This is a placeholder while I work on the guide, fiddle with formatting, that sort of thing. Its a bit mathy and disorganized at the moment, so I don't really suggest that you read it.
This is a guide for individuals who want to learn how to make meat by farming.
Intended audience: New players who are level 13 and above, who have completed most of the quests in the game (you should have at least finished the council quests and killed the naughty sorceress).
Lets jump right in:
In order to farm efficiently we need to optimize 3 things, location, equipment, and diet. For the purposes of this guide I am going to assume that you are adventuring in the castle in the clouds in the sky. It may not be the most profitable place to farm, but it is an easy target. The monsters drop a nice amount of meat, and the item drops autosell for quite a lot too. Note: you should leave the wheel in the castle map position (procrastination giant guarding the back door).
How To Calculate the Value of Item and Meat Bonuses
For the kingdom of loathing, item and meat drop bonuses are additive. This means that 2 pieces of equipment that give +30% meat each will give you the same amount of meat as one piece of equipment with +60%.
Calculating Bonuses for a Single Monster
Formulas:
Value of +meat% = Base_Meat * Bonus
Value of +items% = ( Item1_Value * Item1_Drop_Rate + Item2_Value * Item2_Drop_Rate + ... + ItemN_Value * ItemN_Drop_Rate ) * Bonus
Calculating Bonuses for a Zone
First, figure out the value of a 1% bonus.
+1% Meat: ( Monster1_Base_Meat + ... + MonsterN_Base_Meat ) * .01 / Number_of_Monsters
+1% Items: ( Item1_Value * item1_DropRate +... + ItemN_Value * itemN_DropRate ) * .01 / Number_of_Monsters
These formulas only work in zones where each monster is equally likely to occur.
Now all you have to do is multiply.
+20% meat = 20 * 1%_Meat_Value
+30% items = 30 * 1%_Items_Value
Note about item drops
Because you can only get one of each item, the value of additional +item drop modifiers begins to drop off after a certain percentage.
An item will reach a 100% drop rate at a 100/(drop rate) - 100 % bonus. An item with a 25% drop rate will max out at 100/.25 - 100 = 300%. Item drop bonuses beyond this amount will not yield any additional meat for this item.
Overview of the castle in the clouds
All of the information for the castle can be found on the kol wiki here.
Combats:
All monsters drop roughly 150 meat. A 1% bonus = 1.5 meat.
Item drops:
A 1% item bonus = 1.19 meat
Note that I have assumed you will smash equipment, auto sell the nuggets and sell the wads in the mall for the minimum price. In practice the wads sell for more than that (currently 700 meat), and it may or may not be worth it to malus the nuggets into wads.
Average base value of a combat adventure is:
150 (meat drop) + 119 = 269 meat
Non-combats:
* Leaving the wheel alone does not use an adventure
Average value of a non-combat adventure is 423 meat.
Calculating Combat Rate:
To figure out how much meat we expect to make per adventure, we need to know what our combat rate is. The base rate for the castle is 75%, but since one of the non-combats is skippable the effective rate is a bit more than that.
Every time an adventure is rolled we have a 75% chance of getting a combat, 25% * 2/3 chance of getting a non-combat, and 25% * 1/3 chance of getting the wheel. Every time we encounter the wheel the adventure is re-rolled, and we have a 75% chance of getting a combat, 25% * 2/3 chance of getting a non-combat, and 25% * 1/3 chance of getting the wheel again.
Combat Rate = .75 + 1/3 * .25 * .75 + ( 1/3 * .25)^2 * .75 + ( 1/3 * .25)^3 * .75 + ... + ( 1/3 * .25)^n * .75 + ... (sum of an infinite geometric series)
Combat Rate = .75 / ( 1 - 1/3 * .25 ) = ~ 82%
Average meat gained per adventure (base rate):
average_combat_gain * combat_rate + average_non-combat_gain*non-combat_rate
= 269*.82 + 423*.18
= 297 meat
So if you spent 200 adventures in the castle with no item or meat drop bonuses you would expect to get 200*297 = 59,400 meat. It would take you about 16 days to get a million meat. Does that seem slow to you? Want to make meat faster? Then read on!
Familiars
A listing of familiars, along with their various formulas, can be found here
Leprechaun - adds a (220 × weight)^0.5 + (2 × weight) - 6 percent meat bonus. For a 30lb leprechaun, this is 135.2% which turns into 150*1.352 = 202.8 additional meat per combat adventure.
Baby Gravy Fairy - adds (55 × weight)^0.5 + weight - 3 percent item drop bonus. 30lb fairy = 67.62%. The first item drop maxes out at +143% items (original G), so we don't have to worry about diminishing returns quite yet. 119*.6762 = 80.5 meat.
Cocabo - Kind of an interesting familiar, it steals meat during combat (even from monsters with no meat drops). Averages 5.4*weight - 8.8 meat per steal, and has a 1/12 chance of stealing each combat round up to round 10. 30lb cocoabo = 10/12*(5.4*30 - 8.8) = 127.7 meat per combat adventure.
Clearly the leprechaun wins with 202.8 meat. Please note that there are better familiars to use, but they all cost a lot of meat, or are harder to get, so they are outside of the scope of this article.
Buffs
Probably the easiest way to add on meat and item drop bonuses, there are a few really good buffs out there that you can get for almost nothing from buff bots.
Polka of Plenty - An AT buff that adds 50% meat drops. Adds 75 meat/combat.
Fat Leon's Phat Loot Lyric - adds 20% item drops. Adds 23.8 meat/combat.
Carlweather's Cantata of Confrontation - +5% combat rate. Depends on your total item and meat drops.
Empathy of the Newt - +5 lbs of familiar weight. Depends on the familiar. Adds 25.5 meat/combat for leprechauns (but we already have this factored in)
Equipment
Equipment comparisons are available on the wiki here and here.
It is helpful to keep in mind that, for the castle, +1% meat = 1.5 meat, +1% items = 1.19 meat (up to +143%), and +1 lb = ~4.5 meat for leprechauns. This allows for an easy basis for comparison between equipment with different kinds of bonuses. I selected the pieces of equipment in the table below because of their availability and relative cheapness, it is by no means a complete list.
Example outfit:
Hat - ancient turtle shell helmet
weapon - bar whip
offhand - cup of infinite pencils
pants - poodle skirt
accessory1: pulled porquoise pendant
accessory2: lucky rabbit's foot
accessory3: lucky rabbit's foot
for an outfit total of +79% meat, +14% items, and +2 lbs = 144 meat/combat
Total expected meat per combat:
269 (base) + 144 (outfit) + 98.8 (buffs) + 202.8 (familiar) = 714.6 meat
Now that we have our total meat per combat worked out, we can calculate how valuable the + combat buff is.
current meat per adventure:
714.6*.82 + 423*.18 = 662.1
Adjusted combat rate:
frequency = .8 + .2*.8/3 + .2^2*.8/9 +...
= ~ 85.7
adjusted meat per adventure:
714.6*.857 + 423*.143 = 672.9
So this gets us just over 10 meat per adventure more.
More to come...
