Adventures
The Kingdom of Loathing is a turn-based game. Turns are called adventures. One adventure is long enough to go looking for something to do/kill in a location, to cook yourself some food, mix yourself a drink, or smith yourself something. Things that cost adventures are marked with the number of turns they take, like so: (1). Some actions will take more than one adventure, and are marked accordingly.
Other activities, such as purchasing a trophy, visiting a store, or talking to the Deep Fat Friars do not cost adventures, but they usually do not earn you items, stats or Meat without some sort of price - and if they do, it is typically limited to once a day. Gnollish signs can smith without using an adventure, but only if neither Armorcraftiness nor Super-Advanced Meatsmithing is required for the recipe.
Choice adventures that include a cancel option (such as this one) will usually not cost you an adventure to cancel.
Each day, at rollover, you will get 40 more adventures, and if it's Labór Day you will get 10 more. A complete list of items which will modify that amount can be found at Extra Rollover Adventures. Suggestions for adventure-giving equipment based on your level of gameplay can be found at Maximizing Your Rollover Adventures.
You can get more adventures during the day by eating food, drinking booze, and using spleen items. Besides those common ways, some familiars will spontaneously grant adventures.
There is no limit to the number of adventures you can acquire. However, you are limited to 200 adventures after rollover is completed. Excess adventures are simply lost forever.
On your character sheet, you can see how many turns you've played in a given ascension, as well as how many adventures you've played since you created your account.
Miscellaneous Sources
Besides the standard food, drinks, spleentacular items, rollover, and a select few familiars, there are certain ways to gain or lose adventures that fall outside the common categories. They are:
- %fn, deliver your thesis! +2-11 (only available with a Pocket Professor familiar with at least 400 experience, removes 200 experience, adventure gain dependent on the monster's initial stats)
- Ancestral Recall +3 (up to 10 times per day, cost of one blue mana each casting)
- blank diary +40 (once a week only)
- borrowed time +20 (once a day, reduces rollover adventures -20)
- bottled day +100 (once a week only)
- Brain preservation fluid +5 (once per day)
- Calculate the Universe +3 (limited by copies of the Manual of Numberology used)
- chocolate items +5 to +1 (1–3 times per day per category)
- essential tofu +4-6 (once a day)
- etched hourglass +5 (once a day, reusable)
- Gets-You-Drunk +10 (awarded upon surviving 4 combats after consumption)
- ghost pepper +10 (awarded upon surviving 4 combats after consumption)
- Gratitude chocolate (thyme-filled) +10
- License to Chill +5 (once a day, reusable)
- mafia thumb ring +1 (happens infrequently after any combat that takes a turn)
- magical sausage +1 (up to 23 times per day, as a size-0 food it cannot be consumed on some challenge paths)
- mime army challenge coin +30 or -30 (50% chance of each to occur, one coin flip a day, reusable, need at least 30 adventures to use)
- potato alarm clock +5 (passively applied the first time you log in each day; doesn't count as rollover adventures)
- software glitch +1 (once a day)
- stuffed pocketwatch +1-10 or -1-10 (equal chance of each to occur, one use per day, reusable, need at least 10 adventures to use)
- Such Great Heights +3 (once per ascension)
- tapped black lotus -1 (when used if you have adventures left)
- The Towering Inferno Discotheque +5 (once per day, need at least 5 points of Disco Style to go to the fifth floor)
- Time Juice +1 (untradeable item from 2004, every account at the time got exactly 8, all may be consumed at once)
- time's arrow +5 (once a day)
- triad summoning scroll +1 (sometimes) (unspaded cap)
- Twelve Night Energy +12 (once per day)
- V for Vivala mask +1 (on critical hit, 10 times per day)
- Victor's Spoils +11 (once per day, only on the License to Adventure challenge path)