The Robot's Bodyguards: the Fall 2024 Contest
2023-09-09 // Contest Overview
Last year, we held a large speedrunning contest where the entire theme was beating Autoscend, the automated ascension script built by the Loathers collective. It was really fun! We had 51 qualifying entrants who all received prizes, the sum cost of which totalled 7.1 billion meat. The prizes were selected based on an ordered draw at the end of the contest where participants got to pick the best IOTM remaining from a large suite of IOTMs. This year, we wanted to do a similar contest. After all, it's fun to beat a robot! But after thinking about it for a bit, I decided that simply beating Autoscend wasn't enough. Not for bodyguard path. This year, you get to beat the robot... and the robot's bodyguards!
THE PREMISE
In last year's contest, entrants entered one run in the active challenge path into either the Hardcore or Softcore categories, hoping to defeat autoscend's best marks.
This year, we're changing things up -- there are a full four benchmark runs you can beat! These are:
- THE "CLASSIC": This will be the final Normal Avant Guard run done by Kenny Kamakazi through autoscend, beloved friend to robots. (Just like last year's!)
- THE "BUSTA": This will be the best Hardcore Avant Guard run done by Busta_Rhymes through autoscend, with allowances for him to add small tweaks of his choosing. (Slightly different than last year!)
- THE "OLD FOGEY": This will be a Hardcore Avant Guard done this season by an old speedrunner returning after a long break -- the Hardcore Avant Guard 2/394 run put up by worthawholebean, in the first week of the season in his first manual ascension in 2 years.
- THE "SUFFERING SCOTCH": This will be a Softcore Avant Guard run done by Captain Scotch... but not on his own account. He will be using a donated account with just 3 standard IOTMs, all eligible perms, and access to good pulls. But nothing else! Yikes!
Throughout the contest, Kenny and Busta will continue to run autoscend in an effort to improve their numbers. While worthawholebean will continue to run, his benchmark will remain set at 2/394, as that was the only one he was -super- rusty for. For the last run, Scotch will likely try a route or two before finalizing the mark near the end of the season. It probably will not be faster than any of the first three categories. But then... what if it is? 👀 The final mark for this benchmark will be announced after the season concludes, on November 15th. So you won't know if you're better than it or not until the contest ends. That is the one mote of joy Scotch will derive from the tortous experience of running without the IOTM comforts he is accustomed to.
ELIGIBILITY
In order for your run to be a valid entrant to the contest, you must do the following things:
- Ascend into Avant Guard, the Fall 2024 challenge path (either normal or hardcore, whichever you prefer).
- Play your run in KOLMafia, via the relay browser so you have a session log. If you need to download it first, you should do that. It's hard to use KOLMafia if you haven't downloaded it!
- Finish the run faster than any of the four benchmark runs, per turns and days.
- Send your session logs in to the contest organizers through a Google Form (to be released in a few weeks, once Scotch has finalized how he wants to receive and parse all this information), for the organizers to ensure you didn't just run autoscend yourself.
- Consent to having your log's run be immortalized in a spreadsheet celebrating all path runners at the end of the season, like last year's contest!
In addition, once Avant Guard's standard period ends, you will need to pick one run as your contest entrant -- even if you have both hardcore and normal runs, you need to choose which one you'd prefer to submit for prize consideration. It's easier that way!
THE PRIZES
Each player who submits a run that places within the top 20 fastest hardcore or softcore runs will receive their pick of all standard-eligible IOTMs left in Captain Scotch's display case, after those that placed above have picked. There's a lot of powerful stuff in there! We will be ordering HC and Normal runs, and giving prizes in order of the #1 HC, #1 Normal, #2 HC, #2 Normal, et cetera. All runners who do not receive a display case prize will instead get a prize based on how many of the benchmark runs you beat:
- If you beat one of the benchmark runs, you will get 1 million meat (and be eligible for the contest in the first place; that's right, everyone gets a million meat! What a deal!!!)
- If you beat both of the benchmark normal runs, you will get 7 million meat
- If you beat both of the benchmark normal runs AND one of the hardcore runs with your own hardcore run, you will get 14 million meat
And finally...
- If you beat both the benchmark normal runs AND the benchmark hardcore runs with your own hardcore run, you will get 21 million meat... in ADDITION to any IOTM prizes you may have won! That's, like, 2100 raffle tickets, dude!
Last year, we distributed prizes in a long stream in the Ascension Speed Society Discord. We'll be doing the same thing again! It will likely take about 7-10 days after the season to fully build out every winner's draft list by contacting all winners to determine their IOTM selection pool; while you -could- simply choose your IOTM live at the stream, it will be considerably easier for us to have a spreadsheet we can reference with your IOTM preferences and simply give you the highest thing on your list.
CAN I GET MORE SPECIFICS ON THE OVERALL PRIZE POOL?
The current prize pool consists of at least one of every IOTM in our current standard set, with (in some cases) many more! The prize pool currently contains 74 unbound IOTMs, which are detailed below (and, again, largely visible in Captain Scotch's display case); click here for a larger image!
It's a lot of items, folks! The pool may continue increasing throughout this contest, as well.
ANY OTHER LITTLE SIDE HUSTLES I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?
Well, yes, actually! Glad you asked.
- Anyone who has never achieved a commendation before and ends the season with a Gold Star, Silver Moon, or Bronze Button will receive 15 million meat.
- Received a commendation before? If you beat your old “best” commendation (IE, get a silver if your best is a bronze, et cetera), you will receive an additional 5 million meat!
- Anyone who provides commentary in their submitted run-log will get an additional 2.5 million meat.
- An example would be something like the runlog I released detailing my 1-day 11 Things I Hate About U run I did last month. You don't need THIS much commentary, but it is our goal to make a public repository with the runlogs submitted for this contest, and logs with commentary will help more people learn about the community's fun speed tricks!
HOW LONG WILL THIS LAST?
Any run done while Avant Guard is the active challenge path will count, although only runs that submit their runlogs to the contest organizers will be eligible for prizes. That'll last until rollover on November 14th. The prize draw will happen on November 24th, giving folks 10 days after the end of path to submit their runlogs.
ANY RESTRICTIONS ON OUR RUNS?
- No multis are allowed. Only one account per person. Anyone found using multis to extract multiple prizes will be disqualified on both accounts.
- While we have tracks for both HC and Normal, only one of your runs will count for the purposes of the prize draw. You decide which! Probably the fastest one? I dunno, you do you.
- As runs will require runlogs, once again, your runs must be fully completed in KoLMafia. (Sorry, mobile friends!)
- Your run cannot be using a fully-automated ascension script like Autoscend. Obviously. If you are using pre/post-adventure scripts, that's fine. But if you are clicking a button to generate a full ascension, that's less fine. Please reach out to the contest organizers if you have a more complex personally coded private ascension script you would like to use; we did not allow any full-automation last year, but we may allow it this year if you can credibly confirm that you were the sole developer of your personal script.
COOL. WILL THE RULES CHANGE?
These rules are pretty set in stone, and we do not anticipate major changes. But there is always the possibility that someone finds a weird hole in them and we need to make some small modifications or clarifications. In the event we do, these will be ported to this website and posted in the Ascension Speed Society discord, as well as the KOL Forums. We really want to make this a fun time, but we are putting an absurd amount of meat up in prizes, so if someone does some weird jank that looks like it's going to cost us an extra 6 billion meat somehow, we might need to figure out a way to react to it without bankrupting Captain Scotch.
WHO PROVIDED THE PRIZES?
Big thanks go out to the following chums and buckets (in no particular order) who all donated prizes, meat, or labor for this contest:
- sweaty bill (#1515124)
- Haxxi (#2264486)
- Captain Scotch (#437479)
- gAusIE (#1197090)
- Manendra (#1483803)
- Asmodais (#2071543)
- threebullethamburglar (#1993636)
- Busta_Rhymes (#1901297)
Thanks y'all! Enjoy the contest!
Love, Captain Scotch & the ASS Team
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In case this was not clear in the flowery introduction, this contest is sponsored and officially run by the Ascension Speed Society. Join us on discord for the kinds of speed ascension tips and tricks you may need to beat the robot's bodyguards and earn yourself a sparkly new IOTM!