KickStarter Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) - now available on Steam and GOG

[Lim-Lim]

https://www.adom.de/home/index.html




https://af.gog.com/game/adom?as=1649904300

Spoiler

I have been making new character's in ADOM again, and noticed one peculiar trend. Everytime I get an exeptionally good item early on, the game just throws shit in my face.

I just made a character who found an adamantium tower shield in the Small cave, but nothing to worry about folks! I stepped down the stairs to continue my journey, and behold! An ogre magus was standing right next to me, delivering that quick death that my character so obivously deserved by getting such a boon early on.

My question is this: Does the game take notice of what items you get, and then tries to offset your good luck luck? This kind of thing happens all too often just to be shitty luck IMHO.

 

[Andhaira]

I like your username.

mmmmm...Lim-Lim.

 

[Zeros]

it's kinda how the RNG (random number generator) works in the game. if I remember well, many posts in the adom newsgroup refered to it as a cruel harsh mistress. it's part of adom's atmosphere: you know you just might get shafted next corner.

 

[Higher Game]

That's just bad luck. The small cave does have a tendency towards uber items (I've gotten an eternium two handed sword there!) and the unremarkable dungeon has loads of features (and traps). I don't try going through there earlier if I'm not a combat based character.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

I just died there at lvl 7 killed by a pixie archer when I was running away from it while invisible, my spell points exhausted, and hit some other monster that was blocking the way. A stupid accident, as I suppose I was supposed to "swap position with monster", right?

How far do you guys usually get in this game, on average? Do you always have to go through a couple of false starts (fail characters, bad luck) before you get far in the game?

 

[roll-a-die]

Vile necromancer! Begone heretic, flee before the light of the God-Emperor!

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Do I have to post it in the other thread, or make a new one? (Thread necromancy is not as evil as it sounds.)

 

[roll-a-die]

I would of posted it in the roguelike dicksuction. Rather than a year and half old thread, that hadn't been posted in since 2 days after it's conception.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It depends on how you play. A lot of the 'experts' will tell you that any character can be ascended, assuming you're willing to spend (obscene number here) turns in the infinite dungeon scumming (Yes, literally hopping up and down the same set of stairs until an item is within sight) for spellbooks, scrolls, rings, potions, etc. This is somehow deemed more fair than backing up your save file in case you get killed in a single turn by an enraged mouse. Because any 'good' player never gets in melee range of anything in the entire game .

It's mostly a crapshoot until you manage to get your herb farming done so you have some decent hp. After that point it gets interesting, but spending 2 hours doing the same shit to get there every time turned me off of ADOM. The game screws you on certain aspects: you pretty much NEED either healing, so you're limited in what quests you do since there's really only one fucking way to get it for characters that don't start with it.

The weapons aren't at all balanced and even if they were you'll never find artifact versions of most of them anyways, so just stick with polearms and forget the other 7 types exist.

The entire concept of being stealthy is a cruel joke. Just resign yourself to killing everything you see, ever.

Pickpockting is amazingly useful. It also requires more repetitive farming of weak enemies than any other skill in the game. If you want free loot, just scum the infinite dungeon. It's not really any less cheesy or broken or convenient.

Magic is generally pretty shitty at killing anything you need dead. Enemies you can't just squish with a dagger will shrug off all your missile spells anyways and are probably immune to fire, so you can't use burning hands either. You'll never get enough castings of any ball spells to wade through all that shit. But hey, at least you can carry a lot of shit. Too bad it'll just kill you when it bursts into flame or whatever.

Archery is broken. Really really broken. Normal arrows will take down almost anything just fine, and specific slaying ammo will take out bosses very quickly. You'll pretty much never miss or have to worry about an enemy with high PV. Oh, and you can attack a billion times before they reach you. Hell, you can just throw rocks and it'll work better than most melee weapons in the game.

 

[Destroid]

Archery is broken. Really really broken. Normal arrows will take down almost anything just fine, and specific slaying ammo will take out bosses very quickly. You'll pretty much never miss or have to worry about an enemy with high PV. Oh, and you can attack a billion times before they reach you. Hell, you can just throw rocks and it'll work better than most melee weapons in the game.

Sounds like Dwarf Fortress, unless the new patch has made crossbows anything less than a fantasy MG42.

 

[Elwro]

But you can encounter severe ammo problems when playing archers. Even with using Fletchery.

Anyway, the answer to the "How far" question is for me: "when I'm really paying attention to what I'm doing, usually to the dwarven city".

 

[Destroid]

I only played it while I was traveling, the furthest I got was to some fire tower, at which point I immediately died.

I'm guessing I got less than 5% of the way through the game. Didn't read any guides or anything, just played. Seemed to have most success with the elemental spell casters.

 

[Malakal]

Spellcasters are the best, simply because of great versatility and utility of spells. Everything weapons can do spells can do betetr and cheaper. Fighting those pesky ancient dragons? Death Ray instakills them, you can slay 6 per cast (SIX ANCIENT DRAGONS). Fighting molochs and greater molochs? Here, have a lighting ball (but slaying arrows might be ebtter in this case). Need to run? Teleport. Need to hide? Invisibility. Need amulets of life saving? Wish. No need for bridge building, for having picks or high strenght, magic deos it all.

I personally usually play as a wizard dual wielding tower shields. I dont kill even a single monster by hand, I am above that. The only problem is finding enough spellbooks, but some wandering through infinitive cave fixes that.

I have won (without cheating) twice. Both times gray elven wizards (other classes tend to be too hard for me), one ultimate ending and one normal.

 

[abstract]

The tower of eternal flames is closer to around 50% into the game. You'll need fire immunity and a specific item to survive it.

Elementalists are strong early on, until you start running into monsters with spell immunities or run out of spell "memory", at which point you are most probably fucked since you cannot read spellbooks and fight like a cow.

Farmers are surprisingly easy. I think mindcrafters are the most difficult, and druids the most annoying.

 

[spectre]

You don't need total fire immunity for the tower, just two stacked resistances (like one from an item and one intrinsic from an eaten corpse) will do (unless playing a drakeling).

Main problem with the tower is how to plan your equipment not to lose too much stuff.

Opiions vary as to which class is easiest, archers, wizards and priests seem to be best (especially priests are noob friendly), paladins and monks give a nice mix of weapon and spell ability, some say barbarians and beatfighters are easy as well.
Mindcrafters, farmers and merchants have a piss poor start, and bards are totally random.

Main thing when playing Adom is keeping your yes open at all times. One wrong move or a minor can kill you, or severely cripple the char.

 

[Destroid]

Ok, that makes the game considerably shorter than I thought it would be, it didn't seem to take particularly long to reach that point. It was quite some time ago that I was playing.

 

[Elwro]

Spellcasters are the best, Need amulets of life saving? Wish.

Oh, come on... you have to learn the spell first. (If you don't have a proper wand / ring / luck when drinking from a pool.) And the one event in which it is really fantastic to have an AoLS happens way before you can do this.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

It depends on how you play. A lot of the 'experts' will tell you that any character can be ascended, assuming you're willing to spend (obscene number here) turns in the infinite dungeon scumming (Yes, literally hopping up and down the same set of stairs until an item is within sight) for spellbooks, scrolls, rings, potions, etc. This is somehow deemed more fair than backing up your save file in case you get killed in a single turn by an enraged mouse. Because any 'good' player never gets in melee range of anything in the entire game .

It's mostly a crapshoot until you manage to get your herb farming done so you have some decent hp. After that point it gets interesting, but spending 2 hours doing the same shit to get there every time turned me off of ADOM. The game screws you on certain aspects: you pretty much NEED either healing, so you're limited in what quests you do since there's really only one fucking way to get it for characters that don't start with it.

The weapons aren't at all balanced and even if they were you'll never find artifact versions of most of them anyways, so just stick with polearms and forget the other 7 types exist.

The entire concept of being stealthy is a cruel joke. Just resign yourself to killing everything you see, ever.

Pickpockting is amazingly useful. It also requires more repetitive farming of weak enemies than any other skill in the game. If you want free loot, just scum the infinite dungeon. It's not really any less cheesy or broken or convenient.

Magic is generally pretty shitty at killing anything you need dead. Enemies you can't just squish with a dagger will shrug off all your missile spells anyways and are probably immune to fire, so you can't use burning hands either. You'll never get enough castings of any ball spells to wade through all that shit. But hey, at least you can carry a lot of shit. Too bad it'll just kill you when it bursts into flame or whatever.

Archery is broken. Really really broken. Normal arrows will take down almost anything just fine, and specific slaying ammo will take out bosses very quickly. You'll pretty much never miss or have to worry about an enemy with high PV. Oh, and you can attack a billion times before they reach you. Hell, you can just throw rocks and it'll work better than most melee weapons in the game.

I noticed at some point that the frost bolt, a previously never-failing weapon of mass destruction, just stopped harming the monsters much. I was able to kill a couple of dark elf warriors with it though.

Are there better rogue-likes that aren't just dungeon crawlers?

How many wilderness areas are there in ADOM apart from the first one?

 

[Malakal]

Spellcasters are the best, Need amulets of life saving? Wish.

Oh, come on... you have to learn the spell first. (If you don't have a proper wand / ring / luck when drinking from a pool.) And the one event in which it is really fantastic to have an AoLS happens way before you can do this.

I meant the spell from the spellbook. You need appropriate room to learn the spell (the one that decreases food consumption), about 40 Le not to waste time reading, and about 50 Ma + good birthsign giving -20% PP cost and -20% room for a suprisingly affordable wish to cast as many times as You need for a smal cost in mana stat.

And Temple of Elemental Fire isnt at 50% its at about 20% of the game. There are four more temples and long dungeon of chaos (50 lvl) and the rift (9lvl and library), and the maze (6lvl and maze) and other areas (tomb of high kings, small cave, pyramid, assasisn guild, chaos forge, umd?, etc), which You do not have to visit but are nice to visit anyway. And branches and unique locations (quickling tree, emperor moloch cave, water dragon cave, graveyard etc).
ADOM isnt short.

 

[Elwro]

I meant the spell from the spellbook.

I realized that, that's why I wrote what I did.

You need appropriate room to learn the spell (the one that decreases food consumption), about 40 Le not to waste time reading, and about 50 Ma + good birthsign giving -20% PP cost and -20% room for a suprisingly affordable wish to cast as many times as You need for a smal cost in mana stat.

I know all that :D But you missed one important ingredient: you have to somehow get the book. How many times did you find it apart from the guaranteed location? And when you're in the guaranteed location, you're most likely long after the "I wish I had an AoLS right now" event already.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Is the first wilderness area the only one? No caves lead to others?

 

[Malakal]

Yes, but there are some 'hidden' valleys (ie the northern-western one and southern-eastern). And there are many hidden locations.

Also I once started with the Wish spellbook (not very usefull at level one) and found it many times while exploring dungeons. There is one in the library too and every wizard should head there ASAP anyway (heal, death ray, ball spells are all quite rare). I usually do it way before going deeper into the caverns of chaos.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Well, it's a fun game anyway. And it's not like there are no exploits in other RPGs, quite the opposite in fact.

 

[someone else]

Reading this brings back memories. I cant' believe I won the game twice (priest and assasin), the amount of reading and planning I had to do... no way I'm playing this again.

Oh Paula, you can try the aliens roguelike in my sig. Or Gearhead if you like mecha.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I played ADOM for 3 years, every day and I had the Wish spellbook only one time, when I started with it.