Brimstone Man - Complete!

[Zharradan]

Hey ADOMers, I've been playing for about 10 years and I wouldn't call myself a particularly noteworthy player. I've only had two victories and never done an ultra. But I registered here for the first time because thanks to a whole lot of persistence and some careful well-researched play, I've managed to do Brimstone Man without save scumming: just a whole lot of luck, a pinch of skill and the dragon gold doubling exploit.

Unfortunately, I started this run in October 2010 and, combined with the fact I rolled literally hundreds of Brimstone challengers, the exact details for the opening somewhat escape me. But I'll put down what I can piece together and if you want to ask anything, obviously you can and I'll answer as best as possible. Why would I start in October and not finish it? Because I was at a quandary and didn't think I was going to be able to pull it off and I couldn't bear the thought of having a level 25 crowned character and not succeeding. In the end, I decided I'd take a brief break from ADOM and before I knew it, my Master's took over. But yesterday while laying in bed, I remembered the challenge and decided I would head straight for the ACW and come what may. Now, for the actual interesting parts. From what I remember:

Par (excuse the boring name, as I said, I rolled hundreds if not thousands of Brimstone candidates during the couple months beforehand... call me a junkie) was just another gnomish elementalist to me. So I got to the tower and went about my business and I believe I found a fire drake corpse from a tension room after using only one prayer (and likely frost bolting some other suckers along the way). I wasn't impressed yet: I'd got this far a few times before and it usually ended in starvation. But what hadn't happened before is an altar on TF:3. So, I hatched my plan: get gold off dragons, sac for piety, get crowned (maybe even multiple postcrownings), hopefully get other good equipment along the way and then go for glory. In any case, I did eventually get crowned a Champion of Neutrality and got an Iron Crown of Havlor (could've been worse) for my trouble and of course, immunity to shock. I was hunting for a wish and I did try pickpocketing repeatedly but it never turned up anything of use: all the good items I got aside from the Crown were from drops. But there wasn't really any strategy beyond just killing things with frost bolt, milking dragons for money, occasionally sacrificing more powerful monsters and once I found a spear of devastation, killing the worms/lizards etc. in melee. Problems I had:
1. Frost Bolt castings. Once you get to the 20s, you realise you simply don't have enough castings to get you up a level from it alone. I tried my best to develop missiles, but I only ever got a few scurgar (OK, reviewing the .flg does show some crossbows and quarrels that I probably should've used, but eh. Missiles were never much of a damage source for me.) and in the end, pretty much never used them. So, I meleed. But I simply wasn't strong enough for elementals and grues - even vanilla fire giants often came close to killing me (let's not even think about those extremely experienced fire worms...) Still, through a combination of a knife of endurance for regeneration, sacrificing and sparing frost bolt, I got by.
2. Food. Without food preservation, it never came consistently and I wasted by my guess a good 8-9 prayers on it. And they promptly get expensive.
3. Mana Battery corruption - no wands of wishing, digging, paralysis etc. for me. Thankfully I managed without. I did get pretty lucky with corruptions otherwise though (teleportitis saved my life once or twice, antenna didn't matter).
4. Doubling the gold was harder than expected. Sometimes the pile seemed to burn up as soon as I dropped it. Other times it got destroyed by a breath attack either before or immediately after dropping. Sometimes dragons never picked it up and this usually resulted in the pile burning up. Not too big a deal though.

So, there I was. Level 25, crowned and under normal game circumstances with good equipment, probably good enough to take on the ACW. But I had no source of digging, no source of confusion resistance, no healing and what seemed to me to be an insufficient number of frost bolt castings (~80) and no other means of killing him. But I had no reliable source of food and couldn't keep using prayers on it forever. I knew I could borrow my deity's pickaxe, but I had never done it before and thought it was extremely expensive in piety and I wanted some prayers for the fight for emergency healing (prayers I didn't need in the end, of course). So I took a break for what ended up being nearly a year. When I came back, I checked my piety and noticed it was very close. I also noticed I was only 20k experience off level 26. Getting there got me to ~300 frost bolts. I decided that would be enough and in all likelihood, the random artifact probably wouldn't help anyway. So off I went. In the end I had to pray twice for a pick axe (first melted while I fought a stone giant). I planned on having two shields, but then decided trading a source of fire resistance for a ring of invisibility and my trusty endurance knife would be best. So, I dug a direct line to the altar and cast frost bolt a lot. After a while I noticed it was no longer hitting anything: ACW chickened out to the top right corner of his domain. Getting in his line took some time, but with a lot of applying first aid while waiting out confusion and frost bolting everything in my path, I got to him again. I got hit by a bolt of energy for ~100 damage which freaked me out and made me work hard to keep another monster between him and me, but eventually he went down. ACW aside, I took hardly any damage (invisibility was the correct choice), but I got out of there immediately instead of clearing it out: I knew better.

Well, I guess that's about it. There's a couple of brief annotations in the .flg, but there's not really anything else to say. All you need is a quick corpse drop, an altar and the patience to double gold/level up to the mid-20s. Sounds simple, but in reality I accept there was a hell of a lot of luck in getting that to happen and not getting giant rocked to death while still a fledgling. And barring wishes, skipping out the gold doubling would also make it considerably harder, if not impossible (maybe with food preservation, but even then I'm not sure you'd have enough food from saccing monsters or time to pull it off). I confess I was not either man enough or good enough to try it without.

Thanks for reading and apologies for the length: I am tremendously good at rambling on. I have the .svg at the point where I immediately left the tower with the orb and can attach it if anyone wants it. For now, I just have the .flg. Enjoy!

[_Ln_]

Wow, pretty hard to believe the challenge had been beaten after all these years! Must be a JADE thing

You should make yourself a signature, Zharradan Check out Grey and nathrakh, our fellow forumers, theirs can give you a hint.

I'm amazed you didn't go for postcrownings. With an altar on a high DL place this shouldn't be a problem. Well, at least the 1st one which is pretty cheap.
Also pretty strange to see amounts of equipment in your backpack and invis ring&endurance knife. Must be pretty lucky not to have them burned!

Congrats, anyway!

[Zharradan]

Just discovered I have to use code to have the .flg display. So, here it is without downloading (although it's too big in original form, so I've trimmed background, weapon skills and partially inventory):

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 Screenshot
------------------------------------------------------------------------------



                                                                        ^^^^^
                                                                       ^^^..^
                                                  ^=======^^*^       ^^^^..^^
                                       ~~~~~~~&&&========="""""""&&^~^^^^.^^
                                      &&&&&&&&&&&&&&==""""""""""&&~~~^....^
                                   ^^^^&&&&&&&&&""""=""""""""""&&&&&o..~^^^
                              *^"""""""""""""""""""=="""""""""&&&&&&&&&&^^
                ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^""""""""""""""""""""=""""""""&&&&&&&&&&&~~
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"""""&&&&"""*&&&&""""=="""""&&&&&&&&&&&&~~
               ~"o""""^^"""""""""&&&&&&&&&......^^^^=="""""""&&o&&&&~~~
               """"""""""""""""&&&&&&&&&&&&&
               """""""""""""&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
                """""""""""&&&&&&&&&&&&&*&






Par           St:22  Le:23  Wi:10  Dx:17  To:19  Ch:15  Ap: 8  Ma:27  Pe:13 N=
DV/PV: 81/34   H: 211(211)    P: 222(222)    Exp: 26/1859353    DrCh  Sp: 106
Blessed Invisible Coward
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  Inventory
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total weight: 1288 stones                Carrying capacity: 2700 stones

He: blessed Iron Crown of Havlor (-6, -6) [+12, +12] {Le+4}           [65s]
Ne: -
Bo: uncursed black dragon scale mail (-1, -5) [-2, +11]              [200s]
Gi: uncursed eternium girdle [+0, +4]                                 [12s]
Cl: -
RH: uncursed knife of endurance (+6, 1d3+9) {To+4}                     [8s]
LH: uncursed tower adamantium shield (-2) [+11, +2]                  [108s]
RR: uncursed ring of invisibility                                      [1s]
LR: blessed ring of minor elemental mastery [+2, +2]                   [1s]
Br: -
Ga: uncursed gauntlets of strength (-1, +0) [-1, +1] {St+3}           [40s]
Bo: -
MW: -
Mi: bundle of 2 uncursed drakish scurgari of returning (+2, 2d6+5)    [20s]
Tl: -


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                    Stuff
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total weight: 833 stones   Carrying capacity: 2700 stones

Shields ('[')
   uncursed small mithril shield (+3) [+5, +1]                        [40s]
Gauntlets ('[')
   uncursed white dragon-hide gauntlets (-2, +0) [+3, +2]             [10s]
Necklaces (''')
   uncursed amulet of the cold heart {Ch-12}                           [3s]
   blessed amulet of balance                                           [3s]
One-handed weapons ('(')
   uncursed poisonous hatchet (+0, 1d6-1)                             [50s]
   uncursed spear of devastation (+3, 5d8+9)                          [50s]
   uncursed mithril scimitar (+3, 1d8+3)                              [32s]
Two-handed weapons ('(')
   uncursed adamantium-shod quarterstaff of vampirism (+0, 1d10+11)   [57s]
Missile weapons ('}')
   uncursed light crossbow of accuracy (+8, +0)                       [70s]
   uncursed heavy crossbow of accuracy (+12, +3)                     [140s]
Missiles ('/')
[snip]
Tools (']')
[snip]
   uncursed Chaos Orb of Elemental Fire {St+10}                      [100s]
Rings ('=')
   uncursed ring of fire resistance                                    [1s]
   uncursed ring of cold resistance                                    [1s]
   blessed ring of acid resistance                                     [1s]
Wands ('\')
   uncursed wand of monster creation (6 charges)                       [3s]
   uncursed wand of teleportation (0 charges)                          [4s]
   uncursed wand of magic missiles (0 charges)                         [3s]
   uncursed wand of teleportation (0 charges)                          [4s]
Valuables ('$')
   5132 gold pieces                                                   [51s]
Gems ('*')
[snip]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                Weapon Skills
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Melee weapon           Lvl   Hit   Dam   DV   Level          Required marks
---------------------  ---   ---   ---   --   -------------  --------------
Daggers & knives         5    +4    +2   +1   skilled              178
Pole arms                6    +6    +2   +5   skilled              391

Missile weapon         Lvl   Hit   Dam   Ra   Level          Required marks
---------------------  ---   ---   ---   --   -------------  --------------
Boomerangs & scurgari    1    +2    +1   +0   basic                14

Shields                Lvl   DV               Level          Required marks
---------------------  ---   ---              -------------  --------------
Shields                  7   +14              skilled              567

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Skills
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Climbing ............. 37    (fair)         [+3d4]
  Concentration ........100    (superb)       [+1d5]
  First aid ............ 80    (great)        [+1d3]
  Gemology ............. 26    (mediocre)     [+3d4]
  Haggling ............. 27    (mediocre)     [+3d4]
  Healing ..............100    (superb)       [+1d3]
  Listening ............ 56    (good)         [+1d3]
  Literacy ............. 83    (great)        [+1d5]
  Metallurgy ........... 27    (mediocre)     [+4d5]
  Mining ............... 79    (great)        [+2d4]
  Pick pockets ......... 49    (fair)         [+1d3]
  Swimming ............. 32    (fair)         [+4d5]
  Ventriloquism ........ 51    (good)         [+1d3]


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Spells
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Acid Ball        :     9,  53pp     (Effectivity: +1)
   Acid Bolt        :     2,  24pp     (Effectivity: +1)
   Burning Hands    :  2018,   7pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Earthquake       :    69,  64pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Fire Bolt        :  2155,   8pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Fireball         :   106,  16pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Frost Bolt       :   127,   6pp     (Effectivity: +38)
   Improved Fireball:    54,  24pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Lightning Ball   :    35,  40pp     (Effectivity: +0)
   Slow Poison      :     5,   9pp     (Effectivity: +1)


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            Effects of Corruption
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You are a living mana battery.
Your close attunement to corrupted astral space allows teleportation.
Your antennae explore the details of your environment (Ap: -4).



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
              Her achievements during her adventures:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Par, the gnomish elementalist, left the Drakalor Chain never to come back.
She scored 208680 points and advanced to level 26.
She survived for 0 years, 16 days, 15 hours, 13 minutes and 28 seconds
(23995 turns).
Par visited 5 places.
Her strength score was modified by +8 during her career.
Her dexterity score was modified by +1 during her career.
Her toughness score was modified by +1 during her career.
Her charisma score was modified by +5 during her career.
Her mana score was modified by +7 during her career.
Her perception score was modified by +1 during her career.
She ended her adventuring life in the wilderness.
933 monsters perished under her attacks.
The following two artifacts were generated during her adventure:
  the Iron Crown of Havlor
  the Chaos Orb of Elemental Fire
She possessed the following intrinsics:
  She was fire resistant (enhanced through an item).
  She was cold resistant (gained through an item).
  She was lucky.
  Fate smiled upon her.
  She was invisible (gained through an item).
  She was shock resistant (enhanced through an item).
  She was immune to shock attacks.
  She was immune to acidic attacks (gained through an item).
  She was able to breathe water.
She had the following talents: Boon to the Family, Careful, Charming, Good
Learner, Hardy, Healthy, Heir, Long Stride, Quick, Very Careful, Very Quick.
She had a final speed score of 106 (final base speed: 106).
She was a paragon of her religion.
She asked for 13 divine interventions.
She was a holy champion of Balance.
She was tainted by Chaos.

The following monsters were vanquished:
      1 Ancient Chaos Wyrm
     13 chaos servants
     33 fire beetles
     58 fire demons
    116 fire drakes
     32 fire elementals
    132 fire giants
     26 fire giant kings
     39 fire grues
     95 fire lizards
     44 red baby dragons
     40 red dragons
    303 red worms
      1 stone giant

[Grey]

Wow, very impressive! Invis was definitely a lucky find, never mind the altar and the general survival luck. But I've always thought this challenge is a matter of persistence and many rerolls Hmm, I'd still like to see it done without an altar though...

Is this the last ADOM challenge to be completed then? It seems in recent years everything has been done.

[vogonpoet]

Wow. Just wow. That is the most amazing flg I think I have ever seen. Awesome. Congratulations.

[grobblewobble]

Yes, this is extremely impressive. Well done.

[Soirana]

Congrats.

Tries quietly recall that original idea said about altars.... Although i guess that does not matter anyway.