Avatar of Jarlsberg/Strategy
From A KoL Wiki
Mr. Store Items
Very useful (HC)
- Tome of Clip Art: Summon Clip Art's unbearable lights are the best source of disintegration ("yellow rays") in the path. Clip Art also provides shining, frosty, and time halos for +stats, +items, and turngen, respectively; additional banishes on top of the cheese staff via crystal skulls; and potions like cold-filtered water to help with challenges like fighting your shadow.
- Librams: Now we're talking. Thanks to Jarlsberg's huge MP pool, and particularly the MP-restoring Food Coma, librams are of great interest in this path.
- Summon Party Favor: As always, divine champagne poppers are useful for mini-banishing and free runaways. Remember that the chance for an uncommon favor is halved each time you receive one.
- Summon BRICKOs: Lots of summons means lots of BRICKO fights, but remember that you're limited to 3 eye bricks per day. Plays well with resolutions and O'RLY manuals.
- Summon Resolutions: The main attractions here are "smarter" and "happier", with a few complete duds like "wealthier" and "kinder" and the rest somewhere in between. Your odds for a "smarter" resolution aren't great, but you'll always be able to use more.
- Summon Candy Heart: Though these are less useful now that mainstat requirements for zones have been removed, yellow candy hearts' +20% initiative is handy, and lavender candy hearts' +10% items is always nice to have.
- The other two tomes are less useful; Summon Love Songs requires intense usage to maximize buff potential, and the only relevant result of Summon Dice is the 2d10 stat gain.
- Garden items
- A Bone Garden provides skeleton skis, whose init bonus makes a ton of difference when combined with Never Late for Dinner. The skeletal skiff shaves up to 9 turns from your run, and Skeletal Buddy gives bonus stats once you're done with those two items.
- A Peppermint Patch gives more active benefits than skeletons -- peppermint twists give +40% of valuable initiative, peppermint crooks help with the Filthworms, and peppermint parasols provide free runaways in a path that otherwise has few (in HC, anyway).
- A Pumpkin Patch is arguably the least useful garden, as the pumpkin bomb's yellow ray function is outshined (pun intended) by unbearable lights. Pumpkin juice does provide +20% items, however, and if you don't have Summon Clip Art, yellow rays are still quite valuable.
- Clan VIP Lounge key
- An Olympic-Sized Swimming Pool is one of the main VIP attractions in this path, because Chocolatesphere and the ballroom song are only -20% combat; Silent Running gets you to -25%.
- A Pool Table is also of use, particularly for its +50% initiative buff (that also comes with a handy +10% items).
- A Looking Glass's buffs can give you +50 HP for survivability and several other useful effects.
- The April Shower can make a double-ice cap or double-ice britches for Avatars who are taking hits, and otherwise provides a small stat boost via Thaumodynamic.
- A Relaxing Hot Tub's healing may be of interest to Avatars at several points during a run.
Slightly useful (HC)
- Other Tomes: While not as consistent or effective as Clip Art, some other tomes have uses in AoJ. In particular, two casts of Summon Rad Libs can provide papier-mâché toothpicks, and Summon Stickers can yield huge item boosts from unicorn stickers. Most items crafted from sugar sheets are of limited use, however, and the best result from Summon Snowcones is a 1/5 chance for a blue snowcone.
- Correspondents
- GameInformPowerDailyPro subscription cards provide dungeoneering kits for free, whose scrolls of Puddingskin and Protection from Bad Stuff can be very helpful for survivability and elemental tests without Oilsphere, respectively. The dungeons themselves take a lot of turns, but the Raiments of the Final Boss are exceptionally useful if you're not concerned with your turncount.
- My Own Pen Pal kit is outshined by the dungeoneering kit, unfortunately, as Jarlsberg's hat and chefstaffs outperform the Van der Graaf helmet and electric crutch. The shock belt may be useful to Avatars who are taking hits and did not craft a double-ice cap, however.
- Camp Scout backpack (HC): None of the food or booze is usable, but the CSA fire-starting kit provides HP and MP regen, Camp Scout pup tents are a full heal once per day, and the CSA bravery badge helps shore up your HP and DA when needed.
- The Sorcerers of the Shore Grimoire's snack voucher can help kill tough bosses via tobiko marble soda and Pisces in the Skyces.
Pull-worthy Mr. Store items for Normal ascensions:
Very useful (SC)
Slightly useful (SC)
Astral Consumables
Jarlsberg won't eat anything he didn't make, even if they're astral. However, astral energy drinks are exempt from this rule, and therefore your only option.
Astral Gear
- Avatars of Jarlsberg can't use their weapons to attack, so anything that improves Weapon Damage is largely useless. astral pet sweater also has no use, since you can only use companions.
- astral statuette improves your damage output considerably and provides extra adventures per day. Highly recommended.
- astral ring is an all-around strong item, providing three important stats for AoJ. Recommended if you have trouble maintaining MP.
- astral bracer reduces your MP usage per adventure, but it reduces your damage output due to how AoJ spells' damage cap scales with MP used. While not good for low-MP spells, it can be more useful for high-MP spells, in cases where you don't need to deal as much damage. However, this utility is largely overshadowed by the astral statuette.
- If you have trouble maintaining HP, an astral shield may help with this issue. While your magical prowess is diminished, it gives extra HP, HP regen and damage reduction, making you near-invincible early game.
- astral belt is probably the best choice for speed, once you have the skill points to handle combat with it.
- astral mask is never a bad choice. You can always use more item drops.
- astral shirt cannot be worn unless you ascend under a Gnome sign and buy Torso Awaregness in run. If you're doing this in softcore, you'd be better off pulling a cane-mail shirt (or similar) instead. Access to the Beach in hardcore will probably come too late for the shirt to give much benefit, so in both cases, the astral shirt is a fairly poor choice.
Skills
The following is an analysis of all of the skills available in Avatar of Jarlsberg. Some skills will be more desirable after you bank skill points.
Intrinsic
- Curdle: Your most basic spell. Other than being the primary source of damage on first few levels, costing no MP and opening up half the basic boozes, there's not much to say.
The Path of Breakfast
- Boil: A great early-game spell for AoJ. It's the first skill in the tree, so you can pick it up immediately after Curdle starts becoming weak.
- The Most Important Meal: An important skill for increasing adventure gains, providing 3-21 adventures per day. Once your food options open up as you bank skill points, you can use it more effectively to maximize adventure gains. It also gives a large amount of substats, enough to go from level 1 to 2 in a flash. Essential for speeding up runs.
- Conjure Eggs:
- Egg Man:
- Conjure Dough: Allows you to summon dough, as well as the Staff of the Staff of Life, which great for maintaining HP and MP and increasing survivability while still providing a good bonus to spell damage. Since Avatars of Jarlsberg lack a healing skill, this chefstaff can be used as such.
- Early Riser: You can conjure 1 extra food item per cast. Its effectiveness increases as you gain Stomach/Liver capacity and need more consumables to fill them.
- Fry: Once your 5-MP spell doesn't deal enough damage, Fry is an excellent mid-to-late game spell to use, dealing high elemental damage for a reasonable cost.
- Coffeesphere: Increases +Combat%. Lets your complete the Lighthouse sub-quest at a reasonable time, but other than optimizing speedruns, it's not essential.
The Path of Lunch
- Conjure Vegetables: The most useful aspect of Vegetables is that you can use it to make Die Sauerlager(s). While it's only "decent" booze, it's superior to "crappy" mediocre lagers.
- Radish Horse:
- Chop:
- Conjure Cheese:
- Slice:
- Working Lunch:
- [[Lunch Like a King
The Path of Dinner
- Bake: Deals damage over time. Largely a weak combat spell, since you should be focused on one-shotting monsters.
- Food Coma: Gives 10 free rests, and rests fully restore MP. Great for maintaining MP, as well as healing slightly. With resting now removing Beaten Up, it's also good for weaker players who find themselves getting Beaten Up a few times.
- Conjure Potato:
- Hippotatomous:
- Conjure Meat Product: Conjures meat, which you can use to craft the Staff of the All-Steak, which has a Jiggle effect that greatly increases item drops. Very useful if you're trying to get an important item to drop ASAP.
- Never Late for Dinner: Gives 10 adventures per day, as well as +50% Combat Initiative. The bonus initiative almost guarantees you the first move, saving you HP and allowing you to handle large ML boosts. A good skill overall.
- Grill: The most expensive combat spell. While its steep MP cost can be a pain to maintain, it is good in situations where you need to deal a lot of damage, particularly against the bosses.
- Gristlesphere: Increases ML. Largely a luxury skill not taken outside of speed runs.
The Path of Dessert
- Conjure Fruit:
- Best Served Cold: Gives +100% Spell Damage. A very strong damage booster, allowing you to take out even the toughest of monsters, plus you can get it early in the tree. It's almost essential to have against the final boss.
- Freeze:
- Nightcap:
- Conjure Cream:
- Blend:
- Cream Puff:
- Chocolatesphere: Boosts -Combat%. While -Combat is great overall, make sure you can create good foods/drinks before you pick this up.