No Small Feat: Whuppin' AI

2023-09-09 // Contest Overview

For our autumn 2023 contest, No Small Feat: Whuppin' AI, the name of the game was beating the Autoscend ascension script in a contest of speed in the active Standard path, A Shrunken Adventurer am I. Contest entrants, using their guile and wiles, were tasked with ascending as fast as they could in order to get a cut of the pot in the richest prize pot given away in KOL history. (This is largely because of inflation, but cut us some slack, we put a TON of prizes on the line for this one). The contest was quite successful! We had a total of FIFTY ONE entrants. For the topline numbers, we gave away:

• 7.3 billon in unbound IOTMs
• 15 Mr. Accessories for 100% familiar challenge runs
• 14 extra unmarked prizes of Hobo Sheep, as a surprise for the 100% familiar runners
• 385 million meat in random meat prizes that we added atop the other stuff

Which ended up totalling nine point seven billion meat (the big 9,700,000,000) in total prizes given out. Ridiculous stuff! As part of this contest, we wanted to build a repository of logs that can be used by new speedsters to glean speedrunning strategies and see some of the ways that lower-IOTM contestants were able to reach high placement with unfinished standard sets. For that log repository, click here!

For the sake of posterity, here were the final prizes awarded in our several hour prize drawing.

What a fun time. For more on the contest, read on to dig into all the nitty-gritty details!

Artificial Intelligence has been in the news quite a lot lately, largely for bad and weird reasons. Everywhere you look, people are using ChatGPT and other generative large language models for bizarre and poorly-fit purposes. Automated tools are (badly) replacing the jobs of random people across the world. People just don't like robots right now! With anti-robot sentiment on the rise, what better time to stir the embers of the proletariat with an anti-automation contest run by a Discord server where half our users automate all their turns in pursuit of bacon-flavored capital?

… OK, DUDE, WILDLY CONFUSING INTRO. WHAT'S THE ACTUAL GOAL HERE?

For this contest, we want the masses to defeat Autoscend. For those who aren't in-the-know, Autoscend is an automated ascension script coded by Loathers, the scripting consortium formerly known as LASS. Autoscend is, frankly, very good! It's an amazing script that does a really admirable job of playing through paths and getting people rewards and karma. But this contest is about beating AI, so naturally, the goal of this contest is to beat Autoscend in the Fall 2023 challenge path.

That's right -- your goal is to beat Autoscend. But this won't be easy. To even up the playing field, we're letting Autoscend use a pretty well stocked account. Autoscend will be run through the path by the hot piece of ASS known colloquially as chat mod Kenny Kamakazi. And guess what, folks. Kenny has everything. Kenny owns every standard IOTM, every familiar, every perm… just, you know. Everything. Autoscend has it all at its disposal.

However! That's not the end of the line. Our robot overlords aren't getting gold stars in -every- path, after all. There's a ton of tricky IOTM strategies that Autoscend doesn't use, and a lot of little speedy routing things that Autoscend simply cannot do. At its core, Autoscend is made to finish ascensions, not necessarily finish them as fast as a clever speedrunner can. And it's unlikely that Autoscend is going to make it to a 1-day softcore during this path, either, so that's one way to beat the pants off of Autoscend – just ascend A Shrunken Adventurer Am I (known for the rest of this document as “SMOL”) in one day. Easy peasy. (OK, it's not easy peasy. But it's possible, people have already done it -- and folks completed 1-day softcore runs BEFORE Asym dropped BoFA!)

CAN YOU PUT WHAT WE NEED TO DO IN BULLETPOINT FORMAT?

Sure thing, buddy.

• Ascend into SMOL, the Fall 2023 path (either Normal or Hardcore; both will have boards)
• Put up a run that is faster by days or turns than Kenny's autoscend runs
• Submit your run log for the run you want included in the prize draw via either ScotchLog or KOLMafioso to KOL user "phillapology" (#3472804) or Discord user sweatybill (an ASS moderator)

And that's it!

HOW WILL THE PRIZES BE AWARDED?

The top 20 Hardcore and Normal runs that beat Kenny will pick a prize from Captain Scotch's display case in the order of the speed of their runs, starting at the fastest runs first by daycount and turncount. We will also be throwing in a small meat prize for folks who register the 6 speediest runs of all (the top 3 entrants in HC/Normal).

So, if the prize pool was just a BOFA, an Eagle, a Scepter, and a Goose, the prize distribution could be:

1. 1st HC (Haxxi, 2/300 HC) selects Goose; receives that + 25mil meat
2. 1st Normal (Beldur, 1/350 SC) selects BOFA; receives that + 25mil meat
3. 2nd Normal (3BH, 1/365 SC) selects Scepter; receives that + 15mil meat
4. 2nd HC (Aenimus, 2/305 HC) selects Eagle; receives that + 15mil meat

And so on and so forth. Of course, we have a larger prize pool, so instead of a 4 run list, the speed-ordered list will be for 40 overall runs. Once we reach the end of the 40 runs ranked by days & turns, the remaining IOTMs will be awarded to other entrants who beat Kenny in unconventional ways -- things like defeating Kenny's turncount through silly tortoisecore runs, low-IOTM specialization, and other runs that are special in different ways. Once all IOTMs are exhausted, all remaining runs that did not receive an IOTM will receive 10 million meat for their troubles. That's right -- if you beat Kenny, even if we run out of IOTM prizes, you'll still get 10 million meat!

(Pictured: Captain Scotch, who has already spent 1.5 billion on prizes.)

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. It is the hope of the organizers that every person (or very nearly every person) who beats Kenny with a manual run and enters their runlog ends up with an unbound IOTM for their troubles.

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 25 million meat.
  • Received a commendation before? If you beat your old “best” commendation (IE, get a silver if your best is a bronze, etc), you will receive an additional 10 million meat!
• Anyone who beats Kenny with a 100% familiar run will receive an additional Mr. Accessory, reflecting their commitment to accessorizing with a specific familiar of their dreams.
  • Note: in order to get this extra Mr. Accessory, you will need to submit your 100% familiar run as your primary run; that is to say, if you get a gold star softcore run and a deep silver 100% familiar run, you need to submit the deep silver 100% familiar run as your run for the prize draw to get the extra Mr. A
• Anyone who provides commentary in their submitted run-log will get an additional 10 million meat.
  • An example would be something like the runlog I released detailing my 1-day HCNP run I did last year. 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 SMOL 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 20th, giving folks 6 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.
  • We will always take the best-placing run you have, unless you actively choose to use a 100% familiar run as your primary run for the Mr. Accessory bounty discussed above.
• As runs will require runlogs, your runs must be done 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 probably fine, but anything that makes it so you don't have to play >10% of your turns is against the spirit of the contest.

YOU MENTIONED TORTOISECORE. WHAT'S THAT?

We are aware that not everyone has the IOTMs necessary to beat Kenny's run. Someone with only 1-2 IOTMs will struggle to finish a run in 2 days, let alone at the turncount that Autoscend is putting up. So, in order to try and make sure that some of the prize bounty is going to lower-shiny folks, we are allowing entrants to submit "tortoisecore" runs. These are runs that take more days than Kenny's run, so they don't "technically" beat it on speed, but end up with a lower overall turncount in either normal or hardcore. A few notes on these runs:

• Due to the way we are assigning prizes, it is likely that most (though not all!) tortoisecore runs will simply make 10 million meat rather than an IOTM. Our best guess is we'll get 40-50 runs that beat Kenny straight up and 40-50 runs that beat him only via turncount rather than daycount. With 45-50 prizes (so far), and 40 locked in to the fastest 20 in HC/normal, that does mean there will be fewer pure unboxed IOTMs being awarded to tortoisecore runs. The best way to get at the IOTM bounty will be to beat Kenny's turncount through speed tricks; after all, this is a speed ascension contest.
• To be eligible for prizes, tortoisecore runs submitted will need to come with some sort of commentary. As described above, this could be in the form of spreadsheets indicating how you planned out your run. It also could be in a short 500-1000 word summary of your approach and how the run played for you, or places where you think owning X or Y might have changed your strategic picture for certain quests.
• If you are entering a tortoisecore run, you must submit either an AV-Snapshot or a greenbox to the contest organizers. This will help us pick between turtle-themed runs and make sure that the tortoisecore prizes are going to those with the fewest shinies and the most impressive performances among the entrants.

OK, GREAT. WHAT IS KENNY'S CURRENT TURNCOUNT?

By the end of the contest, Kenny's turns and daycount sat at:

• 2 days, 676 turns in Hardcore
• 2 days, 479 turns in Normal

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 junk 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 NSFW-AI:

• sweaty bill (#1515124)
• Beldur (#1046951)
• Cannonfire40 (#1955580)
• Haxxi (#2264486)
• Lyft (#3045223)
• Aenimus (#2273519)
• Somersaulter (#1770348)
• tigerinanenet (#3553615)
• purple shrimp (#1659891)
• Minikid2 (#1708696)
• LaNz (#835813)
• Captain Scotch (#437479)
• BurningBman (#1729599)
• Manendra (#1483803)
• Asmodais (#2071543)
• playultm8 (#2156370)
• MonkeyMan200 (#1349423)
• 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 Robo-Kenny and earn yourself a sparkly new IOTM!