Beginner's guide
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The Hermit humbly requests that this page be rewritten or expanded.
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Welcome to Kingdom of Loathing! By winding up at this page, you have shown yourself to be a more intrepid sort, interested in going beyond the basics to learn more about KoL and to answer some of your many questions. KoL is not easy for new people because the terminology and items are so strange, compared to the usual Role Playing Games. This page is meant to provide a fast guide and unravel some of the mystery, beyond what the tutorial teaches. KoL is a very complex game and you may be disheartened at first as every time you look up something on the wiki, it brings more questions than answered. But persevere, as you will get the hang of it pretty quick. Note that it is expected that the reader has completed the Tutorial in-game! This guide is for version NS13 and was created November, 2009.
Main Stats
Go click your character link at the top left to bring up your character sheet. You will see three stats, Moxie, Muscle, and Mysticism. You will see three bar-graphs that show a progression for each stat. First, a word on the stats themselves:
- Muscle - Determines your maximum hit points. Determines your chances of hitting with melee attacks, as well as how much damage is dealt with ALL weapons. Most melee weapons and shirts have minimum Muscle requirements. Muscle is an important stat for all characters. Note that the two muscle based classes gain a 50% hit point bonus.
- Mysticality - Determines your mana point maximum. Also determines spell damage, which really is most important for the two spellcaster (mysticism-based) classes. Many accessories have minimum Mysticality requirements. This stat is really only important for the spellcaster classes. Other classes will gain enough mysticism naturally from advancement.
- Moxie - Determines your defenses; how likely you are to be hit and also how much damage you take upon getting hit. It also determines your hit chance with ranged weapons. Note that muscle still determines ranged weapon damage. Most ranged weapons, hats and pants have minimum Moxie requirements. Due to combat formulas it is possible to be almost invulnerable to being hit by a given monster with sufficient Moxie. As such, moxie is one of the most important stats, even for Muscle/Mysticism classes.
More information in Primary Stat.
SubStats
By now you have adventured and noticed that you have gained an alarming variety of different oddly-named stats. Here is the deal: To advance a main stat (muscle, mysticality, moxie), a certain number of substat gains is needed in order to get 1 point of that main stat. Also, each main stat has many different substat names, as shown below for variety's sake:
- Muscle - Beefiness, Fortitude, Muscleboundness,Strengthliness, Strongness
- Mysticality - Enchantedness, Magicalness, Mysteriousness, Wizardliness
- Moxie - Cheek, Chutzpah, Roguishness, Sarcasm, Smarm.
In other words, gaining +5 Smarm is the same as +5 Cheek. It adds 5 subpoints to your moxie stat. When your bar-graph is full and you have collected a certain number of these moxie substats, then you gain a single point of that stat. The higher your main stat, the more points worth of substats you need to acquire for a point in your main stat. More on this below...
Levels and Advancement
You gain main stat advancement by getting the appropriate number of substats as described above. The most common methods of acquiring these are:
- Combat - Every fight will give a certain number of substat points, which are distributed as 50% to the primary stat, and 25% to each secondary stat. This is based on the Monster level.
- Non-Combat - Some non-combat adventures will give you a certain amount of a substat. This amount is typically based on the difficulty of the adventuring zone itself, though some scale based on your current level (to an upper limit), resulting in higher stat gains the higher your stats already are.
- Eating/Drinking - Most foods and booze grant substat points, in addition to giving you extra adventures.
- Other usable items - There is a huge variety of usable items, some of which grant substat points when they are used.
You gain levels by achieving a certain number of your main stat (which is determined by your character class). This increases as you level. From level 1 to level 2 only requires 2 points of your mainstat. Getting from level 9 to 10 requires many more points of mainstat advancement.
Your level is used to determine which quests you can go on, as well as what you can eat or drink. If you have not yet ascended, your character level also determines when you can buy/sell from other players (in town at the Mall or Pawn Shop) or join a Clan.
See Advancement for more information.
Quests
Your main Quests come from the Council of Loathing in the middle of Town. At each level, you are eligible for another quest regardless if you have finished the last one(s). In addition, you will find many side-quests available from various locations.
Mana Pool
One note of importance is that your MP has a different name based on your class. Muscle classes have "muscularity points", Moxie classes have "mojo points", and Mysticism classes have "mana points". They all work the same, mechanically. You can replenish MP by drinking certain 'potions', adventuring with certain familiars, equipping certain accessories, and by resting at your campground or clan hall.
Hit Points
When you reach 0 HPs, you are unable to adventure. You cannot actually DIE however. If you run out of HPs in combat, you lose the fight (and the adventure/turn) and get a 'beaten up' status effect that halves your stats. You generally want to rest and then do something non-combat related (or easy fights) for a few turns until the Beaten Up effect goes away.
Turns/Adventures
In this game, Adventures are your limitation to your actions. You already know how this works from the tutorial, but here are a few things to note.
First, you can do ANYTHING that does not require adventures in an unlimited amount. You can be adventuring in a cave and go back to town, buy stuff, sell stuff, explore, and head back to the cave in ZERO adventures! Basically you can effectively 'teleport' anywhere. This makes for a very user-friendly experience.
The next obvious question is, "How many turns do I get and how do I get more?" Every player starts with 80 turns, and gains 40 turns every realtime day. However, many more turns can be obtained with several methods. The three most common are:
- Food - Eating food increases your adventures. The higher quality the food, the more adventures gained. Some food also improves your stats. You can eat up to 15 'fullness' per day, where an average food item takes 3 fullness, but this varies from 1 to 6. Note that you have no way of knowing what your fullness level is, except by manually keeping track.
- Booze - Drinking booze works the same way as eating food, except it uses a visible Drunkeness/Tipsiness/etc counter. If you drink more than 15 tipsiness, you are UNABLE TO ACT for the rest of the day! So be very careful with drinking once you approach the limit. Be sure to top off your adventures when you are out with one last nightcap, since they will carry over.
- Items/Amenities - There are several items and clan amenities that give you a certain number of free adventures per day. A clan can have a calendar for +3, an inspirational bookcase for +5, and a +1 item. In addition, you can carry or have items which boost adventures. However, many are fairly hard to come by, so by the time you can get them, you will be well beyond the scope of this guide. An easy one to get is the dead guy's watch, but you need to be wearing it at rollover for it to work.
A beginning player can expect about 100 adventures per day or more.
Extra leftover adventures are added to your allotment for the next day, up to a maximum of 200. Even if you cannot spend time adventuring, try to log in briefly to eat and drink, so you can get those significant bonus adventures added to your total.
Equipment
You can equip a hat, pants, either a two handed weapon, or a 1handed weapon plus an offhand item, one familiar-accessory, and three accessories. Later on, you gain the ability to wear a Shirt which is an additional slot.
Like many adventure games, getting better equipment is important. Early on, you can head to the equipment shop in town to get basic equipment. At level 3, you can buy from other players through an auction-house style shop. Items that are equippable can have many attributes. These are the most common:
- Power - For weapons, this factors into your character's offensive capability - namely, it makes you do more damage when you attack. For hats and pants, this boosts your character's defense, causing you to take less damage from opponents when they attack you.
- Stat boosts - Many items give a stat boost. You should almost always equip items that boost your primary stat (or Moxie if you are boosting defense).
- Regain MP and/or HPs per adventure - Getting one of these items early on from the Mall/Flea Market is a great thing and well worth the money! Every adventure you go on, this item restores a certain amount of HP/MP. These are essential for avoiding wasting adventures resting or wasting healing/MP items. They are great for keeping yourself buffed.
- Bonus Damage - This is a strong ability early in the game, when your damage dealt is very weak and you can one-shot opponents. Note that muscle/moxie boosts are generally twice as effective however.
- Damage Reduction - This attribute directly subtracts from damage taken.
- Damage Absorption - NOT the same as Damage Reduction. This uses a formula which effectively reduces a PERCENTAGE of your damage taken.
- Elemental Resistance - Reduces damage taken of that element by a certain percentage. Resistance does Stack, so 3 slight resistances is equal to 3 points of resistance, which is equal to serious resistance.
Buffs/Skills
In the tutorial, you buffed yourself for 5 turns with one of your skills. Buffs always stack for duration. Hence, if you cast a particular skill 5 times, you would have 25 turns of buff instead of 5. Depending on your class, buffs can be a very good way of spending MPs. By level 3 or 4, you will likely want your buff active at all times. Whenever you have extra mana, you will probably boost yourself. Some classes are better at this than others, but you will quickly discover that some class combat skills are pretty weak. Buffing yourself is generally a better use of MPs for these classes.
Combat
A combat is always a 1 vs 1 affair that takes one adventure. Each monster has a certain Monster Level which determines its combat stats. In combat, initiative is rolled. When you attack, you have a certain chance to hit, based on your Muscle (melee) or Moxie(ranged). There is otherwise no advantage to 'ranged' attacks. If you hit the monster, you deal damage based on the Weapon's Power and your Muscle, minus the monster's damage resistance/reduction. When the monster attacks, its chance to hit is directly based on its stats and your Moxie. As such, Moxie is the primary defensive stat. If you are hit, Moxie determines how much damage you might avoid taking. Other stats are Damage Resistance and Damage Reduction and Elemental Resistance which affect damage taken. Upon winning a fight, you gain subStats based on the monster level as well as a certain amount of Meat and possibly an item drop.
Other events that may occur in combat are...
- Fumble - This is one of the most damaging things that can happen at lower levels. You miss your attack and damage yourself. It happens 4.22% of the time. Certain items can negate this and are worthwhile to seek.
- Critical hit - You will occasionally get a critical hit which deals about double your normal damage output. This is a base 9% chance for the player.
- Familiar does something - There are tons of familiars, many of which periodically do stuff in combat. Sometimes they attack, or give MP to the player, delevel the foe, etc.
- Use of a combat item - Several items exist which have various effects on the monsters. Many of these are beneficial to yourself and/or detrimental to the foe. These should be used wisely.
- Use of a skill - Players have a number of skills available with varying effects. These are typically better than a standard attack and have no chance of fumbling. They cost a certain number of MPs to use.
- Run away - You can attempt to run from an encounter to avoid getting beat down.
Classes
There are six classes in the game. Here is my quick overview of each one:
- Seal Clubber - Equivalent to a barbarian. You rely on hitting hard with melee weapons and large HP pools to succeed. Most class skills are passive combat-oriented buffs with a few heals and combat super-attacks.
- Turtle Tamer - Equivalent to a fighter/ranger type character. You rely on hitting hard in melee and large HP pools to succeed. Most class skills are passive buffs, with some active(castable) buffs and a few combat skills. Skills are more defensive in nature and also work more with familiars. Turtle Tamers can use their combat skills in combos where they 'chain' their debuff-style attacks in a sequence.
- Pastamancer - Equivalent to a wizard/priest. You rely on casting spells in combat to defeat foes. Has a large number of buffs and defensive spells in addition to offensive ones. Focused on cooking.
- Sauceror - Very similar to a Pastamancer. Focused on cooking with a variety of defensing and offensive spells. You start off with Spices in your inventory which can be used to auto-hit in combat for 1 damage. This lets you easily defeat early encounters with no chance of fumbling.
- Disco Bandit - Equivalent to a rogue, sort of. Relies on high Moxie to be difficult to hit, and uses ranged weapons typically. The bandit has several offensive combat skills, which can be chained together into combos. The bandit focuses on mixing drinks and can do so more effectively than any other character. Other skills boost ability to gain cash and items.
- Accordion Thief - Equivalent to a bard. Relies on high Moxie to be hard to hit. Uses ranged weapons. The AT has no useful combat abilities to speak of, except for one gained at the beginning of the game. However, he has a large number of buffs which can affect ANY player in the KoL universe! Up to three of these buffs can be active at once and are very powerful. His first level buff adds a huge +10 moxie to a character which vastly increases defensive potential for a very low mana cost.
I believe the accordion thief is the easiest starting character. They can quickly gain their +10 Moxie buff which is extremely powerful early on and useful throughout the game. Being a moxie-based character, it is easy to become completely invulnerable to being hit, with only fumbles able to hurt the character. With this being the case, your offensive damage, elemental resistance, damage resistance/reduction are all pretty much irrelevant.
The muscle-based classes hit hard and are tough, but healing is a problem. Regaining lost HPs costs precious adventures or large quantities of meat. The mosquito default familiar does help this problem somewhat at early levels. As such, a muscle-based class should definitely level up their familiar and make use of the Arena.
The mysticality-based classes are more advanced. Their main stat doesn't give them a big HP supply, nor large damage, nor high defenses from Moxie. Regaining mana is also problematic at first and these classes need a goodly supply of such(and/or an appropriate familiar).
Familiar
Every character can have 1 active Familiar, and several more in storage. More info is available at Familiar. There is currently an overwhelming number of familiars available, but you will be given a Mosquito for your level 2 quest reward. This is a decent one that fights in combat with you and occasionally heals you. Familiars become more effective as they gain levels, which is represented by its weight... from 1 lb to 20 lbs naturally. The Cake Shaped Arena is a place where your familiar can adventure. Upon winning 10 fights, you are awarded with a special item that takes a 'familiar equipment' slot and increases the effective weight of your familiar.
If you want to try other familiars, here is a short list of some that are pretty easy to get by level 5 or less and are useful.
- Star Starfish By level 5, you can spend about 650 karma and get 6 stars, 4 lines, and a star chart from your clan coffers. You then use the star chart and assemble this familiar. He restores TONS of MP in combat while dealing damage, making him really good for Mysticism classes or any character that uses expensive buffs and combat skills.
- Blood-Faced Volleyball Gives you more stat gains per combat. Go to the hermitage and get a Seal Tooth and a Volleyball. Use the Tooth, then use the Volleyball. Use the blood-faced-volleyball item and you're done. Total cost is about 3 turns, 400 meat.
- Leprechaun Gives more meat per adventure. Go to Spooky Forest with a Clover for a Lucky Charms drop. Eat it for a 50% chance for this familiar. Repeat as needed. Cost 200 meat +3 turns.
Guilds/Training
Every class has a Guild Hall where they gain a number of quests and can train their skills for a substantial meat cost. Before you can do anything though, you must pass a certain number of tests...all of which are based on your primary stat. Therefore, equip yourself with every primary stat equipment piece you can find, use any potion-like item that will temporarily boost your main stat, and use any skills that boost your primary stat. In this way, you can get through many of the challenges all in one visit.
Clans
You can very easily join a Clan starting at level 3. I HIGHLY advise you to do so, as it costs you nothing and you get big gains from doing so. In a genius move by the Developer, clans show up on the big listings based on how much money they spend on advertising! This means that any 'dead' clan will quickly fall to the bottom. Hence, pick any clan on the front page and you will likely be accepted within 1 day.
Clans allow you to 'sell' your items efficiently, and you can take stuff from the clan coffers based on a 'karma' currency system which is a good way to get certain items for quests and easy mid-level food/booze. In addition, you gain bonus adventures per day for free, and can get free meat and free items that boost your stats temporarily. Different clans have differing goodies, but they are all great for you!
Ten Leaf Clovers
You might have noticed ten-leaf clovers at the Hermitage. They are interesting in that they automatically trigger special 'super encounters' at many adventure locations causing one clover to disappear. These are non-combat adventures that give you a boost, far in advance of anything you would normally receive. You can 'use' these clovers to disassemble (deactivate) and reassemble them as desired.
Buying and Selling
At level 3 you can buy stuff from The Flea Market in town. This is a pretty big deal, since you can boost your power significantly by picking up solid accessories, plus fill in any missing equipment slots. The best use of the Flea Market is to get food and booze. The stuff you find early on is pretty bad. For 100 meat each, you can buy fairly low-level food that is a big boon for you. For example, using a 3 drunkenness wine for 3 adventures is ok, but for 100 meat you can drink a margarita and gain 7 or 8 adventures for the same 3 drunkenness. That means 500 meat buys you 25 or more adventures for that day! Same with food.
At level 5, you can go to The Mall of Loathing and buy stuff instead. This is almost always cheaper, but a lot harder. The reason is because stuff is not sorted nicely as with the Flea Market. This requires heavy usage of the KoL wiki.
Winning the Game/Ascendance
KoL designers have cleverly created a scheme for beating the game. Once you beat the main quest, you can ascend and restart the game as any class. However, you can keep the stuff you already have, which makes the game easy. BUT, you can choose from several game modes which increase difficulty and add restrictions. You can get Trophies for certain in-game accomplishments, and in-fact many adventures and areas are ONLY usable by ascended players that have given themselves restrictions. Finally, when you ascend you can usually keep one of your existing skills to be permanently usable for all other incarnations. Hence, you can continue to build up your character by cherry picking skills from all 6 classes!
