Honestly, a bad moon loop is really no worse than doing 6 (or how many ever loops you crazy collectors want to do) "first" hard core runs. Except for pastamancers. BM pastamancers suck ... something truly awful and unnameable (if that wasn't a word, it is now).
I'd recommend doing your bad moon loop in the following order...P, S, TT, SC, AT, DB. Hardest to easiest, that way, even if you're not really making any progress in "speeding up" a run, it'll sure *feel* that way.
Ok, before I get into any more advice, let me state clearly and upfront,
I am not interested in "speed", if you are, great! Now go write your own bad moon guide
The purpose of this "guide" is to make bad moon slightly less painful for you, simply by imparting what I've read, experienced, etc, over the course of X bad moon runs (I'm on number 14, 7 completed on SevenLances, and doing the seventh now on another super secret borg).
Now on to the good stuff!
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Semi-Rare_AdventuresSemi rares aren't essential, but they sure are helpful! I usually pick up a lunchbox for my first one (yes, even in hco). The guide on tracking your semi rares is in this same subforum. For my second one, I usually grab the KGE outfit. After that, pick and choose at your whim. There are some that are very helpful for the level 12 quest.
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Bad_moon#Special_AdventuresThere are "special" adventures that occur in bad moon *only*. What I like to do is this...after ascending, I hit the pretentious artist, grab my free goofballs, then start in on the stat-relevant area. Muscle = outskirts of the knob, mys = pantry, mox = sleazy back alley. When you get your "special" bad moon adventure in that area, open your guild! I sell off the crap they give me, talk to everyone at the guild, and the untinkerer, then I go buy Pride!
Next, I'll go to the pantry til I have the manor opened. Once the manor is opened, I'll go hit the barrels for some booze. There's a lovely little chart here
http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com:8080/vb/showthread.php?t=150491 that lays out the "random" items. Gee, turns out they're not so random! Once I've got a bit of drunk on, I'll go hit the forest for my mosquito. I'll stay there til I sell my kidney *cough* or until I'm down to about 20 advs. At that point, I'll head back to the manor and hit the kitchen hoping for some food drops. You *should* be able to purchase Envy by the time you get serious about food-hunting. Day one is really the only serious screw for food and booze.
If I've got my belly full, and my liver working overtime filtering toxins, I'll head to the haiku dungeon and spend 5-10 advs hunting fairy gravy. Any turns left after that, I'll spend on getting the encryption key, and/or Harold's bell.
I hit the barrels first thing upon logging in. Second thing, I concentrate on food. After those are out of the way, then I work on quests. Make sure to check the BHH every day, if there's a bounty in an area you know you'll be in soon, grab it. You'll want at least 1 odor extractor, 2 if you want to play as a broken mox class. The first extractor is for use on the fruit golem in menagerie level 1 to make yummy Sneaky Pete's key lime pies (or whichever flavor you prefer). The other is for zombie waltzers in the ballroom (yay for dance cards).
I usually grab cola gear (free mp = good), and don't even worry about Baron VonRatbutt til I have chronic indigestion. +10% items is nothing to sneeze at. Beating him up is easy enough, waiting til I can do it without wasting a semi rare is fine by me. Once I do beat him, I get my beer lenses and leprechaun.
Somewhere in all this meandering around, you'll want to work on your digital key. I also make monster bait. It's useful in a few places, and, as you can see by the title of this thread, optimalicity (can I patent that?) is not a concern here. I equip monster bait in a few areas, harem, pirates (cove), DoD, south of the border, sonofabeach and so forth.
Ok, not only do I get my monocle, I also get my lucky rabbit's foot. Hippy gear on the road is great, reodorant might drop as well (bonus for sonofabeach)! When I get the road open, I'll head back to whitey's grove for my "free" 5k meat. Now would be a great time for a shore trip, or a few turns in the limerick dungeon (dungeoneer's dungarees, and before you say anything, *thread title*).
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There's this spiffy mechanic at the shore...take one shore trip, wait 40 turns, take another one...you get a tower item, yay! Uncle Club told me about this one, so I don't have a link for you, but I *think* AFH did the spading. So, because I *can*, I make sure I have one of each 6th floor tower item before opening the island.
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Any time I'm not specifically hunting an item (rare) I'll pull out my lep and start putting weight on him for the nuns. The friars is the first place that springs to mind. Once I've got a ruby W and wussiness potion, I'll pull out the lep.
It's 3am here now, so, I'm taking a break =P I don't know when I'll be able to get back to this, hopefully sometime during this week. Please save comments/questions til this post is actually finished. If you absolutely can not resist, please kmail me instead of posting here
Thanks!
Quick edit for Z...
To set up your guy made of bees:
Adventure in the bathroom til you call him 4 times.
When you do the arena quest, make sure you have your antique hand mirror from the bedroom.
Make sure you have 5 handful of sand, make a brick. (pastamancers can use noodles in place of the brick).
Go back to the bathroom, when the choice adventure shows up again, hit him with the brick, slap on the flyers, toss the mirror.
Arena quest done, gmob in hand for yummy spleen-abusing goodness!
It'll be forever til I can actually add anything useful for those of you that prefer a comfortable ascension to a speedy one, but, here is an *awesome* link to salticid's Bad Moon guide that will give you tons of info, suggestions, advice, etcetera...
http://www.hogsofdestiny.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=444
