Luckiest Moments!

[santamaria]

Last character I had going had just explored most of khelly's level on the way to go kill him, and a monster dropped a RoDS. Right at the last second. Not that I was going for an ultra, but I tend to save him whenever I can, for the scrolls mostly, but also 'cause it's just a nice thing to do for the poor shmuck. :P

[anon123]

Last character I had going had just explored most of khelly's level on the way to go kill him, and a monster dropped a RoDS. Right at the last second.

I once pickpocketed a RoDS from one of the chaos servants surrounding him

[moonshine]

On my current game, I found RoDS as a random drop from the level just above Khelly, before I had visited Khelly's level. On the game before that, there was a tension room of great karmic wyrms in the DH:2 and one of them dropped a RoDS.

[auricbond]

For me, lucky often means getting out of a tight spot miraculously where otherwise I would have died.

A recent ratling mindcrafter entered darkforge. He was able to slowly wittle away at the golems with serpent's bite but the critical hits were no joke with my mediocre pv (probably somewhere in the mid-20's). I had no trap detection skill but had a wand of trap detection, which I ended up depleting. On trying to raid the bottom room with the weapons, I stepped on a teleport trap--which whisked me right into the middle of the steel golems north of the crown of science.

I immediately pronounced myself 'done', but then started scrolling through my inventory--five or six times. Coward mode. Mental shield on. Emptied a wand of lightning and zapped it to the left--it bounced and crossed all golems twice evenly without touching me. Perfect. All but one shrugged--damn!

Emptied TWO wands of lightning for about 7 (just making up a figure there, my memory isn't that good) zaps in total, and it managed to take out a single steel golem. I can't recall exactly when but I must have prayed a couple of times, after which my piety was used up, and a couple of extra healing potions.

I also zapped wands of cold and happily discovered they could damage the golems. But I was still surrounded by 4 or so on either side.

My mental shield had ran out and I pronounced myself 'done' for a second time. Then it hit me--a pile of scrolls of power in my inventory! I was able to keep the shield up the rest of the way.

It was a close one indeed, but I managed to get out by the skin of my teeth, again whittling the golems down and I think only got critted one more time.

(Ratling later died to a crash-bug at a statue)

Honestly there are a lot of tales that I could tell like this if only my memory were better. That's probably adom's main selling point in my view: the moments where you are presented with a really difficult situation, sometimes you stand on a tile for minutes at a time thinking of your next move. A less experienced player doesn't always recognise the danger in time, whereas certain enemies now make me go 'oh shit' and I deeply ruminate about my next course of action.

Another similar situation recently was a dark elven mindcrafter (not the most recent one that I lost to a crash, the one before that) and I was performing the descent through the unremarkable dungeon, and was presented with a level dominated by a river. Took way too long before I realised I had started the game with a ring of the fish, which I was able to go up and bless with the help of an altar. The character died on further descent--he was able to escape a vortex by a single-squares pace (I think cold vortex, because lightning would have outran me) by zapping a wand of digging multiple times (those vortices are smart in their pathfinding I tell you) only to be presented with a tension room immediately on the next level with golems, dark elven princess, and other bullshit. It was stay and die, or go up and die. I went up.

Oops, think I veered off-topic.

I just think the 'luckiest' moments are too obvious and ordinary. "I got protector". "I got havlor crown". "I got precrowned with bracers of war and the rest of the game was easy". Etc. It's more interesting when you create your own 'luck'.

Speaking of surges of power, I've not seen one in years. I wonder though if it depends partly on race/class. I've heard of mana affecting luck, and recently I got precrowned with staff of arch-magi, which I equipped on descending stairs. I seemed to run into more vaults than usual, but it could be because I was a dark elf (I ran into a spider vault which I also haven't seen in years).

Oh yeah and in the big room, two very large self-sustaining herb patches spawned, which I've never seen before.

I remember in gamma 8 surges of power seemed like a 1/10 chance when entering smc. :P That version was fun.