[Beginner] Best Race/Class to Start

[_Ln_]

Double posting for extra emphasis - I've decided to bring your attention to the OP's signature which shows that he is familiar with roguelikes in general, but now having second thoughts on his, so to speak, agenda.

[Soirana]

The ToEF was probably far-fetched, but bashing everything with your starting 2hander is not the best introduction I see:
1. Hey, an interesting bow I've found with some ammo - let me try it... What, I miss 70% of the time and do little damage compared to my melee. I guess I'll continue using twohander.
2. Hmm, a spellbook! Should I read it? Damn it, no success... and now it exploded! Oh well, going back to my 2hander.
3. I'm so tough as a troll and I regen health very quickly, I'm pretty sure I can tackle that group of monsters in the open room! ... Hey, that wasn't so bad, I've only prayed twice (thanks to the in-game manual). It's good to be a tank, right?

Hope you are getting my drift.

Beats "I rolled the elf died withing 50 turns - must be due to luck cause it happened only ten times today" by a large margin.

[grobblewobble]

A beginner may run into food problems with trolls, imho that's the only problem (negated somewhat because it's easier to carry around lots of rations with so much strength). If you can manage that they're a great choice. Extremely tough.

Also welcome to the forums, where asking an innocent question will inevitably start a giant flamewar.

[_Ln_]

Beats "I rolled the elf died withing 50 turns - must be due to luck cause it happened only ten times today" by a large margin.

Most elves start with the chain mail, which makes them somewhat more resilient. Their Dx also allows to run a tiny bit faster.

Once again, I'm pretty sure the OP is a bot. I feel somewhat silly debating in a bot-created thread. Can we agree that drakes are a better choice than both elves and trolls?

[quik]

What are the best races and classes combinations to begin the ADOM experience? Thank you from a novice player.

First of all, I want to state that I haven't played the pre-releases. All I'm going to say is based on 1.1.1. Here we go.

I definitely think that you should begin with a tough melee character with the only objective of making your games longer so that you have more time to learn the basic mechanics properly.

In my opinion, the best characters for this are trolls (practically any class, although barbarian is probably the toughest). Trolls have the problem of having high food consumption, which shouldn't be an issue if you read what corpses are safe to eat and what aren't (assuming you play with spoilers). If you play spoiler-free then an orc barbarian may be a better choice.

TL;DR: First objective: learn basic mechanics. R/C combination: Troll Barbarian. If high food consumption is a problem, Orc Barbarian.

Once you begin to feel invincible in the early game and make some progress you'll come to realize that playing a melee character has limitations. You'll reach a point where meleeing some big monsters isn't safe and your progress will be cut. At this moment I recommend that you begin playing wizards. The objective from now on is to get your first win.

The wizard is the most powerful class in the game by far. This is so because of three factors: (1) the high damage that can be dealt to several enemies (while melee and archers can only damage one at a time); (2) this damage can be dealt at a distance, which is safer; and (3) utility spells like teleport and invisibility improve your survival greatly when things get rough.

The most powerful race for a wizard, potentially, is the gray elf. The problem is that the early game may be difficult because you have very low toughness. However, you can play them anyway, just assuming that you are going to die a lot. At the moment that one of your wizards goes through the early game, you'll have in your hands a very powerful character. Other possibility is to admit a less powerful wizard in the late game and choose a tougher race for the early game. Drakeling looks like the best choice to me followed by dwarf. A third possibility is to play a gnome wizard. Gnomes are a little bit tougher than elves and still very suited for magic, resulting in very powerful characters in the late game.

TL;DR: When you are able to stay alive with the tank character, switch to wizards. Objective: get your first win. Suggestion of races, ordered from low to high survivability and from high to low power in the late game: gray elf, gnome, drakeling, dwarf.

Finally, another possibility of a very easy and powerful class is an archer. It doesn't deal damage to several enemies at a time but it deals *a lot* of damage to a single enemy from a distance. Races for an archer: high elf (easy early game thanks to the elven chain mail and the long bow with a lot of arrows they begin with), dark elf (potentially more powerful than the high elf, but they don't start with bows nor crossbows).

TL;DR: Archers are other great alternative for getting your first win. Races: high elf, dark elf (tougher early game).

[magpie]

I think gnome is a relatively good starting choice because they tend to level quickly and aren't made of papier mache. Also, orcs.

All the 'races' have strengths and weaknesses, but it's a good idea to start with races that tend to have problems in the late game rather than the early game. Trolls can faceroll but they level slow and have appetites like the monsters they are; two big problems in the early game, especially for a novice ADOMer. The low HP of all Elves is also a big early-game problem - traps, vortexes, ghuls ...

[quik]

Trolls can faceroll but they level slow

Why is the slow leveling a problem? Unless you are playing a class whose damage output depends on its level or a class that depends a lot on its class powers I don't see the point.

[grobblewobble]

My experience with trolls is that the slow levelling doesn't really hinder you until you want to do the pyramid (you typically need to kill some golems before you can). If you can reliably make it that far you've already learned a lot about the game.

Trolls not only have high To and Str, they also have more hitpoints than other races at a given level, all else being equal.