Kingdom of Loathing

Games
1

I looked around and I couldn’t find a pre-existing thread, just a few mentions in browser game omnithreads from back in 2006-2008ish. I dunno, maybe I’m the only one that still plays/has gone back to Kingdom of Loathing. But I feel like it really deserves its own thread, it’s such an accomplishment.

So, for those of you that haven’t heard about it, here’s the skinny on KoL (www.kingdomofloathing.com): It’s a browser RPG started back in 2003 and under constant development ever since. It is very, very silly. Literally nothing contains fewer than one joke and there are often multiple layers of humor all wrapped into a single encounter or item. But though the humor is pervasive, it’s layered on genuinely impressive mechanical depth and enormous amounts of content. There’s crafting, puzzles, minigames, a decidedly unique take on PvP, ludicrous group effort (but asynchronous) clan dungeons, a whole trophy system, and dozens of challenge paths when you complete the game’s main questline and Ascend to Valhalla to reincarnate. (But you can put the latter off indefinitely if you’d like to explore the wealth of side content. I’ve had my current character since 2010 and I just ascended for the first time in February.)

There are six main classes, two for each of the three main stats (Muscle, Mysticality, and Moxie), and they used to be fairly simplistic affairs - two mildly different spins on the bruiser, mage, and rogue archetypes - but over the years they all received major revamps and now they each have very distinct feels and specialties. The Disco Bandit, for example, can summon knives and has a variety of stabbing skills that delevel enemies and does damage based on the power of the best knife they have, is a master of Cocktailcrafting (for specialty booze that gives big piles of game turns when consumed and plenty of experience), and has a series of Disco Dance moves that combo into Disco Momentum that stuns the enemy and has a variety of beneficial effects (with passives) in addition to doing damage. The Pastamancer can tune various pasta artillery spells to the game’s five elements, summons pasta thralls that act as a second familiar (everyone gets a familiar, only Pastamancers get two and they can buff the regular one as well), and is a master of Noodlecrafting (for high level food). I assume the other four do a bunch of new cool stuff too but alas I haven’t played them.

Initially it looks like you can only play for forty turns a day, which is a pretty meager amount, but as you learn to cook and cocktailcraft (not to mention a third “spleen” category of consumables), upgrade your campground, and join a clan, you can quickly add hundreds of additional turns a day and these days I can easily play for multiple hours if I so choose. If not, they carry over up to a turncap of 200.

A few tips, if you find yourself getting into it:

  1. Join a clan. There’s no real direct multiplayer in the game, although as I say there are a few collaborative dungeons you can do, but a clan rumpus room will give you some handy daily bonuses like more adventures/day, many clans regularly open up those clan dungeons (you might need to be a little more involved with the clan to be given access, though), and if they have a VIP lounge, even better. Plus you’ll have a clan chat channel for chat and quick advice.
  2. Consider donating: if you do this at all, your account won’t be idlepurged, and if you donate at least $10 you can pick up the usually very handy (and cool) Item of the Month, the particularly neat Familiars of the Year ($20), the Monster Manuel (lots of monster info, jokes, and I believe as you collect “factoids” about monsters you end up with passive bonuses), or similar. It’s a bit pay to win, but they’re getting increasingly creative and funny with these things and you’re not messing with anyone else’s game experience. Plus they’re nearly all in-game tradeable so if you come up with enough game currency (meat) you can generally buy them from other players long after their sales window.
  3. Try to solve things and explore some on your own, but when in doubt the KoL Wiki is super-helpful.
  4. As a correlary, especially later as you start to get into grinding stuff you’ve already seen before, [url=http://kolmafia.sourceforge.net/]KoLMafia is a really helpful interface app: it allows you to automate repetitive parts of the game, control more than you can by default, and run a Relay Browser version of the game with a lot of helpful info and links plugged in right there in the browser window. It also allows you to install further scripting - information, automation, guides that respond to your current game state, etc. This is explicitly okay with the folks that run the game, to be clear.

Oh, and the current Ascension Challenge Path is Actually Ed the Undying, which has a whole bunch of new mechanics and a really rad premise (namely, that you are one of the game bosses coming back and trying to track down the Adventurer that killed you and stole your MacGuffin, in order to recover it). It’s super fun and super funny and you should check it out. So, yeah. That is all, for now.

2

Ed the Undying was already hilarious as a boss (he is factually undying, though of course you can “beat” him), and a clever new way to reward players when he debuted.

I haven’t seriously played KoL since 2013, and the level I was playing it then is less than it was. I adore the game in many ways. But complaints that appeared when the game went from NS11 to NS13 (that is, the “finish your run” quest was moved from level 11 to 13 and a ton of new content was added/some existing content was overhauled to compensate) finally caught up with me.

I got into speed running (and got picked up by a noteworthy clan for making some very, very minor waves on the ladders). Speed running is super fun but it was taking me 2-3 hours to play my turns every day by the end. Even with Mafia, the amazing combat macro system, and all the interface overhauls the game had seen. It was way too time consuming, and it becomes easier to fuck up a run when you spend so long making to many important microdecisions. I missed the NS11 days in some respects (but there are many things I love about NS13). And since that time they’ve radically overhauled several of the level quests. It’s not a new game but its significantly different from when I was trying to beat my own best runs (and get into seriously impressive speed run territory, which I never did).

I am probably done forever. But I will always love this game. Here’s my Bumcheekcity profile. Which is out of date; I probably didn’t run the script to update it for over a year. 2014 was the first year I didn’t do crimbo. The ascension game is just great, though (even if it got too finicky for my tastes). DDO is the only commercial MMO I know of that leveraged the oldschool mud Remort system and it was a really interesting game because of it. It’s the heart of KoL, and it’s a great game because of it.

Malkav11, if there’s any advice you need/run logs you want analyzed I can probably still provide a good deal of info (I went from ignorant to “kind of knows the game” to “getting by on speed thanks to Mr Accessories” to “starting to run efficiently” to “starting to run legitimately fast” and remember it well). And I’m very wealthy (modestly so by KoL standards; there are people who still have what are basically incalculable piles of wealth. But billions and billions of meat worth); if you covet any old Mr Store items let me know. Imight have some lying around. ;)

3

Pretty astounding that this game can still spark a conversation after all these years. I played it (not a lot) back about the time it came out. It was silly on the surface, but clearly it had and continues to have a lot of depth.

4

Honestly shocked that KoL has become something more than the “pastamancer LOL” impression I had of it in ~2004? Some enterprising journalist should do an oral history, that’d be sweet.

5

Oh god. I covet all the Mr. Store items, really. Except the ones I actually managed to buy. :p

I am pretty confident I’m never going to get into speedrunning. It just seems too fiddly and attention-intensive for me. But the challenge paths that remix content seem really fun, and I’m sure I can get a significant amount of mileage out of developing monstrous combinations of permed skills and gathering familiars and such.

6

It is an extremely fiddly endeavor. And again while the interface (and enhancements) do a wonderful job helping to manage it, there’s still a lot of mental energy spent making sure you’re doing all the right things, thinking 10-20 turns ahead in terms of mana + buffs, and so on. The paths were a solid addition to the game, I think. Some of them have been pretty interesting (Boris was one of my favorites). The overhaul they did to the ascension game in 2011 I think was really strong, even though I was basically on the tail end of my speed running career at that point. I may do an Ed ascension for old time’s sake.

7

I highly recommend trying Ed, yes. It’s pretty much solid gold.

8

I never went beyond scratching the mere surface of this, as evidenced by the fact I didn’t realize you could eventually increase your turns. Nor that there were helper utilities. Of all the silly browser games out there, this seemed the most ‘worthwhile’ - and I had forgotten that it even existed. Time to hop in and fail.

EDIT: peacedog was quite a prolific player/scripter - several bumcheekcity posts are still on the front few pages on many of the KoL forums. Also, the game looks a bit donation heavy now with the IotM’s and such, or is that really only something that is required for speed ascensions?

9

At no point do you ever need IotMs just to play the game or access the majority of the game content. They are also generally tradeable, or at least are initially purchased in a tradable form even if they become account-bound once used (which of those things is true varies on the item) so if you can pull together sufficient meat you can typically buy them in-game. Moreover, a lot of the items offer similar (not identical) functionality as other older IotMs, so there are diminishing returns as you assemble a collection. The familiars of the year, for example, are now always a) a combination of +meat drop and +stat gain (with an adventure-gaining item spawn), or b) a combination of +meat drop and +item drop (with an item spawn that opens a new content zone or zones). And finally, even if you can’t afford the IotM itself, quite a number of them create items that can be sold, which are usually much more reasonable. The items that give you temporary access to those Familiar of the Year zones, for example, are typically a once a day drop.

That’s not to say they’re not powerful or helpful for speeding gameplay progress because they absolutely are that. Between my IotMs I have strongly enchanted pants (which also provide a strong delevel-and-stun skill that also periodically spawns food, potions, and miscellaneous consumables, a skill that defeats and temporarily banishes a particular monster from a zone, and a stench attack skill based on fullness), an adjustable strongly enchanted hat (that also makes me look like a mummy and is automatically available for Ed the Undying runs even in hardcore), a tome that summons crafting materials that make really powerful gear, food, and drink out of cheap and easily available purchasables and low level drops, which scale based on a new stat specific to the item, access to elemental zones that are challenging but are really good for certain types of grinding, have some neat drops, and sell potent food, drink, potions, and new skills; an ongoing passive effect that gives me a free ongoing DoT skill, a free multi-round stun skill, and a free HP leech skill (all of which are very potent at low levels and don’t scale to speak of) as well as rewarding extra stats, meat, or special drops depending on zone (like the currency for the elemental zones and Hobopolis, or speeding progress in certain zones), a backpack that allows me to put a familiar in it for a passive bonus and some sort of active effect based on the familiar, plus trickle experience to them. Etc.

The thing is, though, they’re invariably creative, funny, and a lot of fun to use and if you feel they distort the play experience too much, well…that’s what Hardcore ascensions are for - in hardcore, most of this stuff is turned off until after the run. Not everything - the charter zones are still there, for example - but most gear, etc.

Speaking of which, I’m on my fourth ascension now, my third run as Ed the Undying, and my second Hardcore ascension. The thing about doing Hardcore as an avatar path (especially the current one) is you get a big karma bonus, you’re already locked out of a bunch of stuff as the avatar but you have avatar-specific ways of compensating, and you get to both make regular skills permanent with karma and boost your starting skill access as the avatar simultaneously. It definitely seems like the way to go, to me. Not sure I’ll ever bother with Hardcore as a normal character, though.

10

Malkav is right, you don;t need them. You can still go fast without them - point of fact, it is the # of permed skills you have that are the biggest determinant in speed. But they make things easier in lots of ways.

The scripting isn’t hard FWIW (I won’t remember all the syntax). It won’t matter starting out, but eventually you probably will want a basic combat macro or two. And if you really start enjoying things, a “fishing macro”, etc.

11

You can go very fast with just a handful IOTMs, there’s a lot of items that will shave 2-3 turns off a run but having all the HC relevant IOTMs won’t get you a free spot on the boards. Each HC ascension also makes a profit and chances are that by the time you have all the essential skills permed you’ll have enough meat saved up to buy an IOTM or two.

I’d stay away from softcore. Not only do you need a gazillion meat worth of stuff to become competitive, you’ll also lose meat on consumables and don’t actually gain more karma per day than you would in HC no path or avatar runs. If you don’t spend meat on softcore it’s not even that much faster.

I have not played since 2013 when a string of updates broke all my scripts but I’m tempted to download KOLmafia now.

12

I still keep up with KoL, although my interest waxes and wanes depending on the challenge path and world events. I definitely consider myself a “quality of life” player, so somewhere above casual and below the hyper-optimized speed-ascenders. There’s still some high-level content I want to finish exploring (e.g. collecting the Sea outfits) but nowadays I’m pretty relaxed about it.

The recent Crimbo holiday event (remote-control robot-adventuring) was great, as is the “Ed the Undying” challenge path. In general, the challenge paths have also been very entertaining, breaking up the usual gameplay by throwing in some variety. I guess that was the intent, and it works. It’s also a great way to stockpile karma points that you can invest to make skills permanent.

If there are any newer players around, shoot me a Kmail in-game (Itsatrap #206213) and I’ll try and put together a care package. Uh… whenever I wrap up my current hardcore run.

13

It’s also worth listening to the Kingdom of Loathing Podcast. All three of the main Asymmetric guys do it (and CD Moyer guests occasionally) and they’re pretty funny while also having some really smart conversations about the design of KoL and answering questions and such.

14

This is the first I’ve heard of this game. I’m surprised, since by the title I’m guessing it’s based on my first wife.

15

This is amazing.

16

Isn’t it?

Incidentally, maybe someone experienced can talk more about this, but as much as I like KoL I am finding there are whole systems I engage with little to not at all. Some of this just seems like it’s been left by the wayside with power creep (and of course I have some pretty potent IOTMs skewing my impressions), like a lot of the crafting systems, particularly smithing but also cooking and cocktail crafting, but some of it I think is probably me not playing optimally. Like, I have no problem messing around with skill-based buffs, but there’s such a ridiculous range of temporary and limited-availability buffs from items and once a day rewards (like the clan ballpit, friars, etc) that I tend to wind up just not using them at all because I can’t figure out what a lot of them do in the first place and if I know, I’m not sure when to use them or how easy they are to roust up. And I pretty much haven’t used combat items at all unless a quest requires it because a) I don’t know what they do and b) they take up a turn in battle and have limited quantity so I might as well just use my skills. What am I missing out on?

17

(It’s been years since I played so things have probably changed)

Smithing is useful in HC when you’re ascending under the sign that gets you meatsmithing with no turn cost. Some items like whatever that sword that gave rollover adventures was called can be worth crafting under other signs too.

Cooking and cocktail crafting are amazing in HC. Even when you can get decent food and drinks from gardens and other IOTMs you’ll still want some advanced cocktails or reagent pasta as filler and there’s some great food you can cook in run like the grue omelette.
In softcore it’s not that important, when you’re fast you pull epic food and drinks anyway and when you’re slow you have more than enough pulls and can go for whatever is cheapest per adventure instead.

To use buffs efficiently you first need to find out what you need to speed up the various quests and areas. The important ones are (or were anyway) +/- noncombat encounters, +initiative, +item drop, +meat drop, +monster level and elemental resistance.
Take your expected run duration and try to order your run around what daily buffs you have available and to do stuff in order. If you have a couple turns of noncombat buffs left over put them to use somewhere where they’re useful instead of shrugging them off. If you have familiars that can drop useful items use them early in the run in areas where they’re not slowing you down and save the items up for later.

Check out some ascension logs to get a better feel for what is useful where:
http://alliancefromhell.com/viewforum.php?f=6
http://forums.hardcoreoxygenation.com/viewforum.php?f=7

KOLmafia makes it super easy to see what buffs you have available and what the various items do. The default UI is useless and a pain to use even with greasemonkey scripts because Jick and co don’t actually play the game.

There’s also mafia combat scripts like WHAM that can put your combat items to use in situations where that’s cheaper than using skills.
Most of the combat items you find during a run are not very powerful but still worth using sometimes, especially when you have ambidextrous funkslinging and can use two at once.

18

Mafia really doesn’t surface what the items do. The only feature that seems like it might help in that regard is the Modifier Maximizer, but otherwise, even with display-enhancing scripts I’ve installed, all it tells me are what the names of the effects are. Which is not helpful because those don’t really tell you what the effect does.

19

Do you actually play in KOLmafia, or is it more a side by side management tool?

20

A bit of both. You can, if you really want, play directly in Mafia. You don’t have direct control when doing so but you can fully customize the automation and there’s a text log of everything that’s happening. But generally for me most of my time is spent in the “relay browser”, which is the regular KoL browser interface plus a bunch of information and quality of life functionality like links to turn in a quest the moment you get the last item you need, and scripting access. I only go to the Mafia app when I want to automate something, like farming for a particular drop, or managing my food and drink crafting and consumption.