Noob here looking for monster vuln advice

[spiny]

Hi all, I'm new to adom and it's been quite a while since I've played rogue-like games, so I'm rusty on basic principles developed playing those games. I've been testing the adom waters with gnome priests, grey elf wizards, and dwarf paladins. I generally find some way to get myself killed before I've reached level 10, but I had one character go to lv 11 but met up with a lesser daemon I couldn't do any damage to at all.

I honestly don't know what I'm doing in this game. I go to the outlaw town, kill the first hostile, walk thru the shop to id stuff, head to SMC or ID lv 1 to get to lv 3/4 (or unluckily higher lvl), do the sherrif's quest for gold (if still possible) to spend on keys from Shriek, save the carpenter, and then try to get thru UD and that's bout it for my experience thus far in this game.

In any event, I have the ADOM wiki and Improved ADOM guidebook as resources at my disposal but neither offered monster vulnerabilities from what I could see. I tried a general google search that wasn't very successful, so that brings me to these forums.

If I had the hindsight I have now, I probably would not have tried to mess with the lesser daemon, but I didn't have trouble with least daemons so thought I'd be ok. But I ended up getting toasted by the daemon and then meeting a green hag around the corner. I didn't even get a chance to see what she was about before I found myself with negative HPs. So is there some special list somewhere with monster vulnerabilities?

Thanks much for any input!
-Spiny

[JellySlayer]

I don't know if there's a complete source available for all such information. As a general rule of thumb, I use:

-Acid works on everything except for a few rare exceptions (monsters that spit acid, plus ants)
-Lightning works on just about everything except for a few rare exceptions.
-Ice works many creatures, but a fair number of things are resistant.
-About half of all monsters are immune to fire, notably all daemon (&) types.
-Magic missile works on everything.

True vulernabilities are rare and usually pretty obvious: cold creatures are weak against fire, fire creatures are weak against cold, some other creatures (liches) are weak against fire.

Note also that some monsters "shrug off" bolts. This is not the same as immunity--they will shrug off bolts of all types equally well. This just means you need high willpower/mana/spell effectiveness to make the spell stick. Repeated applications are necessary for particularly dextrous monsters. Ball and touch type spells (fireball, acid ball, burning hands, petrification) can never be shrugged.

[nathrakh]

Guidebook's monster list has them. That's about it. Generally undeads don't like fire and fire creature ice and so on. Pretty simple.

You haven't been to the Caverns of Chaos? It's the game's main dungeon and it is located roughly in the middle of the map. I'd suggest going there after saving the village carpenter. Try to locate the Dwarftown (at CoC lvl 9-12) and talk to the elder about quest.

edit: You've probably noticed but the SMC can get pretty dangerous quickly... UD isn't an unremarkable dungeon even if it's name says so, a lot more dungeon features get generated there, good and bad.

[spiny]

Nope haven't been to the Caverns of Chaos yet. I haven't even unveiled the main map beyond the SMC and ID. I read somewhere I should reveal the stairs down in the SMC and try to get thru the UD to get to some mountains area which would lead to the CoC? But perhaps that's not a sound suggestion for a noob? If I get another decent account off the ground, I'll do a bit more exploring.

Thanks
-Spiny

[spectre]

Exploring is good for you, the UD will lead you to a nice location, but can be quite perilous, so I would drop it. Yes, you'll land closer to CoC, and you'll find a nice shop (and a few more things) but it is not necessary to get there.

You can also try the save-puppy quest in Terinyo (which is challenging, but may net you good gear in the process), and diving into the Caverns of Chaos is also a good choice.

However, if you want some safe experience, just walk around the ID generating new levels on the depth that fells "okay" for you, gain levels, find nice stuff in the process. For example, a good shield helps a lot in survival. Just train it a bit.

Also, if door traps are a pain for you, start the thieves guild quest (learn to pickpocket and practice it) to gain access to advanced skill training - detect and find traps.

Not sure if you know it, but make friends with the Change 'T'actics command. It really saves lives in sticky situations when you run away on Coward setting, and Aggressive can help your damage output a bit.

[zasvid]

Hi all, I'm new to adom and it's been quite a while since I've played rogue-like games, so I'm rusty on basic principles developed playing those games. I've been testing the adom waters with gnome priests, grey elf wizards, and dwarf paladins. I generally find some way to get myself killed before I've reached level 10, but I had one character go to lv 11 but met up with a lesser daemon I couldn't do any damage to at all.

Was your weapon cursed by any chance? Daemons are vulnerable to blessed weapons and resistant to cursed ones.

[spiny]

I don't recall my weapon being cursed.

Anyhow, I wanted to thank you all again for the advice. My dwarf paladin is currently lv 13 working on the 2nd of Thrundarr's quests. I'm finding the Si to be a bit annoying as the nearest shop is in Dwarftown and after I've got about 10 Sis, I'm doubling back to sell and sacrifice. I've got a pair of gloves of carrying, but I'm reluctant to wear them in fear of getting corrupted by something and getting poisoned drip from hands like I had in a prior run. I read that thick gauntlets were the only things to help keep everything I touched from being poisoned and I'm wearing a pair of those now. I'm toting around a backup pair in case something destroys them.

I've found the floor that splits to Dwarven Halls / Animated Forest, but I'm not sure which route to take yet. My only attack spell got used up a while back on a tension room full of quicklings and I don't have any particularly helpful wands atm. I'm counting my minutes feeling my death is imminent. There's a big white X (I forget what it's called). It poisons and regens so I'm just trying to avoid it altogether.

-Spiny

[fazisi]

The big white X is a holy slayer and they are annoying due to their poison and regen. They aren't much threat to a powerful enough PC but knowing when your PC passes that mark is a fine line.

I would recommend to go through the forest since DH can kill characters very quickly, even powerful ones.

[nathrakh]

Some advise: cross the forest while dual wielding shields and using coward tactics (F7). If you get surrounded wait for couple turns, they will move. The stairs are always on crossing corners. Avoid the dwarven halls... even a quite powerful hero can die the first turn they enter there if a badass monster is generated next to them.

[spiny]

Well I made it thru the animated forest with 1 shield on coward, wand of fire that I used a blessed scroll of charging on and 3 scrolls of darkness. I had a couple of invisibility potions that I used up and didn't realize the wand of fire would be helpful as I'd read not to use fire, but I figured what the heck and it helped. I was wearing an amulet of rapid healing, which also helped, but in any event, got thru that level taking 5 trees to the next floor with me. Cleared the level and found the Khel something or other guy. I read up on him and wished I had a way to find an amulet of lifesaving, but decided path of least resistance was downward so just chatted with him and let him die. Next floor was going well, found a neutral altar and debated pissing my deity off by shfiting alignment to sacrifice some of the Sis I was toting and decided it was worth it. A little after that things got nasty, found some fire breathing badass that destroyed my amulet of rapid healing, killed him but it was such a bummer for me, I went back to the altar to try to drag some of the other monsters so i wouldn't have to kill them myself and lose more hps (no more health pots). Ultimately ...... an ice vortex decided I was worth killing and that was it. Soooo my longest run is now over lol... I think I did ok for what I had to work with. I need to learn more about these pools. I didn't dare do anything with them and I saw quite a few along the way. I didn't seem to be able to dip potions or scrolls into pools to blank them/turn them to water. So I guess that is one major thing that is different in this game. Ah well...

-Spiny