Should I Dive?

[SinginSally]

I am a level 29 Disco Bandit with only 1 ascension under my belt.

This means, no uncapped spell obviously and lacking tons of skills.

However, I notice there are some AWESOME new mechanics that can help basement divers. Especially since Ill be starting hardcore runs soon.

First, eating Marshmellows for a few days can give an extended +500% stat boost!
At the same time, I am queueing up Wad effects and Ball Pit +100% effects. Crazy.

So in addition to the normal stuff, adding these new buffs would result in insane stat bonuses. However, is this enough to make a basement dive feasible?

The main issue I can see is that I am not sure how I would be able to kill anything. Can I just fling 2x Love Songs at every opponent? I guess I dont have a concept of exactly how powerful I will be when fully buffed vs the difficulty of the monsters. How tough is a 12,000 ML bad guy anyways? Can they 1-shot you?
With a base Moxie of around 800, it looks like there are enough buffs to crank it up above 10,000. The 500% buff alone gets me to 4800.

[Muhandes]

My first basement dive was on an unskilled DB. It was possible 2 years ago, it's damn easy these days. For me it was about 1m in consumables, I expect much less these days. I think I started around level 31 though.
Killing stuff is extremely easy. Throw a divine thingy at them and they die. Even an unskilled level 30 can kill anything the basement can throw at him this method, especially with funkslinging.
If I remember correctly the hardest thing for an unskilled DB is the HP and MP tests, MP being the hardest. I remember spending around 100k each time these cropped on the last 30 levels.

[SuperChuj]

MP tests will haunt your nightmares. HP test have an easy heal (scrolls of drastic healing) whereas MP is either really expensive to heal, or you save fullness for jumbo dr lucifers. also bufing up to that much MP could stil be tough

[JOssiE]

I'd go for it. Particularly cause making it to a high level like 29 is at least half the work. Then on the other hand the diving itself is way easier when you have some skills under your belt and whatnot. Funkslinging divines is also fun (instead of lovesongs, whichever takes your fancy). I agree with JD that the MP tests are by far worst. And I also hate the elemental tests. So much phials this way and that.

[TheSarcasticOne]

I just did a basement dive as an Accordion Thief. I started in at, about, level 29 and finished at 31. Love songs were my bestest friends EVAH when it came to the monsters, and the monsters didn't become even slightly annoying/difficult until floor 450-something.

Gear-wise, I was using full hodg, plus bludgeon, plus bunker/hamster for the most of it all, but that's likely to not be available to you (you've yet to do BM, so the brim gear definitely so; the hodg+hamster set-up is possible, but I don't believe you have them available). Elemental tests were with sub-par (a.k.a. crappy) elemental resist gear...buffing HP was still necessary in the last ~30-60 floors in order to pass.

Stat (and HP) tests were simply 'buff up until I pass'. It worked fine for me.

MP Tests...stopped me on one of my days. I couldn't get my MP high enough, and I didn't have enough dough to buy a pressurized potion (as that was my only means of reaching the necessary MP). While you may not have the same issue, exactly, you will hate them with a passion.

...so that's all I can give ya, help-wise. If it matters, I had Tao of the Terrapin, Hero of the Half-Shell, and Torso available. Those will probably help.

[jodez4]

love songs are great for elemental damage. Buffing for stat, HP and MP tests will be a big problem for you.

But I say do it!! I'm also highly masochistic

[Kahdrick]

Man, I just finished my first dive a few days ago, and while it was - for the most part - pretty easy, the things that made it easy were: Full Brimstone set, Wisdom of the Elder Tortoises, Spectral Snapper (owns the beer golem), and the Untamed Turtle (holy cow, this little fella blocked about 90% of all attacks @40 lbs.)

Use this guide:
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Basement_Diving_Guide

Items you'll need many of:
- Jumbo Dr. Lucifer (for me, it was cheaper to buy golden arches and use them than to buy the Dr.'s themselves).
- Medicinal Herbs to get you back to full health after a Dr. or HP test.
- Phial of <Element> (probably 20 of each, if not more).
- Buy resist gear from the mall. Check out each element page in the wiki and it will show the best resist gear you can get and/or afford in a very nice chart. You will need a set for each element.
- Buy stat gear from the mall. Pretty much anything with +% is going to be best. Lucky bottlecap, frayed rope, corncob pipe, Mr. Joe's Bangles are all very cheap. You will need a set for each stat.
- Buy a lot (a LOT! Did I mention a lot? Lots of lots) of stat equalization potions. These make all of your stats match your main stat. For moxie, it's oil of slipperiness. Every time you get a stat boost decision adventure, pick your main stat - these potions will pass that benefit to your offstats.
- Buy a lot of 200% (Hawking's, Ferrigno's, and Connery's) and 100% (Philter, Serum, Ointment) stat gain potions, as well as temporary gr8tness (100% all stats) and tomato juice (50% all stats).
- Divine items (probably the moxie one since you're a moxie class).
- Wrestler Stickers (stack 3 on a sword for 30% stat gain in one hand and you can still get more gains from a shield. These are pretty cheap, and since they only increment uses from combats, they will last you a very long time. I think I used a total of maybe 15 for the whole 500 levels of the basement.
- Wads. I didn't actually use these much, but they give good stat bonuses at the cost of spleen. Combine with the ball pit for hard challenges.

Other stuff:
- A parrot (from the black market) helps out quite a bit with resist tests - get its fam equipment for a whopping +15 fam weight.
- Be sure to get fully buffed from a buffbot for damage resist, +10% stats, etc etc etc.
- If you ate enough roast marshmallows (and have enough to make up the turns you use) to keep that 500% stat buff for the whole thing (well, levels 1-100 probaby won't even need a buff), you might not need any other potions at all beyond oil of slipperiness.
- Good luck! You're a braver man than I.

[JOssiE]

I'd suggest scrolls of drastic healing instead of those medicinal herbs. Because: 1) You are a disco bandit, you don't have herbs and 2) scrolls of healing don't take spleen.

[snowette]

If you're willing to spend meat, diving is not a problem. Stop looking at the meat you're spending to maintain the buffs, and you'll get through the basement in no time.

[Tyramon]

If you're willing to spend meat, diving is not a problem. Stop looking at the meat you're spending to maintain the buffs, and you'll get through the basement in no time.

Then cry at the 1m loss after you've finished the dive

[SinginSally]

Thanks for the encouragement. I got it done and it really wasn't all that bad. Here is my mini-report:


My full set of slime gear was really awesome for boosting my resistances. With close to 90% vs all, I didnt have to use ANY phials for the elemental tests. Its a lot cheaper and easier to just HotTub or even Scroll of Drastic healing. The parrot was a good call too. I went ahead and got one as I figure it will be useful during hardcore (for quest resistances).

I dredged together a set of 1000 Damage absorption gear cheaply without needing any potions thanks to freely available buffbots. So the physical challenges werent a problem either.

I was able to get thru the first 200 levels by using a combo of various buffs like Ball Pit and relatively cheap potions like Serums, the oil and tomato juice, eXtreme, etc.

After that, I ate roasted marshmellows for the next 5 days (45 turns of buffage per day), stored up ballpit, etc. This caused a terrible opportunity cost of lost turns, but my In-laws were visiting, so I only had a few minutes each of those days anyways. Therefore I didn't really lose anything from that point of view. (well, I COULD have made an auto-eat/drink/farm script in advance...but this excuse makes it easier to swallow. It gave me a chance to drink lots of White Canadians without 'costing' so much too. Was lotsa fun winning all 'buffed stat' PvP challenges too and beating down attackers at higher pvp ranks too!

With the 500% marshmellow buff and 200% ballpit, the next 100 levels was easy. Even after ballpit, I had another 100 turns of full marshmellow power. I pretty much just beat down the monsters in normal combat thanks to the Slime accessory that adds heavy prismatic damage (and piddles candy too).

To keep my marshmellow power at full, I spread out the last 100 levels over 2 more days. This required Oil again to stabilize to moxie, as well as the Serum of sarcasm and some Connery at the very end. My love songs that I had summoned over the last 40 days or so were super helpful and really cheap (opportunity cost wise). Usually 1 was enough to kill, though Id funksling 2. That took me to the end.

The worst cost should have been the MP tests as predicted here. I only encountered about 8 of them in total, so it wasnt bad. 4 of them I used Jumbo Lucifers to cheaply recover mana. The others were assisted by my 90 lb Stocking Mimic who would happily restore MP and gimme meat during the long fights with the tougher monsters. The free disco rests every day was nice too. So I didnt blow too much on MP restore, except I rarely had enough Max MP, so Id have to top myself off with restores.

The 'maximize' kolmafia command sure was handy for Damage absorption and MP (which I always seemed to not quite have enough due to no-skill), as it would analyze my gear and max out that particular thing. Unfortunately you can only maximize one thing at a time, so I had to manually figure out prismatic resist. Fortunately it was high enough that I didn't have to specifically figure out how to resist EACH of two elements at the same time for every elemental challenge.

Crap! I just realized that I could have used a Moxie Magnet to more easily boost my maximum MP! Oh well, kolmafia always was able to cough up enough to pass the challenges. Note to self: buy one so Mafia will know to use it when i need to max out MP.

With my leftover awesomeness from Marshmellow, I went and killed a Trophyfish and beat down sea critters.

Then I took a long look at my artifically high PvP rating, took a look at my now-deflated stats, then ascended!
"So long (enemy pvpers), and thanks for all the lewts!" -SinginSally

Thanks again for the encouragement and advice. Hope you enjoyed this mini-report.