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

[Mozg]

The interfaces for '90s roguelikes are obtuse but very fast once you get muscle memory for the hotkeys. It's the VI sperg principle - maybe it's better to have modifiers + hotkeys to remember than it is to have to navigate a menu a billion times.

I forget what exact keys you use but there are fast ways to manage inventory in ADOM. Like ctrl+d puts you in an extended drop menu where you can drop multiple items at once.

 

[Elwro]

Check also ':d".

 

[Space Satan]

tried this.
seems like an interesting roguelike but holy fuck the interface! shift+z to cast magic spells, ctrl+i to cast psi spells.
do you want to sell loot? good luck entering and exiting the clumsy inventory, dropping items one at a time.
the commands are scattered all over the place, with no apparent consistency whatsoever. even the definitely not stellar angband pisses on this, and it's 30 years old game, not a brand new release.

it's 20goddamn15! it's a videoGAME, not a videoSUFFERING.

git gud

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

how do you survive starvation? shops don't refresh and food is bloody expensive and bloody heavy to carry. i can make survive only characters with outdoorsman or whatever it's named the skill to find food in wilderness, and then it's just quick dives.
damn, i survived three days without eating, drinking and sleeping and these heroes can't last three hours.

 

[Zdzisiu]

how do you survive starvation? shops don't refresh and food is bloody expensive and bloody heavy to carry. i can make survive only characters with outdoorsman or whatever it's named the skill to find food in wilderness, and then it's just quick dives.
damn, i survived three days without eating, drinking and sleeping and these heroes can't last three hours.

Eat corpses?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i always get sickness and die anyway.

 

[Tacgnol]

i always get sickness and die anyway.

Unless they've changed something, the only humanoid corpse that causes sickness is kobolds. You can eat orcs, goblins etc without any problems.

In fact, your character comments orcs taste like pork.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Except for kobold corpses.

In general, you buy as much large rations as possible, to the point of getting Strained (or even Strained!), to train your Strength if it's below 18. Eat corpses, preferrably look up which ones are good and which are bad (just look up the Guidebook, playing ADOM spoiler-free is a fairly ridiculous proposition for most of us; but in general, kobolds, rabid dogs, and undead corpses are a no-no). When you get to CoC, a dungeon to the far West that you need to become at least semi-intermediate at the game to reach, you will find the Arena and the ratling traders who sell very nutritious, light cooked lizards and fried bats (ignore everything else unless you're a troll, who eat everything). Then you get stomafillia herbs to fill your stomach. And if you're at the brink of starvation, your god can feed you with divine manna (which lasts for quite a while) if you have his favor.

 

[Ziem]

yeh just keep on checking the guidebook every 20 seconds, make this game even more of a chore than it already is

 

[Dzupakazul]

Well, yes, it takes a while to get used to the interface, but in general, I find that people, in general, use either savescumming or spoilers to cut on the learning curve. I don't know anyone who managed to YAVP a character without prior spoiler knowledge.

You don't have to look up everything in the guidebook, but some general survival tips like "don't eat kobolds" and such are useful to look up.

And again, I figure you have to have a certain acquired taste to play such roguelikes.

I like ADOM because it works well on my numpad-deprived notebook, which doesn't permit me to play DoomRL properly, for instance.

Also - I know people capable of cranking wins out at a breakneck pace, so, after a while, you get used to the game.

I don't think it's any more tedious than, say, Mordor: the Depths of Dejenol.

 

[Space Satan]

how do you survive starvation? shops don't refresh and food is bloody expensive and bloody heavy to carry. i can make survive only characters with outdoorsman or whatever it's named the skill to find food in wilderness, and then it's just quick dives.
damn, i survived three days without eating, drinking and sleeping and these heroes can't last three hours.

Eat dead people. But before, cook dead people to make corpses last longer before rotting. Some creatured will provide you with stats, some with extremely useful abilities, some with penalties and bad effects.
Hint: DON'T eat dwarven children, gorgons, demons and harpies

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

is there a way to learn new skills? i want to try a ranger with magic but i don't get literacy every time.

 

[Space Satan]

There are some ways. Certain could be learned from quests, others mostly from items, like very rare and valuable scrolls of education and such.

 

[Suiboon]

is there a way to learn new skills? i want to try a ranger with magic but i don't get literacy every time.

If your character starts without literacy, rest assured there is a way of getting it as the game progresses. One is by doing quests and the other is eating a dark sage corpse.

Spellcasting is best left to spellcasting classes for a couple of reasons. First of to be able to read even the easiest spellbooks you will need literacy and concentration at or near 100. A good learning score will help as well. Fighter types have a very hard time learning spells even if the aforementioned conditions are met. Not to mention that you won't simply FIND spellbooks as easily as a Wizard will.

 

[Palikka]

You are victorious! \o/

Total of 44 characters and 83 hours of the new Steam version and I finally beat it with a lvl 44 dwarven priest (closed the gate and left). My third victory in total.

The graphical mode really grew on me, ended up using it exclusively. Felt very claustrophobic at first but got used to it. A bit too cutesy graphics for this kind of game imho.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

is there a way to learn new skills? i want to try a ranger with magic but i don't get literacy every time.

If your character starts without literacy, rest assured there is a way of getting it as the game progresses. One is by doing quests and the other is eating a dark sage corpse.

Spellcasting is best left to spellcasting classes for a couple of reasons. First of to be able to read even the easiest spellbooks you will need literacy and concentration at or near 100. A good learning score will help as well. Fighter types have a very hard time learning spells even if the aforementioned conditions are met. Not to mention that you won't simply FIND spellbooks as easily as a Wizard will.

as a level 9 rat ranger i found two books already :V but yeah, i noticed that i'm not going to be able to cast spells anytime soon. or ever.

 

[Damned Registrations]

By level 9 a wizard will likely have found like 12-24 books, depending on your penchant for wiping out cannon fodder like vaults and clearing the low level dungeons. The only question is how many of those books will be the ones you need vs worthless shit like darkness or summon monster.

 

[Space Satan]

There's a library with every spell available in the game. Including book of Wish,

 

[Ziem]

yeah.. by the time you reach the library you're going to have the useful spells anyway, and wish is a useless spell.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

meh, fun didn't last long.
well, it's never been actually "fun", i was interested in exploring its possibilities.

 

[Dzupakazul]

You can play a Paladin or Monk, these drop spellbooks at a pretty decent rate and can actually cast.

For most classes that aren't primary spell-casters, wands, scrolls, thrown potions and bookcasting is the way to go.

 

[Nevill]

Ranger is doing fine with spells, but those are supporting spells, and he needs to be pretty high level to learn them consistently. At lvl9 it is not very plausible, unless we are talking light/darkness or something equally primitive.

He won't be throwing fireballs around, that's for sure.

Don't diss darkness, that spell can save a life of a melee char on more than one occasion. Not every monster can see in the dark.

Bookcasting is pretty underwhelming, and it is hard to keep the books safe.

 

[Damned Registrations]

For every situation where darkness is useful to you, you'll have already found like 3 consumables to create darkness. Also melee is ADOM is hopelessly outclassed by ranged weapons and spells. You're better off throwing rocks unless you stumbled onto an Eternium weapon before you even found a real ranged weapon.

 

[Space Satan]

But phase daggers, man, phase daggers!

 

[Damned Registrations]

I see your phase daggers and raise you a *Foo flies into a berserk rage!* *You are stunned!* *You are critically hit like 10 fucking times!* *Suck it, massively overprepared melee character!*