Beginner's guide

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The Beginner's Guide

Welcome to the Kingdom of Loathing wiki! Although this guide is meant for players new to KoL, it assumes that you have completed the Toot Oriole Quest. Armed with that basic knowledge, you can use this wiki to discover more about how KoL works.

Although the wiki contains detailed explanations of various quests and puzzles, it can be more fun to figure them out on your own. Of course, if you get stuck, the wiki can help get you back on track.

Turns/Adventures

In KoL, adventures are a limit on the number of actions you can take each day. You already know how this works from the tutorial, but here are a few things to note.

Some activities, like shopping, do not cost you any adventures and can be performed at any time (except in the middle of a fight). Also, traveling between locations does not require the use of any adventures.

Most actions (like fighting a monster) use one adventure, but a few activities (like taking a vacation) use multiple adventures. These will be marked with their adventure cost in parentheses.

All players receive 40 adventures each day at rollover. Unused adventures are carried over to the following day (up to a maximum of 200), so don't worry if you are unable to use all of your adventures every day.

Some other common ways to gain adventures are listed below.

Food

As you discovered from the tutorial, eating food gives you more adventures. Some foods also give you stats. You can eat up to 15 fullness per day. Generally, simple foods (like fruits and cookies) are 1-2 fullness, while more complex foods (like burritos and pizzas) are 3-6 fullness. Unfortunately your fullness level is not displayed by the game, so you will have to keep track separately.

Not all foods are equal! Besides having different fullness values, some foods are higher quality and will give you more adventures. Most of these high-quality foods will require that you spend adventures cooking them. You may be able to assemble a chef-in-the-box, who will save you time by cooking things for you.

Booze

Drinking booze also gives you more adventures. Fortunately there is a visible drunkenness counter. If you drink 15 or more drunkenness, you will be in a drunken stupor and unable to adventure for the rest of the day (with some exceptions). An optional quest will later allow you to raise your drinking tolerance to 20.

Different drinks have different drunkenness values, and some drinks give you more adventures. Generally, you will have to mix the highest-quality drinks yourself, but you may be able to build a bartender-in-the-box to mix drinks for you.

Many players like to end their day with a nightcap, a final drink which puts them over the drunkenness limit. The gained adventures can then be carried over to the following day.

Spleen

Although not explained in the tutorial, every player also has a hidden spleen counter, which limits the use of other powerful items. These spleen items have a variety of effects from restoring HP to giving you substats or adventures. The easiest way to obtain adventures from your spleen are to buy or make the various wads (except for the sewer wad, that serves a different purpose). In order to create them yourself, you must have learned the Seal Clubber's Pulverize skill.

Other Sources

• Depending on the path you take, you will have the opportunity to steel one of your organs and give it an extra 5 capacity. Please note that for the liver that while it is extended 20, you can not go over 19 drunkenness without the same penalties.
• 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.

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.

You have as much time as you need to complete any particular quest, so there's no need to rush.

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.

Your Character

There are six classes in the game. Seal Clubbers and Turtle Tamers are Muscle-based classes. Pastmancers and Saucerors are Mysticality-based classes. Disco Bandits and Accordion Thieves are Moxie-based classes.

Main Stats

• Muscle - This stat determines your maximum hit points, your chances of hitting with melee attacks, and 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 - This stat determines your mana point maximum, and increases spell damage which is most important for the two spellcaster (mysticism-based) classes. Many accessories have minimum Mysticality requirements. This stat is less important for non-spellcasters and they will likely gain sufficient mysticism naturally from advancement. The two mysticality classes also gain a 50% MP bonus.

• 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 however. 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.

Stat Gains

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 you have collected a certain number of these moxie substats, then you gain a single point of that stat. There are also many ways to add bonus stat points. 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.

Mana Points

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.

Equipment

You can equip a hat, pants, either a two handed weapon, or a 1-handed weapon plus an offhand item, one familiar-accessory, and three accessories. Later on, you can gain the ability to wear a Shirt (for an additional slot), or the ability to dual-wield 1-handed weapons.

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 (approximately 10%-20% of the weapons' power). For hats and pants, this boosts your character's damage absorption, 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).
• HP/MP Regeneration- 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 - This is 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 serious resistance.

Outfits

Outfits are special sets of equipment. When you equip an outfit, your character's avatar will change. Most outfits will give you a hidden boost to your stats or allow you to visit some place previously forbidden.

The first outfits that you will probably find are the Knob Goblin Elite Guard Uniform or the Knob Goblin Harem Girl Disguise. Other recommended outfits include the Filthy Hippy Disguise which will allow you to buy produce from the The Hippy Store.

Wearing an outfit and visiting the Pretentious Artist will unlock a tattoo for your use.

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.

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 generally become more effective as they gain levels, which is represented by its weight... from 1 lb to 20 lbs naturally, plus modifiers from buffs and equipment. 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.

• 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 bowl of lucky charms. Eat it for a 50% chance for this familiar. Repeat as needed. Cost 200 meat +3 turns.

• Baby Gravy Fairy Increases the chance an item will drop after a combat. You need to bake a fairy gravy boat with a knob mushroom to make a pregnant mushroom.

In addition there are 6 familiars that no adventurer should be without

• 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.
• Mosquito You should have obtained this by completing the Level 2 quest. Damages opponents and restores your HP.
• Sabre-Toothed Lime Meat-paste a lime with some sabre teeth. Attacks opponents.
• Angry Goat - Combine some goat cheese with some anticheese. Attacks opponents, also will deal Stench Damage.
• Levitating Potato - Its hatchling may be found sometimes in The Daily Dungeon. It will block enemy attacks and criticals.
• Barrrnacle - You will probably get one of these while fighting pirates. It will lower a monster's level in order to make it easier to hit.

Another trick is to visit the Flea Market under the Familiars section to browse the various hatchlings for sale (though you should probably buy it from the Mall). This will give you an idea of approximately how rare each one is.

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. (The last test requires a main stat of about 17-20)

Other Stuff

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!

Stat Days

The moons that you see in the upper-right corner are not just for flavor. If the combination is right, a 25% boost will be given to any gain to a certain stat that day.

• If Grimace is full, the bonus will be given to muscle stat gains.
• If Ronald is full, the bonus will be given to mysticality stat gains.
• If both moons are either a double waning crescent, or a double new moon, the bonus will be given to moxie stat gains.

Holidays

On certain days of the KoL calendar, holidays are celebrated. These will happen 4 times a year, however a 5th occurrence may be occur if it's close to the real-world holiday that it's based on. (Except for Yuletide, Crimbo usually takes its place.)

• Jarlsuary 1 - The Festival of Jarlsberg - All skills cost 3 less MP to use, the party hat may be purchased and used.
• Frankuary 4 - Valentine's Day - Special Valentine's day themed items may be purchased from The Gift Shop
• Starch 3 - St. Sneaky Pete's Day - Special adventures may be found by overdrinking and adventuring in a stupor. Green beer may be brewed.
• April 2 - Oyster Egg Day - Oyster Eggs are hidden throughout the Kingdom, the placement changes every holiday.
• Martinus 2 - El Dia de Los Muertos Borrachos - The Dya of the Drunk Dead. Special combats will pop up throughout the day, allowing you to obtain special booze.
• Bill 3 - Generic Summer Holiday - The Gigantic Superfluous Fountain opens for swimming. This will give you a special stat gain bonus dpeending on what floaty you use.
• Bor 4 - Dependence Day - The Market will sell fireworks which will grant a +50% stat bonus to one stat.
• Petember 4 - Arrrbor Day - The Arrrboretum opens up for adventuring, and the rewards of the prior Arrrbor Day may be found.
• Carlvember 6 - Labór Day - An extra 10 adventures will be given to you at rollover. This is applied after the cutoff point, it is possible to have 210 adventures.
• Porktober 8 - Halloween - You may go trick or treating for special candy.
• Boozember 7 - Feast of Boris - Your stomach's capacity is boosted by 15. In addition, special monsters will appear to fight.
• Dougtember 4 - Yuletide - You may listen to ghost stories and toast marshmallows.

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 Mad Train wine will give you 3 adventures for 3 drunkenness. However if you were to buy a margarita, you would obtain twice the adventures along with some substats.

At level 5, you can go to The Mall of Loathing and buy stuff instead. This is almost always cheaper, and recommended.

At level 9, you can purchase a store in the Mall for 50,000 meat. This should be done as soon as you can, as you can now sell to anyone and avoid the listing fees of the Flea Market.

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!

Collectible

There are two main types of collectibles in the Kingdom. You may obtain either tattoos or trophies.

Tattoos can be obtained from several sources, however almost all of them will come from the Pretentious Artist (after completing his quest). You will also gain various tattoos from ascending, drinking a martini, or eating some delicious salad.

Trophies can be purchased from the Trophy Hut for 10,000 meat a piece. There are numerous trophies in the game, and all have special requirements that you must have satisfied in order to be purchased. Many trophies can be obtained during a single ascension, however it will take at least 16 ascensions in order to get them all.

Hints and Strategies (Warning: Spoilers)

If you want a bit of extra direction on how to more efficiently play during your first few days, read these tips.

• Visit the Artist Hovel in the Wrong Side of Town immediately. His quest takes you to three different adventure locations and will start to give you Tattoos. In addition, he now buys Rat Whiskers for 50 meat each which is solid early on.

• The Spooky Forest has a Vampire Hunter encounter which will give you Wooden Stakes. Equip these to fight Vampires, as the hunter will occasionally show up and give you a very strong consumable which boosts your stats significantly. You can also combine the Wooden Stake with a Bar Skin to make an improved Tent.

• At level 4, visit your Guild. You can pick up your Epic Weapon quest which is relatively easy to accomplish, has no combat required, and will boost your character significantly.

• At level 4+, the Bodyguard Bats are particularly valuable for their 200ish meat drops. When you do encounter the Boss Bat, you may wish to use Harold's bell to drive it off. Doing so allows you 20 more turns of Bodyguard Bat encounters which is a great assistance at low levels.