The Kingdom of Loathing

Class Act II: A Path for Pigs makes non-optimal runs faster because Jick & Co. are beta testing a new stat distribution scheme in it. Playing 'normally' and seeing some of the new content got me near level 8 on day one of a new run. It's super awesome.

 This is game mechanics talk BEWARE

Okay, so Class Act II is pretty standard fare for a boring Winter challenge path, and what a bunch of you were expecting us to do. We're hoping it'll give us a good sense of how each class feels on its own now that everybody's got a whole new suite of awesome skills.

The other thing we're doing with CA2 is testing out a new scheme for stat distribution. The basics are this:

1) Stat gains from defeating monsters are doubled.
2) Stat gains from powerleveling noncombats have been lowered a bunch.
3) +Monster Level has a more significant (but totally deterministic) effect on monster difficulty. More details below.
4) Pixel orbs and corrupted stardust have been limited to one use per day.
5) Cave bars are limited to one fight per day.

The goal is to use this path as a testing ground to see how this all feels, with an eye towards applying these changes to the base game.

+Monster Level details:

At +25 ML, monsters will start to get some damage resistance, up to 50% resist all at 50 ML.
At +50 ML, elemental monsters will start to do some autohitting damage of their element at the beginning of each fight.
Above +75ML, monsters become resistant to stuns.
Above +100ML, monsters become resistant to staggers.

Since it's also basically my first time trying a class since the revamp (I tried a Seal Clubber run as they were the first to be revamped and got caught up in Pokemon), I chose Pastamancer (my favorite class).