This guide is designed to rank the skills for each class when choosing hardcore perm skills. In classic KoL alliterative style, I've divided them into major, middling and meh, based on how helpful they will be in future HC runs.
I didn't include the following:
-The 1 MP starter buffs: These are all in the meh category. While not *completely* useless,t they fade to insignificance rather quickly.
-The underwater skills: These only work underwater, and since you're already on the Sorceress quest when you get there, there's no reason to ever actually do the underwater zones in Hardcore. You can simply kill her first to drop your HC restrictions.
-The hobo skills: The AT skills require you to be level 15 to cast (so you won't be in HC), and the spells cost obscene amounts of MP that aren't useful pretty much anywhere but Hobopolis... they MAY be useful on the final nemesis fight. MAY.
-Cash skills: These are automatically hardcore permanent, so it's pointless to mention these in a guide to spending your karma... they don't use any.
-Non-cash skills that auto HC Perm: Not listed for the same reason as the cash ones
-Chronic Indigestion: Get a real spell.
If I missed any skills, let me know.
Within a category, each skill is listed in order by level, with the Spookyraven skill listed last.
A few general considerations:
-Due to limited access to MP items, you're likely to favor passives over actives. That doesn't mean there aren't some great actives that you'll want though.
-A good number of skills that a softcore player would pass over become a lot more valuable to a hardcore player as they help get through the HC restrictions.
-Of course, the reverse is also true - some great softcore skills just don't work very well in HC, because you don't have the mall to really make them work.
-Remember that you can pool karma. If a class you hate playing as has multiple skills you want, you can build up karma, then use it on that class. This is especially common for Accordion Thief, which, well... pretty much no one likes using.
-A lot of skills are best used in combination with other things... you'll have much earlier access to Ode to Booze if you've boosted max MP with Wisdom of the Elder Tortoises for instance. A couple of skills are also clearly intended to be used directly together, with Pastamastery and Advanced Saucecrafting being one obvious example of this.
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Seal Clubber------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MajorThe Tongue Skills - The ability to purge the Beaten Up status is huge. You don't get the item for this until level 10, and while the hot tub is an option if you have access to it, that's limited to 5 uses/day. As for which one to take, the stronger one heals more HP and cures a few extra status effects, but those extra status effects are rare, and it's still a very inefficient heal. Then again, it's only 3 more MP, so you'll have to decide if what you get for the extra 3 is worth it. It probably isn't. Grabbing *one* of the tongue spells should definitely be a priority on this class though.
Eat of the Stoat - More crits and less fumbles both put the RNG more in your favor, so even without a Smack skill to use this in combination with, it's a very useful passive, especially in close fights.
Double-Fisted Skull Smashing - This one is HUGE, and I highly recommend grabbing this before anything else this class has to offer. Its value to physical characters is obvious, but even casters get great use out of this. Equip a chef staff, then offhand your epic weapon, and you'll see what I mean. The only class unlikely to make regular use of it is Turtle Tamer, but even they will likely want to use it at times.
Pulverize - Especially at high level, the ability to gain wads is nice. You'll get an extra 15 adventures/day with minimal effort, and the buffs are pretty nice too. You'll only get the full value out of this while playing a muscle class (wads come quite late otherwise), but even without the Malus, this could easily shave a day off of a run, as well as saving adventures spent saucecrafting - the wad buffs are often good enough.
MiddlingClaws of the Otter/Walrus - Passive damage is always good, but this only grants 3 or 4 (depending on which skill) points of it. This can be very powerful early in a run, but fades to insignificance at very high level. Of course, you can stack them for +7 damage to make it effective longer, but now you need 2 skills to do it.
Super Advanced Meatsmithing - This can be useful when you just can't get decent gear to drop, but the 3 tier epic weapons have rendered it mostly unnecessary... although you may want to forge a decent off-hander with it.
Hide of the Walrus - It's not exactly a huge boost, but it *is* completely passive, so it has some value.
Lunging Thrust Smack - Sure, the damage is awesome, but it's melee-only, restricting it to 2 classes, one of which is going to get it whether it's permed or not. If you're planning on doing a lot of muscle runs in the near future though, this can certainly help.
Rage of the Reindeer - The muscle buff isn't large enough to be worth casting purely for the +HP, so this is another skill that would largely only get cast by muscle classes. It's a fairly strong buff though, so it does have significant value when playing those 2 classes. Disco Bandit *may* get some value out of this, as their damage tends to be low enough to notice +10.
Northern Exposure - 20% passive cold resistance certainly doesn't hurt (and has the added bonus of auto-clearing that part of the Mt. McLargeHuge quest), but there's just too many better things to take for this to be a high priority.
Musk of the Moose - While manipulating the combat:noncom ratio is certainly a good thing to be able to do, this only does it by 5%, at substantial mana cost.
Snarl of the Timberwolf - This is weaker than Rage of the Reindeer, but has the important distinction that the damage it adds is elemental. Still, in the rare case that you NEED elemental damage, there's plenty of gear you can grant it with.
MehHide of the Otter - 20 defense is way too little to care.
Thrust Smack - You get this early, and the only other class that would ever use it is Turtle Tamer. Additionally, there just isn't any good reason to take this over the stronger version.
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Turtle Tamer------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MajorAmphibian Sympathy - There are 4 skills that give +5 familiar weight, but this one is completely passive, making it by far the best of the 4. It's a very flexible, passive buff, and it also speeds up the end of the run by getting those needed familiars to 20 quickly.
Wisdom of the Elder Tortoises - It's a huge boost to max MP, and it's completely passive. It's pretty hard to pass that up.
Astral Shell - Not only is this a respectable defense boost, but it boosts all elemental resistances, which besides being good in general, makes several parts of the run much easier. In particular, you'll find the Daily Dungeon becomes stupidly easy with a single cast of this.
Tao of the Terrapin - This provides an ENORMOUS defense boost, completely passively, to all classes. You'll need to go to 15 to get it, but it's quite worth it. This is unquestionably one of the best perm choices in the entire game.
MiddlingSkin of the Leatherback - Raw damage reduction is always useful, especially when it's passive, but this doesn't give a ton of it.
Ghostly Shell - 80 defense is definitely enough to notice, but usually not enough that you want to have to keep recasting this. It's a nice thing to have handy for when you really want to crank your defense up to 1000 for a particular fight, but it's unlikely to get used regularly when not actually a TT.
Armorcraftiness - There's a pretty wide variety of mods you can get out of this, but you can often find better stuff through questing and normal drops. Still, it's handy to have when you need to fill in something you're missing, and it greatly speeds up the fun house run (clownskin buckler = 2 out of 4 points).
Tenacity of the Snapper - It's 1 point stronger than both of the SC damage skills combined, but it requires constant maintenance. Still, if you've got the mana to spare and find your damage coming up a bit short of where you want it, this can help.
Kneebutt - It's a spammable stun that still lets you swing. However, it's melee-only, which largely limits it to 3 classes.
Reptilian Fortitude - This is clearly inferior to things like Saucecrafting, but it also doesn't burn adventures or items to use, so it can be a cheaper substitute when you know you don't need as massive a buff as the sauce pots grant to beat a boss.
Cold-Blooded Fearlessness - Passive resistance is good, but there's much better ways to spend your karma.
Hero of the Half-shell - This can be incredibly powerful to muscle classes when you really need protection, but it's mostly useless to everyone else.
MehHeadbutt - You can only combo this when you're actually a TT, and the other butts are far superior.
Shieldbutt - The can't miss part is nice, but it's melee-only, requires a shield, and lunging thrust smack almost never misses. It's hard to give this much of a priority.
Empathy of the Newt - +5 weight always helps, but this is the most expensive way to do it, so you should only really be taking this if you've already permed the other 3.
Spectral Snapper - That's a LOT of MP for that damage range. At that cost, you're much better off just grabbing an attack spell from one of the casters.
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Disco Bandit------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MajorOverdeveloped Sense of Self-Preservation - A nice, large, passive init boost is certainly useful, as is the ability to bail out of combat easier. Moxie classes can use it to set up a face stab or get more pickpocketing done, and both casters and clubbers can use it for the instawin with a strong skill. Only TT has minimal use for this... and even they still benefit from going first.
Advanced Cocktailcrafting - This can be a pain to use. You don't get easy fruit access until you have island access and a hippy outfit, and the randomness of the summoned items can be annoying. Still, while this may be of limited value early in a run, and you can find good booze naturally late in the game, it's very useful mid-run, and retains some value late in a run.
Nimble Fingers - Meat can be tight in a hardcore run, especially until you get your dictionary. This goes a long way towards fixing that.
Mad Looting Skillz - +item drops is critical to a fast hardcore run (and to not getting frustrated when that one damn item you need just isn't dropping), and this provides a large boost passively. This may actually be the best thing to HC perm on this class.
Ambidextrous Funkslinging - Lots of items become far, FAR more useful when doubled or comboed with a stunning item. This is especially true in boss fights, where you funksling some combination of heal, damage, and stun in one round. There's also a couple of nice tricks, like funkslinging a flier and the mirror on The Guy Made of Bees to clear that miniquest and get a nice spleen item at the same time. Although your limited supply of items does somewhat limit its use, you probably weren't using this in normal fights anyway.
MiddlingDisco Naps - It's mainly the free rests (and the MP you get from them) that makes these attractive. The status effects they cure are all pretty rare (or easily cured in the case of poison), and the casters have more efficient heals. Still, it's definitely enough free mana to be worth looking at, particularly on the stronger of these skills.
Disco Face Stab - The value of this to moxie classes is obvious, but muscle classes are unlikely to use it unless they're having trouble hitting, and myst classes are unlikely to use it at all. Still, while it may be a bit niche, it's quite good at what it does.
Disco Fever - It's a rather strong passive damage boost, but only moxie classes use it, severely limiting its overall value.
Heart of Polyester - As with the rest of the passive resistance skills, it's useful, but there's too many better skills for this to get any kind of early priority.
Smooth Moves - As with Musk of the Moose, the ability to manipulate encounters is very useful, but it's only a 5% swing, so it's very unreliable.
Superhuman Cocktailcrafting - Sure, you can make awesome booze with this, but as a hardcore player, you can't buy the final ingredients to do so, so while this provides a pretty large benefit, only moxie classes can use it, at all.
MehAll Dance Combo Skills that aren't Face Stab - You can't do disco combos when you're not actually a disco bandit, and if a monster is hard enough for de-leveling to help, you're going to want to use the best version of that.
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Accordion Thief------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MajorThe Ode to Booze - This is... well, this is pretty much the only reason most want to touch this class at all. The huge MP cost limits its use, but once you have the MP for it (and this will come much faster with the aid of Wisdom of the Elder Tortoises), this will net you an extra 15-18 adventures per day. You really can't go wrong with that.
Middling and MehEverything Else - This class has a bunch of useful buffs, but most of them are either kinda meh for something you have to keep casting, or insanely expensive MP-wise. Having a list of these available is nice, but with the exception of Ode to Booze, you're probably going to find you rarely use most of these in HC.
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Pastamancer------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MajorPastamastery - The ability to make the pasta/sauce combo foods is HUGE in HC, and this is one of the 2 skills you need to do it. I recommend getting Advanced Saucecrafting first (for the pots), but you'll definitely want to pair those 2 skills at some point.
Spirit of Ravioli - +25% max HP, passive. It may not be the most exciting skill in the world, but it's a very useful one to pretty much all classes (TT probably doesn't really need this.)
Canonelli Cacoon - No matter how much HP you have, this fully restores it. It's not even all that expensive considering that a DB pays the same MP to heal only 80 damage... and that's the second most efficient heal. It's even better if you also perm a Tongue spell, as the 2 in combination are a full recovery from a loss for 27-30 MP.
Fearful Fettucini - This is actually slightly stronger than Saucegeyser, and slightly cheaper, but it's forced to always deal spooky damage, making it overall less useful.
MiddlingEntangling Noodles - Though powerful, the fact that it has a 50% chance to break on turn 2 (and therefore do nothing but give your familiar an extra turn) limits its value, especially since it can't be used twice in a round. Still, while it's a crapshoot, when it works, it can make some fights MUCH easier, especially the earlier bosses.
Springy Fusilli - It's an enormous initiative boost, but you can get a pretty high rate of going first without employing this. It's great when it's needed, but that isn't really all that often in most cases. Grab the DB passive first.
Spirit of Rigatoni - It's extremely unlikely that you'll get a chef staff before level 7 in hardcore, but the ability to use one without a globy on a Sauceror is pretty huge. No one else cares though.
Stuffed Mortar Shell - When it comes to straight up spell damage, you'll likely find this to be the most reliable source of it. Although sauce nukes are stronger, they risk backlash.
Weapon of the Pastalord - It's a physical attack spell, when you're usually better off employing an element. (You can force it elemental, but only half). It also doesn't count as AoE. It does, however, do good damage, and it doesn't have the risk of overload backdamage that Saucegeyser does.
Leash of Linguini - This is another +5 familiar weight buff. Definitely grab the TT's passive for this first, but this is cheaper to cast than the TT's active, so this will likely be your second +familiar skill. Still, as most familiars have diminishing returns by weight, you probably won't be in a giant hurry to grab this.
Flavour of Magic - The ability to set your element at will is certainly useful, but only applies to Pasta spells, greatly limiting its value, especially since Weapon of the Pastalord can only be set to half elemental. Still, this is awesome to have when actually playing a Pastamancer, and once you have Stuffed Mortar Shell permed, is a good way to boost it.
Transcendental Noodlecraft - You can make awesome foods with this... but only when you're a caster.
MehAttack spells besides Weapon of the Pastalord and Stuffed Mortar Shell - If you're using spells on a non-caster, you generally want some heavy damage.
Lasagna Bandages - The sauceror has a better combat heal, and you're better off with cocoon if you're max HP is >65... which is usually is.
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Sauceror------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MajorSaucegeyser - This is the strongest normal attack spell in the game. It packs a huge punch, and unlike the rest of the sauce nukes, cannot cause backlash damage to the caster. If you're going to perm nukes, this is likely going to be your first choice.
Elemental Saucesphere - 20% resistance to all elements, and total resistance to quest element checks (especially in the daily dungeon) is quite useful. You probably won't be running this constantly on the low MP classes, but it's a great tool to have handy.
Advanced Saucecrafting - This is THE skill to perm on a Sauceror. Definitely grab this before anything else on this class. Not only is this the second half of being able to get a ton of adventures, but the potions it produces makes nearly all bosses stupidly easy to defeat. Both of these are an enormous help in HC, and go a loooooooooooong way towards making you not miss the mall.
MiddlingSaucy Salve - It's not an especially potent heal, but its ability to heal you without using a turn of combat gives it quite a bit of value early in a run. This stays in the middling category though, as it's worthless at high level.
Expert Panhandling - More meat is always nice, but the DB passive is twice as strong. Grab that first.
Jalapeno Saucesphere - It reflects a bit of damage, blocks a bit of damage, and if you have a sauce nuke, makes it also slightly heal you as you cast it. All 3 of these are useful, but none of them are done at an especially powerful level, limiting the value of this.
Jabanero Saucesphere - This effectively reduces the casting cost of sauce nukes, blocks damage better than Jalapeno (5 vs 3 damage reduction), and still hits enemies, but it doesn't heal you when you cast through it. As with Jalapeno, it's a nice thing to have handy, but not necessarily something you want to constantly maintain.
Instrinsic Spiciness - This is one of those odd skills that's actually more useful when you're NOT a Sauceror, as you'll actually notice the +level damage when you're doing dozens rather than hundreds of damage. Still, it is only +level, so this shouldn't get a huge priority.
Impetuous Sauciness - In most cases, you really only need 1 turn of a saucepot (a boss fight). However, if you're trying to force yourself into areas you shouldn't be able to handle yet, this makes that a lot more feasible. It's especially useful in things like seasonal challenge paths, where you're more likely to be temporarily stuck with some seriously gimped gear. It's very situational, but it's nice to have.
Diminished Gag Reflexes - As with all passive resistance skills, it's nice to have, but there's far better stuff to take from the class first.
Immaculate Seasoning - This is of course only useful if you perm a sauce nuke first (or are actually playing a sauceror), but it's quite nice if you do have one, as it *passively* forces the correct element into play when needed.
The way of Sauce - The extra 2 reagents is nice. The potions you can make with this are insanely powerful, but you need Superhuman Cocktailcrafting AND to be a moxie class to actually use this for that, and Pulverize to use it for elemental forms. Still, while you'll rarely get to use the main function of this, it's insanely powerful when you do get the chance, and if nothing else, more reagents to make your normal pots with never hurts, especially when 2/3 of the normal ones are going into food.
MehSauce nukes that aren't Geyser - If you're using a damage spell while not actually a Sauceror, it's generally because you want a LOT of damage. Geyser also carries zero risk of backlash, which is not true of the other sauce nukes.
Scarysauce - The damage is unreliable, it doesn't block damage, it doesn't do anything if you cast a spell through it, and though it grants resistance to 2 elements, it's 2 that aren't actually used much. In spite of this, it still costs 10. Needless to say, it's not a very attractive spell.
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Gnome Skills------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MajorTorso Awaregness - The extra gear slot is pretty huge, and a lot of people take this as one of their first perms as a result.
MiddlingThe +item and +meat ones - Though certainly useful, they're much weaker than the DB ones, so get the DB skills for this first.
MehThe +HP and +MP ones - They only add 5%. This tends to do a whole lot of nothing in the overwhelming majority of battles.
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