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KickStarter Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) - now available on Steam and GOG
- Thread starter Lim-Lim
- Start date
Paula Tormeson IV
Scholar
A good tactic is to play fighter and switch constantly between "coward" and "berserk" (coward when you move, berserk when you strike). Gets pretty boring though. And ultimately it didn't help against the crime lord and his two half-orc bouncers. I'd just killed the dark sage and was planning to visit the village to collect my reward, but ended up in the outlaw settlement instead, and thought I might as well kill the crime lord while I was there. I got killed in one round instead. ffs
Elwro
Arcane
Wait for the really fun deaths, like e.g. when you miscalculate the trajectory of your Bouncing Bolt and your mid-level caster you've invested quite a few hours in fries himself :D
Paula Tormeson IV
Scholar
By "far" I meant what lvl, preferably without spending time in the infinite dungeon. My three most successful characters have all died at lvl 7. It was only in my second to last game that I realized praying is a good way of healing your character. And perhaps the "coward" tactic setting is good for spell casters. Haven't tried that yet.
Elwro
Arcane
Of course it is :D Praying should be your last resort until you learn how to properly use altars, though.
And the rate of gaining levels varies hugely. Try playing a hurthling healer - you'll be level 10 in no time, while still being easier to kill than a level 3 trollish fighter. A trollish barbarian might not even get to level 30 before the endgame, but that's an extreme example. I think I usually get into teens without any problems. Know when to run etc.
No, but seriously, don't play hurthling healers right now. Or hurthling merchants. Trollish wizards are easy for beginners, though.
And the rate of gaining levels varies hugely. Try playing a hurthling healer - you'll be level 10 in no time, while still being easier to kill than a level 3 trollish fighter. A trollish barbarian might not even get to level 30 before the endgame, but that's an extreme example. I think I usually get into teens without any problems. Know when to run etc.
No, but seriously, don't play hurthling healers right now. Or hurthling merchants. Trollish wizards are easy for beginners, though.
I usually either die fast or last quite long, after the ball starts rolling. When you have many options survival improves... Most often I die while diving into the infinite dungeon looking for amulet of life saving/wish (up to level 60 often...). It also helps levelling: one room full of greater wyrms is worth dozens of levels (imagine 24 named greater karmic wyrms!).
Currently I have a level 4x wizard with wand of wishing with 4 wishes left and 2 orbs (+many artifacts), but I'm waiting for good concentration to finish this one.
Mellee isnt exactly good but has the best weapons in game: Sting and Needle for massive dmg, Trident of the Red Rooster as overall the best weapon, many nice slayer weapons (skullcrusher, vanquisher). And most importantly you have many guaranteed artifacts unlike ranged weapons.
And I reroll untill I get my chosen starsign. If you can choose race why not sign?
Currently I have a level 4x wizard with wand of wishing with 4 wishes left and 2 orbs (+many artifacts), but I'm waiting for good concentration to finish this one.
Mellee isnt exactly good but has the best weapons in game: Sting and Needle for massive dmg, Trident of the Red Rooster as overall the best weapon, many nice slayer weapons (skullcrusher, vanquisher). And most importantly you have many guaranteed artifacts unlike ranged weapons.
And I reroll untill I get my chosen starsign. If you can choose race why not sign?
314159 said:
Well when You have 100PV they dont hit hard. But true, melleing greater titans or molochs is suicide, true too for the claw bugs.
And one word: Vanquisher. Weapon with possibly ALL slaying properties. ALL at once!
Besides You can use both mellee and ranged, especially on faster monsters (shoot when they close in then fight). And dopplegangers.
Awor Szurkrarz
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2009
- Messages
- 21,899
Most of my Wizards were pretty good at melee.
Elwro
Arcane
Yup. I killed the emperor moloch with a beastfighter. It was simply impossible for a character fighting with her (I wanted to do the pool quest) fists to damage the guy (200 PV)... so I used the arrows of construct slaying iirc.
thathmew
Zero Sum Software
I've completed 6 lawful ultra endings, 2 neutral, 1 chaotic, and 6 regular endings.
I almost never play straight fighters, I've won with bards, priests, wizards, archers, a paladin, healer, assassin, and a weaponsmith. Almost always magic and missile focused. I think my first win was the classic dwarven priest. And numerous failed ultra endings after hitting level fifty with everything from wizards to farmers to monks. All my characters do melee a lot as well as cast and use missiles. And yes, I usually use polearms, I'll farm orcs for a good one if I need to.
Wizards can be a bit tough early due to lack of HP, but rock later on. Gnomish wizards/priests/healers are probably my favorite due to starting with extra talents. Grey elves are nices to start because of the elven chainmail as well. Starting with treasure hunter makes the game a lot easier by the end. Herbs are key. I usually go through 6-10 characters up to level 8 or so before I get one that I continue onward with (or don't die).
andy williams guidebook is crazy helpful. I confess I only got one character up to level 25 before I started reading it. Lot of fun figuring things out on my own before then, though.
My usual game start is: go to village, buy as much food as possible, go to outlaw village, kill something, learn pick-pocketting if neutral/evil and don't have it, walk over everything in the shop for some early ID's, go to small mountain cave (nw) until level 4, try to find stairs down, read the scrolls there to practice literacy while levelling, leave, wander countryside until raider is encountered (often die/starve at this point), kill raider (sometimes die here), collect reward, buy food, keep strained and satiated to improve strength. Explore druid cave (come back and kill druid later at level 10-12), explore puppy cave (sometimes die here), hopefully head back down through small mountain cave and out other side, otherwise head overland. Once a character actually reaches this stage I'm dedicated to trying for a win. If I haven't encountered any herb levels, altars, or gotten some good loot though, I'll sometimes just abandon and start over.
damn it makes me want to play.
peace,
-m
I almost never play straight fighters, I've won with bards, priests, wizards, archers, a paladin, healer, assassin, and a weaponsmith. Almost always magic and missile focused. I think my first win was the classic dwarven priest. And numerous failed ultra endings after hitting level fifty with everything from wizards to farmers to monks. All my characters do melee a lot as well as cast and use missiles. And yes, I usually use polearms, I'll farm orcs for a good one if I need to.
Wizards can be a bit tough early due to lack of HP, but rock later on. Gnomish wizards/priests/healers are probably my favorite due to starting with extra talents. Grey elves are nices to start because of the elven chainmail as well. Starting with treasure hunter makes the game a lot easier by the end. Herbs are key. I usually go through 6-10 characters up to level 8 or so before I get one that I continue onward with (or don't die).
andy williams guidebook is crazy helpful. I confess I only got one character up to level 25 before I started reading it. Lot of fun figuring things out on my own before then, though.
My usual game start is: go to village, buy as much food as possible, go to outlaw village, kill something, learn pick-pocketting if neutral/evil and don't have it, walk over everything in the shop for some early ID's, go to small mountain cave (nw) until level 4, try to find stairs down, read the scrolls there to practice literacy while levelling, leave, wander countryside until raider is encountered (often die/starve at this point), kill raider (sometimes die here), collect reward, buy food, keep strained and satiated to improve strength. Explore druid cave (come back and kill druid later at level 10-12), explore puppy cave (sometimes die here), hopefully head back down through small mountain cave and out other side, otherwise head overland. Once a character actually reaches this stage I'm dedicated to trying for a win. If I haven't encountered any herb levels, altars, or gotten some good loot though, I'll sometimes just abandon and start over.
damn it makes me want to play.
peace,
-m
Azrael the cat
Arcane
I've played that game to death, won the normal ending, the super-good 'kill the chaos god' ending (where you have to go almost all the way evil, get uber-corrupted, and make it all the way back to a champion of goodness), and got my ass handed to me trying to usurp the evil god and take his place.
I don't recall anything about the rng getting harder if you get good items. You just got unlucky.
BUT be warned: there ARE dungeons where certain things can significantly increase the difficulty.
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SPOILERS
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For example, there's a dungeon accessible early on the gives you some GREAT rewards for doing early and going all the way through to the exit at the bottom level of the dungeon (you can EITHER go in, get a very nice early item, then high-tail it out, OR you can try to go down to the bottom level and find the exit at the other end, taking you somewhere that gives you a really neat bonus location that has one NPC needed for some of the super-endings (I think it's the 'become the god of corruption' ending, maybe some of the others too) and a very neat companion if you go back to pick him up at level 30.
Now the 2 nasty aspects are: (a) the dungeon gets harder the more turns that you spend in there (so you need to race to the exit asap), and (and this is the real killer:
(b) the RNG DRASTICALLY scales upwards if you go in there at a higher level. I.e. if you go in first, it's a tough initial dungeon, so long as you're sensible enough to explore the first level thoroughly, get the 'nice item' (btw it's a practical item, not an uber-weapon - things like 'x'-resistant blankets can be more important than weapons of+uberness in ADOM), and then race to the bottom of the dungeon, avoiding encounters where possible. BUT if you go in the first time later in the game, you're in for an ass-whooping (from memory, once you've got to the secret town on the other side of the dungeon you don't need to go through the dungeon to get there in future - either that or the dungeon stops scaling upwards, I forget which).
I ALWAYS start with that isntead of the small dungeon - not only does it set your character up really well for the early game, but it's a great test of whether your character is tough enough to invest serious hours into. Most chars will die in that dungeon, and quite quickly, so look at it as weeding out the inferior types. It doesn't take long to spam characters through the dungeon until you get one good enough (and lucky enough to make it) and then you've got a decent shot at going a long way through the game. When people ask how the hell you can win the game (on the 'normal' win conditions that is - the super victories require some serious luck on top of some insane knowledge of game mechanics), starting out in that dungeon is, imho, the most important bit of advice. If you can get a character through that dungeon, you'll easily get to the dwarf town, and will probably find it easy enough to reach the stage of the game where builds and skills come into it (different types of characters make things like the mummy dungeon, the assassin dungeon, the dwarven tomes etc either very very easy or very very hard, so I kind of call that the end of the 'mid-game').
I still recommend doing the small dungeon btw. Just make it your 2nd dungeon rather than your first. It will take negligible resources having made it through the other one and levelled up a bit.
I don't recall anything about the rng getting harder if you get good items. You just got unlucky.
BUT be warned: there ARE dungeons where certain things can significantly increase the difficulty.
.
.
.
.
.
.
].
SPOILERS
.
.
.
.
.
For example, there's a dungeon accessible early on the gives you some GREAT rewards for doing early and going all the way through to the exit at the bottom level of the dungeon (you can EITHER go in, get a very nice early item, then high-tail it out, OR you can try to go down to the bottom level and find the exit at the other end, taking you somewhere that gives you a really neat bonus location that has one NPC needed for some of the super-endings (I think it's the 'become the god of corruption' ending, maybe some of the others too) and a very neat companion if you go back to pick him up at level 30.
Now the 2 nasty aspects are: (a) the dungeon gets harder the more turns that you spend in there (so you need to race to the exit asap), and (and this is the real killer:
(b) the RNG DRASTICALLY scales upwards if you go in there at a higher level. I.e. if you go in first, it's a tough initial dungeon, so long as you're sensible enough to explore the first level thoroughly, get the 'nice item' (btw it's a practical item, not an uber-weapon - things like 'x'-resistant blankets can be more important than weapons of+uberness in ADOM), and then race to the bottom of the dungeon, avoiding encounters where possible. BUT if you go in the first time later in the game, you're in for an ass-whooping (from memory, once you've got to the secret town on the other side of the dungeon you don't need to go through the dungeon to get there in future - either that or the dungeon stops scaling upwards, I forget which).
I ALWAYS start with that isntead of the small dungeon - not only does it set your character up really well for the early game, but it's a great test of whether your character is tough enough to invest serious hours into. Most chars will die in that dungeon, and quite quickly, so look at it as weeding out the inferior types. It doesn't take long to spam characters through the dungeon until you get one good enough (and lucky enough to make it) and then you've got a decent shot at going a long way through the game. When people ask how the hell you can win the game (on the 'normal' win conditions that is - the super victories require some serious luck on top of some insane knowledge of game mechanics), starting out in that dungeon is, imho, the most important bit of advice. If you can get a character through that dungeon, you'll easily get to the dwarf town, and will probably find it easy enough to reach the stage of the game where builds and skills come into it (different types of characters make things like the mummy dungeon, the assassin dungeon, the dwarven tomes etc either very very easy or very very hard, so I kind of call that the end of the 'mid-game').
I still recommend doing the small dungeon btw. Just make it your 2nd dungeon rather than your first. It will take negligible resources having made it through the other one and levelled up a bit.
Azrael the cat
Arcane
Destroid said:
Versatility is the key to ADOM. Your character's 'strengths' will get you through to the midgame. By the time you hit vaults and greater vaults, or simply run into quest dungeons that exploit the gap in your character build (and the game is designed such that no matter what class/race combo you go, there will be at LEAST one dungeon that is designed completely around fucking you over - mobs full of fire/elemental resistance for casters, mobs full of insane melee/lvl-drain/karmic for melee etc.
BUT unless the RNG hates you (and it does, but it takes a while for it to realise that
), you'll have quite some time up your sleeve before you start running into that stuff. What that means is that unlike almost every other crpg out there, you don't min-max in ADOM. Instead, spend those early easy levels shoring up the holes in your character. If you are a mage, then yes practice your casting but whenever you see a nice easy mob use it to train your melee (hint: the gremlin dungeon an provide an infinite supply of that, although you can also end up with things going out of control - it's actually a puzzle-dungeon, where you need to use doors and put stones on traps to limit the number of gremlins and the directions that they can come at you from. But once you've got the hang of that, you should be able to use it to get your wizard competent at melee or (preferably) some non-magic ranged attack, or both.Similarly, there's no reason why your fighter needs to stay illiterate - there are several sources of learning in the game. Get literate, get scrolls - heck, learn some spells - to deal with those pesky melee-is-suicide creatures. And ALWAYS learn a ranged weapon as well as a melee one as a fighter.
Mind you, I've never even made it to the last level as a non-caster before. Priests are probably my favourite combo of spells and melee, then wizards.
Paula Tormeson IV
Scholar
Hey, what's going on with Prelude to Darkness? I've heard that it's crazy buggy, so I've been moving it toward the future in my list of games to play. The website says the latest version is four years old. The forums whisper of a version 1.7.thathmew said:
Castanova
Prophet
Azrael the cat said:
I'm a bit confused since the dungeon that you're describing (with the blanket) is called the Small Cave and that leads to the Unremarkable Dungeon. What are you referring to when you say "the small dungeon" if it's not the Small Cave?
Awor Szurkrarz
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2009
- Messages
- 21,899
Isn't small cave the puppy cave?
Paula Tormeson IV
Scholar
Small cave is just some two-level dungeon, iirc. I think he means the one immediately south-east of the village. It's maybe eight levels, and I seemed to notice the monsters got tougher in the manner he described.
Castanova
Prophet
No, small cave is the single level dungeon with the blanket. The puppy cave is the 4 (?) level dungeon NE of the start town with the puppy at the bottom.
Paula Tormeson IV
Scholar
I just visited a dungeon directly NE of the village, and it was called "a small cave". Unfortunately, I died before I could check how many levels it had, even before I had found the first stairs down (if it had any).Castanova said:
Castanova
Prophet
"The Small Cave" is most certainly NW of Terinyo. The Puppy Cave is the one NE near where you start the game. I don't know what the description is in-game, though. Never noticed... I'm just going by what they're referred to on the guidebook.
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