Using Your Brains

[ShadowWolf]

*POSTED BY FOXY BOXY*
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There are three campground items that are all very valuable to a Hardcore ascension (links to the wiki provided): the meat maid, the bartender-in-the-box, and the chef-in-the-box. The two X-in-the-boxes are generally referred to as "innaboxen" and I usually also include the meat maid when using the phrase "innaboxen" even though the maid isn't, y'know, a maid-in-the-box.

The reason for this is that A) all three use the same common two resources - smart skull and disembodied brain - as their base, and that B) all three perform the similar service of effectively giving you "free" adventures per day.

The meat maid is the most obvious of the three as far as giving you free adventures per day, because that's exactly what it does. You get 4 additional turns every rollover.

The other two innaboxen are more subtle in that they give you their free adventures indirectly by saving you the adventures that you would normally spend crafting your food or booze. If you cook a tomato and a wad of dough into a plain pizza, that costs you one turn. With a chef-in-a-box, it's free. Thus, the chef-in-a-box has essentially given you +1 turn today.

In an ideal world, you'll get a bunch of smart skulls and disembodied brains and other parts and be able to make all three. I've done 55 (and counting) hardcore ascensions and I don't think I've ever made all three, and not for lack of desire or want to be sure. So what's the priority?

The Math

Let's look at the expected adventures per day that each one is giving you. Meat maid's easy, she gives you 4 per day. The others depend on what you're eating or drinking. Without going into in-depth cooking and drinking strategy and assuming you have Liver of Steel, you're probably making five AdCock drinks and one extra mixed drink per day (four for consumption during the day to get you to 16, a random drink to get you to 19, and then one AdCock drink as a nightcap at the end of the day). That's 2*5+1 = 11 turns spent per day making drinks.

Food's trickier. Without Pastamastery, you're probably eating pies, pizzas, stir-fries, or some combination depending on what you've found. A pizza or a pie is 2 turns to make (1 for pie crust / plain pizza, and 1 for the final pie / pizza). A stir-fry is 3 turns to make (1 for the secret blend of herbs and spices, 1 for the base stir fry, 1 for the advanced stir-fry). And you're eating anywhere from four to five of these per day. So that's roughly 10 (5*2 pizzas or pies) to 12 (4*3 stir-fries) adventures per day spent. There are other things worth cooking here and there, like reagent potions when you get AdSauce.

If you -do- have Pastamastery and Advanced Saucecrafting, your turns spent will go down a fair amount. An ideal day will see you eating two reagent pastas (2 turns to cook, 1 for the sauce and 1 to add the noodles) plus one random pastamastery food (1 turn to cook). That's only 5 adventures per day.

So as a complete Hardcore n00b, you wont' have Pastamastery or AdSauce so you'll be blowing 10-12 adventures per day cooking food and 11 adventures per day making drinks. So it's really a wash whether you make a chef-in-a-box or a bartender-in-a-box first to save you those 10-12 or 11 adventures per day. But -both- are much much better than a meat maid who's only giving you 4 adventures per day.

But after a couple of HC ascensions when you've got Pastamastery and AdSauce make the really good food, the bartender-in-a-box becomes the clear favorite for your first innabox. After that, the chef-in-a-box has a slight edge over a meat maid.

More Math

In order to even make these innaboxen you need the parts. To get the parts, you need to spend turns. So is it worth it to spend those turns?

Well, how many turns will you get from each innaboxen? Let's say you don't get your innaboxen made until during day three, and installed in your campsite. And let's say it takes you another 15 days to break the prism (going by the KoL ascension database and searching on Hardcore No Path, 0 skills, it seems like 17-19 days is a median number of days for your first HC ascension). That means a meat maid gives you 60 extra turns, a chef-in-a-box gives you from 150 to 180 extra turns, and a bartender-in-a-box gives you around 165 extra turns. In order for this thing to be worthwhile, you have to spend less than that many turns farming the pieces needed to make it.

Fortunately, a lot of the components can be found doing things you would normally need to do (or want to do) to ascend. Most people like to get their Legendary Epic Weapon, which requires opening the "Fun" House and farming there for a while anyway. You should be able to get a box while you're doing that, so it's essentially no extra turns. Similarly, the chef hat usually drops when you're at the Outskirts of Cobb's Knob looking for the Encryption Key to complete the Level 5 (Kill the Goblin King) quest. You need a meatcar to unlock the Beach in order to do a bunch of necessary quests (level 11 quest, Shoring to open the island to get the level 12 quest and level 9 quest started) so you should have a meat engine from untinkering the meatcar, and you should have found a couple extra springs.

The three big things you have to go out of your way to get are A) the beer lenses from the Typical Tavern post-quest, B) the maid parts (frilly skirt and maiden wig) from Degrassi Knoll, and C) the actual smart skulls from the Misspelled Cemetary and the disembodied brains from Fernswarthy's Tower.

This is why a lot of people like muscle Zodiac signs: you can buy meatcar parts, springs, maid wigs, and frilly skirts at the Degrassi Gnoll store under a muscle sign and have to farm them otherwise, spending turns. It's a compelling argument.

Beer lenses are a superlikely (meaning you should find them in 2-4 adventures in the Typical Tavern) but have an opportunity cost associated with them of adding drunkness without gaining adventures (actually -spending- adventures). By getting the beer lenses and getting drunk adventures, you're "spending" drunkness that could be "spent" on drinking booze that gives you adventures. In my experience, you're usually putting on 2-6 drunkness which translates to anywhere from 5 to 15 turns "wasted" in addition to the 2-4 adventures spent.

Smart skulls and disembodied brains are trickier. I generally prefer having innaboxen, so I do the Wizard of Ego quest to get the Manual. It's a handy reward that adds 220 main stat substats over five days which is a nice boost, and you generally get some nice items along the way ... skeleton bones + loose teeth for skeleton keys, which are something you need for the level 13 quest as well as the Daily Dungeon ... pre-Hippy Store fruits from the fruit golem and wads of dough from a couple monsters in Fernswarthy's Tower to make booze and food from.

So What Does This Mean?

Good question! It really depends on how many smart skulls and disembodied brains you get from doing the Wizard of Ego quest. I usually get at least one set, but sometimes I don't even get that much. Then you have to see how many turns it would take to farm it and as we showed above, if you can farm it in fewer than 100 turns or so, you make a very good profit in turns. So it's worth spending some extra time there.

Here's what I do. I do the Wizard of Ego quest and then see how many skulls + brains I found. If I happened to get one of each, great. I want at least one set of brains + skull.

Then I make a bartender-in-a-box because I have Pastamastery + AdSauce and that means I'm looking at the "save 11 turns with bartender vs. 5 turns with chef" equation. If you're a n00b with no Pastamastery + AdSauce, you make a chef-in-a-box because you're looking at the "save 11 turns with bartender vs. 10-12 or more with chef" equation.

Then later, you're going to run across extra clovers. Spend a clover adventure (or two) at the Misspelled Cemetary after you've killed the Bonerdagon and poof! you magically get another set of brains + skulls (or two) and can make that other innaboxen (or two) you've had your eye on with a very minimal expenditure of turns.

But Think About It

150 to 165 to 180 turns. That's a lot of adventures saved. If you're spending 2000 turns on a run (eyeballing the KoL ascension database, that looks about right) that's 7% to 9% of your whole ascension. It may not seem like a lot, but it's a lot. I strongly recommend trying to make the construction of at least one innaboxen a fairly important part of your early Hardcore strategy. It's a huge part of mine.

[ironhorn]

i try to make my innaboxen, but i have horrible luck with the beer lenses, for me they are superlikely (not to show up )

[ShadowWolf]

i try to make my innaboxen, but i have horrible luck with the beer lenses, for me they are superlikely (not to show up )

Yeah, sometimes you get a swift kick from the RNG. That's why it's probably better, when you don't have Pastamastery yet, to go for the chef-in-a-box first. As I showed, it's close to being even as far as turns saved, and the chef hat is a common drop.

[Guest]

i have 2 extra beer lenses

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