West of Loathing: what do the stats do?

I get that muscle, moxie and mysticality all are the core stats, and I played enough KoL back in the day do grok them. But is there any information about the other stats? Grit? Skills? I don't need an optimized character, but I would like to figure out what each thing does. There doesn't seem to be anything like a mouse over tooltip or anything.

Solution 1:

There are explanations for each of the stats in game if you open up the character screen (C) and click on each stat.

Here is a breakdown of the primary ones:

• Muscle improves how much damage you do with melee weapons and reduces the damage you take from monsters' melee attacks.
• Moxie improves how much damage you do with ranged attacks and reduces the damage you take from monsters' ranged attacks.
• Mysticality improves how much damage you do with spells and reduces the damage you take from monster's spells.

Basically when you use a stat to attack, your stat is compared to the same enemy stat to see how much damage you do. The same thing happens in reverse when monsters attack you.

The other stats (Grit, Gumption, and Glamour) improve your capacities for things and provide combat boosts.

• Grit increases your HP, Stomach Capacity (how many foods you can eat per day), and Pain Tolerance (how many fights you can lose/times you can get angry before you are knocked out for the day)
• Gumption improves your speed (makes it more like you will attack first in combat), maximum AP (how many times you can use skills in combat), and Spleen Capacity (how many potions you can use per day)
• Glamour increases your meat gains (how much currency you find after combat or in events), item finding bonus (how likely you are to find items after combat or events), and liver capacity (how many alcoholic drinks you can use per day)

You will need to level up these stats multiple times before you see all of the capacity improvements.

There are too many individual skills to list, but their effects are also mentioned when you click on them in the character view.

Stats and skills can also provide additional options when interacting with people or things in the world. Some examples:

• You may need 20 mysticality to decode some runes or 30 moxie to fast talk your way into winning at cards or 10 muscle to move something heavy.
• You can use Outfoxin'/Intimidatin'/Hornswogglin' to resolve situations without combat. The more difficult the fight, they higher the skill needs to be to bypass it.
• You need to have lockpickin' to unlock locked containers. And safecrackin' to unlock safes.
• You can use master cookery to get a better result in some random map events where the enemies are cooking things. Other skills are used in other random events.

The various options will usually mention their requirements to the right of the option box. If you don't have the necessary stats or skills, the option will be grayed out.