Subjunctive KoL: AscensionStrategy

This page is my attempt to gather some useful hints, tricks, and tips for Ascension in a non-spoilertastic way. This is obviously still very preliminary, so if you have any suggestions, let me know.

• Always try to fight in the hardest area that gives you a challenge. If you're always killing your enemies in one hit, try to find a more profitable area. Mysticality signs can crank up the mind control too.
• Always try to save up adventures for stat days. This makes a big difference for hardcore players, and an even bigger difference for Oxygenarians. If you're Oxygenarian, you can set things up so that you're always adventuring on a stat day.
• Never stop thinking about your stats. There are only two times when you shouldn't be carrying along a stat-increasing familiar: (1) when you're at the end of the game and don't need any more stats, or (2) when you really need an item from an area which is much lower in stat return than a harder area you could be adventuring in.
• In hardcore, the best way to make money is to get a worthless object by adventuring in the sewer, trading it in at the Hermit for a ten-leaf clover, and then adventuring in Cobb's Knob Treasury to get a dense meat stack, which you can sell for 1000 Meat.
• Try to avoid resting. Use spells or Doc Galaktik to heal you. Notice that the Homeopathic Elixir is only about twice as effective as the Ailment Ointment but costs four times as much. So if you're not in battle, use the Ointment.
• If you're softcore, think carefully about pulls. Always consider (a) how many adventures you're saving by using the pull, and (b) what else you could pull instead.
• If you're in hardcore, smith your own weapons. It costs time and money, but for most classes the smithable weapons are the best weapons you can have in the midgame.
• Remember -- for Pastamancers and Saucerors, your most important stat is moxie. With higher moxie, you get hit less often and less hard, and that's the only way you'll survive in the long run.