schlurp

Episode 10 Summary: A = Aenimus, L = Lyft, C = Chameco
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Announcements: If you have Amazon Prime, consider a Twitch Prime sub to help support the channel. Hosting ain’t cheap. There’s a turngen spreadsheet to help plan your runs. There’s an ascension contest planned for May/June. If you want to help out with planning or donate to the prize pool, let A & L know. The Dark Gyffte challenge path is out; we’ll cover it a bit later this episode and more thoroughly in a later episode. Also, CaptainScotch, VioletInsane, and KirbyLlama are doing Dread runs to help people get skills and boss drops. There’s a dedicated Twitch channel for it. We’re updating the useful resources spreadsheet. See the Reddit thread. Also, the West of Loathing DLC is out!

On Chameco
A: Where does your name come from? C: It’s a silly joke that’s already in the game that I wasn’t aware of when I started playing. It’s a Culture Club joke that everyone gets at this point. I’ve kept it and used it for a while because it’s easy to recognize, but not to say. A: How did you find KOL? C: When I was in middle school/early high school, I was into Nethack. One of the large Nethack tournaments had a KOL-related challenge. Around 2010, I decided to try KOL out and stuck with it. L: What made you stick around? C: Community stuff. When I first started playing, I didn’t have regular internet access, so I spent a lot of time reading old posts on the forums. Knowing the community was there and that people were taking the game seriously and doing a lot of analysis – like Royal Tonberry’s spading posts – was a big motivation to stick around. A: Is there anything that Royal Tonberry didn’t spade? If you’re a graphophile, his website is the best thing on the internet. C: I was particularly in awe of his analysis of the Panicked Kernel vs. the Bandersnatch. It was a strange and silly thread, and I had only been playing the game for, like, 3 months. A: It’s a shame he’s not as active as he once was.

A: You’ve done quite a bit of spading yourself? C: I haven’t really spaded much of anything. When new content comes out, I’m dumb enough to throw a lot of resources at it for no real benefit. A: That’s the definition of a spade. C: I don’t have rigorous data collection procedures. When FantasyRealm came out, I burnt a huge number of Print Screen Buttons to unlock all the maps on the first day. My spading is mostly throwing millions of meat in Print Screen Buttons and free kills at things. As Slaw says, making small numbers become big numbers and big numbers becoming bigger numbers.

L: I like your daycount in Dark Gyfte. C: When the path came out, I did a 2-day SC run. I was just going along, and there was a bug early on where, if you beat the Hidden Temple before you beat the Castlevania-themed Lord Spookyraven replacement, you couldn’t fight Spookyraven. You’d have immediate access to the Summoning Chamber but couldn’t get the Eye of Ed. I bug reported it and things went on for a while, and the issue was that the powers that be thought that my name wasn’t a player, but was one of the funky Castelvania-themed bosses with an incorrect flag. So now I have a kmail from Jick giving me an Eye of Ed. It was like when there were Pirate Fledges in the mall – I was hoping I could do a similar thing with the Eye of Ed.

A: So how did you get into speed ascension? C: When I first started playing, I read a lot of forum threads. The speed game was different back then, but still existed. The game was pretty stable and strategies from years ago still worked. I wanted to try the speed game but didn’t have time for it when I was in high school. I’ve got more time now, so I’ve been asking people lots of questions and getting better and better. A: That’s how it goes. Learning new mechanics and how to plan your runs. It’s a progression.

On the Kramco Sausage Grinder.
L: Spading took a while on this one. We had a basic idea in January. It charges up and then you encounter a sausage goblin, but we were unsure of the ceilings. Malibu Stacy wrote a script that parsed the intervals between encounters and collected a lot of data and came up with some ceiling numbers. We’ve heard that the first encounter with the grinder equipped is not guaranteed, but my experience has showed it happening every time. So the ceilings are goblin1 at 0, goblin2 at 5 adventures, goblins3 and 4 at 10 adventures. Goblin5 is probably at 15, but Malibu Stacy’s data said 14. Then goblin6 is also at 15, and goblins7 and 8 are at 20 adventures. So instead of going by gut, you have some numbers to get your goblins more frequently and early in the day. What an amazing IOTM. C: There are a lot of things about the reception to this IOTM I don’t understand. L: Me too. It seems straightforward – free scaling fights, delay burning. Very good. In my last HC run, I encounters 21 goblins. After goblin8 in a day, they become really unpredictable and it’s hard to tell when they’ll show up. A: You always have a non-zero chance to get a goblin. We’re talking about ceilings, where you’re guaranteed to see a goblin, but you can get one on any turn when you have the Kramco equipped. At first, we thought free fights were charging the Kramco, but that’s not the case. But you do have a non-zero chance to see a goblin on every turn. L: We care about the ceilings because you want to have your Latte Mug in your offhand most of the time, so the fewer turns you spend attempting to encounter a goblin, the better your turncount will be. The mall prices sure went crazy. A: This is one of the quickest rises in mall prices I’ve seen. It’s what, 100 mil now after being retired only 24 days? C: This is a weird situation where it seems really underinvested and really optimal for meatfarming. You don’t have to use it a whole lot. The spading is pretty remarkable and it increases the meat per adventure because you don’t have to equip it as often. A: Basically, it makes aftercore and in-runs better. It’s so surprising to a lot of us how people didn’t really cotton on to it until after it left Mr. Store. Like a lot of people, I looked at the Reddit thread and thought “ok, maybe I won’t invest in this.” Eventually, I did, though, and I’m laughing all the way to the bank. L: The free fights are good, but you also have the MP restore and the goblin phylum interaction with the Robortender for the +25% item drop or the +50% advanced drink. The only thing you want to watch out for when using this in-run is picking delay zones that you don’t need Latte ingredients from until you’ve gotten those ingredients. Like the Spooky Forest or Haunted Gallery.

C: The MP is a real angle on this too. We used to worry with the Proton Pack going out of Standard, but now with this you have maximum MP in any path with sausages. L: It’s especially useful late in the day when your God Lobster buffs have run out and you’ve used a few gulps from the Latte, and perhaps your MP pool is much larger. A: Is God Lobster MP required anymore with the sausages? L: I still used it partly out of habit, but it’s really nice to charge up a lot of buffs at the beginning of a run. The 40 MP per adventure helps allocate those buffs a little better when my MP pool is smaller. C: You definitely want to still use God Lobster MP. Your sausage hole is still pretty small early on. You want to wait until you have a decent amount of base MP, and when you have a stack of 7-8 sausages stacked up, use some free-ish buffs like a LOV potion or random other free stuff like the Proton Pack buff. Then eat all the sausages at once. L: That’s a good point. I did some LOV potion testing preparing for the Tower tests because I had so much MP at my disposal. A: Not too many buffs compared to alien booze, though. L: That’s true, of course. In softcore. A: One last point: because you have a non-zero chance to get a goblin, it makes a bit of a dilemma as to whether to equip the grinder and hope you get one early, or wait until you hit the ceilings. L: For your first 8, I’d say wait for the ceiling. You’ll have enough guesswork with numbers 9, 10, 11 and so on. And you can time it with your breadcar banish. If you don’t get the goblin, use the spring-loaded bumper to banish and try again.

On the Lil Doctor Bag
A: What do we think of the Doctor Bag? C: Over the course of a 2-day run, it’s minus 12 turns, minimum. It’s 3 free banishes and 3 free kills. Otoscope is pretty good, too – a 1-turn 200% item buff. I think it’s not boosted by the champagne bottle... L: But I think we confirmed that Squint does double it. In softcore, the free kills mean a lot more for things like Eldritch Attunement. Are you seeing places to use it in hardcore? C: I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but nothing comes to mind. You can always use it for Generic Summer Holiday shenanigans. And nuns aren’t a thing anymore, in case people are wondering about that. The free fight meat drops have been capped so you can’t use free fights there. You used to be able to use them to extend your inhaler buff, but not anymore. L: How about in the challenge path? C: In the challenge path, it gives you +1 blood bag. Which is substantial turngen. You’re not filling that organ space otherwise, in hardcore at least. In softcore, it saves you a pull. That’s pretty strong at +23 turns per day. Banishes are so common that you probably can’t use them all. And the Otoscope buff is pretty powerful. You can cap a lot of stuff in the challenge path along with the Spant. L: You can upgrade your bag permanently to +50 HP and 11-14 HP regen per adventure. Free fights don’t trigger that regen. C: That’s mostly just a fun side thing. The upgrades are more for fun than anything else. L: You don’t need to keep it equipped all the time. When you’re in a zone where you know you’re going to need the +200% item or a free kill, you can equip it then and then switch to something else. C: The accessory slot is pretty overloaded. It’s nice to have that flexibility.

A: You said the upgrades aren’t too relevant for the challenge path? C: I went ahead and bought 20 of the bucket upgrades, and I haven’t been having any HP issues. There are a lot of skills you definitely don’t have to buy. Even having some of the marginal skills like Misform or Spectral Awareness. If you just skip out on the early combat skills except for obviously good ones like Savage Bite, you still have a lot of HP, even early on day 1. A: In terms of having it upgraded, I found that having more HP was beneficial. I’ve only done one Dark Gyfte run, and I was dying from the initial elemental damage you take from elemental monsters.

On Dark Gyffte
L: I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. Chamco, what are your impressions? C: It’s the path people have been waiting for since the spy path. It has it all. It’s very fast, there are a lot of powerful skills, there are big numbers. And a tradeable reward you can farm if you’re in the mood. L: And some nice Council replacement text. C: The writing is wonderful, compared to last year’s Pokefam. A: I really enjoyed the writing so far. I’ve chuckled numerous times. It has a unique mechanic in that skills cost HP to use. You don’t use MP at all. The skill buckets give you +20 max HP, and you can have up to 23 buckets or 460 HP. Does completing a softcore run give you...? L: +20 HP for softcore, +40 for hardcore. A: So you have to do 23 softcore runs or 12 HC to get all the upgrades. Muscle for HP only counts true muscle, so buffs don’t give you more HP. You can recover HP only through regen, not healing items, so the Doctor’s Bag is good. You can use a skill called Dark Feast to recover some HP by nom nom-ing on some enemies. Or you can rest in your coffin if you lose a combat, like Ed. But you have to lose the combat and that turn. It doesn’t cost 2 turns, just 1. But if you want to rest to get your HP back, you can rest and use a turn. If you’re about to die in the next combat, you can go to a delay zone and just die there. You don’t get stats or items, but it’s not a completely wasted turn. C: You can also recover HP in two other ways. You can use a blood bag from the Doctor’s Bag, which isn’t a great idea, but in a real pinch, that’s a thing. Like after Dr. Awkward. And you can use the skill bucket cket upgrades – they heal for HP and also up your max. That feels very dickstabby, but it’s a thing. A: But if you’ve already used 23, you can’t do it. You can get up to 8 Blood Bags per day, but you need 10 to fill your organs with a nightcap. That makes Dieting Pills very useful. They’re only 15k meat in the Mall for now.

A: Let’s talk about Ensorcel. C: It’s good with large plants and large bugs. Plants are less interesting. People are going gnome sign now to get the Garbage Shirt to make the powerleveling crunch less bad, so bugs are where it’s at. So your options are wishing for a Black Crayon Beetle that scales, or going to the Spacegate and getting a large Spant which is bigger than a scaling bug most of the time. A: To go over that in more detail, I’ve found goblins to be very nice to get monster level. The goblin blocks your first attack, like Mesmereyes. C: The new Blood Bubble skill is the same. You can’t actually use it in-run, but you can wish for it. When you’re looking for a big Spant or big Black Crayon monster, you probably want one of these blockers and your options are either goblin or use a wish on Blood Bubble. Maybe you shouldn’t be able to wish for it, but I did yesterday. A: So a good place to get a goblin is in Cobb’s Knob to burn delay. Using Ensorcel is like a free runaway. Cannonfire says Angry Snakes are optimal because they are a scaling beast and give up to 300% meat at a rate of (ML/2.5). At 750 moxie, your snake will give 300% meat. Other beast options are the Tomb Asp and Taco Cat. I thought Iliti Kitty, but it turns out that that’s an undead, not a beast. There’s also the Black Crayon Beetle and Spant Drone that can give up to 300% +item, which is ML/5, so you need 1500 ML to get the full 300%. Going for Spants is tricky and not necessarily the best thing to do. There are some planets that have only Spant Combats and skippable noncombats, including ZWWWWWW or ZSGHDFH. But they’re tricky to use because you get beaten up after adventures due to environmental damage. But it does save a wish. The Spant Warrior on Z planets is +635 ML, because you get +24 ML for each letter of the alphabet leading up to your first level. So you only need +865 ML to get the best item drop. C: Just to announce – Blood Bubble is no longer wishable. A: Could it actually be exploitable? C: It probably was not exploitable. You’re using a wish to free up an Ensorcel. A: At that point, you may as well just use the wish for the monster.

A: Notable wishes in Dark Gyfte. The Naughty Sorority Nurse. It’s 2 gauze garters, one is a 25% drop, the other is a 20% drop, so you only need 400% items to get both. You don’t even need the champagne to get that. L: The Otoscope is good for that. C: The Spant will take you there with passives. You have a ton of passive item drop on the path. At least later on – you might want the garters to help you powerlevel before the Spant. A: That’s why the path is so much fun for the moment. Routing is totally up in the air. Enamorang is nice for this wish, which gets you another 2 garters, which makes 2 Blood-Soaked Sponge Cakes for +23 turns. And you can put it in a delay zone. There’s also the Blackberry Bush, which is only slightly worse than sorority food, but you get 3 blackberries instead of 2 garters. You get +20 turns for the Blood Roll-up? C: They’re arranged in tiers based on the quest you get them in. Something like that. So the Blackberry is a L11. A: Like +3 turns per level? So 11, 14, 17, etc. So the blackberry is nice, but not as good as a garter. Mountain Man is still a good wish. You can also Enamorang that. In 1-day SC, you can try to zap for your last ore. Black Crayon Beetle is good for +item Ensorcel. Maybe a Blooper for a sniff. I’ve had really variable experiences with the Perceive Soul skill. C: That’s going to require some further spading. Potentially, it has the benefit of removing rejection but does not add copies like Olfaction. We have to test it. A: It’s definitely not as good as Olfaction. The 8-bit Real has a billion monsters, so either I was getting really unlucky or it doesn’t take away rejection. That’ll get spaded soon enough. You can wish for the G-9 effect for +a billion stats to powerlevel quicker. This path is all about getting to L12 in HC to get the best food and booze. At least when we still need that turngen. Maybe we won’t need it by May. But the best food and booze is in L12 with the Monstar Energy Beverage and the Carbonated Soy Milk, along with garters and poultices. There’s also a Skeletal Sommelier wish, which is a 50/50 chance because there are two monsters with the same name. I’ve asked to clarify that in a podcast question. That’s risky and not recommended. And the Orcish Frat Boy Spy is a 30% chance of outfit drops for the war. That covers Dark Gyfte for now, we’ll do more in another show.

On the Copperhead Route.
L: We’ve done a few runs with this. How do we feel about it? C: So far, it hasn’t been noticeably more miserable than the pirates. Most of my exposure to the Zeppelin was in paths like G Lover where you couldn’t do much with it. Now you can make it go pretty fast. L: And the new bridge mechanic that we’re still spading. It’s not bad. The Zeppelin in particular is just delay, but there are ways to speed it up. A: I like it. Everybody is looking at the pirates with nostalgia, but getting the outfit and insults were awful. Hoping to not get the Swordfish noncombat in a billion turns. I like the protestors – that’s an optimization puzzle. L: It does require planning from the minute you click ascend.

A: In my pastebin, the Shen files have some data points. Thanks to Strangerer who was doing Copperhead a lot for PvP boss minis. The intro choice adventure for Shen can be shipped. That’s a nice way to check your semirare counter – go there, and if you don’t get the semirare instead, opt out of the choice adventure and go somewhere else for a turn. Do that as many times as you want until you get what you want. Flaming Whatsisnames are not great semirares, but they’re not terrible. It burns a turn of delay. L: Burns a turn if I had a choice between no semirare or those, but it’s fine.

A: You cannot burn delay in a snake zone preemptively. The Shen intro choice adventure sets the flag for the first snake. Only after that can you burn delay towards the snakes. Any delay you’ve burned in those zones before then is useless. Once you’ve killed the snake, you can burn delay in the next snake zone, but until you talk to Shen again, you won’t ever encounter that snake. Snakes have a max of 6 turns, so you can burn 5 turns of delay and be guaranteed a snake next, but they can appear as quickly as 3 turns. So you kill a snake and spend 3-5 turns in the next snake zone – you won’t get the snake but the delay will be gone. L: Is there a reason why that’s beneficial? A: I had this idea... People think Day 2 snakes are the best. I had a plan to do Day 1 snakes in HC to save a Yellow Ray and Clover by doing Batrats.... L: Don’t you need to spend a clover to get the sonar to access that zone? A: Yes. I was thinking you could cap one sonar, and then cap/luck into the other 2 because you have to spend turns in that zone anyway. If you can spend 3 turns in that zone for free anyway, you should get 1 turn trying for a sonar, then spend one more for a second, then leave it and come back when you can cap it for the third one. It’s complicated and hard to explain, but it won’t matter anyway because that’s not how it works. But it’s nice to know how it works to burn delay preemptively. So if you have the Frozen Snake, if you’ve already done the Assassins, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to burn delay again there. C: The interesting thing about this for SC is that Eldritch Attunement lets you get more continuous turns of delay zones without noncombats in between. It’s still definitely probably worse to start Shen on Day 1, but it’s a consideration for the future. You could start Shen Day 1, don’t do anything with it, get your Attunement up over rollover both days, then you have the delay until the next Shen in the Shen zone, you have one snake, and then after that, you have the other snake. It seems to work. That’s some fraction of a turn. A: The main merit for being able to do the Batrats early is that you could get meat from the Boss Bat, but sadly you can’t burn delay preemptively. L: So maybe in 1-day runs this is relevant, but I am definitely leading towards the Day 2 snakes. A: Day 3 snakes are better, but that means doing 3-day runs.

L: So let’s talk about allocating banishers in the Copperhead Club. Fan dancers? Use a banisher on them? A: You either banish it or hope for a queue banish, meaning you fight one and hope the queue rejection keeps it out. L: Or macrometeorite it. A: You’ll want to sniff the first waiter you see. If you can cap 20% drops, either is fine. If you can only cap 30% drops, you’ll want to wait for the Ninja Dressed as a Waiter (not the Waiter Dressed as a Ninja), because that has a better drop for the Crappy Waiter Disguise. Those disguises give you a superlikely on your next turn that let you do a lot of things. One thing you can do is set your unnamed drinks on fire to make Flaming Whatsitsnames. And the choice encounter does not take a turn, which is nice. You’ll want to use your first disguise to set everything on fire to get more Whatsitsnames. Then, depending on how many Whatsitsnames... well, this depends on how many clovers you’ll use, so we’ll come back to that. But you’ll want to use your disguise to get the right number of cocktails. You also want to save disguises for a potential trick. There are 4 superlikelies in the zone. The first is the intro adventure. The second and third are turns that don’t matter, because only the last one matters for minimizing turns. If you have gotten the snake 3 quest and killed snake 3, and if you’ve spent 14 turns in the Shen zone, you can use a disguise and have a chance to get either the disguise adventure or the last Shen superlikely. They two superlikelies fight with each other to see which one comes up. It’s hard to spade what chance it is, buy you have a chance to get the Shen superlikely for free. This is quite complicated – I’ll paste it. L: The net result is 1 turn saved, so don’t worry about it. A: But you’re guaranteed to get the last Shen superlikely on Turn 16. I haven’t had a datapoint show up after that. So you can get to 15 turns with disguises or 16 otherwise. L: So the Copperhead is just a delay zone, and if you don’t care about Whatsisnames because you’re going to get the protestors a different way, dump wanderers in there. There’s a silly trick for using the Robortender in there if you banish a monster or two to get the penguin and get its phylum drop. Feeding it back to the Robortender turns it into a 2x leprechaun which could be useful.

L: But let’s talk about the snakes. On Day 2, the first one is in the Smut Orcs, the second one is the Very Unquiet Garves, and the third is the Hole in the Sky. You’re going to be spending turns in HC in the Smut Orcs, so that’s fine. For the Garves, eh. Free runs. And the Hole in the Sky, you’re going to be going there to get the Star Key. C: It’s definitely not a think to copy Skin Flutes anymore. Being forced to do Copperhead makes it impractical to skip the Hole in the Sky anymore. L: It’s too complicated to do it otherwise. A: People did some math and decided the Hole in the Sky/Top Floor Castle is much closer than you’d believe. Top floor isn’t that bad at being a snake. You have an 80-90% chance to get both noncombats by the time you get the snake, so you save two Stench Jellies there. I’ll get that in the show notes.

L: So the protester part. This is a great place for clovers. The semirare and clover are exactly the same and let you pick which noncombat you want to see. One removes protesters with Flaming Whatsitsnames. One is based on the amount of sleaze damage you have, and one is based on Lynard gear and musk. Provided you can hit certain thresholds of sleaze damage, you can finish the zone in 4 turns in SC and 5 turns in HC. In HC, you can wish for +100 sleaze (50 Ways to Bereave Your Lover), you drink the Robortender sleaze drink which is from fighting orcs, and you drink its upgraded version for +40 and +80, that plus Tinsel Tights, a Short-Handled Mop, and Ghost of a Necklace will give you +256 sleaze damage, or 16 protester kills per noncombat. That’ll finish the quest in 4 clovers plus a semirare. You can mix or match these if you don’t have a mop yet – there’s the KGB effect, the Latte intrinsic, other stuff. A: There’s a scheduled noncombat in that zone? L: I think in 7 turns? A: Does that happen if you don’t encounter another noncombat or does that happen either way. Is it guaranteed or like the Spooky Forest where you only see it if you haven’t seen the noncombat in six prior turns? L: I’d have to spade it. A: You could save a clover... L: At the cost of some turns or if you can’t get 256 sleaze. The next threshold would be 400. C: That’s doable in softcore with the Deck of Lewd Playing Cards. And stuff like the Ratty Knitted Cap. You can hit the threshold pretty easily, and save 1 turn and 1 clover. L: So that means get the intro adventure and eat a fortune cookie to find your semirare counter. Use that and potentially finish it in 4 clovers and a semirare. That’s excellent. A: How do we force a sleaze drink in HC? L: You’re going to be in the Smut Orc zone. It’s debatable whether you want to use your guaranteed phylum drop on your 151st Frat War Soldier via Calculate the Universe. You might have better priorities going for bridge parts. C: I’ve just been using mine in the Smut Orcs for sleaze damage. That’s a very lazy one. A: Another good consideration is the plant one for the meat. L: I’ve been doing it in the Hidden City with the lianas. And the goblins is your other high-priority Robortender drink.

A: So after we’ve killed all the protesters, what happens? L: The Zeppelin proper. It has a great item with the Red Butler. Definitely sniff/copy him. You need +234% item to guarantee a Glark Cable drop, and that is a free kill in the Zeppelin up to 5 times. So you’ll banish Red Snapper and Red Herring, and olfact the Butler. You’ll spend 1 turn fighting the Butler, and then chain uses of the Glark Cable, and finish the zone in 2-3 turns. Last time, I did it in 3 turns. A: That’s how you get your Copperhead charm thing. L: It’s rather fun. A: I love the quest. After the orc change, it is so well-designed in turns of intricate mechanics. It’s not half-assed. L: It makes the Zeppelin clover choice way more likely. C: Clovers in Zeppelin vs. in bridge parts is way less complicated now. A: People were simulating the zone to figure out whether to do this, and the math got weird.

L: Do we want to touch on the new bridge mechanic now or wait until another show? A: Let’s do some user questions, because that is one of them. (Some compliments for Dark Gyffte, compared to older avatar paths.) C: We’ve already seen 1-day Dark Gyffte SC runs. It’s interesting to see tools that are substantially more powerful than what is available in Standard. A: Who would have thought that a path where wishing for a sorority nurse or crayon beetle would be optimal. I’m loving it, it’s great. C: People having to get zap wands again. It’s a blast from the past.

Questions
Q: In Dark Gyffte, are we pushing free fights into later in the day to get more levels out of them? In Standard?
C: In Dark Gyffte, levels are a double-whammy. You want them early for routing, but also for turngen. In Standard, you have a lot more stat buffs early on. It’s very easy to gain a lot of stats and you’re not as pushed to get to L12. You can get to L11 just by doing free fights and that solves some routing problems. In Dark Gyffte, you’re constrained and you have tasks to accomplish at lower levels. My hunch would be to do the same sequencing as the start of Standard runs. L: I pushed my fights off a bit. I got my LOV Tunnel and a few NEP, then Goatlet and Kitchen, then finished my free fights. We’ll see if that’s correct or not later. A: Was the NEP for early meat? L: Stats and meat and the Goatlet was a zone to use a breadcar banish. A: I’ve found that if you push your free fights back to L9. The best food is at L12 and you need that for turncount. So you have two obstacles – no Torso, so that means no Garbage Shirt. If you’re doing free fights, you really want a Garbage Shirt. At L9, I was getting 250 mainstat from the shirt alone. There’s no real reason to use free fights early because there’s stuff to do to get you to L7 or so anyway – the Kitchen, the 8-Bit. It isn’t necessary that you get to L12 immediately. You just need to be there when you need to eat. This will change as the path unfolds. For now, I’d say Standard, do it early-ish. In Dark Gyffte, you want to do it a little later, possibly.

Q: Is Marmot still valuable?
L: I think so in Standard. I’m not so sure in Dark Gyffte. A: In DG, it’s gnome, because Torso is so important for the Garbage Shirt. With the change to the Chasm, clovers aren’t as important. C: Now we have a cap on the number of useful clovers. You used to want as many as possible to dump into the Chasm. Now, you need maybe 4-5. One for the sonars, plus 4 plus a semiarare in HC. It depends on clover days – you want 2 each day, plus your starting clover. It’s much less attractive to get the clover sign.

Q: Where do we host the podcast?
L: Kolshow.libsyn.com. It’s an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.

Q: Favorite blood type?
A: I don’t even know my own. In Asia, blood type is everything. Here, I don’t even know. I guess my favorite is “all of them”? L: No comment. C: Yum.

Q: Turn order for free fights in Standard?
A: I’ll do that today. It’s probably not too much different from that post on Reddit. You’ll want to get your LOV stuff first. That’s the important part. Do whatever with the rest.

On the new Bridge Mechanic
A: So there’s a new mechanic in the Chasm. It looks like you need 15 points of progress to get a choice encounter, and progress is made by dealing cold damage to Smut Orcs other than the pervert. This seems to be capped at 5 progress per combat, so 3 turns in between choice encounters. This appears to be based off ML or HP. It’s hard to lower HP without lowering ML, but the point is, you need to do about 5 times their HP in cold damage to get maximum progress points. I believe the Dark Gyffte skill – Chill of the Tomb -- works as well. C: It’s one of the better skills anyway because it staggers too. A: The choice encounter has 3 tests, each of which give variable numbers of bridge parts. They’re still being spaded, but option 3 is sleaze resistance and moxie, and buffed moxie give you more bridge parts. Option 2 is spell damage and myst, and Option 1 looks like it’s weapon damage and muscle, but it’s still being spaded. L: You can get 7 of each part if maxed out. C: It’s 14. 3 base, plus 11 more. They’re not that unattainable in-run. In my last DG run, I did it in 16 turns. 4 noncombats. I went sleaze resistance, and it wasn’t too bad. I threw the KGB on sleaze resist and had a couple other things going. Buffed moxie is so high, so it won’t be hard to hit the cap. A: Sleaze resist is also nice for sausage goblins, so 2 birds, 1 stone.

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