Hardcore Strategy

General Tips

• Don't rest. Heal and spend any Beaten Up turns in a low level area where you still need a drop. Alternatively, visit the "gym" or level up your familiars at the Arena. Soda water from the market is useful for restoring mp to save turns. Boost your moxie with hair spray so that you get hit less; it's definitely worth the 8 meat per turn.
• Become good friends with Doc Galaktik. His Ailment Ointment offers the best heal/value. If for some reason you cannot afford to buy healing items, spend a few turns in an easy area that you still need an item drop from with a restoring familiar (ghuol whelp, starfish, raincloud).
• Plan ahead. Keep track of what drops you need and what area they come from.
• Adventure while the area is still your level. Don't skip an area you need a drop from, or you'll be wasting turns later where you could get more stats from better monsters.
• Complete quests on stat days. Using things like the meat globe, stat script, and Chest of the Bonerdagon are best saved for a nearby stat day.
• Any stat boosts are good stat boosts. When you have next to nothing, anything helps. Assemble any stat boosting accessories you can with what parts you have.
• Avoid the gym. Stats are best gained by adventuring. Using the gym doesn't give you nearly as many stat points as adventuring well.
• Befriend the autosell. As a general rule, if you have more than two of something that's not a food/booze ingredient, healing or combat item, or similarly useful, it's a good idea to autosell all but one. It's also a good idea to autosell your old weapons without stat boosts, for example the viking helmet. Also consider autoselling stat-lowering foods and drinks such as Imp Ale or ghuol guolash (this is not the time to go for a trophy).
• Be a bounty hunter. The Bounty Hunter Hunter is often overlooked, but sometimes he'll be buying items you have. Just be sure to follow the guidelines above so you don't sell something you'll need later. Do not sell him your yeti fur; instead, wait for bounties on hippopotamus skin or penguin skin, and convert them at The L33t Tr4pz0r's C4b1n.
• Take advantage of Clover Days. Many benefits can be gained from ten-leaf clovers. If you are in dire need of meat for a skill or item, you can use clovers at the Treasury, but this requires adventuring without stat gains. Clovers can also be used to obtain cooking ingredients including spices, can get booze, or extra stat gains. If you are going to need clovers in the next several days, stock up on them because you never know if the next day will be a clover day or not.

Teetotaler

• Autosell your booze. Unless you're stocking up for some reason. If you obtain an ice-cold six-pack, it will only autosell for 150 meat, while the six ice-cold beer you get for using it will autosell for 180 meat.
• Always use a chef-in-the-box. As soon as you can make one. This means obtaining some chef's hats when you're young. If it starts to make bad noises, make sure you have the hard-to-get parts (such as the disembodied brain) on hand to make another one.

Boozetafarian

• Autosell your food. But keep one bowl of cottage cheese to convert into a cottage later, and keep important cocktail ingredients.
• Always use a bartender-in-the-box. As soon as you can make one. This means adventuring in The Typical Tavern on stat days until you have a pair of beer lenses. If it starts to make bad noises, make sure you have the hard-to-get parts (such as the disembodied brain) on hand to make another one.
• Drink the right booze on stat days. Y'know, drink a martini when both moons are new for extra Moxie, drink a white Canadian when the moons are opposite for extra Muscle, etc. This means saving up the ingredients for the upcoming stat day as well.

Oxygenarian

• Autosell your food. Just be careful that you don't need it for a quest later on.
• Autosell your booze. Unless you're stocking up for some reason.
• Increase your daily turns by any means necessary. Assemble a meat maid, collect a dead guy's watch, put together your pagoda.
• Don't Adventure! Since nothing you can do will raise your number of adventures (unlike other paths that could find food or booze they can use), let them accumulate until a stat day comes. Unless you are about to get more than 200 adventures at your next rollover, you should never be adventuring on non-stat days. Only adventure down to 200 minus your nightly amount, and concentrate on tasks which you need to do which don't provide stats (such as fishing for a worthless trinket in The Sewer).

Required Item Drop Planning

Items Required for Sorceress' Tower

Drop	Location	Level
Boris's key Jarlsberg's key Sneaky Pete's key	The Daily Dungeon	4?
Gnollish pie tin	The Bugbear Bakery or Degrassi Knoll	4
ten-leaf clover	The Hermitage or The Shore, Inc.	1
digital key red pixel potion x5	The Inexplicable Door	3?
spider web	The Sleazy Back Alley	1
razor-sharp can lid	The Haunted Pantry	1
worthless trinket stolen accordion	The Sewer	1
skeleton bone loose teeth	The Misspelled Cemetary	3?
baseball sonar-in-a-biscuit	Guano Junction	4
disease	The "Fun" House	4?
barbed-wire fence	The Shore, Inc.	4?
tambourine bells	The Hippy Camp	5?
wussiness potion ruby W	The Deep Fat Friars' Gate	7?
acoustic guitarrr	The Obligatory Pirate's Cove	8?
meat vortex lowercase N x2 Tasty Fun Good rice candy	The Valley Beyond the Orc Chasm	8?
frigid ninja stars	Lair of the Ninja Snowmen	9?
photoprotoneutron torpedo metallic A	The Penultimate Fantasy Airship	10
thin black candle chaos butterfly original G heavy D Angry Farmer candy	The Castle in the Clouds in the Sky	10
Richard's star key star buckler star starfish (familiar) star crossbow, staff, or sword	The Hole in the Sky	10

The Hermit humbly requests that this page be rewritten or expanded.