Bard strategies?

[Snock]

I've played through a few 'easy' classes, (barb, archer, wizard) and I wanted to try something a bit more difficult. I've just made a Candle-born drakish bard. I wound up with some very nice skills- alertness, dodge, find weakness, herbalism and food presv. I spent the 3 first talents on the Heir line for 7lb, which is nice. I've got a pretty good feeling about this char-problem is, I have no idea how to play a Bard.

I know I'll be relying pretty heavily on pets- what makes a good pet? Can *all* monsters be tamed? Obviously I can't tame the ACW or Master Cat or anything like that, but what about humanoids? Can tamed monsters be given equipment to use? The other problem I've been encountering is that with these 7LB I inherited, I'm constantly outrunning my pet (started with a giant lizard). Is there anything I can do, other than wait around for him to catch up or tame a faster pet? If I accidentally leave a pet behind in the ID, is he gone forever?

Those of you who have played a Bard- I'd be much obliged if you'd lay some wisdom on me

Edit: one more
How can i heal my pet? I know I can apply the Healing skill, but since I can easily pacify/companion-kill cats, I've been considering taking the druid quest over Yrrigs, especially since I'm candle-born.

[Soirana]

I know I'll be relying pretty heavily on pets

Why so? The fact manual writes about it does not make pets good strategy.

Looking back instead of all fancy stuff like assassin guide, i should have written "Basic guide to plumming monsters to death in Adom"....

Find shield, find spear, take care of PV early on and train missiles. Usually works.

[Maul]

The main reason against pets is that they'll steal your exp when killing monsters, which means you won't advance. If you got your 7LB, there is really no reason to keep a pet permanently - from time to time you can tame something stronger to help you in a tough spot, but otherwise just do what Soirana said.

You can't heal your pets with Healing skill, that's reserved for Healers.

This just in, your character is ridiculously good. Take the druid quest, since with Candle you won't need Healing anyways. Bards can learn spells, so if you can kill the druid (you have acid spit and animals to be tamed on that level, why couldn't you?) you'll receive an offensive spell to further kit you out, which means your most dangerous enemy early on will probably be a stone block trap.

[mackthaknife]

uhm, drake bard, thats powerfull. i enjoy playin them, being able to cast variaty of spells, good in mellee, excellent missile shoters, can tame any animal, have huge range of usefull skills with extra modifiers, as a drake you have acid spit, you name it they know it. nice choice ;]

[Pumpernickel]

I've just made a Candle-born drakish bard.

As others said, the most efficient way to play bard is to make use of your high movement speed by playing hit-and-run early on. Use missiles against tough monsters, fall back on your acid spit in tight spots, pick up gear and turn the char into a vanilla melee combat monster.

The bardic pet boni are mainly a neat little bonus. You can rely on them to kill things for you, but that's a bit of a challenge game. Killing stuff yourself is generally more effective - you'll get experience and levels and thus survive better. Taming can be used to get out of summoning gridlocks - just pacify those jackals and they'll beat up each other instead of concentrating on you. You can also avoid killing cats. If you have poor equipment, an early giant ant warrior can be quite helpful. Other than that, you perform music to cause a diversion, provoke monster infighting and make good your escape. Avoid travelling with many weak companions - when they get hurt, they'll end up panicking/berserking, which causes recoverable crashes - you won't lose the character, but levels can become a tremendous pain to navigate when you have to go through launch adom - take a step - crash - launch again for every single step you take.

Music will only ever tame 'animals'. You can only get other creatures as pets via scrolls of familiar summoning and figurines of wondrous power (or by knowing the right word in the High Mountain Village). Animals generally can't be equipped, and 'equippable' pets will never pick up items. So no, you can't equip your pets, apart from Hawkslayer, who can pick up and equip stuff before you hire him.

If you really want to play a pet-dependent bard, you'll have to pick up something quite hefty - giant boars work o.k., but for your pet to clear out greater vaults for you, you should get hold of some killer beetles.

If I accidentally leave a pet behind in the ID, is he gone forever? [...] How can i heal my pet?

Pets and some peaceful creatures left behind in the ID will pop up again in the wilderness, you can simply 'allow them to accompany you'.

For healing, i think you're restricted to healing spells - hope you pick some up sometime, although you don't seem to have concentration skill. Still, bards aren't too bad at reading books. Be careful when you're playing a non-lawful - healing pets gives significant numbers of lawfulness points.

[mackthaknife]

if you runnin for good pet strategy heres one, go to smc or dh read few cursed danger scrolls and then read blessed sofs...

[Grey]

My own guide to bards I wrote a few years ago:

http://adom.brinkster.net/forum/mess...ge=1&tmp=61395

The pet section remains incomplete, for good reason. Pets just really aren't that great - they're more a novelty than anything. With SLBs you should use hit and run tactics a lot. If monsters can't get next to you they usually can't hurt you. Never forget the power of acid spit either.

[grobblewobble]

In case you do want to play around with pets, there is a great post by Sami where he explains how he beat the game with a level 1 bard. There is one especially relevant advice about pets that is interesting and worth looking at:

Finally I realized that the levels had too high danger level and I have to reduce the danger level a bit to generate better companions... after 5-10 scrolls of peace the danger level were low enough to get like greater moloch, emperor lich and such monsters. But again both of those were killed in a stupid way, greater moloch were killed due to carelessness and it's stupidity by Srraxxarrakex and emperor lich were single turn killed by a randomly generated greater moloch.

Then finally I got a pet that was capable of killing nearly every monster in a single turn after getting a bit training: Ambaretelydes, the great blue wyrm. I trained it up to level 90 or so and then tried Srraxxarrakex with it and it worked.

So, if you do want to play around with pets, keep this in mind. The SMC and DH are NOT the best places to read SoFM.

From own experience, I remember getting a Quickling Queen by reading a SoFM in the entry room of the Tower. That is one kickass companion, because:

- they are easily fast enough to keep up with you
- they regenerate as fast as they move
- they attack and poison enemies as fast as they move

Was a lot of fun to watch this companion kill things. It did end badly, though. We stumbled upon a corruption trap and my companion turned herself into a purple J before I could even sneeze (triggering the trap 7 times a turn, or so.) That was horrible.

[Soirana]

Don't know DL between Emperor Lich and greater elementals is so small that it is not practical to get it exactly....

From what i've ever tried balors are very good these do require scrolls of danger on DHII although.

As wyrms go.... DH1 or black unicorn glade is probably best.

[Evil Knievel]

Don't know DL between Emperor Lich and greater elementals is so small that it is not practical to get it exactly....

From what i've ever tried balors are very good these do require scrolls of danger on DHII although.

As wyrms go.... DH1 or black unicorn glade is probably best.

First time I ever heard of the existence of Balors was right in DH.