Lingo
From A KoL Wiki
This page is an attempt at covering all the terms you'll see dealing with the community of Kingdom of Loathing. There's a lot of terms specific to this game and borrowed from other games used in regular discussions, so if you feel a bit lost in a conversation, this should help you gain your bearings.
Common names
These are common nouns used by players to discuss certain elements in-game.
Stats
- Refers to Muscle, Mysticality, and Moxie.
Substats
- Refers to the experience points of the actual stats. Shows up as different versions of things like Muscleboundness, Enchantedness, and Chutzpah at the end of most combats and from certain adventures and items.
Mainstat
- Refers to the determining stat of your class's level.
Offstats
- Refers to stats other than your Mainstat.
Init
- Shorthand for Combat Initiative.
Avatar
- Refers to the three Avatar challenge classes, Avatar of Boris, Avatar of Jarlsberg and Avatar of Sneaky Pete.
- Also less commonly refers to the picture of your character in-game, andor image on the forums.
Shrug
- Refers to clearing away a buff by right-clicking and confirming to shrug. Usually an Accordion Thief Song, to free up a slot for another song, or 'buffs' that only provide no meaningful bonus such as Just the Best Anapests.
Perm
- To learn a skill using Karma for future ascension use.
- HCperm thus means to learn it for Hardcore.
Strategies
Delay
- The amount of turns needed in a zone before certain adventures can happen.
- A subterm of this is delay burning, which is to use things that either spend no turns or give better adventures to use the turns prior to the desired adventures occuring.
Sniff/Olfact
- Terms for increasing frequency of encountering monsters of a given name, often using scent-based mechanics. This is accomplished by adding in an extra copy of that monster to the queue for each zone when it's a zone that has that name of monster.
- Important in increasing overall chance of getting a particular counter, to help with item drops and the like.
- Sources include Transcendent Olfaction and Nosy Nose's Get a Good Whiff of This Guy skill, and both AoSP and AoJ have their own special skills similar to this. You can also use an odor extractor which does the same as Transcendent Olfaction as a one-shot item, though it's not recommended to use it outside of not having any other choice, as working towards Olfaction is a much better purpose for the lucre that they both require.
Plinking
- A strategy where you set your moxie high enough to not take much damage from monsters in a given area and then slowly kill them with weak attacks and items, which maximize the number of rounds of combat.
- Important in getting more out of Cocoabo type and Starfish type familiars, as well as other per-combat-round effects.
Outmoxie
- Having enough moxie to render most enemies' attacks into misses.
- Invaluable to survivability.
- Maximizing Your Moxie will help with this.
Tune/Tuning/Attune
- Focusing on a given element, either via equipment, re-casting a Flavour of Magic, or by using phials.
- Important in making sure you can deal high damage with less MP.
Arrow
- Refers to the act of shooting a badly romantic arrow or winking at a reanimator to turn a monster into a wandering monster temporarily.
- Important in making sure certain combats happen, which means you get certain drops guaranteed without having to be in the zone they'd normally require. They also do take away from the delay in a zone, though certain other elements of progression might not be moved forward, such as desert exploration or progress in unlocking places in the Black Forest.
Free runaway
- All effects that let you escape combat without a turn cost.
- Important in getting through delay in areas where adventuring otherwise isn't optimal.
- Major sources of these are glob of Blank-Out, divine champagne popper, Frumious Bandersnatch, Pair of Stomping Boots, Greatest American Pants, Navel ring of navel gazing, peppermint parasol, amongst quite a few more. However, keep in mind that most are not available in current challenge paths due to the Type69 restriction.
Tatter/Tatters
- Nickname for tattered scrap of paper, the most common/available free runaway method which can be used en masse to do certain tasks without using your turns. It has a 50/50 shot at working or doing nothing, which means you need a lot to do much of anything.
- Important in maximizing opportunities where you need pickpocket-only items or are seeking to only spend turns on certain adventures within an event or similar.
Banish
- All effects that remove a monster from a queue.
- Important in maximizing your chances of seeing a given monster by making other choices less likely.
- Current sources include Batter Up!, divine champagne popper, ice house, and a number of others, though once more most options are not Type-69 legal.
Free fights
- Combats you can come across that do not consume turns.
- Includes Mini-Hipster, Artistic Goth Kid fights, BRICKO monsters and infernal seal fights.
Wandering Monsters
- Refers to enemy encounters that happen regardless of what adventure zone is being adventured in, usually as part of specific events or quests. They replace other adventures in zones, thus potentially being a good way to increase your delay burn.
Copy
- All effects that can let you make a copy of a monster in combat to fight it later.
- Important in seeing a monster with certainty multiple times.
- Occurs in a zone that is not a normal adventure zone - so, no, it doesn't take from any delay.
Faxing
- A version of copying that is done outside of combat, and thus lets you choose rather than having to copy something in a fight.
- Important in making sure you have a monster available outside of when you'd normally see it, and compounds the effectiveness of arrowing or copying.
- The skill Rain Man from Heavy Rains and the fax machine are the two current sources available. The first is dependent on your encounters, which is either populated by your Monster Manuel or what you've met in Heavy Rains paths. The latter is dependent on another player providing you the monster from the fax machine, although you can address this via a Faxbot.
Yellow Ray
- Any effect which both give you the Everything Looks Yellow effect and forces non-conditional items to drop.
- Sources of these include He-Boulder's yellow-eyed gaze (Yellow Optical Ray of Item Dropping Sexiness), Summon Clip Art's unbearable light, Summon Smithsness's Golden Light, getting Nanoballsy from a Nanorhino and using Unleash Nanites and many more.
Stunning
- Refers to actions that prevent a monster from acting for several or more rounds. See Stunning.
Staggering
- Similar to stunning but for the current round only, usually as part of another effect. See Stunning.
- Important note, creatures gain a resistance to Stunning at a fairly low ML, and to Staggers at a farily high ML, which Staggers are usually more valuable, depending on your strategy.
Combat modifiers
- Used interchangeably to describe effects that make monsters more or less attracted to you to modify the frequency you see combats or non-combats, respectively.
- Has many different nicknames: +Com, -Com, +C, +NC,
- See Combat Frequency.
Familiar types
For examples of these familiar types, please see the Familiars by type page.
If you see an amalgam name of the types below to describe a familiar, it means it has both of those abilities, generally at full weight although some exist that are partial or increased in weight calculation.
Attack
- Any familiar which attacks. Most use a sabre-toothed lime formula, though there are plenty that don't.
Volley
- Increases combat substat gains like a Volleyball, i.e. linear function.
Sombrero/Brero
- Increases combat substat gains like a Hovering Sombrero, i.e. quadratic function.
Chaun
- Increases meat gains like a Leprechaun.
Fairy
- Increases item drops like aBaby Gravy Fairy.
Barnacle
- Decreases enemy stats like a Barrrnacle at the start of combat.
Potato/Tater/Tato
- Blocks enemy attacks like a Levitating Potato.
Ghoul/Guhol
- Heals HP and MP at the end of combat like a Ghuol Whelp.
Mosquito/Squito
- Drains HP from an enemy like a Mosquito.
Cocoabo
- Performs a variety of actions like a Cocoabo.
Starfish/Fish
- Deals damage and restores MP like a Star Starfish.
Spleen/Spleeniar
- Drops an item that gives you spleen damage for turns and possibly stats.
Drop
- Drops anywhere from one to an assortment of items. Usually not also used for those in the Spleen category.
Random cultural lingo
Bartle Test Type
- What sort of player you are, determined by a multiple choice test. The four categories are:
Heart: Player involvement oriented. Diamond: Collectors. Spade: Discoverers of mechanics and secrets. Club: Seeks conflict with other players, usually in PvP or other competitions.
Spading
- Refers to the act of figuring out game mechanics, also taken from the name of Spade from the Bartle test.
Mafia
- Refers to [[1]], an external tool to the game that helps with automation and time management.
Baleet
- An alternate term for ignore which originated from Homestar Runner's use of the word as an alternative to deleted.
Griefing
- To instigate another player via various actions.
Huggler
- Someone who both griefs and is a Heart, which is possible.
Dickstabber
- A term coined by the devs of Kingdom of Loathing, to mean someone who will do something completely unfun and difficult for the most minute advantages.
Common acronyms
For a more comprehensive list, see Acronyms. This is for the more common ones you'll see in day-to-day conversations.
