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Loathers.net

Passing Time IV: Past to the Future

2026-01-02 // Contest Overview
Passing Time IV: Logo

Welcome to Passing Time IV: Past to the Future, the winter contest for Loathers.net! This contest is a lovingly rendered recreation of community stalwart Beldur's original Passing Time contests -- both the 1st in 2021 and the 2nd in 2022. Also, of course, Passing Time III: Time After Time, which we held last year! Credit for the original idea and the general coziness of the concept go to Beldur. Thanks, Beldur!

THE PREMISE

The point of the contest is to pass the time between the start of the year and the first challenge path of the year by seeing who can play the fastest runs with the new standard meta, with the hope that our collected entrants find fun tricks and tactics that we never unlocked in our previous years. Helpfully, with incomplete IOTM sets, new year runs tend to be a bit simpler than end of year runs. There will be rewards for all participants, but the best prizes will go to the fastest ascenders!

ELIGIBILITY

In order for your run to be a valid entrant to the contest, you must do the following things:

  • Play Kingdom of Loathing. You know, the online game. If you don't, it would be very weird that you're still reading this!
  • Ascend into Standard -- 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 your run. Play as fast as you can! (In turns, not IRL time. Everyone knows that playing fast in IRL time is for suckers.)
  • Send your logs to the organizers through the Google Form linked later in this post. To produce a log, use ScotchLog! (You will also need to send a Greenbox or an AV-Snapshot; those are detailed in the form as well.)
  • 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.

That's it!

THE PRIZES

Each player who submits a run that places within the top 15 fastest hardcore or softcore runs submitted will receive their pick of all standard-eligible IOTMs left in Captain Scotch's display case, after those that placed above them have picked. There's a lot of powerful stuff in there! Runners will only get one prize; even if you are in the top 15 in both HC & SC, you'll only get to draw for your highest placing run.

In order to set the prize draw, 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 5 million meat. That's right, FIVE MILLION MEAT! Just for entering! Take that, capitalism!

It will likely take about 2 weeks after the conclusion of the contest 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 72 unbound IOTMs, which are detailed below (and, again, largely visible in Captain Scotch's display case); click here for the source spreadsheet, for a more readable copy!

Passing Time IV: Prizes

In addition, the contest managers reserve the right to add a handful of extra "cute" prizes at the end, like a prize for (say) "most improved", a prize for the funniest self-restrictioned run, or a prize for someone sharing their strategy publicly to help their fellow speedsters. (As a rule, I am very devoted to helping more and more people find speedrunning fun.) In addition to the 30 speediest-run IOTM prizes, we are also going to award 5 IOTMs to low-shiny entrants who far outperform their expected placement with an incomplete standard set.

HOW LONG WILL THIS LAST?

This contest is meant to pass the time between the start of the year and the spring challenge path. However, to increase the duration a bit, this will extend (a tiny bit) into the challenge path. Any run completed between January 5th, 2025 and February 25th, 2025 will be eligible for entry.

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 run will count. We will pick the run that gets you the highest placement, if you enter multiple runs!
  • 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. If you are using pre/post-adventure scripts, that's fine. But if you are clicking a button to generate a full ascension and demanding prizes, 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 are fine with folks using bespoke scripts, but it has to be something you yourself built rather than a community script.

HOW DO I ENTER?

Simple -- fill out this Google form every time you do a run! That's all!

ANY ASCENSION TIPS TO HELP ME OUT WITH MODERN STANDARD ASCENSION?

Certainly! Here are a few helpful links for you.

  • In 2024, our very own BurningBman provided a general guide on planning a Standard ascension. There are a few minor updates since; there is a new 2026 resource template that is fully updated to modern Standard. Just make a copy of the sheet and start planning stuff out!
  • If you would like to figure out some good standard-relevant pulls, check out the ASS Standard Pull List, which goes over a ton of useful pulls from turnbloat to turnsave, as well as (in many cases) a discussion of why the pull is strategically valuable.
  • If you would like to figure out what your suite of IOTMs do, and what you may be missing, I've put together a Standard IOTM Tier List, with commentary.
  • If you would like to figure out what things you should consider summoning with your Chest Mimic, you should check out our primer on the best summons to target; it's great for figuring out the best mobs to summon!
  • This website has full page analysis covering every standard IOTM. Go to our analysis page, linked at the top of the page, for more!

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:

  • Beldur (#1046951)
  • Busta_Rhymes (#1901297)
  • Captain Scotch (#437479)
  • soolar (#2463557)
  • sweaty bill (#1515124)
  • zincaito (#2125208)

If you would like to be added to this list, please reach out to Captain Scotch.

Thanks y'all! Enjoy the contest!

Love, Captain Scotch & the Loathers team

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 win this contest!

Article contributed by Captain Scotch