what would you change in adom

[sweetnothing]

fir, you did not taste it enough
just try moar cats
see, jellyslayer and gr:3ybird know the subject really well

[fir]

fir, you did not taste it enough
just try moar cats
see, jellyslayer and gr:3ybird know the subject really well

Right now if i se a cat or tiger i get a fear, i dont wont to go to psychiatrist with cat-fobia, stop that
(and as i said this is in the slogan of being cat friend when you really began to hate them and want to kill it greatly), this is sick

[boat]

While not chest, most dungeons have special last level that sometimes have special treasures.

Puppy cave have a lesser vault, village/druid dungeon a boss, frost giants have haggar (and a vault above), high king is on last with special treasure, TOEF have a an awesome orb.
You won't always find awesome treasure but I think thats cool.

Secret areas also exists, not at bottom levels tho.

Yea I understand there's similar rewards, I just mean the physical chest with items is something I always associate with RPGs , so it would be cool to have it in adom. An example would be like Diablo 2 where a gold chest is guarded by a unique monster and his minions . Vaults are awesome too as it is but having a chest in a vault would be cool

[_Ln_]

The problem with cats IMHO is in the discrepancy between the bad outcome and the good outcome:

1) Avoid button-mashing and receive hands down the best artifact ring in the game.
-or-
2) Slip several times and receive a fight that is:
2.1) Incredibly nasty for it's location -- cat lord is significantly much more powerful than the Air and Earth Temple guardians combined (which are both below the cat lord level)
2.2) Comes out of nowhere if you don't know about it and is extremely unfair -- some cat attacked you first and you had to put it down, then suddenly some punk-ass cat lord stops you dead on the quest to save the world?
2.3) Is extremely unfair gameplay-wise -- level forbids teleportation without any indication whatsoever (you just know it's special from the message) and cat lord will 90% be invisible beforehand. You are walking around and then suddenly something punches you for 80% of HP every turn.

Personally I'd want to see him neutral if you killed not just one cat (right now it's not even guaranteed), but, say, 5 of them and simply tell you to get lost.

[Rick]

I hate corruption...would like to travel up and down and take my time without hurry or be worried about amount of corruption, always uspset that it's enough a first trip below dwarftown to come back with tentacles from your mouth or antennas from your head..maybe should take more time to be corrupted so much...

About the cats I learned a lesson..after two hours of travel trough UD avoiding in many tricky ways TONS of cats, don't accept Druid quest...

[Silfir]

The problem with cats IMHO is in the discrepancy between the bad outcome and the good outcome:

1) Avoid button-mashing and receive hands down the best artifact ring in the game.
-or-
2) Slip several times and receive a fight that is:
2.1) Incredibly nasty for it's location -- cat lord is significantly much more powerful than the Air and Earth Temple guardians combined (which are both below the cat lord level)
2.2) Comes out of nowhere if you don't know about it and is extremely unfair -- some cat attacked you first and you had to put it down, then suddenly some punk-ass cat lord stops you dead on the quest to save the world?
2.3) Is extremely unfair gameplay-wise -- level forbids teleportation without any indication whatsoever (you just know it's special from the message) and cat lord will 90% be invisible beforehand. You are walking around and then suddenly something punches you for 80% of HP every turn.

Personally I'd want to see him neutral if you killed not just one cat (right now it's not even guaranteed), but, say, 5 of them and simply tell you to get lost.

The internet can kind of ruin the perspective on stuff. I think of the cat lord as a regular old miniboss that can be bypassed if you explore the game world and piece together clues (Mad Minstrel, fortune cookie quotes, the killing message unique to cats) to figure out and fulfill the intentionally fiendishly onerous restrictions. It's because of the ubiquity of spoilers that myriads of players start going out of their way to kill cats even though there are many, many more things they should rather be worrying about on the way to D:35.

As for the cat lord showing mercy - let's say you're the demi-god tasked with protecting all the little orphans in the world, and you encounter someone who has murdered not just one orphan, but five. Would you go "Well you didn't kill six orphans so I suppose I will let you live"? You kill one orphan, you're an orphan murderer.

Are cats the same as orphans? Nah. Did they attack you first? Sure. Is it fair? The cat lord doesn't operate under your standards of morality or fairness. Cats matter to him, you don't.

As far as difficulty goes, there's no PC that makes it to D:35 that can't deal with him. Unlike the Air and Earth Temple guardians (if anything, they're the ones who need some buffing), you don't even have to kill him to progress, and if you do, you get mad XP.



(If there's one thing this thread shows me is that for all his faults, there's no one I'd rather have in charge of ADOM than Thomas.)

[_Ln_]

The internet can kind of ruin the perspective on stuff. I think of the cat lord as a regular old miniboss that can be bypassed if you explore the game world and piece together clues (Mad Minstrel, fortune cookie quotes, the killing message unique to cats) to figure out and fulfill the intentionally fiendishly onerous restrictions. It's because of the ubiquity of spoilers that myriads of players start going out of their way to kill cats even though there are many, many more things they should rather be worrying about on the way to D:35.

A spoiler-free player that hasn't discovered disablers (especially after my universally hated RFE to nerf them passed ) and met the cat lord somewhere in the middle of the level will die. I guarantee this to you. The cat lord can be bypassed if you zap mob detection and dig around. If you meet him in the field unprepared and some distance from the staircase, you can't run because he is faster and you can't teleport. With 80ish DV he dishes out 100+ damage per turn.

As for the cat lord showing mercy - let's say you're the demi-god tasked with protecting all the little orphans in the world, and you encounter someone who has murdered not just one orphan, but five. Would you go "Well you didn't kill six orphans so I suppose I will let you live"? You kill one orphan, you're an orphan murderer.

Funny how currently it sometimes works with one orphan. Especially since you get the message afterwards.

Are cats the same as orphans? Nah. Did they attack you first? Sure. Is it fair? The cat lord doesn't operate under your standards of morality or fairness. Cats matter to him, you don't.

Can't argue with that part.

As far as difficulty goes, there's no PC that makes it to D:35 that can't deal with him. Unlike the Air and Earth Temple guardians (if anything, they're the ones who need some buffing), you don't even have to kill him to progress, and if you do, you get mad XP.

Both parts are simply not true. The second one opens up a good point - why is there a monster unrelated to the main quest and related to some obscure bullshit you have to find through repetition/experience directly on your way through the main dungeon?
If I were to play without spoilers and the very first PC that makes it to D:35 is killed by some mysterious cat lord, I'd be pissed. Especially after I find out that was unrelated to the whole central conflict.

(If there's one thing this thread shows me is that for all his faults, there's no one I'd rather have in charge of ADOM than Thomas.)

Respectfully disagree. I dislike a lot of things changed in prerelease solely because they make little sense from a player who is used to 1.1.1 stuff. There's a thread right now about missile chance destruction by some guy. He threw a boomerang 3 times and it got destroyed. Tell me how many boomerangs you average per whole playthrough and whether you think that missile destruction changes are reasonable.

[gr3ybird]

Okay, first, yeah, I am glad Thomas is in charge of ADOM and it is a great game. I'm not taking this discussion seriously, and I hope he isn't either if he's reading this. ADOM is fantastic even with cats.

I kind of like the idea of making the quest optional, like, getting it from Guth'Alak at the beginning of the game (obviously not if you have already killed a cat). That way if you don't want to deal with cat lord you don't have to...But you can't ever get the ring, either.

And I also want to point out that I pretty much never have cat problems. I kill a cat maybe once every 50-100 games. I always get the ring if I make it to cat lord.

[fir]

Okay, first, yeah, I am glad Thomas is in charge of ADOM and it is a great game. I'm not taking this discussion seriously, and I hope he isn't either if he's reading this. ADOM is fantastic even with cats.

I kind of like the idea of making the quest optional, like, getting it from Guth'Alak at the beginning of the game (obviously not if you have already killed a cat). That way if you don't want to deal with cat lord you don't have to...But you can't ever get the ring, either.

And I also want to point out that I pretty much never have cat problems. I kill a cat maybe once every 50-100 games. I always get the ring if I make it to cat lord.

mistaken kill is only smal parto of the problem (to me), other are the efforts
that are not much interesting to me (there is a couple of ways of dealing with
cats making it not so bad (like i noticed cats dont follow you if you use wand of
dor creation etc) but still..

Other changes are also welcome for example thing i said with sword starsign, maybe this is yet more important that cats, if sword makes you get better to hit to damage im only plaing it abandoning other starsigns and that makes a tlittle patologic, all starsign should imo guarantee same fighting coefficients

Other thing quite importand with be with the starting question
IMO better is to ask me all of them not random subset but let me configure the answers inconfig file as i tend to use the same answer profile all the time

[TheCableGuy]

A Few things that Piss me off about the Cat Lord.

1.As it's been said, way too powerful for it's location.
If anything, it should be in one of the side tunnels that you can choose to bypass (in exchange for a different difficultly.)

2. Why the Hell does a cat stepping on a Fireball/Stone Block/Acid/Etc Trap count as ME killing him?
That's just BS. I spend 30 lvls, making damn sure to not touch a cat, only to meet one on some random lvl and as I try to outrun it,
he walks over a Trap that I avoided, goes up in flames but for some reason, I now have a Demi-God on my ass.
Or worse yet, triggering a Trap on a door that just so happens to have a cat on the otherside (that I have no idea) but suddenly it MY FAULT?
I mean, I can understand if it was my trap that I created.

3. Even killing the Cat Lord isn't worth the effort, IMHO.
He should have some kind of drop that makes it worth my while.
A (cursed) item of situational use. Doesn't even need to be an Artifact.