Useful farming and leveling Tips, Tricks, and Synergies that

Due in no small part to the Crimbough thread, I decided to post a thread with some of the less broken strategies I've noticed over the years, both for farming and for leveling.

Cheap Astral Mushroom leveling: Somewhere in the deepest recesses of the KOL forums there is a thread I posted detailing this. The violet fog substat choices are some of the very few infinitely scaling stat gain non-combats in the game, and on a great trip it scales at a rate of mainstat*(5/9). Normally you can only get one violet fog every five adventures average, which is worse then the sign or hobopolis gyms. However if you use SGEEAs to remove Half-Astral directly after every violet fog encounter and then using another astral mushroom, you get an average of one violet fog every three adventures, and you should get more substats per adventure than in the gym.
Or, for those of you who are math inclined: Fog (mainstat*(5/9))/3 vs. Gym (((mainstat/10)+2)+((mainstat/5)+5))/2
If you equip +ML, you can earn some extra substats from the otherwise unwanted combats, or you can increase your item drops and earn most or all of the meat you spend on mushrooms back.

5 turn farming: a fairly obvious technique, it is still surprising how effective it is. The PYEC is an ultra-rare which can be used 1/day. It refills your MP, cools your zapping wand back to zero uses, and adds five turns to all buffs currently up. So what you do is you get every +Myst, +item, +meat and familiar weight buff you can. You are limited to five adventures per day, but with a spooky putty sheet you can guarantee it will be against enemies with a high yield. So what do you do with your fullness since adventures are not your limiting factor? Well, after you've gotten all the buffs, use Jumbo Dr. Lucifers. For 1 fullness, a Jumbo Dr. Lucifer reduces your HP to 1, then gives you 10 mp per 1 hp drained, effectively refilling your MP to full. Can you say 100-200 libram summons, or enough buffs to literally last someone years? Note that as of yet this is NOT profitable enough to be considered worth it. However new buffs are added fairly often, so this strategy can only become more profitable as time goes on.

Chum farming: With another serving as cage bait, you can earn a good amount of meat farming for C.H.U.M. chum as a moxie class and the right setup. With Elvish sunglasses you should get chum 50% of the time. With a Navel Ring you can run away after pickpocketing, and will have a minimum 20% chance of not using an adventure for doing so. And finally you will need Olfaction to get C.H.U.M. fairly often.

Blue Cupcake farming: Divine Crackers pickpocket with an inherent +40% item drops, and cost about 150-200 meat. Blue Cupcakes have a 15% chance of dropping, and are usually priced at around 4-6k. Same equip as Chum farming (it's unknown if he sunglasses work on crackers, but it's worth trying). Don't bother without Olfaction, otherwise it's fairly profitable even without the navel ring or glasses.

I'm sure there was more, but it is late, I am getting noticeably tired, and I can't think of anything that is still profitable and not just common sense.

I appreciate the info, Zourath. Every bit helps, and that's some solid stuff.

Very cool indeed. I've always been the type to just go for Castle farming to reduce the amount of brainpower involved, but these techniques are indeed solid. Makes me wonder if I should switch over.

For those without a lot of fancy gear, but with enough to get up around 300-350% item drop without much cost (gear, hound, basic buffs), sniffing kitties in the middle chamber can be pretty good. Or at least better than the castle unless you're running a fairychaun. Hardly a secret, but for a basic technique it's not too bad.

If I've got turns to burn the day I'm jumping through the Gash to ascend, I like to "Lazy Farm."

Basically, strap on a Leprechaun type (hobo monkey for me) and 3x UPC sticker my sticker weapon, cast enough Polkas of Plenty, and Olfaction some wealthy pirates in the Poop Deck. The meat/encounter is much higher for a wealthy pirate (vs. say the Castle) once you Sniff him, and it's pretty straightforward. Also, the one noncombat there is avoidable so it's all +meat drops all the time.

There are much higher yield areas / techniques, but when I'm feeling lazy and just want to get to my next life ASAP, it's usually good for 900-1000 meat per turn.

That is actually another fairly decent farming method even when not lazy. The only thing it is missing is Birdform from Llama lama gongs for roc/great tit/raven feathers, as well as pickpocket if you aren't a moxie class. Also you should NEVER avoid that non-combat. Even the worst non-autosell only item is worth more meat then you can earn in a normal adventure, most are in the 8000-10000 range, and the autosell only items are in easily avoidable coordinates.

Also, at current prices (500 meat each) UPC stickers are profitable for this, and after removing the cost of the stickers the sword gives you the equivalent of +32% meat drops for determining what weapon is optimal for farming. However, there is only a limited amount at 500 meat, and the next price range of 750 meat turns the sword into the equivalent of a +11% meat drop bonus, making the bottle rocket crossbow better when UPC stickers are in that price range.

My farming strategy typically involves clicking on Paypal and.....

Turns should be spent ascending! Need. More. Skills.....

There has been a large influx of +%stat_gain since the moonsign/valhalla revamp.

For muscle
Baobab sap - +20% to muscle gains
honey stick - +5%
April shower - +5%

which gives a potential of +30% bonus on top of the 10% moon sign bonus and possibly the 25% stat day bonus.

There is also a long standing bug in KOL where you can enter a choice adventure for more than one turn (the shore for example), where you get the initial effect for as long as the choice adventure lasts. For example, if you had the Mental A-cue-ity buff for 1 turn and did a shore trip, you would regenerate 30 MP, rather than 10.

The same sort of trick can be used with Hobopolisis' Richard for stat gains. By using 1 baobab sap and 1 honey stick, and then spending 200+ adventures with Richard making protein shakes, you can extend the duration of the stat bonus though entire the encounter.