Pastamancer Day 1

[tanithryudo]

(Yes, I'm using a Gaia icon cuz I don't have a stick figure icon. :P)

So, started my softcore Pastamancer run on Kingdom of Loathing on a mysticality day with 80 turns to start off of, and a fairly well stocked Hagnk's. I also lucked out in that the daily bounty and the Myst class gourd quest both took place in the Haunted Pantry. So I was able to get 3 gourd potions and a lucre right off the bat.

At the end of the 80 turns, I was about lvl 4. I had hoped to make it to 5 so I could make/eat delicious spicy noodles, but that didn't happen and I ended up eating 5 stocked bat wing stir-fry. The myst bonus from the food (and the myst DB cocktails I got from the guild quest & stock) was able to bump me up to the middle of lvl 5. I finished the day at lvl 6.

Probably need to slow down a little on subsequent days. I've only done the lvl 2 quest and there is a bunch of stuff I need to backtrack on.

Overall impressions:

- In retrospect, getting the hat from the lvl 2 quest boss was not a good idea, since it requires a base moxie of 22 and it's going to be at least another level before I get there. By that time, I might already have the Epic Hat, which is much better as it has built-in mana regen. I might've saved 1 round of beaten up if I hadn't been setting the detuned radio to 9 to start off in the tavern.

- Pastamancers are *expensive*. At lvl 6, the costs are as follows: 800 mt entangling noodles, 4000 mt cookbook, 5000 mt pastamancy, 6000 mt springy fusili. I bought the first two items with the 5k I pulled from Hagnk's today. I'll need to buy the last two tomorrow when I can pull again. And, of course, that's assuming I don't level to 7 by then, since chefstaves requires another 7.5k for both the skill and the equipment component from the store.

(Granted, I also forgot to turn in my rat whiskers in my haste, and that should've been at least 1k more meat there, but that's still a drop in the bucket. I foresee the HC run having to spend a lot of time farming the boss bat chamber/knob goblin treasury)

- Either spice ghost is overrated or RNG just hates me. I'm hoping it's the latter. But of the ten rounds of spice ghost summons pastamancers get per day, it only dropped a spice the first time (the guaranteed one). One spice a day is definitely not enough to fuel the normal food costs for the day. While I have my stocks to make up for it, my hardcore run is not gonna be as fun if I have to spend a large amount of time farming the forest for it. To say nothing of non-pastamancer runs.

(However, things do appear to get better once pastamancy and saucemaking are permed. As that generates two hell ramens or its mushroom-based equivalent per day which is 12 fullness right there, and the single guaranteed spice per day can go toward that remaining 3 fullness.)

- Damage: yes I can one shot kill pretty much all the mobs that come up. The problem is that if I don't get initiative, they can do a lot of damage on me. That ends up with a lot of money being thrown at the doctor's. I'll need to test springy fusili's initiative buff tomorrow to see how much of a difference that makes. If it does, I might consider making an extra round of HC/DB to perm OSSP before I start my HC/PM run.

- Regen: again, I went with a stat buffing familiar the entire way today. Will need to test cocoabo and starfish to see if that makes a difference. And whether it's worth the extra 1.8k mt of buying lasagna bandages while taking a starfish, or leaving that and taking the cocoabo instead.

(Actually, looking at the familiars further, it might be worth it to go with a rock lobster at the lower levels. The floaty sand drops gives initiative and moxie boost. In low level/low-skill myst, that could be more useful than the stocking mimic drops.)

Comments

[cashew.insanejournal.com]

Oh right, forgot the floaty sand thing. Heh. Yeah, it's very, very useful for getting moxie up, even if you run a moxie class (esp. in early runs).