I’ve narrowed my list down to the following:
Blue shell
Dueling turtle
Turtlemail bits
Padded tortoise
Syncopated turtle
Spiky turtle

When I am in the 8-bit realm, I’ll look for blue shells

When I am in whitey’s grove, I will look for a dueling turtle (with a turtle rod)

I will need 16 turtlemail bits total, which will take 4 encounters. I will look for turtlemail bits in the following locations (with a turtle rod)
Friars, crypt, Pirates cove and haunted library

When I am in the barrr, I’ll look for a padded tortoise (with a turtle rod)

I will also look for a syncopated turtle when I look for the Filthy Hippy disguise (with a turtle rod) and then use the turtle with a rod in the un-hyrated desert for 2 spiky turtle shells, for shoulder pads.

I will do the nemesis quest, at least until the sinister cave

For the cave, I will need
Viking helmet
Insanely spicy burrito (from the peak)
Clownskin buckler

Ideally, the nemisis stuff should be done 150 turns before I hit 90 mainstat (90 mainstat is lv 10.25)

The First major obstacle was realizing the wiki was wrong, flat out wrong on the rates for most of the pickpocket only items. I spent a month and a half running a multi around the kingdom collecting data for Quarks, Little Round Pebbles, Cheap Cigar Butts and Colon Annihilation Hot Sauce. Without olfaction, and on a very cheap diet (200ish turns per day), I would see perhaps 40 – 60 monks per day, which took a while to collect enough data to feel confident with. I actually managed to snag 800 data points in just over 2 weeks, giving an observed rate of 39.13 on the pebbles. My sample size for the other pickpocket only items are much smaller, but quite obviously not the given rate by the wiki.

The Second thing was knowing how pickpocket actually worked. Normally, the game chooses the items based on the unmodified drop rate – if a sent gland has a 10% drop rate, you could also pickpocket it 10% of the time. It gets more complicated when the monster has more items available to steal – if the monster has two (unique) 25% base item drops, the rate of any one of those items is 21%. In the case of the Monks, who have 3 items that can be pickpocketed, an item that was observed at 39.13% would have an (effective) base drop of 47% (most likely 50%) unless…

The Third thing was that I wasn’t exactly sure how pickpocket only items were chosen. I could easily see it being a separate roll, perhaps done before or after the game rolls for normal drops. In fact, I quite clearly remember someone telling me this was the way it worked when i was a newb. This, in fact, is not the way it works. Rather that it being a “second” pickpocket roll, pickpocket only items are chosen alongside the normal drops. I also wasn’t sure if pickpocket only items had the bonus apply to them.

My data
Number of Ancient Insane Monks: 800
number of stones pickpocketed:  313 (39.13%)

WITH +70 pickpocket bonus
number of monks :  224
number of pebbles: 129  (57.6%)
number of sakes:45  (20%)
number of cereal: 25  (11%)

The model predicts  a 59% observed rate for the pebble if it was rolled alongside the other drops and if the pp bonus applied. Sake was predicted at 18% and the cereal at 10%.

It’s also worth mentioning that since pickpocket only items are chosen alongside the other possible drops, all of the observed rates the wiki lists that end in 0 or 5 are flat out wrong. The base rate should be in an increment of 5, and the effective “base rate” rate should be calculated from that, so it can be gauged how effective pickpocket bonuses will be. The good news is that the difference is very small for smaller numbers and monsters with fewer drops.

by the time I finished the war, I needed to powerlevel about 2000 substats. I needed a g-string for the tower, but also messed up on shoring and didn’t pick up a 6th floor item. The second gate needed a handsomeness potion, so i found myself south of the boarder (while still on the trail of zombies, bah) with +100ish items. I came across a marachici that dropped the g-string and didn’t think much of it, as I was looking for a handsomeness potion. The hansome marachici finally shows up, and I go to yellow ray him… but find myself short a yellow ray. I’m already on the trail of something else, so I can’t sniff him, and the potion is a 20% drop – between pickpocket and my item bonus, it’s less than a 50% shot – but I managed to pickpocket the potion! So, I run off to do my tower, get ready to blast el diablo with my fire fist, when i realize that I have the gimick, and I can save 5 turns and blast the level 6 monster instead.

Also, the entire run, I was worried about needing the stone marachici instruments – drum, guitar and accordian. well, I was only worried about the drum and the guitar. but guess which one I didn’t have? the accordian. luckily, i had amassed a small fortune (5k) and could afford the chewing gum to find an AT starting weapon.

Overall, the run was a blast, I got to do stuff that I wouldn’t have otherwise in Normal, like use Emilio, or get ice shards from the shower(shards save more turns than stats when you have a difficult time killing stuff). I didn’t worry when the temple took 35 turns and the desert(unhydrated) took 8. or when I messed up something, because eh, it wasn’t a serious run. It was Very relaxing, and worth nearly the same karma per day as my regular 3 day runs.

6/1200 HC is just as good as 3/600 softcore, right? I think it is.

Now, a year later, I have 5ish more skills (2 are mr store skills, 1 is olfaction, and I upgraded the pasta and reagent skill) have a wider range of Mr Stuff (mostly in the form a VIP lounge) and am blowing though the run. I really have no idea how much longer it will take, but I estimate that the war will take 1-2 days, with the tower taking <50 turns. Oh, I still have the pyramid to do, so I guess that’s another 60ish turns.

I’ve been faxing lobster frog men, and am in Fist, so I think my best bet is to do the war as a frat. Obviously, I’ll skip the nuns. I’m worried about getting the glands from the filthworms, and not sure how to approach the farm. I’ll probably be able to muster about +250% from disposable sources for 10 turns, and I’ll make sure that I get the jump. With pickpocket, i have a 10% chance to pp a gland, and then (1-.10)*(0.1*(1+(250/350)) = .315 chance to get it to drop normally, for a total of 41.5%, or on average 2.41 turns per gland.

So, if i’m doing a 4 sidequest war, it’ll take 8 turns to get to the Filthworms. Once there, it’ll take 25 more to get to the farm. IF I do the farm I’ll need to spend 16 more turns on the battlefield. IF I  skip the farm, I’ll need to spend 67 turns (total) on the battlefield.
With farm: 49
Without farm:67
difference:  18 turns

Now, I know that with the shortcut, I’ll only need to fight 5 ducks in each of the 3 side areas, plus 5ish more per non-combat, for a grand total of 20-40 ducks. Clearly, skipping the farm is the most effective way to do the war, but doing the sidequest would add only a few turns and open up some farming opportunities for aftercore.

One more thing that I’m worrying about is the Tower Familiars. I need to get 20 lbs on mine to defeat them, and I’d rather not level them in the arena. I can get 5 from the furry halo. I can get 5 from the pool table. I can’t access the knob lab store to buy pet buffing spray, nor do I have +weight skills permed. I can use the beaded headband for +5 lbs from the hatter, and I might be able to get lucky with Resolution summons and get a Kinder. I also have a lead necklace (+3)  and Beast paste (+3).
Things to use
+5 Furry Halo
+5 Pool Buff
+5 Hatter ( Reinforced beaded headband)
+5 Kinder resolution
+3 Beasty Paste
+3 Lead Necklace
It might be worthwhile to use the friars buff and spend a turn or two with each tower familiar on the battlefield to get them to base 2 so I could simply use {lead necklace, Pool Buff, Hatter, Furry halo} and not worry about getting Kinder to drop or having room in my spleen for a beasty paste.

I still have to worry about getting a guitar and defeating the shadow.

On day 2, I was able to:

Get Liver of steel. This was kind of weird because I was using stinkpalm on the hot monsters, and then the sub bosses aren’t hot aligned, and were one shotting me. They seemed to get easier the more that I lost to them, so that was kind of nice.

Killed a faxed lobsterfrogman. I wasn’t sure if I was going to pull off enough damage here. I’ve been collecting ice shards from the shower to make the ice cap and had a few spares. A shard of ice and Drunken baby style was enough to net me a barrel of gun powder at level 7. I feel like this is pretty big. At best, I’d get +10% combat from the hound and a reoderant, giving an expected 5ish turns saved per barrel.

Got Fruit stand access. Not really a big deal, shored and yellow rayed a hippy. I still don’t have the 3500 meat to buy the cocktail kit +skill, so there isn’t much going on here. Turngen from booze is pretty crappy, although it’ll probably be just as bad (or worse) for Bad Moon.

Got Ramen cubes. I don’t know how far these will go, but I spent turns looking for a scroll while sniffing hellions. I think I have 6 or 8 extra, which should last 3 or 4 more days. As I’m on day 2, expecting a 7+ day run, i quite clearly do not have enough to last until the end.  Most “Awesome” level foods require spices and herbs. My next best options are Goat Cheese Pasta or settling for a “good” tier level food.

Tomorrows itinerary is doing the pirates and unlocking the second floor of Spookyraven’s manor.  I hope I’m not pushing myself too hard.

I picked Fist over no path for a few reasons, mostly for the combat skills, and also to make it a little easier. For the same reasons, I picked the astral mask and went Vole moonsign. I also upgraded pastamancery and adv. saucecrafting. I don’t remember why I went DB over AT, perhaps I thought that I could scrounge up enough meat to buy the cocktail crafting skill in my run? The astral mask should be slightly more helpful overall, as I can get stats from dance cards and the extra moxie helps me survive combat.

My basic strategy is using Emilio as my primary stat familiar, and Stomping boots as my primary fairy. I don’t need to worry about mana, since I have the fist skill that regens mana and very few other skills that use mana. Also, as I’m in fist, I don’t need to worry about a leprechaun or too many other familiar types.

I DO need to worry about HP, since I don’t have any healing skills permed. Emilio should help with the healing a tiny bit, however since each action is equally likely and he has 8 other combat actions (6 of which will often kill), I suspect that I won’t get much healing out of him. Managing HP is probably going to be my biggest struggle this run and I have a few ideas on how to approach this. I can’t equip weapons/off-hands, nor am I aware of my torso or able to craft so I’m losing a lot of options. The subject 37 pin seems like a viable option, as well as getting the 8th fist scroll (needs 36 extra turns to get). Disco nap will cost 1000 meat, which seems more reasonable than using Doc Galactic, or sleeping in my newbie sport tent.

Lets do the math. Assuming that I can get a +item resolution, my fairy is 10lbs base and I’m using the mask. I can get ~20% extra +item from the pool table too. 15 + 30 +20 +20 = 85. I might as well get the +item halo from the clip art for an even 110 (total). The wiki lacks data for the item drops, but i’m going to assume that they are the same rate as GOTOs (my spading from a year ago shows the drop rate to be ~30%). Each zone also has 3 monsters, so… it’ll take about 3 times as long too. I have an expected 63% chance to get the item needed (not including pickpocket), so factoring in the other monsters, it should take me 5 turns on average per zone to find the item I want. I need 4 items for subject 37, so this is an expected 20 turns. If I use the pool buff on something else, I have a 90% +item, giving me an expected 5.25 turns per item. This is clearly fewer turns than spending the 36 turns looking for more scrolls.

I’m able to get 500 meat per day from the harem disguise non-combat in the treasury (once per day). Therefore, the disco nap costs 2 adventures.  OR, it takes 1 additional turn in the crypt to earn ~250 meat, so disco nap could be viewed as 4 turns. I’m going to be taking advantage of these meat non-combats actually, as I may need to buy a cocktail kit (1000 meat), the skill (2500 meat) as well as 2700 meats worth of questy stuff (6200 meat total). If I expect to take at least 7 days to do this run, I’ll get about half of the meat I need from harem girl wages, and need to spend 13ish turns  making up the remainder in the crypt, plus the 4 more to buy disco nap.

Between harem girl wages and crypt looting, I’m like some sort of slutty tomb raider.

Stat showers
I get 3 showers per run. My gut is telling me that 50 turns of +5% stat gain is more worthwhile than (up to) 1000 MP, or 3-4 shards of ice. It’s easier to think about if I work backwards

Day 3
I typically save the pyramid for flyering and then run my +item bonuses on tomb rats and filthworms. So at level 12, my only non-combats are  from setting up Ed, and starting the war. I’m also running lots of  +ML to help with flyering, and have had 3 days worth of  time to gather +stat stuff. It’s a really easy choice, I need to start the war, set up Ed, and then get the stat shower before I fight him.

Day 2
Moon leveling is the obvious choice here. I’m going to spend 30 turns on the moon, so I’m not sure if I should I time the shower so it runs out when I finish on the moon or just get it before I start. The value of combats are pretty low before and after, so it probably doesn’t matter.

Day 1
This is actually pretty tough. My highest value combats are nightstands, and I’m in a desperate rush to get to level 6. I have a lot of (statless) non-combats to slog though too. If I use it for the bedroom while running bugbear and aria at level 5, I’m getting 60 ML,  ~+7.3 mainstats and fighting monsters worth about 20.3 mainstat – so +5% is worth +1.7 extra mainstat.  This will work out to an extra turn’s worth of stats, which isn’t great but not bad considering the alternatives are the cranny (ML~+130) for the ~3ish turns I’m in there, or postponing the shower until the end of the day seem lackluster as don’t need the stats as badly at that point. A stat shower when I get into the billards room, or possibly the library seems like the best option. I’m not hurting for MP too badly and my max MP is rather low (200ish, if I recall) so the MP option is very terrible.

The very best I could do is use a stat shower before using a clover, as this gives 300*.05=15 extra mainstat per turn. The shower is always going to save me about 2 turns of the average stat value for the 50 turns I’m using it in (50*.05=2.5), so it’s clearly better to use it when powerleveling when stat gains are high rather than a typical combats when stat gains are negligible.

Other things
I overshot level 13 last run, but barely made lv 12 without poweleveling, which is weird. Obviously, I need to dedicate some +stat resources for doing level 11, and save less for level 12. This is tricky because I am using a fairy for most of level 11 (ketchup hound, drum machine, dusty bottles, and hoping for mojo filters and guitars), and further complicated by needing various non-combats (making +stat buffs less effective). I may try not looking for the guitar and mojo filter, as these never seem to drop and I have plenty of pulls on day 3 anyway.

I know what I need to do, and i know what I need to do before I try to do … this thing. I need a transponder. I need the island open. I need to hit level 8 on day 1 so that I can get 5 turns of mining in. I need to hit level 6 in under 60 turns so i can eat. I need to get the mosquito before level 7, so i can double up on the +ML for the cellar and the cranny. There is a a lot of X before Y so I can do Z.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that I didn’t need the extra adventures from booze. It’s been a pretty regular diet for a while. I drink 3 adv. cocktails, 2 pumpkin beers every day. on day 3, I use the spare pumpkin to make juice to help hardcap the tomb rats. Everyday, I eat 2 key lime pies. i also eat a fortune cookie, and then fill in with hot dogs or fondue. Booze is extra adventures, food is keys (which save turns) or +stats (which save turns). Now, if i can generate 500ish turns without booze, I might as well do a teet run, right?

WRONG

Oh my god, so wrong. because the thing that I didn’t mention, is that to do my crazy bat shit insane plan is that I need to start powerleveling 50 turns after I start day 2. why is this? it’s because i’m eating a drunki-bear. Do you have any idea what drunki-bears are made of? drunki-ness. As in, teets cant eat booze. My crazy plan was doomed from the start.

I tried gathering info first. No one really knew, and I can’t blame them. Not a lot of people do diet paths any more. The few that do, do it in such a weird, expensive way that I don’t really want to play. million dollar consumable budgets, etc.  I sort of figured it was a coin flip. On one hand, you are EATING the food, so maybe the drunk portion wouldn’t affect anything. On the other, you’re not allowed to drink the ! potion that gives +drunk, nor are you allowed to receive the normal non-combats in barrrney’s barrr.

So, i start my run, I do the bedroom sort of earlyish – one of the asshole diamonds was kind enough to explain to me that OMG, YOU’RE WASTING RESOURCES DOING IT THAT EARLY AND YOU TOTALLY DON’T NEED TO WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING OMG OMG. but perhaps in a less retarded way. Fact of the matter is, I do not waste resources. getting to level 8 on day 1 is important for mining. Furthermore, while I could go wave my dick at the bats, my fairy isn’t fat enough to drop the bean. I’m not fucking summoning 2 yellow rays on day 1, and it only takes 2, maybe 3 turns with a base 15 lb fairy. a yellow ray here saves 1ish turns, and is clearly not a top priority. It’s okay to postpone the bat hole.

SO, I’m doing my ballroom. I’m getting my pastes.  I’m shoring. No, wait. I fucked up shoring. I got the wrong tower item. whatever. So, i’m doing my other stuff… and I run out of turns. i need to eat my KLPs, and I need to eat my hot dog, and then i need to eat my drunki-bear. moment of truth….

It doesn’t fucking work. FUCK.so I drop path, and try to regain composure.  I’m off balance my entire run. it’s uncomfortable. I didn’t have time to do the pirates when i normally do, the hidden temple unlock was shelved until way late, i didn’t unlock the island in time, so i lost turns of the drunki-bear buff. It wasn’t perfect, and it shouldn’t be hard to just get everything to line up. it’s frustrating. it’s really fucking frustrating because it should be easy to do. I NEED to powerlevel. it doesn’t matter WHEN i powerlevel. well, it does slightly – the monsters scale with my equalized mainstat, so postponing powerleveling gives perhaps one or two more stats per fight.

I did put a little weight on my sombrero this time. it was pretty easy to do in 2 of the crypt zones for 10-15 combats, so the little bastard was 4 or 5 lbs when I finally got to the moon. Not much, but better than nothing. running sombrero in the CoT early is trouble (as it deals unwanted damage), and using it as a stat familiar is worse than a bugbear, and less helpful than a xeno – which i need a transponder from.

I’m currently on day 2. I should finish tomorrow. I want to try this stupid run once more. I want to get it RIGHT.

Day 2 was a disaster. Powerleveling was … weird. I needed a cherry, but pulled a lime, I needed a cocktail onion, but didn’t have any. I nearly forgot about getting my transponder to drop too. I also spent 2 extra turns looking for black candles with the giants; I’m not sure how bad this was as I was getting 50 mainstat per fight. One of the REALLY NICE THINGS about moon leveling is the off-stats. I typically have about 40 in my off-stats when I powerlevel in spookyraven, since I’m completely neglecting everything but mainstat. 28 turns on the moon yielded enough off-stat to equip the battlefield equipment AT LEVEL 10. I say 28 because I messed up my buffs for a turn, and lost combat in another. This is easily 250 mainstat missing.

Things to fix for next time:

1.  Stock cocktail onions, cherries, pressure pots, bears, etc before ascending
2.  get 1^st SR, if only to set mafia’s timer
3.  use the sombrero in the crown more often
4. get a transponder early
5. put off leveling until as late as possible (started 4 turns early).

I feel missing the cocktail onion hurt the most. I’d like to try it again and get everything just right.

EDIT:I finished the run. I felt like I had some bad luck finding gnasiar in the desert, but that was probably mostly negated by a lucky 8 turn temple… anyway, the run finished. I estimated that it would cut my 63 powerleveling turns in half (if i had the onion anyway). So rather than clock in at 525 (last run) I managed a 494. Exactly 31 fewer turns, even though I skipped SR, and other cock ups. It’s simultaneously frustrating as I try to get everything to line up, and exciting when things work.

My multi, Ketchup Monger, reached level 97. Which is strange, because I still feel that at level 97 the character is just as fragile as it was at level 40.  My mainstat is just under 9k, my offstats are about 6k. I’m also the 60th strongest, and 120ish th most powerful in the kingdom. I feel that I might have been able to do better if I used more equalizer potions. I was gaining about a level a day for the past month. I’m not sure if I want to continue powerleveling to 100 or do slimetube or just go back to farming isotopes.  Moon stats are very lackluster compared to crimbo stats – I estimate that it’ll take about 10 days to gain a level with an “epic” diet, and longer on the crap that I eat.  I should note that there is nothing that I’m able to do now that I couldn’t do at level 40.

I have also been spending time with a multi looking at the rates for pickpocket only items. I’ve been doing this for a month now, and have amassed a pile of junk which I sold for a small pile of meat. I mention this because I am surprised at what people pay for things that I don’t need or use. The rate data is going along just fine, except I am losing enthusiasm for the project. If it wasn’t 90% automated, I’m sure that I would have quit already.  I mostly stayed away from the seasonal content with this multi.

On my main, DeadNed, I have been farming the everloving crapitty crap out of crimbo. Between this and the haunted house stuff, I’m doing okay with this virtual currency. I (apparently) didn’t do quite as well as a few other players who boasted of 3500 MPA (at 400 adventures, this is a profit of 1.2 million meat per day). However, considering that I have my eye on a hockey stick, which is sitting at a cool 230 million meat in the mall,  it would take nearly 200 days (~6.6 months) of that level of farming to earn a stick. with a more normal MPA of 1k, it would take … well, at least 3.5 times as long.
I decided to do a little investing this year as well. I have a hunch that Finance guides and Kumquartz suckers are going to be going up in price. I’m fairly certain that other people think so too, but we’ll have to see how it plays out. I also made 700k flipping items this crimbo, which I feel to be quite good.

My next big project is to get a sub 500 turn run without breaking the bank. I have a crazy idea to replace spookyraven powerleveling with moon powerleveling. The log from my last run showed that I spent 63 turns with 34 non-combats, but the stupid log doesn’t show how many clovers I burnt though. 15? I don’t know. It does show that I needed 8k worth of  powerleveling the moon can be the most efficient place to level. I’d also like to fight fewer copied ascii art. With -25% combat in the bathroom, a clover is only saving a turn (but reduces swing), so fighting a ghoul swarm or modern zombie will save 2-3 turns, which is a better return. I mean, spend a turn to get 1.5 clovers, then spend another turn using the clover, and I may as well have just spent those two turns powerleveling.
The run structure is going to be radically different, rather than running out of thing to do an going “oh, shit, i better level up”, I’m post night capping with a yellow drunki bear on day 1, then powerleveling on the moon for X turns before the buff wears off. Which means I need to do a lot of shit on day 1, and on fewer turns too. I still need to hit level 8 on day 1 to do mining, and I also need a transponder to drop on day 1 as well, possibly 2. I need the island open, but I don’t think I need pirates unlocked. Tome summons are going to be equally funny, since I expect to be summoning as many cold filtered waters as I can get in.
If it goes as expected, I think I can cut about 35 turns off my run