History YMMV / KingdomOfLoathing

* {{Squick}}: Often [[invoked]] in sleaze attacks

** Seal Clubber's Tropical Island. You need to make a disguise that will allow you to get past the guards at the volcano. In order to do so, you need six each of three specific items dropped only by the mother hellseals at the beach. How to make them appear in the first place? You have to injure (not kill) a hellseal pup so it will wail for help. And here's where the hardest part comes in - the chance of a mother hellseal appearing are equally proportional to how many times a hellseal pup wailed... but so is their [[OhCrap strength]]. Putting it simply, you have to choose between fighting a pretty tough enemy with a ridiculously low chance of appearing in the first place or [[BossInMookClothing a ridiculously powerful foe that will kill you unless you one-shot it]]. Oh, and don't forget to have a club as your main weapon or the parts they drop will be damaged and thus useless. Fortunately, [[GlassCannon the mother hellseals' HP doesn't scale with their other stats]], and your Nemesis is [[AnticlimaxBoss ridiculously easy]] in comparison.

** For [[HundredPercentCompletion completionists]], the "Bees Hate You" challenge path. Updates occasionally add a reason for going back (most notably, the introduction of Monster Manuel a year after the path meant factoid hunters had to dive in for at least long enough to fight all the wandering bees three times each), and often add a hurdle to make the path much harder.

** The New Year's 2015 update introduced the new "Standard" path: the regular game, but with the Trendy restrictions in place in exchange for extra karma and new equipment. It also buried no-path *without* Trendy at the bottom of a drop-down list and removed the leaderboards for all non-Trendy runs. Cue the outcry: besides the above objections to Trendy, many players were upset that Jick appeared to be putting down their playstyle.

* ThatOneBoss: The Enraged Cow requires you to use a barbed-wire fence, which rarely and randomly drops at the Shore vacation. This was thankfully patched to make it guaranteed to drop.
** In its place are the fried egg (requires black pepper, a random drop from ''another'' random drop), El Diablo (require a mariachi G-string, a rare drop from one monster in a zone where 75% of the adventures are non-combat), and the giant globe (requires an NG, which you cannot just stumble upon - and which is a reference to an obscure TheyMightBeGiants song, making it hard to guess). The giant globe is made even worse by how the new Level 9 quest makes the area where lowercase Ns drop optional, meaning many players haven't even visited it by the time they reach the tower (except for Hardcore players, who need one for [[spoiler:a Wand of Nagamar]]).

** Less arguably, the Smith's Tome. What does it do? It lets you, up to 3 times a day, summon a Lump of Brituminous Coal, a handful of Smithereens, and a Flaskfull of Hollow. The Brituminous Coal can be smithed into equipment that gives you a few small boosts, including +5 to a new stat called Smithsness... and one very ''large'' boost that scales with your current Smithsness. Yes, Smithsness is essentially a redo of Hobo Power, but much more accessible. As for the other two, the Flaskfull of Hollow adds +25 Smithsness and a Smith-scaled boost to all stats for a whopping 150 turns. And the Smithereens can be crafted into fairly useful combat items, or fairly good consumable items which (RuleOfThree, everyone) can grant ''a buff adding to your Smithsness''. More annoyingly, the Smiths equipment can be pulverized into more Smithereens, adding ''even more'' value to the turn-free smithing from Degrassi Knoll moon signs that were already regarded as too good. Nearly every discussion by StopHavingFunGuys on the forums now includes some form of the question "how the hell are Jick and co going to make the game stop centering around Smithsness without just making a new even breakier GameBreaker?"[[note]]The easiest answer is "let it type69 out", but that won't happen until 2016, and not everyone is happy about Smithsness dominating for that long.[[/note]]

** Less arguably, the Smith's Tome. What does it do? It lets you, up to 3 times a day, summon a Lump of Brituminous Coal, a handful of Smithereens, and a Flaskfull of Hollow. The Brituminous Coal can be smithed into equipment that gives you a few small boosts, including +5 to a new stat called Smithsness... and one very ''large'' boost that scales with your current Smithsness. Yes, Smithsness is essentially a redo of Hobo Power, but much more accessible. As for the other two, the Flaskfull of Hollow adds +25 Smithsness and a Smith-scaled boost to all stats for a whopping 150 turns. And the Smithereens can be crafted into fairly useful combat items, or fairly good consumable items which (RuleOfThree, everyone) can grant ''a buff adding to your Smithsness''. More annoyingly, the Smiths equipment can be pulverized into more Smithereens, adding ''even more'' value to the turn-free smithing from Degrassi Knoll moon signs that were already regarded as too good. Nearly every discussion by StopHavingFunGuys on the forums now includes some form of the question "how the hell are Jick and co going to make the game stop centering around Smithsness without just making a new even breakier GameBreaker?"

** Less arguably, the Smith's Tome. What does it do? It lets you, up to 3 times a day, summon a Lump of Brituminous Coal, a handful of Smithereens, and a Flaskfull of Hollow. The Brituminous Coal can be smithed into equipment that gives you a few small boosts, including +5 to a new stat called Smithsness... and one very ''large'' boost that scales with your current Smithsness. Yes, Smithsness is essentially a redo of Hobo Power, but much more accessible. As for the other two, the Flaskfull of Hollow adds +25 Smithsness and a Smith-scaled boost to all stats for a whopping 150 turns. And the Smithereens can be crafted into fairly useful combat items, or fairly good consumable items which (RuleOfThree, everyone) can grant ''a buff adding to your Smithsness''. More annoyingly, the Smiths equipment can be pulverized into more Smithereens, adding ''even more'' value to the turn-free smithing from Degrassi Knoll moon signs that were already regarded as too good.
:::Nearly every discussion by StopHavingFunGuys on the forums now includes some form of the question "how the hell are Jick and co going to make the game stop centering around Smithsness without just making a new even breakier GameBreaker?"

::Nearly every discussion by StopHavingFunGuys on the forums now includes some form of the question "how the hell are Jick and co going to make the game stop centering around Smithsness without just making a new even breakier GameBreaker?"

* GameBreaker: Arguably, the Hodgman's imaginary hamster. It's an off-hand item raises all your attributes by 20% and converts Hobo Power to more Meat drops, item drops and HP[=/=]MP regeneration. You get it from beating Hodgman, The Hoboverlord, but only if Hobopolis (a clan-only dungeon) was [[TimedMission cleared in a single day using no more than 1100 adventures]] (and even then only if your clan leader feels like giving it to you), making it a bit of an InfinityPlusOneSword as well. (Of course, it requires that you actually ''have'' Hobo Power to convert, which means you need other Hodgman items, and it has very high equip requirements so it's only useful after the main quests are long since completed)

** In its place are the fried egg (requires black pepper, a random drop from ''another'' random drop), El Mariachi (require a mariachi G-string, a rare drop from one monster in a zone where 75% of the adventures are non-combat), and the giant globe (requires an NG, which you cannot just stumble upon - and which is a reference to an obscure TheyMightBeGiants song, making it hard to guess). The giant globe is made even worse by how the new Level 9 quest makes the area where lowercase Ns drop optional, meaning many players haven't even visited it by the time they reach the tower (except for Hardcore players, who need one for [[spoiler:a Wand of Nagamar]]).

** The Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot familiar. It needs a pineal gland! They don't even drop anymore. The only way to get one is to spend over a million Meat in the mall, or (if you're lucky) beg your clan leaders to give you one from the stash.

** In its place are the fried egg (requires black pepper, a random drop from ''another'' random drop) and the giant globe (requires an NG, which you cannot just stumble upon - and which is a reference to an obscure TheyMightBeGiants song, making it hard to guess). The giant globe is made even worse by how the new Level 9 quest makes the area where lowercase Ns drop optional, meaning many players haven't even visited it by the time they reach the tower (except for Hardcore players, who need one for [[spoiler:a Wand of Nagamar]]).

** Also of note is that Unlike the other Avatar paths, the final battles have the final boss giving their reason as to why they are trying to kill you, [[spoiler:and then the touching scene where the two spirits become reconcile. However, the Avatar of Boris has no dialog and the battle ends with Trusty falling onto his foot.]].

** Seal Clubber's Tropical Island. You need to make a disguise that will allow you to get past the guards at the volcano. In order to do so, you need six each of three specific items dropped only by the mother hellseals at the beach. How to make them appear in the first place? You have to injure (not kill) a hellseal pup so it will wail for help. And here's where the hardest part comes in - the chance of a mother hellseal appearing are equally proportional to how many times a hellseal pup wailed... but so is their [[OhCrap strength]]. Putting it simply, you have to choose between fighting a pretty tough enemy with a ridiculously low chance of appearing in the first place or [[BossInMookClothing a ridiculously powerful foe you have no chance of defeating unless you're ridiculously overleveled and buffed]]. Oh, and don't forget to have a club as your main weapon or the parts they drop will be damaged and thus useless. Fortunately, your Nemesis is [[AnticlimaxBoss ridiculously easy]] in comparison to those mother hellseals.

** How could we forget Fernswarthy's Basement? 500 grueling, repetitious levels of tough monsters and "tests" that mainly test your ability to spend tons of meat on potions. Actually, there's ''infinite'' levels, but most people stop at 500 because that's when you finally get the telescope. No, sorry, one-seventh of the telescope. You've got to do 500 levels of the basement six more times to finish upgrading it, or it won't be very useful. Have "fun!"

*** Given that your character is a HeroicComedicSociopath, flirting with a girl so you can clobber her on the head and skedaddle before anyone notices is more RefugeInAudacity. Heck, the quest could even be considered a callback to the Roofie item (Which is a roofing shingle, not a drug. [[CrossesTheLineTwice That fratboys clobber their dates with]]) After all, this game plays SlapstickKnowsNoGender hilariously straight.

** The Quest for the Holy MacGuffin. An exceptionally long quest made up of five mini-quests. As a reward, you get [[spoiler: [[AWinnerIsYou a ticker-tape parade in your honor, and some confetti.]]]] Also, before you can complete one of the mini-quests you have to unlock the aforementioned Pirate's Cove and do a couple sub-quests ''there''.

** The Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot familiar. It needs a pineal gland! They don't even drop anymore. The only way to get one is to spend over a million Meat in the mall.