How drunk is too drunk?
Different drinks get me drunk at different speeds, is there any way of knowing how drunk a drink will make me? How drunk do I need to get before I become fall-down-drunk?
Solution 1:
The amount of Drunkeness you can have before becoming completely useless depends on your skills and what kind of run you are doing. For the purposes of normal ascensions, your alcohol tolerance runs at about a baseline 15. At and over that, you're face-down in the gutters. You can increase your tolerance by consuming a steel margarita, received from the Azazel in Hell quest.
Avatars of Boris and Zombie Slayers are lightweights, only having a tolerance of 5, while Avatars of Jarlsberg can handle slightly better at 10. Avatars of Sneaky Pete, on the hand, pretty much have two functional livers and have a base tolerance of 20.
Note that these numbers are the levels of Drunkenness at which you become falling-down drunk. The amount of alcohol you can drink and still actually adventure is the aforementioned appropriate number minus 1. So to more clearly illustrate my point:
- Normal ascension - 14 Drunkenness
- Avatar of Boris/Zombie Slayer - 4 Drunkenness
- Avatar of Jarlsberg - 9 Drunkenness
- Avatar of Sneaky Pete - 19 Drunkenness
- Actually Ed - 0 Drunkenness
- consuming steel margarita - +5 Drunkenness tolerance
- Nightcap (Avatar of Jarlsberg skill) - +5 Drunkenness tolerance
- Hard Drinker (Avatar of Sneaky Pete skill) - +10 Drunkenness tolerance
- Hollow Leg (Skill gained from Sloppy Jalopy) - +1 Drunkenness tolerance
- Replacement Liver (Actually Ed skill) - +5 Drunkenness tolerance
Solution 2:
The kingdom of loathing wiki has a potency value for most, if not all, drinks, and it is visible in the item description.
For a normal character the maximum drunkenness without being fall-down-drunk is 14. So 15 and above is to much. Getting a Liver of Steel increases your maximum safe inebriety to 19.
Solution 3:
You can get up to 14 drunkenness safely by default, and 19 if you get the liver of steel from the Deep Fat Friers side quest.
As a rule of thumb, beers and wines give you 1 or 2 drunkenness, spirits and basic mixed drinks give three, fancy mixed drinks(umbrella, coconut, etc) give 4.