HC Avatar of Boris diary

I am missing a 4-day (4/982?) by about 3 adventures this run. Every mistake I made in the past day or two (and there were plenty) is haunting me.

Starting with 8 extra skill points, astral belt, astral energy drinks, taking full feasting and shouting. My (pretty standard) skill tree this run was:

• Bellow and Bravado before turn 1 (to allow running ML from early)
  
• Then all of Feasting
  
• Rest of Shouting (getting Battle at 11 and Banish at 12)
  
• Stomach of Steel (a first for me in Boris, took 27 adv, which I think is pretty good RNG)
  
• Cleave at level 13.

I made a meatmaid this run, which I haven't done before in Boris. Turngen was way up, I just blew it by blowing up turncount too. I also had horrible meat problems day 1 and 2; to heal I had to run a lot of sackbut when sackbut than I'd normally like.

From next run it should be easier to get a 4-day, since I'll get Song of Solitude, Banishing Shout, and Song of Battle so much earlier, probably powerleveling early to make use of them during more quests.

First HC AoB run: Astral ring (for MP), hot dogs, skills ended up (4,5,4) and I probably took them all in the wrong order, starting with singing, then going fighting because combat was hard, and interspersing feasting occasionally. I didn't think to get the double-ice cap until a few days in, and then I was drowning in MP. Meanwhile my no-VIP-key multi who took the mask for her first run was dying for lack of MP or healing. Possibly the shorts would be better than the ring, but I was pretty happy with the ring and would use it again if I didn't have a VIP key. I took the War as a Hippy (Ducks, Orchard, Gremlins), because the run was already slow and I didn't want to do the Arena. 10/1207 (I didn't play every day.)

Second run (+2 skills): Astral mask, hot dogs, skills (4,1,10) -- first all feasting, then fighting to Pythons, then Bellow. I don't really love bellow because when I tried it early on in the first run, it deleveled by 1. I'm not sure when I realized it was percentage-based and actually worthwhile at higher levels. I did the Frat side with just 3 sidequests, again for laziness reasons. In these first two runs I am farming limes with odor extractors and eating Boris' key lime pies. 7/1069

Third run (+4 skills): Astral mask, hot dogs, skills (4,3,10) - starting with part shouting, part feasting, and only going to fighting in time to get Broadside at level 12. Still not optimal , but was I really in love Broadside, it's a 4-turn stun and in the war you can power it with the PADL phone. I didn't think I'd get the good shouting skills early enough to make a difference. War was Frat AJ-OD, I think. In this run I changed from doing lucres and farming limes with odor extractors to farming spices (in the Forest) and Desert/Oasis food. 6/1061

Fourth run (+6 skills): Astral belt! hot dogs, skills (4,5,10) - This time I got Solitude at level 6 and finished the Feasting tree slightly later, saving Fighting for the later levels. I'm using the hot dogs (in all these early runs) on day 1 and 2 to help zip through the early levels where there aren't a lot of quests, which is not the best use of them, but does let me hold off on Demand Sandwich until level 5, at least. I didn't get stomach on any of these early runs. I don't think it would have dropped any of them to 4 days with the way I was abusing the hot dogs, so it wouldn't have been worthwhile. The belt and early Solitude and-I'm not sure what else-helped save 130 adventures despite the reduction in item drops due to no mask. 5/935 (leaderboard position 27 at the time)

5/983 -- I lost to Sneaky Pete once for no good reason.

Today's a (doesn't matter cause I'm not ascending until after SSPD tomorrow), and I won't have a Crimbo present, so no turn-1 crumhorn. (Edit: I did get a turn-1 crumhorn by selling 9 flower schnapps!)

Plan for run 6: astral belt and energy drinks again.
I'll start with Feasting through Barrel Chested and Shouting through Bravado and get (these are pretty boring safe choices):
2: Accompaniment
3: Big Lungs
4: Gourmand
5: Solitude
6: Good Singing
7: Song of Fortune (and lute!)
8: Louder Bellows
9: Song of Battle
10: Banish (save goats and maybe Dungeons and F'cle for here)
11-13 are the first 3 fighting skills

I don't really care that much about the Shouting skills between Solitude and Battle, so I'm a little tempted to try for Pep Talk at 10 instead of Banish, but I know Battle really speeds the War and Banish should speed up quests massively if I can scrounge the MP and use it right (at the cost of powerleveling earlier and less efficiently to save quests for level 10).

Day 1-2: It was a very slow day in Pandamonium, but I ended Day 1 with a lucre (triffids!), stomach, and 1/3 of the way through level 7 thanks to energy drinks. After rollover I power-level to 10 so I can use Banish, and have little idea how to use it, but: fast goatlet! helped a bit in the Chasm, used my lucre to farm some limes, got two free burritos at the Peak, and now I'm in the Castle hunting a subtle and elusive furry fur. Thanks be to Manuel Labór!

There's a Gallery bounty, but I only got 3 hooves. Semi-rares lunchbox, wine, eyedrops. Maybe that last one should have been tarts, but I've got lots of decent food and not much to drink. I'll have to backtrack for the Temple unlock and F'c'le.

End of Day 3: at 752 adv, hunting for the NC to start the war. All that's left is the War, Ed, and a few more lines for a star hat.

End of Day 4: Again I forget to eat before breaking prism. Blew 3 clovers and 14 adv powerleveling after the War, and maybe 18 adv hunting extra flyers (and black pepper) during it, so I should have powered to 12 earlier and left more MacGuffin stuff than just Ed to flyer. Spent 175 and ended up at 4/927, with 21 adv, 5 stomach left and liver and spleen untouched. This makes me wonder if I could do it without Stomach of Steel.

70 adv for stomach of steel (= 5 full/day * 7 adv/full * 2 days)
+ 10 adv from Labor Day
- 30-50 adv to get Stomach
------------------------
= 30-50 turngen I'd lose next run if I skipped Stomach.

The Astral Energy Drink at level 11 or 12 is 29-35 adv, and my booze is running ~ 4 adv/drunk, so I had ~45-51 more turngen available. Tipping the balance: I really hate the Steel Organ quest; I never have adequate item drop bonuses for it, and it's day 1 when I don't have Banish, let alone MP to fund it.

Not sure when to cut over and start prioritizing Fighting, and too lazy to do actual math.
If I stick with my recent path, I'll:
1: Shouting to Big Lungs, Feasting to Barrel Chested
2: Solitude,
3: Good Singing,
4: Gourmand,
5-8: Fortune, Louder Bellows, Battle, Banish, (Skipping Stomach of Steel)
9-13: Cleave through Pep Talk, the first +30 ML skill -- seems silly. Final tally (5,10,10)

I'd love to take Pep Talk earlier or more of Fighting earlier, but I'm not sure if it's worth deferring or giving up Gourmand or Banish yet.

Day 1: Ran out of time, but was able to get to 6 and eat and drink at least. Semirare lunchbox, pumpkin beer, some burritos, club sandwiches and probably a lot of junk filler.
Note to self: Get starting Boris skills before PvPing, don't lose fights!
Day 2: Banish works wonders in the Defiled Niche! I'm trying to do the Chasm without the Semirare and Banish helps there, but my item drop rates are not high enough to make it a good strategy. Still mid-late level 9 at day's end. I think my semirare was wines. Skipping stomach.
Day 3 ended mid-MacGuffin, picked up semirare eyedrops and more wines.
Day 4: Up to nearly the last minute I didn't think I'd finish. I blew 4 clovers lazy-leveling offstats to equip the war outfit and didn't have one left for gum, so I had to farm pickle-flavored chewing-gum and then do an extra daily dungeon after blowing up my wand failng to zap the gum. But it worked out! I had 5 adventures, 2 stomach, and 1 liver left, so I wasn't overgenerating a lot, but there were several places where the RNG could have screwed me. Last semirare was tarts. In the past I've run lute during the war, but this time I had enough MacGuffin food to stick with crumhorn.

I'm using Banish a lot now:
- In the Cyrpt, normal lihces
- MLarge: Dwarfs and non-dairy goats,
- non-box-holders in the Dungeons, non-scroll-holders in the Chasm, non-quest (or food) holders in Fcle,
- Giants I didn't need,
- extra pirates Belowdecks, and I should have done it earlier; it had been 14 adv or something before I thought of it.
- non-food-holding monsters in the Desert; I depend heavily on Desert/Oasis food day 3-4
- while farming tower items: enemies I don't need in the Black Forest, Pyramid, and Outskirts;
- AMC gremlin and two non-moly-holding gremlins at the Junkyard,

I suspect I should be banishing in the Airship and on the Battlefield, but I have no idea what I'd want in either place.

I'm probably going to regret this immediately; it's not so much a plan as a reckless unwillingness to deal with the crumhorn:

Starting with 15 skills (4,4,7): Fighting to Pythons, Shouting to Lungs, Feasting to Hungry Eyes
2: More To Love (for MP, using sackbut)
3: Pep Talk
4-9: Rest of Shouting - Solitude through Banishing
10: Barrel Chested
11: Gourmand?
12-13: Throw Trusty, Legendary Luck.

End of Day 1: This is way too easy to be fast, but I regret nothing. The sackbut is an HP/MP fountain, and not buying the crumhorn or as many restoratives keeps me comfortably meaty. Cleave one-hits everything, and I've only been beaten up once, the first time I tried the Knob King. I think I read Cleave is +40 to hit and Pythons is another +10 or even +20, so I just have to keep an eye on how outclassed I am and keep HP high enough to survive a first hit. Ran out of time early level 6 with maybe 40 adventures banked. I guess this will get harder when I using the lute, but so far it's a much less fraught experience.

Day 2: Late level 9, with work still to do on goats, pirates, and the chasm, and dungeons unstarted. I'm much less flush with HP and MP and meat now that I'm running other songs and instruments. 2nd SR was ASCII art. Diet: sandwiches, pumpkin pie, flower pies, fortune cookies, filler booze

Day 3: I bent my no-food-farming policy to spend an extra turn in the Peak with Solitude and was rewarded with an extra burrito. Barrel-chested at level 10 makes combat easy again; I'm back to using Bellow and Axing more than Cleave and Belch, and running more crumhorn. There was no way I'd make it to 11 without eating, but I did save about 15 stomach and my AED until then, for the most turngen. Quest-wise, I'm about where I was at the end of last run's day 3, but with ~50 fewer adventures played and 1-2 more of every stat. About 3/5 of the MacGuffin done, no stars farmed, and I still need to get a G-string and probably power a lot to hit 12. I had a fast Desert, and didn't get a lot of food, but I also picked up a lucky bounty, which I'll probably use for booze tomorrow to drink during the Orchard.

Day 4: Tragedy! Stranded at 829 adv at the entrance to the Hedge Maze. I spent 42 turns powerleveling today, both mainstat and offstat, a while looking for astronomers and 7 adv backfarming a stringed instrument. I resolve to make fewer stupid mistakes next time. (Again I blew a couple of clovers for a couple of points in each offstat after a discouraging run trying to do Myst in the bathroom with Solitude. Pretty sure I should have stuck with it unless I were swimming in extra clovers, though. At level 12, the Bathroom is substantially better for leveling Myst than the Gallery is for Mus. I think that holds even for offstats, based on the wiki.)

Day 5: Finished, putzed around.

Note: The reason we don't banish on the battlefield is actually blindingly obvious; it wastes a turn (or 3 turns) for a slim marginal increase in whatever enemy you want to see. If there were an enemy that were constantly killing you, that might be different. I took actually casting Banish for me to see this, sadly.

I didn't get Stomach, make a meat maid, use what would have been my 5th semirare, I ate a lot of junk day 1 and didn't get Gourmand until level 11. But I think 829 adv should be enough to finish if I were better, so--the turngen is probably okay, I just need to cut turns somewhere. (Except if I cut turns and turngen by taking hot dogs instead of AEDs, I may need to compensate.)

Starting with 17 skills (5,4,8):
Fighting to Pep Talk, Shouting to Lungs, Feasting to More to Love
Taking: astral belt, pumpkins.
I could shift the order on some of these; I'm not sure I can scrounge the MP for Banish at level 7.
2: Solitude
3-7: Rest of Shouting- Good Singing through Banishing
8: Barrel Chested
9: Gourmand
10-11: Throw Trusty, Legendary Luck
12: Cockiness!
13: Impatience!

I still think I can cut enough turns that I don't need Gourmand earlier; I'm not even sure I need it at level 9.
I need to plan my eating better, so I have Belch at the right times. I need to Belch at 4 or 5 on Day 1 for the Billiards Room, Baron, Shaft, and possibly the King. I'd like to also have it at level 6 for the friars and 7 for the Crypt. Maybe at 4 I need to eat flower pies to 15 full and save some stomach for club sandwiches and maybe SR food at 5.

Some folks are doing pretty fast runs with the mask instead of the belt, which makes me envious.

Changes from last time: I'll have a crimbo tree present. Remember to get MCD at start. Skip artist quest. Maybe start shoring earlier, since we have meat saved from crumhorn. Maybe skip Clancy's level at the Peak-do the last 2 levels add enough +exp or +item to make up for the turns they cost? Plan shower use better.

End of Day 2: Interfering job is interfering -- I've had to finish both d1 and d2 in a rush right before rollover. I just made level 9, didn't manage to eat anything with Gourmand, and ... now I have a meeting, so day 3 isn't looking good either. In this economy (and with layoffs looming at my employer) I guess I should be glad...

End of Day 3: That only took 2-2.5 hrs! And I'm mid-level 11 with the MacGuffin done up to the mini-bosses and everything else but stars done, so I guess it's time to power-level, and a 4-day seems feasible. I need 11 mus, 7 myst, 3 mox to get to level 12 and equip a war outfit. Am I doing something wrong, or do I just have to hit the bathroom and suck it up to get that myst? 2nd SR was wine, 3rd SR was eyedrops (for Orchard), 4th is coming up early day 4.

Day 4: Pretty smooth sailing. Great RNG in the Junkyard, not so great in the Orchard. Powerleveled one adventure longer than I needed after forgetting to turn on Pep talk at first. I had to backfarm a Meleegra and some ! potions, and then had to waste one adv identifying ! potions, which happened to be a semirare in the Chasm. I needed blessing and had the worst 3 single potions unidentified: blessing, teleportitis, and inebriety. Fortunately the first two I threw were teleportitis and inebriety. And leaderboard! (Very low leaderboad, one of the last 4 slots.)

I ascended about 15 minutes before rollover, so I just added the two feasting skills to my earlier setup without thinking much.
I didn't really need the turngen before, but since I didn't play a full day 1, maybe it'll help this time.

Starting (5,4,10); ending (10,10,10) at level 12
Level 1: Fighting to Pep Talk, Shouting to Lungs, Feasting to Gourmand
2-7: rest of Shouting: Solitude thru Banish
10: Cockiness
11: Impatience
12: done!

I forgot to summon D1 sandwiches, because I was trying to race to 5.
D2: I ran out of time again, which turned out ok, I had a lot of adventures banked for April Fools! Somewhere in here I managed to kill two drunken rat kings and get two tangles

D3: Ate four pickles (2 from clovers, 2 got the hard way), snagged 13 mime soul fragments, bought a new hat, did almost 400 adventures, level 8 to 12. I don't know if it was the pickles or the extra ML, but this time I don't need to level my offstats! I drank my 3rd pumpkin without thinking hard about how I need gremlin juice for the Gates, so I'm now farming the Frat outfit the hard way (pledges banished), and missing my 4th semirare. Especially salty nightcap, yum!
D4: Is it because of pickles or Cockiness/Impatience? I have meat left over, and everything was easy, though the NS got me one time. I would think it was Impatience, but things went better than expected before level 11. I was using the Boris helm too, but that got me into trouble a few times, as I'm so used to the ice cap stunning enemies. Didn't use my tangles, because I got the wheel before finding a rat, and I think Solitude in the Middle is better.

Like last run I'm skipping Clancy's last two levels, which give ~15% additional item drop, but cost 6 or 7 adventures to get.

wow, it's neat watching the daycount and turncount melt away

I'm going to get everything I care about by L9 this run--I'm just a run away from having every skill by the end of D1!

This was dumb, I do not endorse it--I was feeling reckless:
L1: (9,4,8) - Impatience, Lungs, More to Love
L2: Solitude
L3-4: rest of Feasting
L5-9: rest of Shouting
L10: Bifurcating Blow.

Impatience makes life easy, but I can't run both Cockiness and Pep Talk easily without Louder Bellows or at least Song of Fortune. Unless I can belch everything to death. I should have saved cockiness/impatience for L8-9, which is plenty early. Instead I delayed some useful shouting skills by 4 levels.

D1: Starting 30 mins before rollover, I forget to run Pep Talk until level 3! I got to level 5 with the King killed, Boss Bat lair unlocked, and Clancy leveled--haven't touched Spookyraven or the Shore yet, haven't got crumhorn yet. Diet: 3 pumpkin beer, 1 flower schnapps, 2 club sandwiches, 1 Knob nuts, 6 flower pies, swill nightcap.

D2: Levels 6-10. Fortune makes a big difference in survivability now. I don't remember much else
D3: Feast of Boris, we don't get extra stomach, and we only get the low-level holiday food drops, not the top-tier ones. Finish farming my tower items, get to 12 and stop, since I want to use tomorrow's pumpkin to get the war outfit. Somewhere in here I got eyedrops for my 2nd SR (after hitting level 9 in time, but not opening the island) and ASCII for my 3rd. I skipped the 4th, but it might've been safer to get an extra eyedrops.
D4: stuff. My Boris war since several runs ago is always Frat: Arena, Junkyard, Beach, Orchard, flyering (most of) the hole in the sky, macguffin minibosses, pyramid, Ed, filthworms, lobsters--and if I must--gremlins. Today I think I did the whole filthworms before remembering to throw flyers, and finished flyering on my very last gremlin.

Next time I'll try using a semirare for the temple. I've been hitting it with Solitude and lute, and several times it's been really fast, but others, not--if I'm not using my last semirare or two, why not spend it there? This might change if I start trying to do a 3-day run, but I have no clue how to plan that.

I need to find a consumption planning spreadsheet to figure out if I can do a 3-day run. I've seen them a lot before, and I saw someone's 3-day HCBoris plan just days ago, but I'm having a hard time finding it again. When I make spreadsheets, it isn't pretty.

I think on a 3-day you need peppermint drinks for turngen. 3 sprouts on Days 1-2 fill your liver and give you an epic nightcap. Two more sprouts on Day 3--you can't make a crook or anything. And you need to hunt base booze and buy a Queue du Coq.

Skills - starting (9,5,9) - Impatience, Solitude, Barrel Chested
I'll work on shouting skills at levels 2-4, get Gourmand at 5, Banish by 7, and Bifurcating at 8.

Day 1: only 30min to play, I got to level 5, ate for 18 full, had my peppermint drinks (with tequila from the Tavern Cellar), and drank an AED. I can't defent the Astral Energy drink, since it was clear when I started that I wouldn't get far enough to stay on a 3-day schedule.

Day 2: I played about 20 turns, then had to run. No consumption today, since I already had too many adventures, but I did summon sandwiches. I tried my luck in the Knob Shaft without Belch and got Clancy leveled, at least. This run is gonna be pretty boring if it keeps going this way!

Day 3: A 400 adventure day, ending up in early MacGuffin. I opened the Menagerie, as if in a 3-day attempt, to farm limes, then decided that was silly and skipped the limes. Got semirare 1 while opening the Pantry. My plan requires SR2 be ASCII, which I've been missing for stupid reasons about half the time. It takes ~120 adv to open the island spacing shore trips (I don't have full scope), so I need to start shoring shortly after my first SR to be able to get the Swashbuckling Outfit and dictionary, and I need to power level a bit to get to 9. Today my issue was leveling, not the outfit. I had to blow some clovers early and get the last few stats from food. I may have lost as much as 400 mainstat by blowing the clovers early, which is 5 or 6 turns of powerleveling, but I don't think I could have gotten the scrolls that fast doing the Chasm the hard way. Not sure. I could delay completion of the Valley quest, but the meat is very handy.

Day 4: I got to the point of entering the Battlefield. Day 5: Killed the NS at adventure 775. Started Gourdcore since this run was already 5 days. Gourdcore is a breeze with full Shouting. Unset the ballroom song and run Song of Battle for 100% combats, banish 3 enemies for 100% Mad Scientists, and 290 adventures later you're done.

Skills: I start with all but 5, and am done at level 6!
I'll leave off Bifurcating, Gourmand and Barrel Chested, Song of Battle, and Banishing Shout.
I don't know which of Gourmand and Banish I try to get first.
I'm working on a turngen spreadsheet.

Edit: I found someone else's awesome 3-day HC turngen spreadsheet in my browser history. I have no idea where I found this, unfortunately, I suspect it was IvanGS' https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhNku3hm3EZfdEFyRlB6cDBvRHhiZi0xcVhzMjFtcmc#gid=0

D1: get to 7, do stomach quest
D2: power-leveled to 9 (sandwiches!) and then 11 (for better astral energy drink). Finish the Shore at level 11. 2nd Semirare is Hidden Temple, as it comes well before I get the pirate outfit.
D3: I've generated 783 turns, and I'm not even going to make it out of the battlefield. I'd like to thank my 42-adventure Sonofa Beach (with +15% combat!) and the black pepper I've spent ~15 adv farming so far. Zapping a caviar would have been better, even if it meant farming the caviar and doing a daily dungeon, I think. I used a crook at the filthworms.
D4: Finished war, killed Ed, got a pepper on my 4th zap, and found myself doing one zero-locked-door daily dungeon. I missed the 3-day by 72 turns, then crafted some pies and filled my stomach before breaking prism.

My diet clearly wasn't good enough. Only 1 casserole, only one good War food, a lot of key lime pies. I didn't make a maid either. (didn't get thru the crypt or have an extra clover D1, thought it would be lame D2).

I just finished my first HC AoB run so when I ascend tonight (after rollover so I can do some aftercore pooting) I'll have 4 skill points to start. Last run I bought out Feasting, and got Cleave through Sick Pythons (ignoring Song entirely). The goal was to have enough combat skills to deal with NS plus L12 monsters; I found Broadside to be ridiculously awesome at L12, especially as an Entangling Noodles replacement during Arena flyering.

My major concern is with day 1 food. Last run I purposely ascended into FoB solely for the food drops and they were extremely helpful. This run, I won't have that luxury. I always do muscle zodiac so I'll have pie fixins and was assuming I'd make a crapton of flower petal pies early, but I've never done PVP (other than to get Der Toastdieb) so that's making me a little anxious. As far as I can tell, it's just a matter of PVPing one of many PVP-bots but I'm a little green on the matter. I think I've got a good handle on Day 2+ food from the last run.

I plan to spend the 4 points, 2 on Song to get to Bravado for the +10 all stats and then 2 on Feasting to start on that tree. Maybe by L3 get Cleave but essentially all skills into Feasting until maxed and wind up with (4/2/10) similar to last run (through Sick Pythons). I had a hell of a time last run in the early game since you need 10 myst to get 10 MP to cast Lunch; this gives me Lunch at ground zero which should make up a bit for not having FoB food since I ate a bunch of it without Lunch on day 1. The extra moxie and muscle is icing, obviously letting me run more ML earlier.

I don't have any earthshattering observations from my first run. I wound up with 1200+ turns over six days, which seems staggeringly high. I was expecting somewhere in the 1000-1100 range but frankly I haven't looked at average low-skill Boris runs for comparison and I know I spent a ridiculous number of turns waiting for things to happen. What I mean by that is, for example, trying to get the Swordfish NC in the Poop Deck ... I can't do anything about it, I just have to burn turns there until it happens, and it took me 20+ turns. I wound up with >25 stars and lines (each) before I hit my second Astronomer. 15-20 turns between my last immatera and getting the SOCK. Every use of the hedge maze but one resulted in my map getting stolen by a hedge golem. Things like that added up, hopefully this was a weird, weird outlier of a run.

Oh, and if anyone's got some +initiative tips I'd love to hear them. I didn't get any decent +init item drops, and without ticking clock (my usual muscle-class go-to +init) I'm a bit lost. I know I need to pumpkin bomb a jewelry hippy so I can get the bonerdagon necklace made (which I forgot to do this run). That's #1 on my list.

That sounds like awful luck with Swordfish and the Astronomers!

I've pretty much just suffered along without any +init until I get the Bonerdagon necklace, using the pool buff if I'm really worried. You can get low init bonuses from leotarrrds and infernal insoles; you start getting better options at level 11 and 12 with a few equipment drops, maybe an ant agonist, but I've never used them much except against the Shadow.

For early food consider key lime pies and burritos (insanely spicy if possible). Lime farming benefits from Hungry Eyes and any easy lucre you can find (and Banish, eventually). Burritos benefit from Hungry Eyes for the beans (usually found while hunting for the 3rd sonar in the Beanbat Chamber), and Solitude for spices from the Spooky Forest. You can also get spices, sausage, or mushrooms from the Knob Kitchen, but I think the forest may be better, even with Hungry eyes. You can get more burritos running -combat at the Peak if you're leveling Clancy. Those are the first choices, this shows some other possibilities: http://introvert.net/images/2012/02/hc_boris_food.png

There's a 'flowers' button in the mafia PvP interface that just hits the redshirts for you and makes it almost a no-brainer. I've lost a fight occasionally, which does cost stats, but it's rare and if you're fighting at turn 0, the loss is low. It works best when your rank is 60 or below, low enough to hit the weakest redshirts.
Tips for the best odds of winning:
- fight after getting your starting skills, so your stats are higher
- before hitting the shore
- before eating
- ideally with high hp and mp and few or no effects, but I don't usually worry about these, honestly.

I was about 50/50 on PVP fights, only needing 3 flowers for pies today. It seemed like I would lose a fight, then drop down into the "losers" bracket where there was an obvious L1 n00b patsy I could beat on, but then winning would bump me up to the "normal folks" bracket. I had initially done a search for flower / pvp bots and every one I found had their hippy stone intact. I should probably have asked in /hardcore but I was feeling lazy. Anyway it worked.

Food wasn't too bad. An initial pumpkin pie (3) tided me over until about L4 when I ate my three flower petal pies (9) and a fortune cookie (1). This tided me over until L5 when I could summon club sandwiches and ate three (9), got my tasty tarts (eating 2), and the last fortune cookie (1) to fill up to 25 (base 20, plus the +5 skill).

I'm not sure what I would've done without flower pies. Tomorrow I'll be pumpkin bombing a hippy outfit so normal fruit pies will be in the mix, and hopefully a good bounty so I can get my boris pie on.

Foxy Boxy wrote:I had initially done a search for flower / pvp bots and every one I found had their hippy stone intact.

I think they're all in one or two clans, PvP Fights Only, Hobocore Oxygenation, and AFH: Away Team. Here are the ones mafia typically attacks for me:

PvP redshirts:

This is going to be another failed 3-day attempt along similar lines.

I have a consumption spreadsheet showing ~770 adventures generated with day 1 stomach, AEDS, 4 key lime pies, 1 semirare food, 3 insanely spicy burritos, 5 war food. I have no idea how I'll get 5 war food in time on day 3. This is drinking 2 peppermint booze every day and a random nightcap. I think you can get around 770 with pumpkins too, but filling the corners of your liver is sketchy. You could do a lunchbox SR hoping for 2 coffees instead of tasty tarts, at the cost of putting off leveling clancy, but getting to open the Manor early. Or eat an extra fortune cookie and fit distilled wine into the semirare plan somewhere.

Day 1, I failed to get stomach (barely), drink my AED, or use the shower buff due to running out of time. Didn't even start the Crypt, so naturally no Meat Maid. I've been spreading out the Crypt a lot, so finishing it day 1 will require some changes anyway.

Day 2, finished stomach, powerleveled to 11, grabbing wand and finishing the castle along the way. I miscalculated my food and needed 2 filler, which could have been had from the Oasis, so I ate a Peppermint Patty using 2 sprouts I'd been saving for a Day 3 crook. I made the meat maid, though I'd only get 4 adv from her if I finished D3, on the (possibly bogus) theory that since the Gallery revamp, a clover's worth closer to 2 than 4 power-leveling turns.

Key learnings:
- Don't putz around until 45 minutes before rollover day 1!
- Monsters in the Airship (maybe the post-banishing Niche or high-init Alcove too) have really high initiative, and the ML initiative penalty can really hurt there. I don't remember having huge issues before, but this run I couldn't handle it without twisting my horns back to normal. Volley-Clancy's worth almost 24 ML by that point, so even if you could stay alive with sackbut+askew helm, you're far better off with crumhorn+normal helm.
- The MCD does not count towards the initiative penalty. I know this, but it's really easy to forget, and I went without the horns for a while due to forgetting this. Mafia doesn't have any initiative penalty features yet, so I might try to write a script or spreadsheet to stay on top of it.

Anecdotally (i.e. no basis in hard spaded numbers) there has always been a HUGE difficulty jump for me between the L8-L9 random crap (pirates, valley monsters, ninja snowmen, etc.) and the L10 stuff. Until I started getting really good at ascending (~5-6 dayers, with a bunch of skills under my belt), I had the perception of the Airship being a big leap up in difficulty. Not even getting into the giants and the HitS.

Especially for non-moxie classes. Until chefstaffs rolled out, myst was awful for me at L10 because I was basically faux-moxie and the difference in "safe adventuring" numbers between L9 and L10 is huge when moxie's your off-stat. Muscle wasn't -hard-, it just meant I had to start actually buying wereseal blood by the bucketful to be able to do anything there.

Keep reaching for that elusive 3-dayer. My own travails with a 4-day HCNP are well known to anyone who hung out in chat 12ish months ago (or more, I'm a bad judge of time). So I'm rooting for you.

Tangentially related, I made it to L6 on day 1 for the first time in Boris. Didn't finish the Friar quest (much less start working on Stomach) but this was the first incremental progress I noticed. Depending on how things go, of course, I'm gunning for a 5-dayer.

Thanks for the PVP patsy list, that made things a lot easier this time around.

Hooray for progress!
I was always more worried about the Castle than the Airship until now; I don't know how I missed how painful the airship can be. And everything in the airship has 80-90 initiative, whereas only one Giant does.

Finally a good day 1!
pre-ascension choices: astral belt, energy drinks, peppermints, Mongoose
Telescope: gremlin juice, butterfly, G-string, sonar, NG, inkwell (I don't have the last upgrade)
Day 1 is a 1-clover day with no good bounties and a 0-door daily dungeon.

Day 1 More aggressive on crumhorn and cockiness than in the past; I'm using a little mafia script to check my initiative, so I have a better idea of what I can safely run. I'm midway through level 8 with stomach, quests done up to opening the Goatlet, temple and ballroom open (but song not set), gallery almost open, and 1 vacation done. It was easy, required no power-leveling, and I even planted a mushroom for tomorrow, which I hardly ever do. Diet was AED at level 8, 3 club sammies, 2 KLP, 1 cherry pie, 3 tarts, 2 knob nuts; 2 mint drinks + mint nightcap. I looked at trying to get to level 9 for Reubens once I was mid-level 7 without having summoned sandwiches, but didn't think it was worth early powerleveling. AEDs give 2 more adv for every level you delay them, while each Reuben are 3 adv better than club sandwiches (each).

Cost of food: 11 adv farming (5 for key, 2 golems fought, 4 banishes). 5 adv crafting 3 mint drinks and 2 key lime pies. 37 adv getting Stomach, including 1 banish.

Mistakes:

• Not banishing more in the stomach quest,
• Not building up MP in the outskirts for banishing in the Harem, getting beaten up once by drunken rats.
• Not starting vacations earlier. I didn't vacation until near the end of the day, worried about meeting my D1 goals; now I know I can meet them easily.
• Probably using my 2nd clover for sonars instead of meat maid. Maid gives 8 adv over the next 2 days, and I could have opened the boss lair in 7 adv worst case while farming beans, which I need anyway. I could get the sonar for the tower while farming or clover for it on day 2 or 3. It was great to get through the bats quickly though; I'm not sure I regret it.

Day 2 Plan:

• Farm 3-4 limes, 3 to be eaten on D2 (done: got 3, ate 3)
  
• I needed solitude, mp for banishing, and item drops most of the day, so little chance to Keep running crumhorn and Cockiness aggressively
  
• Space as many shore trips as possible for tower items. (done. sadly, I took one extra vacation due to idiocy)
  
• Find 1-3 base booze for tonight's nightcap and Day 3. (done!)
  
• Finished quests: trapper, pixels, Fcle, chasm, airship, castle, opening Gallery, leveling Clancy, monocle, opening DoD and identifying a bunch of ! pots, Hidden City. The daily dungeon had no doors, and it was a 1-clover day, otherwise I might have hit the DD instead of the > sign, and
  
• Semirare 2 was Temple, 3 was ASCII art, 4 (tomorrow) will be eyedrops.
  
• Do HitS at level 10 if possible (Failed! I gave up and started powerleveling about 30 adv before end-of-day and only mid-way through level 10.)
  
• Save Astral Energy Drink for level 11 (Failed! I was a bit more than one Louvre shy of 11 when I ran out of adv. The AED at 11 is only 2 adv better than at level 10, so I don't feel too bad.)
  
• Mistakes
• 1 extra adv in shore,
• picked up castle bounty, meaning delaying banishing an enemy I had no need for. Also in the Castle, ran crumhorn instead of lute for a while after switching locations.
• I could definitely have done the chasm without the SR this run.
• Ended at turncount 512, overall 2 adv below average so far. That's dretty decent RNG. But I don't think my progress is fast enough to finish tomorrow. The plan below requires me to hit level 12 by adventure 569-595 and have most other quests done,

Day 3 Milestones:

• I expect ~175 adv from rollover and pre-war consumables
• Try to finish MacGuffin up to Ed before level 12 or pad all the below numbers by remaining MacGuffin turns. The plan below doesn't leave space to finish anything else during or after the war. I only have 1 tangle so far, so I don't really need to save rats for leftover eyedrops.
• Do have something in mind for leftover eyedrops. Maybe the inkwell or gremlin juice, or use them on the battlefield for food drops. (Using them on battlefield would involve saving 10-15 of something else to flyer and shifting all the below milestones ~16 adv earlier to fit filthworms in mid-war.)
• need to hit level 12 with 96 (112 if not flyering worms) or more adv remaining, around adventure 595 (569), or 80 (64) adv into the day given average turngen, to get about 10 combats in the battlefield before I need food, which would be ~691 given avg turngen.
• start war: ~25 adv
• flyering/beach/junkyard/Ed, maybe filthworms: ~60 adv (~45 flyered combats)
• battlefield adv to first good food: ~11 including the starting noncombat. Plus an intermission of ~16 if doing worms mid-war.
• 117 adventures expected from 6 war food, 58 to finish the war and 59 after that to finish tower and NS.
• I may need ~15 adv of that 59 powerleveling, as I think my war plan only gets me 4400 mainstat after hitting level 12, leaving me 1900 short of level 13.
• 44 left for tower, including getting last tower items, maze, NS.
• Alternatives: fortune cookie + 2 SR food if 5th SR comes soon enough, limes from beach, MacGuffin 2-fullness food or casseroles.
• Risks: SR timing could force me to do filthworms mid-war whether I want to or not if I'm using eyedrops as my 4th SR. If I wanted to flyer MacGuffin bosses not named Ed, I'd need to fit in about 30 extra adv somewhere in the above to finish the pyramid; there's no time for it after the war. If flyering Ed but not filthworms, I may need to find 10-15 other decent combats to flyer, which contradicts trying to get everything else done Day 2/early Day 3.

Day 3 Reality:

• played to adventure 668 -- real life intervened, and I had little time to play turns. I'm pretty sure I wasn't going to make it anyway, but I'd have liked to play out more of the plan and see which parts had issues.
• I didn't get to level 12 on time, but 20 or 30 adventures later than the milestone. I think I completed the MacGuffin up to Ed before powerleveling though. Flyered Ed and lobsters and started flyering gremlins before running out of time.
  
• My offstats were surprisingly high, around 74 each when I hit level 12. I think I just need to figure out how to complete quests faster, because I don't think powerleveling helps with that. I'm almost tempted to take the astral mask instead of the belt next time.
  
• Mistakes: Did not check consumption plan before assuming that the upcoming semirare was optional. Nope, that was where I was supposed to get eyedrops, and I blissfully blew right through it. Also missed We'll All Be Flat in the Ballroom, and stayed there for 13 adv altogether before double-checking and catching the mistake.

Day 4: I finish the darn thing. Nothing to see here.

That Day 3 feels really complicated in part because I changed plans a couple of times while writing it. I love the idea of using the eyedrops on the battlefield , but it shakes up my flyering routine.

starting skills: all of them!
stuff: boris helm, peppermints, astral belt, astral spleen drinks
plan: I'll farm limes, but no stomach. I hate getting stomach, it's not helped me do a 3-day yet, and Rulle has done a stomachless 3/745 HC Boris: Rulle's log

My tower is really friendly: Sugar Rush, firecracker, NG, locust, hair spray, inkwell.

D1: I get to Level 8 and finally make a Day 1 meatmaid! I feel way behind on quests, but turngen is great so far, 239 adv generated. Diet: 3 lime pies, 1 cherry pie, 3 club sandwiches, 1 FC, energy drink at level 8, 3 peppermint drinks. I've got 3 tarts in reserve for tomorrow and a mushroom planted. Crypt, King, Bats are done, mine is started, conservatory is started, shore is almost open, bedroom is open but not started. I may have to actually read Rulle's log during rollover, because I have very little idea how to speed up quests; he commented it really well.

D2: 509 total adv generated at day's end, which is 17 ahead of the RNG if my math is right. I'm playing this like my 4-day runs: open the island at level 8 or 9. I got an N and enough scrolls burning delay in the Chasm that I just kept going instead of waiting for the SR, then powered to 10, did quests, powered to 11 and got through the Hidden City with Belch. Oasis, Cellar, and Dome are still to do. I got 2 lucre this run, triffids and bulls. I got stone wool with my 2nd and eyedrops with my 3rd SR; my 4th is now free for consumables. Ate Bounty-Os (see below), cherry pie, lime pie, omelette, 3 reuben, and 2 cookies; drank 3 peppermint booze and a level 11 AED.

On Lucre: Sniff Bloopers. That saves 10 adv on average. Sniff Fruit Golems if limes will save a day and you don't have Banish or Solitude. Other sniffing targets are probably situational in Boris, especially once you have Banish. I'm not sure when the +item buff becomes better than a sniff. Bounty-Os are on par with the best War food, better than Reubens. Brandy is not as good as Peppermint or Pumpkin or SR booze except as a nightcap. Having forgotten to sniff Bloopers, I used the +item buff in the Fcle and Sky, and I plan to sniff Astronomers tomorrow.

With Banish you don't need to sniff to get limes; with Solitude farming spices for burritos is good enough that I don't think you'd was. The Hogs have a spreadsheet of olfaction targets I've been scanning for other ideas: http://hogsofdestiny.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=895

D3: Wow. I generated 772 adventures in 3 days without stomach. My spreadsheet only predicts 755, so I guess the RNG was kind, but I still feel validated in not choosing stomach. I am 1-2 adv away from level 13, with all tower items, all 3 keys, all instruments, 1 clover, no wand, DoD not open. (This is the hoping-for-teleportitis-gate strategy.) The bronzed locust, which has never troubled me before, was brutal. I guess you learn something every run.

I did two new things in the junkyard: used Restorative Balms for stasising to increase my endurance and reduce between-adventure healing, and I optimized my junkyard order for banishing. Both were great and I will do them again. Here are the dudes in the different areas:

• barrel: batwinged (tool), AMC, vegetable, batwinged
  
• tires: erudite (tool), AMC, spider, erudite
  
• fridge: spider (tool), AMC, batwinged, spider
  
• rusted car: vegetable (tool), AMC, erudite, vegetable

The tool-holding and non-tool-holding gremlins are different monsters, so banishing one doesn't affect the other. Each molybenum-holding gremlin appears in only one zone, each non-tool-holding gremlin appears in two zones, except the AMC gremlin who appears in all four.

Start in any zone; I started at the barrel. Banish the AMC gremlin and any non-tool-holding gremlins you run into until you get the tool. (You can tell the good batwinged gremlin from the bad one by combat messages, see the wiki.) The ordering of the rest of the zones depends on what you've already banished. Look at your banish list by clicking on the name of the skill in your character sheet. We want to make the best use of your earliest banish, the lowest on this list, by going to the other area before he appears. If your first banish was an AMC gremlin, I'd look at the next one up. At the barrel I banished a batwinged gremlin, then a veggie gremlin, so I went to the other batty area next, the Fridge. In the fridge I only banished a spider gremlin; the lowest on my list was still the veggie gremlin, so I went to the Rusted Car third. At the Rusted Car and finally at the Tires I got the tool before running into anything to banish. This could be a little more complicated if you ran into an AMC gremlin, but it improves your odds of getting the tools quickly and having to do fewer banishes.

D4: Spent 29 more adv. I did use a couple of resources I wouldn't have had if finishing day 3, most notably a clover to finish leveling. Gates were ! potion of strength and Meleegra.

Since I'm failing anyway and I know I need to speed up quests, I'm trying the mask this time instead of the astral belt. Other valhalla choices remain the same: Peppermints, energy drinks, mongoose.

Tower is okay, though I need an NG again:
Outer gate: gate of the porcupine (Spiky Hair/super-spiky hair gel - NEED)
Tower Guardian #1: giant desktop globe (NG - NEED)
Tower Guardian #2: bronze chef (leftovers of indeterminate origin - NEED)
Tower Guardian #3: the darkness (inkwell - have)
Tower Guardian #4: the fickle finger of f8 (razor-sharp can lid - have)
Tower Guardian #5: fancy bath slug (fancy bath salts - NEED)

D1: With judicious use of cockiness, I ended up pretty close to where I was last time, 225 adventures played, starting the goatlet with a few vacations under my belt and a meat maid in place. This time I set the ballroom song to -combat before starting the Friars or Crypt. I hope it's worth it; it took 14 adventures. No stomach. I think I'm behind on stats but maybe ahead or at least even on quests. The temple and Gallery aren't unlocked and I haven't done a Daily Dungeon. That's okay if I make up enough through the mask's item drop bonus to let me power-level away the difference. My hopes are built on the fact that the new Gallery is very powerful. I haven't killed the Baron and am not sure I will. Tangles could make it worth while to kill him; I've only got one so far. I have 1 lime and 2 cherries and one club sandwich for tomorrow. The cherries come free while you're hunting the limes, but they're not even as good as the club sandwich, so I might find better food tomorrow. Mushroom is planted. That gets pretty easy when you finish the crypt. (I think having Impatience is a big part too; I get hit much less and rarely have to heal. A few runs ago I was healing after every adventure.)

D2: 482 adv played, 492 generated. I'm level 11 with the Sky done and midway through the Hidden City, my first MacGuffin subquest. Still have two tower items to backfarm and I didn't get a spare stone wool. The chasm was slow, the airship was slow, I went back to the Tavern but didn't get any more tangles. My peak item drop rate with mask, clancy, monocle is only 141%, which still feels really low. I'm getting a lot more items with the mask, but the items I want can still be maddeningly elusive and my peak item drop rates aren't enough to force drops. The mask could still help with the Orchard and Pyramid and Battlefield food, and my next semirare is free for either extra eyedrops or consumables.

D3-4: I sort of gave up, because I knew I wouldn't make it. I did a Daily Dungeon on D3 and then forgot on D4 and opened the DoD, right before finding out I had the teleportitis gate. I finished at 4/808, but I did a bit of farming before breaking prism to get 4/866 on the official record. The mask and spare eyedrops did help me get ratchets, but I had a horrible filthworms, spending 16 adventures to get the first gland.

Run 18 was 5/820, kind of a throwaway.
Run 19 started today. A triffid bounty and 3 clovers thanks to SSPD made it a great day to ascend.

Meatcar and Crumhorn now cost 3008 meat in knoll signs; pre-revamp it was 2808 + n*50.
You can get this Turn 0 from: 2500 (meat gems) + 200 (pen pal) + 350 (selling 7 flower schnapps).
One wrinkle: winning at PvP. I was starting with 0 on 5 of 12 minis: hobo power, basement levels, mystery, item drops, and fame. I spent meat on 9-10 MP to cast Song of Fortune and improve my odds after losing one match against a redshirt, and that was enough to make it impossible to get the turn 0 crumhorn. In other words, hit the basement before ascending, if only for 1 floor, and maybe try to gain some fame and whatever the mystery thing is.

I continued to screw up by wavering between saving flowers for pies and selling schnapps to buy the crumhorn. I got stomach and got to level 8 but had to eat some crappy food along the way and didn't finish the crypt and make the meat maid. Here are two more problems: the Bat Hole and the Harem. If you could delay one or both until you get to level 7 and get the lute, you could do them faster, but you'll have a hard time finding enough to do and enough consumables to keep you going to Level 7 that way. My basic plan, using peppermints for booze, requires 1000 meat for a cocktailcrafting kit somewhere in there. I also don't open the manor until my first semirare.

This is a really chintzy ash (kolmafia's scripting language) script that calculates the current initiative penalty based on your current ML and initiative modifiers. It also shows a few scenarios of what the penalty would be if you ran more ML. The monster control device (detuned radio, Canadian Mind-control device, Annoyotron, and I think the Hellevator) does not affect initiative so we talk about non-MCD ML. This isn't Boris-specific, but I used it a lot in Boris.

I put this in a file called init_penalty.ash in my kolmafia scripts folder and call it from the gcli with "call init_penalty.ash". You could also select it from the scripts menu.

Code:

/*
 * Initiative_percent = 100 + initiative_modifier() - init_penalty(ml_excluding_mcd)
 *    - monster_base_init
 *    + max(0, my_basestat(my_primestat()) - adjusted_monster_attack)
 *
 * Adjusted_monster_attack includes MCD
 * TODO: What if ml_excluding_mcd is < 0?  For now, assuming it's treated as 0.
 *
 * Goals:
 *  - P1: know my current modifier including penalty
 *  - P2: whatif scenarios: what if I add 15-30 non-mcd ML?
 *  - P3: initiative / stat gain tradeoffs or initiative/damage taken
 *  - P3: chance of getting jump in an area.
 */

/* input: ml_excluding_mcd
 * output: initiative penalty (percent)
 */
int init_penalty(int ml) {
    int penalty = 0;
    // Penalty is 0 for ml values from 0-20, and I assume for ml < 0 too.
    // The formula does work for ml in the 0-20 range.
    if (ml > 20) {
        int x = min(ml / 20, 5);
        penalty = x * (ml - 10*(x + 1));
    }
    return penalty;
}

int ml_adjusted_init_modifier(int delta_ml) {
    int adj_ml = monster_level_adjustment() + delta_ml - current_mcd();
    return initiative_modifier() - init_penalty(adj_ml);
}


void main() {
    int mlfp = monster_level_adjustment() - current_mcd();
    print("You're running " + monster_level_adjustment() + " ML, of which "
        + mlfp + " counts toward the initiative penalty.");

    print("Your base initiative modifiers are " + initiative_modifier());

    print("Your current ML-adjusted init modifier is "
            + ml_adjusted_init_modifier(0), "blue");

    // Scenarios, so I don't have to cast cockiness to see how bad it would be:
    // 5, 10, 15, 30?
    print("ML-adjusted init modifier would be "
            + ml_adjusted_init_modifier(5) + " with 5 more non-MCD ML");
    print("ML-adjusted init modifier would be "
            + ml_adjusted_init_modifier(10) + " with 10 more non-MCD ML");
    print("ML-adjusted init modifier would be "
            + ml_adjusted_init_modifier(15) + " with 15 more non-MCD ML");
    print("ML-adjusted init modifier would be "
            + ml_adjusted_init_modifier(30) + " with 30 more non-MCD ML");
}


I've finished my first serious attempt at speedy HCAoB: http://forums.hardcoreoxygenation.com/viewtopic.php?t=7072
It was 10-skill, no stomach, no limes farming. Took a lot of advice from this thread, thanks everyone :)

Very impressive. I've yet to break 950 or so, even with more skills. Though I'm doing things a little lazy, and I am going for Stomach.