Cannonfire40's Sea Guide Mk 1.4.0.3

A Guide to The Sea.
	By Cannonfire40

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||Things to know.||
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Sea Adventuring, or, as it will be referred to after this sentence, "Seaventuring", is in quite a few ways different than normal adventuring. Depending on how deep you dive, there are penalties to both meat drops and item drops, ranging from a minimum of 25% to a maximum of 200%. These penalties can be overcome with effort, though, and the ability to overcome them completely is in no way necessary. Underwater adventures also take two turns instead of one, though this can be reduced with the effect "Fishy."

Also, NOTE: IF YOU PLAN ON FIGHTING THE ULTRA SECRET FINAL BOSS, OR, HONESTLY, DOING THE SEA AT ALL, I VERY MUCH RECOMMEND UNTINKERING YOUR MAKESHIFT SCUBA GEAR AND BUYING THE OLD SCUBA TANK FOR 10000 MEAT BEFORE PULLING STUFF FROM HAGNKS. YOU WILL THANK ME LATER.

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||The Briny(iers)(iest) Deeps(ers)(ests) (Optional).||
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On your first time through the sea, I highly recommend checking out these zones. They've got the smallest penalties, and the weakest monsters of any zones underwater, and serve as an excellent introduction to Seaventuring as a whole.

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||An Octopus's Garden||
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When you first enter the Sea, this will be the only zone available. It has four monsters, but only one counts for the quest of the sea: The neptune flytrap. Kill neptune flytraps until you receive a wriggling flytrap pellet, and open it for Little Brother, who will unlock the Sea Monkee Castle on the seafloor and let you begin the quest proper. NOTE: All zones from this point forward have a penalty of -100% or higher. You *must* have either some +item, or some "makes you a better diver" to get any items whatsoever.

Other things to do in this zone: With an octopus's spade equipped, you will get noncombats that give you slimy chests. These slimy chests will give you 3-5 sand dollars -- if you can boost the rate of noncombats some, slimy chests can be a nice source of sand dollars for a first-time sea venturer. Additionally, if you equip a straw hat and have a soggy seed packed and glob of green slime in your inventory, you will get noncombats that give you 2 sea vegetables at the cost of the seeds and green slime. Sea vegetables can be useful later, so the garden is a good source if you want them.

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|| The Wreck of the Edgar Fitzsimmons||
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Visit Little Brother in his castle -- this will unlock a new zone: "The Wreck of the Edgar Fitzsimmons."

Your mission is to rescue Big Brother. To do this, boost the rate of noncombats and, when you get one, open the bulkhead to release Big Brother.

Other things to do in this zone: Open the bulkhead again to get different, stronger monsters for 20 turns. I VERY, VERY much recommend doing this and then throwing a pulled yellow taffy at an unholy diver (and doing it once more when Everything Looks Yellow goes away) -- you'll need an aerated diving helmet later, and throwing two yellow taffies at unholy divers will get you everything you need for one.

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||The Old Man, or "Oh right. *THAT* guy."||
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Now that you've freed Big Brother, he has opened up a shop!

There's some cool stuff in here, a lot of which I recommend getting. By now, you've almost certainly noticed dolphins stealing stuff from you. This happens sometimes when you would normally get an item, but the sea penalty causes it not to drop. With Big Brother, you can use dolphin whistles to fight a dolphin who's guaranteed to drop the last item a dolphin stole from you. Cool!

Also, Big Brother will sell you a Damp Old Boot for 50 sand dollars. BUY THIS. Take it up to The Old Man for one of four rewards: a Das Boot (an equipment that lets your familiars breathe underwater with a lower weight penalty than the bathysphere (take this your first time)), a Fishy Pipe (which gives 10 turns of fishy -- cutting the adventure cost of sea venturing from 2 to 1 for its duration (Take this your second time), a crate of fish meat (never take this it's worthless), or a damp old wallet (which gives you roughly 65 sand dollars -- take this every time once you have both the pipe and the boot -- it's an instant profit!).

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||Sushi, or "Oh, great, more exposition without quest explanation"||
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For a price of 50 sand dollars, you can buy a sushi-rolling mat. You may or may not want this. It will let you roll sushi using ingredients like white rice, seaweed, fish meat, and sauces -- sushi gives you turns of Fishy. I recommend looking at http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Sushi for explicit details, but I wanted to mention it regardless.

Where was I? Oh, right.

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||The Skate Park (Optional, kind of.)||
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Big Brother will sell you a map to the skate park for 25 sand dollars. Get this.

You can now seaventure in the rumble near the fountain! Hoorah!

There are three ways to end the rumble near the fountain, and you'll have to pick one.

You can equip a brand new key and beat up some ice skates, to establish roller skate superiority, or equip a skate blade and do the opposite. You can, alternatively, equip a skate board and "peacefully" resolve the conflict (I recommend this.)

Before you do any of these things, though, you'll want to use drops in the zone to make an ice skate decoy and use it on a grouper groupie, and make a roller skate decoy and use it on an urchin urchin. This will get you two new familiars! One will act as a full weight baby gravy fairy underwater and on land, and the other will act as a full weight leprechaun underwater and on land. If you don't have many water-breathing familiars, this is huge, because it means you can end your reliance on Das Boot. Well worth the effort it takes.

After ending the conflict, you will have one of these rewards:

Ice-Skate victory: 30 turns of fishy per day.

Roller Skate victory: -30% pressure penalty for 30 turns per day.

Peaceful resolution: 30 turns of 1 bonus sand dollar per underwater combat per day, 30 turns of +25% item drops underwater per day, and +30% turns of +10 familiar weight underwater per day.

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||Grandpa Sea Monkee||
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Go talk to Little Brother again -- it's time to resume that quest we were doing. You'll unlock one of three zones. Boost noncombats, and adventure in these zones to rescue Grandpa Sea Monkee! (This will take three noncombats, and you'll also get one of six skills based on class). NOTE: The zone where you rescue Grandpa has a penalty of -200%, the highest in the Sea.

The skill you receive from Grandpa Sea Monkee is going to be extremely useful:

Seal Clubbers: Harpoon!, a 30 MP skill that deals some good damage. It'll be useful later, trust me!

Turtle Tamers: Summon Leviatuga, another skill that deals damage. Again, it'll be useful later!

Pastamancers: Tempuramancy. This skill will, 3 times per day, let you summon bubbling tempura batter by adventuring in the marinara trench. This batter can be used to make a number of useful foods; this is a great skill.

Saucerors: Deep Saucery. This skill will let you convert pressureglobes into globes of deep sauce by adventuring in the marinara trench, and convert those globes of deep sauce into powerful sauce potions.

Disco Bandits: Salacious Cocktail Crafting. Uh, actually, I guess I take back what I said about all the skills being useful. Sorry about that.

Accordion Thieves: Donho's Bubbly Balad, a skill that removes 20% of the pressure penalty. This is effectively 20% meat and items. Enough said.

Also, you can now ask Grandpa about stuff. There are like 30 words or something that you can ask him about, though, and screw typing all of that out and summarizing it, so http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Grandpa .

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||Madness Reef (Optional, kind of.)||
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Buy a map from Big Brother to get here.

Good zone for farming. That's not super relevant here, though, as what we care about is the economist of scales. A noncombat in this zone will let you trade 10 dull fish scales into 1 rough fish scales, and 10 rough fish scales into 1 pristine fish scale. This'll be super important once Grandma comes into play.

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||Grandma Sea Monkee||
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Ask Grandpa about Grandma. This'll unlock a new zone, the Mer-kin Outpost!

Boost noncombats, and adventure until you get the note and two types of yarn. Ask grandpa about the note. Adventure until Grandma is rescued!

Grandma will sell you a variety of things. Mer-kin gear (necessary later), sushi doilies (one used per sushi eaten, gives an extra 3 adventures from sushi), weapon cozies, scale-mail underwear, and sea back items. Also a saltwaterbed.

The weapon cozies might seem pricy, but they can be super worth it!

The scimitar cozy will give you a cozy scimitar for ~40 combats -- casting harpoon or summon leviatuga in combat with the weapon equipped will give you 1-2 rough scales and 2-5 dull scales, which is incredibly good. You can make about 12 pristine scales profit by casting both skills every combat for the duration of the scimitar (about 6 scales profit without fishy).

The Staff of the Cozy fish lets you jiggle it to pickpocket from Mer-kin. Cool. Also, it'll get you Mer-kin lunchboxen, an ingredient in the best sushi dish.

Both Donho's bubbly ballad and the effects from salacious cocktail crafting will give you one extra sand dollar per combat with a bazooka cozy equipped. Sooper powerful.

Also the weapons reduce 30% of the diving penalty, for an equivalent of 30% items and meat from monsters.

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||Mom's Cave (totally optional)||
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Go back to little brother, who will tell you he's concerned about Big Brother. Big Brother will offer to sell you a black glass for 13 sand dollars. "Buy" it (you'll get refunded) for access to the caliginous abyss. Equip the black glass and start adventuring there until you rescue Mom! (This may go faster if you use a comb jelly, equip a shark jumper, and/or equip scale-mail underwear. This may also be the placebo effect.)

Mom will give you one of seven 50 turn buffs once per day -- five of which are useless, giving you high resistance to an element, one is okay, giving you 15% to crits and spell crits, and one is blatantly over-powered and gives you 200 stats/combat. No comment.

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|| Back to the Quest ||
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Return to the Mer-kin outpost, and kill mer-kin with high item% to get a mer-kin lock key. Then, boost noncombats and adventure until you get "Into the Outpost". Choose the tent whose description best matches the mer-kin who dropped the key, and pick choices/get the adventure again until you get a mer-kin stashbox. Use the stashbox for roughly 35 sand dollars, and use the trailmap in the stashbox. Then, ask Grandpa about "currents".

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||The Coral Corral, or "Seriously. Why doesn't this persist across ascension? Stupid. Seahorses."||
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Equip a sea cowboy hat and sea chaps, and adventure in here until you get sea lassos, and use the sea lassos in combat. These pieces of equipment each give an extra "experience" level when lassoing, drastically reducing the number of lassos needed from roughly 20+ to 7. You'll be done when you start seeing "You expertly" in the start of the combat message instead of "You clumsily/carefully/deftly". Also, get 3 sea cowbells.

Next, wait to encounter a wild seahorse (you may have seen one earlier). Use three sea cowbells on it, and then a sea lasso to tame it. Meet your new seahorse, <Seahorse Name>.

You can now click on the intense currents to cross them.

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||The Mer-kin Deepcity||
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You and your trusty Seahorse <Seahorse Name> have crossed the intense currents and have landed yourselves in the Mer-Kin Deepcity. Cool.

You should know that all zones in the city have a penalty of -150%.

There are two paths through the city: The eastern path, and the western path.

The western path has a lot going for itself: It's simpler and faster than the eastern path, and has three Boss monsters that the eastern path doesn't (factoids, yay!).

The eastern path is kind of confusing, and is slower and more complicated than the western path. But, it has different and powerful rewards, as does the Western path.

Start by making a crappy mer-kin disguise at Grandma's place, and pick a path:

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||The Western Path ||
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This will be divided into multiple sections.

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|| Attaining Colosseum Gear (Optional after doing this side at least once)||
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Equip your crappy mer-kin disguise. Adventure in the gymnasium and eventually you'll get non-combats (NOTE: Some reports indicate these are made more likely by +combat modifiers. I can't confirm it, but keep this in mind.) that will randomly give you a thighguard, a headguard, or one of three +7 PvP fight 2-handed weapons. Once you've got the headguard and thighguard, go back to Grandma and convert your crappy disguise into a gladiator disguise.

The path splits here. If you want to do the colosseum the meat-cheap and likely intended way, read on. Otherwise, skip to the next section and skip to paragraph #3.

With each of the three +7 PvP fight 2-handed weapons, get 15 critical hits. This will unlock 3 new in-combat skills per weapon. I recommend blue taffy and the mer-kin specter available by having a mer-kin hallpass in the mer-kin elementary school.

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||The Colosseum||
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There are two ways to complete the colosseum. Regardless of the way you choose, you will fight 15 Mer-kin who will gradually become stronger and gain special kills.

To do this the intended way, defeat 12 mer-kin gladiators in the colosseum, using the dragnet (and its skills when appropriate (signaled by bold words)) on balldodgers, the dodgeball (and its skills when appropriate (signaled by bold words)) on bladeswitchers, and the switchblade (and its skills when appropriate (signaled by bold words)) on netdraggers. Then, beat the three Beatle-named bosses to follow. Congratulations, you've now completed the western path.

With sufficiently high stats, you can choose to brute-force the fights. This is probably harder than the first option, but may be faster and take less effort. Combat items highly recommended. Kill the 15 mer-kin, and you've completed the Western path.

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||The Eastern Path||
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If you've already completed this path once, you still need to either do the library or use 10 mer-kin wordquizzes with cheatsheets.

Equip your crappy mer-kin disguise and boost noncombat frequency. Adventure in the Elementary school -- you'll get noncombats with mer-kin bullies. Two of the three choices will harm you, but one will open a new noncombat (there are three of these.) You're looking for the teacher's lounge one. Pick the first choice in "A Mer-kin Graffiti," the second in "Bored of Education," and the Third in "Wooly Scaly Bully" to unlock the new noncombats. Pick the second choice in the teacher's lounge non-combat twice for a mer-kin face cowl and a mer-kin waist rope. Make yourself a mer-kin scholar disguise, and equip it.

Unfortunately, you're not quite ready to adventure in the library (though you can certainly do so anyway). You can't speak mer-kin! Pick the second choice in the teacher's lounge non-combat more times (until you have 10 mer-kin word quizzes). Having a mer-kin bunwig in your inventory will get you three quizzes instead of just one. Use these word-quizzes while in possession of 10 mer-kin cheat sheets (dropped from the monsters you'll have fought) to maximize your vocabulary comprehension to a full 100%.

Now it's time to venture in to the library. Adventure until you get a Mer-Kin Dreadscroll from a non-combat adventure. This is the key to completing the Eastern Path. Feel free to use it -- it won't be consumed. It's essentially mad libs but for each incorrect word of the prophecy you get 3 turns of a non-removable -50% mysticality effect that prevents you from using the dreadscroll again. Luckily, it's not completely trial-and-error:

There's a choice adventure in the library with three choices (provided you've maximized your vocabulary. Not doing so means there are 13 choices, 10 of which are utterly useless except for +300 myst substats.) Pick all three choices, noting the bolded words each time. those bold words correspond to correct choices in the mer-kin dread scroll.

Next, use a mer-kin killscroll and a mer-kin heal scroll in combat in the library. The bold words that ensue are, you guessed it, more clues.

Eat some sushi with the mer-kin worktea in your inventory. That'll get you your next clue!

Kill mer-kin researchers until you get a mer-kin dark book: this is a non-tradable thing that'll grant you a new skill! Use a phial of spooky and cast the skill until you get yet another clue!

Next, kill mer-kin drifters until you get a knucklebone. Use it for one more clue.

Now that you've got all of your clues, complete the dreadscroll. Congratulations, you're now the mer-kin high priest and have completed the Eastern Path!

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||The Mer-Kin Temple||
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Welcome to the last segment of the sea!

Now that you're here, you're either a Mer-kin gladiator champion or a Mer-kin high priest. *NOTE: If you are going to fight the ultra secret final boss, you do not need to be either of these.*

If you're a gladiator champion, go to "Shub-Jigguwatt."

If you're a high priest, go to "Yog-Urt."

If you're fighting the ultra secret final boss, go to "Dad Sea Monkee."

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||Shub-Jigguwatt||
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So, you're a gladiator champion. Your final boss, as the title of this section gives away, is Shub-Jigguwatt, Elder God of Violence.

Shub has 4000 attack and defense, and 3000 hitpoints. Luckily, he's still easy to defeat.

Strategy: Get yourself down to 0 current MP, so that Shub won't deal massive damage at the start of combat. Funksling crayon shavings for 5-6 rounds, then throw a sea lasso, and attack until he's dead! Easy as that!

If I could, I would totally bold and underline crayon shavings. Crayon shavings. Crayon shavings. Crayon shavings.

Reward: One of 6 pieces (based on class) of the Violent Vestments and an Instant Karma.

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|| Yog-Urt ||
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So, you're a Mer-kin High Priest. Your final boss, as the title of this section gives away, is Yog-Urt, elder goddess of Hatred.

Yog-Urt deals 90% of your maximum HP every round of combat and deals 40,000 damage to you if you deal any damage (if you have the stat limiting debuff she gives you in the noncombats before the fight). In addition, you can only use any given combat item once in the fight, and she only takes damage from elemental sources.

Strategy; Debuff your HP (a mer-kin gut girdle is an excellent choice, but it may be unnecessary), and equip as many mer-kin prayerbeads as you possibly can. Also, use a haggis soap so that if you can't do elemental damage from any other source you'll do sleaze from your attacks. While in the combat, stasis by funkslinging different healing items and delevelers until the stat debuff fades. I recommend the following:
Round 1: Cast + Doc Galaktik's homeopathic elixir.
Round 2: Cartoon heart + Sea lasso
Round 3: Red potion + deleveler.
Round 4: Green pixel potion + deleveler.
Round 5: Red pixel potion + deleveler.
Round 6: Filthy Poultice + deleveler.
Round 7: Gauze Garter + deleveler.
Round 8: Soggy used band-aid + deleveler.
Round 9+ (or earlier with prayerbeads) Attack however you want.

NOTE: Make sure that none of the delevelers you use do damage.

Reward: One of 6 pieces (based on class) of the Hateful Habiliments and an Instant Karma.

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||Dad Sea Monkee||
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So, you are neither a Mer-Kin gladiator champion nor a Mer-kin high priest. You do, on the other hand, have at least 6 pieces of the Clothing of Loathing (made by smithing together the Hateful Habiliments and the Violent Vestments).

You equip those pieces of the Clothing of Loathing, a sea salt scrubs (or Hodgman's overcoat, if you have one), and a hopping sock (or a Pocket Square of Loathing, if you have one), make sure you can breathe (old scuba tank or fish juice box), and click on the Mer-kin temple.

NOTE: I recommend, at a minimum, at least 200 base in every stat before attempting this fight. You need at least 1200 MP, so keep that in mind. If you're using the overcoat, you should REALLY have wisdom of the elder tortoises permed. I cannot stress that enough. You really want more than that, but 200 base is going to be the minimum I'll recommend.

NOTE-2: Don't even bother trying this without torso awaregness. It's certainly doable, but so much harder.

All of your effects are stripped, and you enter combat with the final boss of the sea: Dad Sea Monkee.

His Intro text has a number of changing words -- these are the key to victory.

NOTE: IN ORDER TO WIN, YOU MUST HAVE ALL 6 120 MP HOBOPOLIS SKILLS (YES, INCLUDING TOYNADO. THE 30 MP SKILLS WILL NOT WORK.)

Strategy: Download the spreadsheet from http://db.tt/L9v3Q1iI (or http://db.tt/eF7MPLbl if you have excel 2003 or earlier) and use the dropdown cells to put in the changing text, and look at the list of weaknesses the spreadsheet gives you. Cast the respective 120 MP hobopolis skills according to the elemental order the spreadsheet gives you.

Video Example of Dad Sea Monkee Kill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BI5UghTF7w

Reward: The Pocket Square of Loathing, an instant karma, and a Star Spawn (familiar).