Lollek, HE Wizard - crushed in Mana Temple

[Elwro]

This was my first character (not counting a few early deaths) after a few years of break from ADOM. It seems I indeed forgot quite a few things and one of them got me killed. (Years ago I managed to win with a HE wizard.)

Short story: I was playing a wizard with no Detect Traps skill. I had no wand of trap detection. As you know, there are unavoidable traps around the Mana Temple. I thought I'd be able to cast the "Disarm trap" spell at empty space - that's what I was doing throughout the game, e.g. in the Pyramid and in other Temples. But this did not work - the spell was blocked! (Twice.) And after 3 turns I had 0 PPs anyway due to the "drain of magical reserves". Now, I had blessed scrolls and crystals of power, but decided they were useless in this case, since the disarming spell was getting blocked, so it'd be better to save them for later, when I'd be happily Acid-Balling the chaos scum. So I decided to just stomp my way through the traps. Exchanged my ring of the master cat for ring of ice to protect the equipment. But then along the way I fell into a pit which ate like half of my HPs. "No problem", I thought - "let's just wait a few turns". So I pressed and held the '5' key on the numpad, only to see the death screen of my character after 2 or 3 seconds. Yes, Strength of Atlas ended, and he got crushed...

If that's not a stupid death, I don't know what is

Some of my achievements: I got the weird tome and exchanged it for SoCRs. I got the ring of immunity (a crowning gift.) I killed the greater black unicorn, so I had even more access to corruption-cleansing options. I even got the ring of the master cat. One level above the Banshee I found a ring of djinni summoning - used the wish for "teleport control" since my teleportitis was getting infuriating. (Got a ring of tc.) And, you know, of course on the Banshee level I found a blink dog corpse and got the tc intrinsic. A wasted wish, but I thought drinking a PoCC could also be a waste since exactly the same corruption would be likely to happen again in this case (teleportitis is pretty frequent). Then I couldn't wish for a ring of ice so I went through the ToEF with just two fireproof blankets (first time in my life), killed the main beastie by throwing a PoCC at it. (Found a ring of ice later.) I was only level 30 when I got to the Mana Temple. Found the 7LB a bit earlier.


Such a death is one of those things that are supposed to teach me something, but somehow I'm sure this will happen to me again


A side note: something was up with the RNG; I kept finding Girdles of Strength and amulets of Perseverance. All the time!

[SirTheta]

Whenever I lack Detect Traps, I drop my inventory on the steps (or other appropriate place), take off any precious cloaks and run through known trapped areas like a chicken with its head cut off.

On a more important note: holy moley, 25k stones worth of stuff? You need to engage in better inventory management, my good sir! Stop lugging around all the useless books and other equipment you won't be using and this won't happen even if SoA runs out

[JellySlayer]

Just so you know, by the time you reach the Mana Temple, you should probably be HPcasting 100 % of the time. PP regeneration is too slow to be of any use in the endgame. Certainly for the Mana Temple itself, where having more than 5 PP at a time is quite rare, you need to HPcast if you want to use spells at all.

[Elwro]

Thanks guys, I will take both of the hints into account... Somehow I thought I should never HPcast, but of course NOW it makes perfect sense if you have good healing spells.

Eh. I'll do it next time

[Maul]

"No problem", I thought - "let's just wait a few turns". So I pressed and held the '5' key on the numpad, only to see the death screen of my character after 2 or 3 seconds. Yes, Strength of Atlas ended, and he got crushed...

What version are you playing? (Is it above 1.0.0?) Strength of Atlas expiring always gives me 5 warning messages with a (more) prompt which would make it impossible to do what you described. Unless it's possible to set some configuration detail so that pressing keys other than Enter or Space will also bypass (more), in which case you should probably set that back.

[SirTheta]

Unless it's possible to set some configuration detail so that pressing keys other than Enter or Space will also bypass (more), in which case you should probably set that back.

Ctrl-k. It's actually very awesome, and I set it in all my games--having to press space/enter anytime you get hit by 3+ attacks per turn gets annoying very quickly.

[Elwro]

Yes, unfortunately (here) Ctrl-k is always the first thing I press...