Melee tank char in ID dive?

[rainy]

Hi, I've been playing adom for a while and I first tried to ascend with a barbarian and I think I got somewhere to mana temple at most, then I tried to ascend with a wizard and got to the last level but got corrupted, I think, very close to finish but I don't remember exactly..

Lately I've been playing hurthling archer, but didn't pass ToEF yet.

Anyway, I saw a recent thread about an ID dive by a good but not maxed out char and I thought about somethign like this.. what if you took a really really maxed out melee char, smithed as much as possible, with the best weapon, etc etc. and then tried to melee as far down ID as possible.. was this ever tried and how far did people get? What are the best posted stats for a melee char, anyway?

If I want to try this but not wanting to go through the hassle to building such a char, what's the easiest way to do this? Are there save files, etc online? Otherwise, what's the most scummy/easy way to building one?

(BTW when I say melee down ID I mean use wands for dopple kings, arrows for karmic beings and melee everybody else).

Another thing I wanted to ask.. in my last game I found the serpent's bite and from what I understand it's a really good weapon (one of the best?) but when I swap it for a dagger of death, they seem to be about equally effective, even though DoD to-dmg seems to be pretty low compared to many other weapons.. (i'm aware that serpent's bite is good against humanoids especially). So I'm wondering.. SB is good to poison then run or it's just not as good as I thought or DoD has something special except to-dmg? My dagger skill is about 10-11.

thanks!

[EDIT: I forgot one more question: I use ubuntu and I play adom 1.1.1 because I could not find sage that'd work on new linuxes. The only thread I found for that had dead links. Compiling sage did not work for me either. I really would like to get sage, what can I do?]

[sorear]

1. ID diving with a smith is a waste of time. High-level monsters that show up past I:100 or so will pay no attention to your PV. You might as well go naked.

2. To experiment with situations, use hacked games (AdomBot is the most polished one but it's sadly Windows only, jaakkos' swapgame hack can inject wands of wishing into a running game, which is useful but a lot more time consuming; if you're comfortable with gdb you can also use that to hack ADOM, symbols on request)

3. 98% of the point of Serpent's Bite is the humanoid slaying power. If you're never going to fight a humanoid, DoD is absolutely better.

4. Is http://ancardia.ath.cx/~jvsalo/compilefix.patch what you're looking for?

[rainy]

1. ID diving with a smith is a waste of time. High-level monsters that show up past I:100 or so will pay no attention to your PV. You might as well go naked.

2. To experiment with situations, use hacked games (AdomBot is the most polished one but it's sadly Windows only, jaakkos' swapgame hack can inject wands of wishing into a running game, which is useful but a lot more time consuming; if you're comfortable with gdb you can also use that to hack ADOM, symbols on request)

3. 98% of the point of Serpent's Bite is the humanoid slaying power. If you're never going to fight a humanoid, DoD is absolutely better.

4. Is http://ancardia.ath.cx/~jvsalo/compilefix.patch what you're looking for?

1. High level monsters all have penetration attacks? What if you smith up DV to the max?

3. Is there any special about DoD other than dmg?

4. I patched sage and here's the error I get:

adom-sage.cc: In function ?void push_state(State*)?:
adom-sage.cc:68: warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ?char*?
adom-sage.cc: In function ?void pop_state()?:
adom-sage.cc:74: warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ?char*?
adom-sage.cc: At global scope:
adom-sage.cc:98: error: ?int StateDrawable::waddnstr? is not a static member of ?class StateDrawable?
adom-sage.cc:98: error: ?WINDOW? was not declared in this scope
adom-sage.cc:98: error: ?win? was not declared in this scope
adom-sage.cc:98: error: expected primary-expression before ?const?
adom-sage.cc:98: error: expected primary-expression before ?int?
adom-sage.cc:98: error: initializer expression list treated as compound expression
adom-sage.cc:99: error: expected ?,? or ?;? before ?{? token
make: *** [adom-sage.o] Error 1

[sorear]

1. The __ punches through your armor and hits you. is very strongly related to level.

3. No.

4. Will have to wait for jaakkos then.

[gut]

> Otherwise, what's the most scummy/easy way to building one?

Tmp file fiddling prolly, for non-adombot elligible platforms.
It's what I always used in the old days.

[rainy]

Thanks for all the great answers.. I have another question: I found a frozen eternium 2H sword in darkforge, that's the only prefix eternium sword I ever found, is it one of the better weapons in the game? Frozen is good against ToEF crowd and generally against daemons, right - anyone else who's otherwise very tough?

[nathrakh]

Frozen is ok for early game. It's something like +1d6 ice damage, which is reduced by PV.. making it useless quite fast.

[Maul]

Yep... at that point it's of minor help. At least it has no negative characteristics though.

[rainy]

That sucks.. I thought it was nice.. what about monsters vulnerable to cold? BTW it's 2d6 cold dmg.

[Dudley]

(just for the topic, i have some save files from previous wins, if you want to try a give with them, i'll need an e-mail or smthing. too big to be posted on this)