priests, merchants, and bug temple

[JellySlayer]

These can get amazing amounts of starting gold if they choose the rich talents. I wonder if there is some way to exploit this? IIRC you can get about 40k, two-thirds of what a dwarf needs for a crown or precrown.

In 1.1.1, you could dragon double blup with a wand merchant and get a very early crowning.

[anon123]

There's a file in your adom directory called adom.cnt. Edit this file in a text editor. In it will be a single character. Just change it to something that has an ASCII value >100. Quitting does not count as death. BugCave is a good way to increase your death count if you don't know what you're doing though...

This, and this. Replacing the file's contents with four spaces will do. But the Bug Temple is hard, and it got harder on 1.2.0. Prior to the balance changes, a very careful PC could gain many early levels there. Now, GCBs apparently shrug bolts 50% of the time, and killer bugs 95%, not to mention neither kind seems tameable anymore... unless you have ball spells and/or Death Ray, going with any class at any point in the game is asking to be shredded to pieces

[gosos]

how do you guys start Wizards? Do you go to ID to get spellsbooks and such? I did ok with a gnome merchant until about 4-5th level of UD and then I am too weak and die. Did this a few times. I also thought elementalists were easier to start than wizards. You get spells just for levelling and this made blasting people easier.

I saw in alot of guides that Troll Bezerker was easy. Its probably easier to learn the game with. I died alot from starving without even noticing. I have mainly used paladins. I am not that good at the game (don't even make it to dwarftown half the time). Was using drakeling paladins. I have not played most classes. I mainly use paladins. Go to UD and try to crown, get 1 post crown artifact, bless and eat the oracle, then get rid of doom by sacrificing and praying more. To get started.

[JellySlayer]

If you make it to Dwarftown half the time, you are a very good player. I have won the game a few dozen times and I don't make it to Dwarftown half the time

UD runs are quite difficult. Your PC needs to have significantly above-average abilities (or luck) to survive a UD run. The village/druid dungeons are generally much safer to start the game in (the village dungeon being the easiest because of free healings). A merchant is going to have an awful lot of trouble in the UD.

I personally almost never visit the ID. Wizards usually find enough books that sort of thing isn't necessary. The big advantage to wizards over elementalists is versatility. Elementalist spell list is quite limited and they don't find books very often. Most of their spells are fire based, but a fairly significant number of monsters resist fire. Wizards are much more likely to have access to useful utility or healing spells--cure light wounds, teleport, invisibility, darkness, strength of atlas, slow poison, etc. and will almost always have a spell that will work, regardless of the monster--magic missile works on everything.

[Carter]

how do you guys start Wizards? Do you go to ID to get spellsbooks and such?

I almost always hit the ID until i get invis/darkness or even teleport + a couple of attacking spells. Normally directly after killing Hoetz. I'm conservative like that - but i like to have a "get out of jail free card". I would estimate with that approach 95/100 of wizards will make it to Dwarftown. With careful playing i would win probably 75% of the time with wizard as they are so flexible and have so many options when they get into trouble.

Melee on the other hand i would be 50% to dwarftown and maybe 1% win.

[Frankie]

i once managed to close the gate with a hurthling merchant, had to use some extreme tactics early on - throwing coins & rocks while keeping my health low to be able to maintain distance more easily.
and i must say that coins are generally very effective (mostly due to their huge quantity, also damage goes up with your char's level) and imo they *must* be used as a weapon by any merchant during early game

[gosos]

your right about spending time and then making a stupid mistake and dying. I tried a drakeling wizard last night and got some great RNG. Hit SMC. There was a neutral altar right at the initial down stairs. SCORE. Easy crowning after I finish the UD due to the difficult of monsters and I can run out easily.

Then on the first floor, I found a spellbook store. SCORE.
3rd floord general store that had an affordable spellbook of firebolt (already had it, but only got like 200 casts). plus i was running around to different floors and grabbing everything to sell. to get gold for more spellbooks.
Then found another neutral altar on the 5th floor AND there was a tension room with goblins and sacrified all of them. Quickly got to 'your god favours you' literally in 15 minutes or less.

then found a spellbook of earthquake and strength of atlas. I figured earthquake is really useful due to hits high pp cost cause guys here have posted that they think casting spells with high pp cost raise mana more.
strength of atlas is great after i cap my strength cause i can carry lots of stuff unburdened.
quickly got to level 10.

got teleport control from blink dog
fire resistant from a pool (real important to drakeling)
poison resistant (ok this is common, but not having it is a real pain).

then... hit a bunch of jelly's and that other thing that is like a jelly and parallized you. pimp smacked them a few times with earthquake (like how it breaks up the whole floor. looks cool. ).
then... got parallelized, surrounded by jelly's. and died just like that. did not even get a chance to pray for my HP back.

dammit. that was the best rng layout I ever got for an SMC. no herbs, but i was only on level 5.

oh and with learning 10, I had no issue reading the earthquake book.

the jellys did seem to split faster than I could kill them even when i hit 4 with a firebolt. I had not used firebolt enough to get it high enough to kill one shot was one of the problems too.

Lesson learned: run away from jellys. though I had not found the down exist. should have gone back up stairs and bought more spellbooks. There was even an acid ball spell. since I had treasure hunter, kill stuff.get everything sell to general store and buy more spellbooks. there was also some adamantium armor that i could have used with the strength of atlas.


the pro to a drakeling is the high HP, the ability to go coward and spit if you run out of HP, but only having 3 trains due to low INT is really limiting to drakelings. i would probably need to waste alot of time re-reading the ratling guys pamplet to raise this.