Avant Guard

Avant Guard is the Fall 2024 special challenge path, introduced on August 15th, 2024. This path adds variant rules and restrictions to an ascension run. Its description in The Bureau of Reincarnation reads "Everyone in the Kingdom has a bodyguard."

Restrictions

• You cannot adventure in The Sea. Attempting to talk to An Old Man gives the following message:

That shack you saw on the main map was just a picture of a shack drawn on the ground.

• You can only adventure with the Burly Bodyguard familiar as your active familiar.
• You can still swap to other familiars, although attempting to adventure with the other familiar gives the following message:

You can't adventure without your bodyguard!

Divergences

• Your adventure begins with A-1 Sound and the Sound's So Suardin'‎

• You always receive a baby bodyguard.

• Enemies have other monsters guarding them, which you must defeat first.

• You first encounter "<random monster> acting as the bodyguard to <encountered monster>"

• The bodyguard is chosen from a list of wishable monsters with some exemptions.

• Monsters that come from Lucky Adventures, some Crimbo monsters and monsters that are inherently free (e.g. Witchess Knights) can not become bodyguards.
• The full list can be found here.

• The base stats of the bodyguard depend on your character's level:

• At levels 1-5 the bodyguard scales to your stats +3*Level (so, buffed moxie+3L attack, buffed muscle+3L defense, 75% of defense HP).
• At levels 6+ the bodyguard uses their normal attack and defense, but their HP is equal to twice the HP of the guarded monster.
• Scaling monster caps apply afterwards, so you can, for example force a Goomba bodyguard before the Wall of bones fight to avoid having to deal with a 40,000 HP bodyguard.

• Appropriately enough, in The Bat Hole the bodyguard will always be a beefy bodyguard bat.

• You will not see the same monster acting as a bodyguard until you have seen all of them at least once.

• Forcing a monster via Chatting with your Burly Bodyguard does not count towards the above.

• After successful combat: "You've defeated the bodyguard, now for the real fight..."

• • Monsters that transform into other monsters will destroy their bodyguardees! Sleepy mariachi/Surprised mariachi, among other monsters, can really mess with important monsters you may have wanted to hit.

• The bodyguard drops its meat and items as usual, but the second enemy drops only items:

"Your opponent spent all their meat hiring a bodyguard."

• Bodyguards cannot be CLEESHed:

"A nearby bodyguard holds up a "NO CLEESHING" sign. You comply."

• An adventure will be spent on the monster's bodyguard, but not on the subsequent fight with the protected monster
  • An adventure will still be spent fighting the bodyguard even if it you use something that would otherwise make the fight free, like a shadow brick, or a machete on a dense liana, or Shadow Affinity against Shadow Rift monsters.
    • The only known exceptions are:
      • Breathitin (out of Standard) which does make the fight against the bodyguard free, but ticks down on the normal monster too.
      • Bat wings, which specifically turn non-free fights into free fights.
  • Both fights advance The Arid, Extra-Dry Desert's exploration counter, the 8-Bit Realm's score, and the protector spirit delay in The Hidden Apartment Building. Both fights also give you an opportunity to search drawers for the Spookyraven billiards room key in The Haunted Kitchen.
  • Bodyguard fights do not advance the kill counts in The Black Forest, A Mob of Zeppelin Protesters, or The Battlefield - unless the bodyguard itself is from that zone.

Text

See The Council of Loathing/Avant Guard.

Strategy

• Since the path's only restriction is familiar choice, for the most part Avant Guard can be approached as a normal ascension. If anything, it's generally easier than softcore up to a point, as you get double the fights for the same number of turns and advance in levels quickly.
• The two biggest issues in a run are the bodyguards for the Mysterious Island Quest boss and the bodyguard for the Wall of Bones. Some kind of insta-kill ability is essentially required unless the player can do huge amounts of damage. The Guy Made Of Bees has similar problems, but is optional.
  • Without IotMs, the only insta-kill available is Batter Up, which requires the player be a Seal Clubber.
  • Alternatively, the bodyguard can by passed by chatting with the bodyguard about a scaling monster before fighting them. This will result in the bodyguard's stats, including HP, scaling to yours and being capped at whatever their stat cap normally is.
• The Mysterious Island Quest is best fought in the Frat Warrior Fatigues, as all three of the initial Frat sidequests can be completed (though Gremlins will be annoying, and the usual shortcut for flyering won't work without a way of defeating his bodyguard). The starting Hippy sidequests include the Nuns, which pose serious difficulties because the dirty thieving brigand doesn't drop Meat.
  • It is possible to aquire the Order of the Silver Wossname by defeating both sides in the war. However as it is possible for the Hippy side to have Frat bodyguards or vice versa, care should be taken to not accidentally kill too many of one side and to run away from fights if needed.

General

• As bodyguards can be nearly any monster, including, for example, deep sea monsters, some will be very dangerous at lower levels, even though their HP scales with the HP of the guarded monster. A rare few, like the hulking construct, require something special to defeat, and may prove impossible to beat normally.
• Using free kills to save turns is not really a thing in this path, as a turn is spent against bodyguards anyway when winning.
  • Free kills can still be used against otherwise impossible-to-defeat bodyguards.
• Your Burly Bodyguard is always attacking, which can interfere with quests like the Gremlin sidequest, or even flyering if you don't lead off with the flyers.
• Similarly, the lack of meat from the main monster interferes with the Nuns sidequest.
• You might pick up quest-relevant items from the monsters' bodyguards while adventuring. Keep those item drop% bonuses up if you can.
• Every 50 combats with the Burly Bodyguard active, you can chat with him which leads you to a specific bodyguard monster, giving you more chances to fight quest-relevant monsters.
• If you find yourself low on meat, head to The Bat Hole where all of the bodyguards are beefy bodyguard bats.
• If a monster appears as a bodyguard, banishing it will also remove native instances of that monster.

IotM

• The bat wings are one of the only ways to make bodyguard fights not cost an adventure.
• If you have some way of giving your Chest Mimic experience without adventuring, for instance the Mayam Calendar or the Apriling band piccolo, you can get mimic eggs. Non-snarfblat.php fights are also usable, and bodyguard+guardee means sources of fxp are twice as good as they are normally.
• The Spooky VHS Tape will bring back the target monster, but will attempt to YR + instakill their bodyguard (will still cost the adv). You will have to use the Bodyguard Chat in order to get value out of the pseudo-YR function.
• The Roman Candelabra has two uses:
  • Purple candle on guardees allows you to fight one without a bodyguard.
  • Purple candle on bodyguards will give that monster again, with no guardee at all.
  • In both cases, this will cost a turn normally, which makes it a viable free kill target, such as with...
• Although Everfull Dart Holster Bullseyes will not save a turn in most fights, this is your primary free kill to combo with the Roman Candelabra.
• The model train set advances stations on both fights, so it's twice as effective.

Rewards

• Finishing a run while it is the current special challenge path -- between August 15th, 2024 and November 14th, 2024 -- gives players 50 (in Normal) or 100 (in Hardcore) extra karma points the next time they visit Valhalla.
• Players will receive a Thwaitgold shield bug statuette upon defeating the final boss.
• Any ascension in which the Burly Bodyguard completes a fight causes it to gain up to 11 weight in future ascensions.

Ascension Paths
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Special Challenge Paths
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