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

[Azrael the cat]

OK, I'm giving this game another shot and I've got a question.

I'm playing a Dwarven Priest. I followed all the main steps so far (killed a mugger first, found the waterproof blanket and stairs to the UD, killed Kranach the raider, explored some of the Druid Dungeon). I just got the puppy quest and I entered the Puppy Cave to find my progress impeded by a giant river of "deep water."

Is my blanket enough to ensure safe crossing? Or do I need to forget about this quest for the moment?

Also, a random dwarf is wandering around chopping down walls and I got a piece of mithril ore. Any use in keeping it?

Blankets give resistance to the destruction of your items - they aren't perfect, but a fire res blanket will burn before your items do, same with water before your items rust etc. They don't help you cross flames/water.

There ARE multiple ways of crossing rivers (both of ice AND water), ADOM being the neat game it is. Firstly, you could learn fletching and bridgebuilding (you'll need the relevant books and enough food to read them without starving), then good yourself some wood and build the bridge. Or (and this is just ONE of the many reasons I love casters - elementalists are best at this trick for obvious reasons) you can just cast ice-bolt over the water. It will freeze the water into a bridge. There's lots of environmental interactivity in the game like that, you just need to keep your eye out for it.

 

[Azrael the cat]

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 agree with almost everything here except the 'magic' comments - it is tougher early-game but much much stronger late-game. Spells 'level up' like melee attacks, so they'll get tougher as they get used more. Also, no fighter is going to be able to pull all the monsters into a line and then zap all 10 of them with one ice ray (and I've almost never had problems with monsters shrugging off magic if I'm a magic-focussed class - though monsters are often highly resistant to specific forms of magic, so you need to swap around a bit til you find what they are weak against).

I'd have no fricken clue how you'd manage the gremlin dungeon without AoE and bolt attacks, nor greater vaults. Especially those bolt attacks (yes, archers get them too eventually, but not for a while - I agree that archers are cool, they're almost as good as a really really nerfed wizard, what with those bolt attacks but complete lack of teleport/wish/knock/other utility spells).

 

[Konjad]

OK, I played once more and I do like this game... I think I need more time though to make my opinion.

 

[Elwro]

As for pools, if you have the choice, drink from the one which colour corresponds to the colour of your character's eyes.

 

[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.

I agree with almost everything here except the 'magic' comments - it is tougher early-game but much much stronger late-game. Spells 'level up' like melee attacks, so they'll get tougher as they get used more. Also, no fighter is going to be able to pull all the monsters into a line and then zap all 10 of them with one ice ray (and I've almost never had problems with monsters shrugging off magic if I'm a magic-focussed class - though monsters are often highly resistant to specific forms of magic, so you need to swap around a bit til you find what they are weak against).

I'd have no fricken clue how you'd manage the gremlin dungeon without AoE and bolt attacks, nor greater vaults. Especially those bolt attacks (yes, archers get them too eventually, but not for a while - I agree that archers are cool, they're almost as good as a really really nerfed wizard, what with those bolt attacks but complete lack of teleport/wish/knock/other utility spells).

How about Darkforge? I can burn 10-20 castings of lightning bolt (Each hitting the fucker TWICE by using the wall) trying to kill a single golem. And they're weak to that. You can quadruple that number if you have to use magic missile or something.

Fire tower isn't quite as bad, but still, it takes a lot of casts of frost bolt on average to kill anything in there, because more often than not it gets shrugged off. Magic missile is practically useless except for clearing out hordes of weaklings, which is annoying because everything else but burning hands rapes the loot.

 

[Malakal]

Use 'ball' spells, they are a must later in the game. Ice Ball rapes fire tower, lighting ball rapes golems and molochs (allright its useful against them....), fireball and acidball are useful too. And with high Wi You can clear really large areas too.

Dont enter forge without lighting ball, just forget it.

Also learn death ray if possible, its an awesome spell against strong monsters (like ancient dragons and such).

 

[Azrael the cat]

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 agree with almost everything here except the 'magic' comments - it is tougher early-game but much much stronger late-game. Spells 'level up' like melee attacks, so they'll get tougher as they get used more. Also, no fighter is going to be able to pull all the monsters into a line and then zap all 10 of them with one ice ray (and I've almost never had problems with monsters shrugging off magic if I'm a magic-focussed class - though monsters are often highly resistant to specific forms of magic, so you need to swap around a bit til you find what they are weak against).

I'd have no fricken clue how you'd manage the gremlin dungeon without AoE and bolt attacks, nor greater vaults. Especially those bolt attacks (yes, archers get them too eventually, but not for a while - I agree that archers are cool, they're almost as good as a really really nerfed wizard, what with those bolt attacks but complete lack of teleport/wish/knock/other utility spells).

How about Darkforge? I can burn 10-20 castings of lightning bolt (Each hitting the fucker TWICE by using the wall) trying to kill a single golem. And they're weak to that. You can quadruple that number if you have to use magic missile or something.

Fire tower isn't quite as bad, but still, it takes a lot of casts of frost bolt on average to kill anything in there, because more often than not it gets shrugged off. Magic missile is practically useless except for clearing out hordes of weaklings, which is annoying because everything else but burning hands rapes the loot.

Yeah, like the guy below said, ball spells and death ray are your friend.

Having said that, part of the beauty of the game is that there is some SERIOUS thought to go into whether to min-max or develop allround skills. If you're just going the normal ending, then mn-maxed caster is probably the best. But sure, if you're doing the harder endings there are plenty of areas that will rape you hard. Even with ball lightning the golems will hurt. But EVERY build has some area that will assrape you - it's just a matter of working our whether you think you can develop your character's 'bacup' skills by the time you get there.

It's another good argument for starting in the small dungeon that takes you to the secret village if you are using a non-elementalist. You probably don't have many spells by then, so if you manage to survive through to the other end (which will probably take a few replays) you'll be on your way to building your melee skills.

The other trick with casters is to abuse the gremlin dungeon like all hell. Use your spells to get the artifact and then set things up so you have a water trap and gremlins on ONE side of you, and no other exit for them (so the door on the other sde of the trap is closed). You can then grind your melee and non-magic ranged skills to your heart's content, while having your beam magic to fall back upon if things get out of hand (yes it's grinding, but I suspect it's a large part of the reason why the dungeon s in the game). I always do it for a whle anyway - I don't go crazy or anything, just try to melee through as much as possible unless surrounded or in trouble, the gremlins being a need source of easy melee-grind at that stage of the game (and t's usually the 2nd big side-dungeon after the mummy, so it's about the point where versatility will soon become important).

 

[Malakal]

Well I find wizards to be all around good.
In the beginning they are easily one of the strongest classes. Did You know that a level one wizard with good ray spell (frost or acid) can go and kill the crime lord for his first kill? Just set tactics to coward and wizards tend to survive.
Then comes the midgame where wizards lose their starting advantage of having huge damage and range. This is when most of my chars die unless I find good enough and versatile spells or good gear.
But in the late game nothing really compares when considering fighting more than one opponent (as it usually happens) or fighting certain types of opponents. And wizards can recharge wands and SCRIBE SCROLLS effectively. Need some corruption to be cured? SoCR please. Need some defense? Scrolls of defense or protection. Going for minotaur maze? Magic mapping. Alchemy is awesome too, wizards also have herbalism from the start.

Only problems wizards have are insanely strong enemies with lots of hp (like molochs and greater molochs) or enemies outright immune to everything (titans and diamond golems, greater karmic wyrms). But You know what? They can teleport the fuck out of there. Or summon some monsters as meatshields. Or use another one from quite large list of utility spells.

Wizards with trained ranged weapon skill (for slaying ammo) are, I think, THE class (also priests but I hate those fags and dont play them) of ADoM. Versatile, with many options for combat or escaping, enchanting and brewing, stat training and wishing. At least beats swinging pieces of metal around.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Eh, that just means you have to stair scum the ID for thirty years to get ball spells. Might as well make a wish engine and random your class.

By the time I've cleared the pyramids, graveyard, CoC down to Khelvaster, I'll be lucky to have more than one book of ball spells. And it's probably fire or acid. And it probably won't give me enough castings to even clear darkforge, just the first hallway.

The utility magic is really handy, but to get enough spells to actually fight like a wizard instead of a shitty archer, you pretty much have to scum. You can rape the early game, but once you need that AoLS for Khel, your attack power drops like a rock and you need crazy spells that are too rare to find in decent quantities through normal play.

Consider this: In the time it takes to find 2 books of ball lightning by stair scumming the ID, how many stacks of ammo will you find for an archer? Hell, at least one of them is probably construct slaying.

Being able to clear a vault also isn't very rewarding if you had to burn all the loot in the process.

 

[Malakal]

Well there is the library. There is the book casting feat build (getting feats that make You cast effectively from books without actually having to memorize spells, but some loses in effectivity). There is diving to level 9 of the ID and back. And of course, my favorite, starting with 25+ Le. One read gives then about 500-600 spellwhateverthatis. Or shops, those always have some spellbooks.

Yes, it depends on luck. But so does almost everything in roguelikes. You can play archer and never get an artifact bow.

 

[Elwro]

As for darkforge, the golems aren't very fast, are they? With lightning bolt you can simply kill one or two and climb up 1 level, regenarate PPs and return.

 

[someone else]

DamnedRegistrations, have you tried playing a mage class?
Book drop rate is different between classes.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You could, but archers wield artifact swords and spears just as well as paladins. Mages get screwed for their learning rates on weapon skills.

Can you get to the library that early? I've never gotten my climbing even close to 100 with a mage by that point.

Book casting has the same issue: Until you're level 30+, it's such a shitty way of casting a combat spell you're better off throwing rocks. It's like what, triple casting time and mana cost by default? And you need like a dozen feats to get it down to 2x and 1.5x or something. And I've gotten under 100 memory or whatever from a book even with grey elf wizards. Bad enough for a common spell like magic missile, but when you get like 60 for frost ball, what do you do then? Read it more and get even shittier amounts? Take the book with you to relearn it when it runs out (And risk getting it torched)? Run back to your stash every time you run out of casts?

I just don't see the advantage over having an archer or paladin, learning some of the utility spells to use sparingly, and being able to fight things in the mid game without worrying about nuking the loot or running out of ball lightning forever. Archers have the easiest early game anyways. I can reliably take an archer straight through the UD without even heading to town, let alone getting healing. That's insane.

 

[Castanova]

DR, so if you're playing an Archer you just go Small Cave -> UD -> HMV -> CoC -> cooked lizards -> finish starting area? Or do you skip the Puppy Cave / Village Dungeon / Druid Dungeon entirely?

I'm improving with the game a bit. I getting to the CoC pretty consistently now but then I die doing something stupid usually. Blessed amulets of fast healing or whatever are quite nice

 

[Damned Registrations]

Oh, I don't actually do that. You'll want healing for the later areas anyways. Usually when I play I skip the puppy cave and druid dungeon and I only do the UD if I get a really close set of stairs or if I start with healing and can do it while I'm level 1-3. The village dungeon is a must before anything else if you lack healing and an eventual must if you lack herbalism. The shop and free healing potion at HMV is a very nice bonus, and you can often find enough herbs to at least get some Stoma and alraunia in the UD, but playing without healing or herbalism is a nightmare, and the SMC is a death trap after level 5 or so, unless you can get to the stairs very safely somehow.

I'm just saying you can take an archer through there right off the bat. That's pretty crazy, taking a character through the UD without healing. You sure as hell couldn't run a thief or assassin through there the same way (Well, maybe a Trollish one.)

 

[Castanova]

But if you play an Archer, you don't start with Healing OR Herbalism. Don't you need to pick between the two in that case since the quests are mutually exclusive?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yep. Unless you get lucky with a potion of learning or whatever it is later on.

However, herbalism isn't strictly necessary. It speeds up herb farming by a TON and eliminates the need for scrolls of remove curse to fix all the herbs, but you can still get all the same herbs without herbalism.

Technically I'd rather have herbalism I think, since you can heal with spenseweed but you can't feed yourself or cure poison with Healing. But the druid dungeon is such a pain I'm not sure it's worth it. Fucking cats.

 

[getter77]

Did I miss the thread where Codex ponders IF the dev chatterings on the ADOM blog will result in the legendary bugs getting fixed after all these years and new features get introduced via the notion they've got cooking for an iPad release?

Otherwise, I'd like to think they'll manage it at least somewhat---likely as a prelude to anything finally happening with JADE within this next year or so.

http://www.adom.de/blog/index.php

 

[Malakal]

Well I have played some, having been inspired by this thread, and levelled my wizard from level 35 to 41 while getting three orbs (air, earth and mana).

I encountered, for the first time ever, an eternium golem. Funny enemy but vulnerable to acid, unfortunately for him.
I also scribed three scrolls of chaos resistance while pondering how good is it to be a wizard. At a cost of mere 2 points of mana each I removed 7 corruptions. Not bad.

Now I am wondering whether to go for an ultimate ending or a normal one. I have all orbs and medal of chaos, did the ratling quest so I can get the crown, saved the man I needed to save.... Only thing left is to get the trident. And corruptions needed, because I am the champion of balance. But normal endings score better, I am divided on this.
So, some advice?

 

[Elwro]

Well, which level will the quick guy be on?

 

[Malakal]

Well, which level will the quick guy be on?

I think I did kill mugger as my first kill so probably <10. But I could safely dive <100, with wands of monster detection and recharging them while scribing scrolls to cure corruption and teleporting... Not that there is any need to do so. I usually try to pick my first kill safely, just in case.

 

[Zomg]

Bolt spells do start sucking bad in the midgame. If I'm playing an actual mage the drop rate increases for spellbooks + high learning and literacy are usually good enough for me to use ball spells more or less at will though. Just don't read away the entire book right off, there are diminishing returns for how many uses you get from each reading. The half-mage classes like paladins and priests or the quasi-mage classes like elementalists that don't get so many book drops do need to be archers as a top priority though.

 

[Elwro]

Pro tip for book-hunting in the ID (of course, only resort to this if you're desperate):

1) Stand on the stairs on level 8
2) Cast Far Sight
3) Press ">" and "<" repeatedly until you see a """.

Why level 8? Because levels 1-9 are corruption-free, and the deeper you go, the higher the danger level, so the better the drops.

 

[Castanova]

Well, sheeit. Just got the Dwarftown and Thundarr assigned me a Shadow Lord as my kill

Any particularly good place to find them?

 

[Elwro]

As a gamer, not as a char, do you already know what to ask Thrundarr for him to open a new area for you? This area is where I'd go to if I was to kill a shadow lord. Still, since your character almost certainly didn't learn about the location yet, many would call this cheating. Tough luck!

 

[Castanova]

I know that you can say 'portal' to him. I don't know exactly where the portal leads, though. Does going through this portal invalidate his second quest? (finding out whats past the animated forest, etc.)

What kind of level should I be before going through this portal?