Speedy win

[Soirana]

With barbarians I'm afraid of instadeath from mimic, ghul or fire giant king.

How any other class helps you to be less afraid?..

Skills overall are tragically overrated in Adom. Sadly I think I deleted playlist of crappiest bard ever (dude had no extra skills behind guarenteed by race at the start)

[JellySlayer]

When I was thinking about speedy win, I had in mind an easy, pleasurable experience of swiftness and no-big-dealness :-) Something like when you've got 600HP, all resistances, Preserver and spear of devastation.

Wizards are easy to kill so they probably are out of contest. With barbarians I'm afraid of instadeath from mimic, ghul or fire giant king. Class starting with both Healing and Herbalism seem food for such an experience - healer or ranger. Chaos knight is random, so may fail in "100% winning chance" requirement. Maybe duelist can kill things single-handedly and with DV big enough to be bold in face of unpleasant surprises.

Non-elf wizard can be pretty sturdy. Try Dwarf, Drakeling, or even Gnome. And they aren't particularly easy to kill, really... most monsters in ADOM are only dangerous in melee, so if you have a powerful ranged attack (ie. bolts), you can do some pretty incredible things. A level 1 wizard can kill monsters that would cause trouble for a level 20 duelist.

Not sure why barbarians would have trouble with ghul/mimic/fire giant king particularly. The orc barbarian I suggested starts with 8 PV minimum, and 10-12 is not uncommon. Ghul and mimic can't hit you at all. Fire giant king is dangerous to any underprepared character, barbarians aren't particularly unique in this regard--if anything, barbarians are probably safer against them, since barbarians have the highest HP of any class. Barbarians don't need to use a two-handed weapon, if that's what you're worried about. Shields work just as well for them as anybody else. But for a melee character, they're crazy powerful right out of the gate.

Healer and ranger are both fairly fragile in early game, and don't lend themselves to fast play. You generally aren't going to be using herbs on a fast run, so herbalism doesn't matter. If you aren't going for turncount and just want a no-fuss win, then I'd go Wizard, Archer, Barbarian, or Druid.

[zliplus]

Perhaps what he means by 'no-fuss' is something more like 'hard to screw up by not paying attention'. To list the easiest ways to accidentally kill yourself for some common strong classes:

Wizard: MM/other yourself to death.
Archer: Hold T too long.
Barbarian/Any melee: Hold a direction too long? Though duelists/high level beastfighters/smithed out anyone can usually get away with this.

[koctyxa]

Wizards are hard. You either got too little HP, too little PP, it's hard to train shields and spears (if you kill things fast, they can't touch you; if you play with them, you loose time and risk critical hits). And then there's slaying ammo, and which one should I use and train, magic missile or crossbow. Some things shrug bolts and single paralization can be deadly even in late game. Been there, done that. Necromancers are just poor wizards with nice role play. Other magicians lack offensive power (although survivability of my Druids is high).

Regarding being afraid of instadeath: having high DV truly helps. It's all about DV. Spear + shield combo is not a lie, it's not disputable Treasure Hunter, it's real single pivoting point from which you can divert if you're into roleplaying Indiana Jones with whips or you're Paladin who've just got crowned with Justifier. The idea of DV is alien to Barbarians. Of course you don't have to use crowning gift, get naked or use mighty strike, but that's dishonour for a Barbarian. And it *is* possible to get killed by a mimic with 40 PV :-p

Archers are very nice, but they are really Barbarians in disguise One mistake and you're dead. And then all the picking up junk, dependency on Fletchery and random wilderness roaming can result in the scummy feeling.

[JellySlayer]

Wizards are hard. You either got too little HP, too little PP, it's hard to train shields and spears (if you kill things fast, they can't touch you; if you play with them, you loose time and risk critical hits).
And then there's slaying ammo, and which one should I use and train, magic missile or crossbow. Some things shrug bolts and single paralization can be deadly even in late game. Been there, done that. Necromancers are just poor wizards with nice role play. Other magicians lack offensive power (although survivability of my Druids is high).

Wizards don't need slaying ammo. Spells are more than enough. Yeah, some monsters shrug a lot, but there aren't so many monsters that are both bad shruggers and super dangerous in melee... and in such cases, well, there's always acid ball. Or burning hands, for that matter. Druids are quite underrated IMHO. Right now they get a bazillion Divine Wrath books, so you can get away with fairly low Le and still have decent firepower. They have good starting gear, decent enough skills, and friendly animals means a host of nuisance monsters (including cats) are friendly, and you have lots of decoys around that you can use to explode vortices and help you evade attackers.

I think you're overestimating the danger of paralysis, honestly. Unless you're spending a lot of time doomed, it's very rare to be killed by paralysis past the early-mid game. If you play stupid with a stone ooze, mimic hivemind, or dorn beast, I guess you can get a nasty death, yeah. But Wizards are great against those kinds of monsters because you have ranged attacks. Endgame Wizard is pretty much unstoppable, honestly. You can always pick up -Para from pools, use an amulet of free action or use teleportitis though if it's really a concern.

Regarding being afraid of instadeath: having high DV truly helps. It's all about DV. Spear + shield combo is not a lie, it's not disputable Treasure Hunter, it's real single pivoting point from which you can divert if you're into roleplaying Indiana Jones with whips or you're Paladin who've just got crowned with Justifier. The idea of DV is alien to Barbarians. Of course you don't have to use crowning gift, get naked or use mighty strike, but that's dishonour for a Barbarian. And it *is* possible to get killed by a mimic with 40 PV :-p

Sure, if you're roleplaying a certain style of play, it makes the game harder. You were asking about how to win easily/quickly, which is a different question entirely.

Archers are very nice, but they are really Barbarians in disguise One mistake and you're dead.

Not really? Do you run around Cursed, with low HP, and Strained! all the time? Beyond the early game, it's rare that a single mistake is so catastrophic that it can wipe you out. Archers are as durable as most other classes, with the added bonus of being basically immune to ranged attacks, and having stupid powerful ranged attacks of their own. Their abilities in melee are just fine too.

[Soirana]

Regarding being afraid of instadeath: having high DV truly helps. It's all about DV. Spear + shield combo is not a lie, it's not disputable Treasure Hunter, it's real single pivoting point from which you can divert if you're into roleplaying Indiana Jones with whips or you're Paladin who've just got crowned with Justifier. The idea of DV is alien to Barbarians.

If you want to speed up I suggest you drop extra challenges and misconcepts. That would help a ton.

p.s. I still don't get why any class is more disadvantaged vs paralysis than others... If you that afraid of it use neck slot in proper way.

[Blank4u47]

If you want to speed up I suggest you drop extra challenges and misconcepts. That would help a ton.

p.s. I still don't get why any class is more disadvantaged vs paralysis than others... If you that afraid of it use neck slot in proper way.

What soirana said. Any given class becomes very easy to beat if you don't have to save the carpenter every time, or need to get to HMV, or save the stupid puppy.

As for paralysis, it's very easy to avoid for any class- don't melee them. If you gotta bump-kill everything, just wear the amulet of free action, it's not that rare.

[koctyxa]

I've checked some of recommendations and it ended up in hilarious slapstick. Chaos Knight was killed by trapped room in upper CoC, without Healing to be able to wait a little for more HP and I didn't think about godly heal. Barbarians ended their lives in SMC, sleeping to death or crushed by stone trap in PC5. Duelists, I don't remember, but their deaths were also fast. Finally I had a very successful and effective orcish assassin game (well, first one was killed by stupidity when not in danger at all, but second play was lightning fast, see YAVP section).

Coming back to discussion, when I say about barbarians and playing against their specials, my concerns are not revolving only around role playing (although it's also important). In case of ranger it's simple: don't fight with double weapons. Requiring from barbarians to forget berserking, mighty blow and crowning gifts is more than a simple advice, it feels like raping (kind of "Oglaf Honor!" feeling).

Advising to play any character with specific amulet, which can be found after killing 2000 enemies or to avoid introductory quests is not the kind of "easy, non-extreme-tactics, non-scummy" experience I'm looking for.

Thus, from my experience, if you want to win fast, without killing your characters and without scummy feeling, you should pick dwarf, drakeling or orc as a race and healer, ranger, paladin or assassin as a class. However I can be biased, because I didn't really try magic classes in version 1.2.0, which seems to be significantly easier than 1.1.1.

[zliplus]

Uh, why wouldn't you have Healing as a Chaos Knight? Did you forget to get it the evil way?

Edit: my deaths as Chaos Knight usually come from being overconfident and trying to slaughter Dwarftown when I first get there.

[yhal003]

Coming back to discussion, when I say about barbarians and playing against their specials, my concerns are not revolving only around role playing (although it's also important). In case of ranger it's simple: don't fight with double weapons. Requiring from barbarians to forget berserking, mighty blow and crowning gifts is more than a simple advice, it feels like raping (kind of "Oglaf Honor!" feeling).

Crowning gifts is one of the reasons barbs are so good at speedruns. Skullcrusher is probably the only bad one as monsters in temples are non-humanoid. And mighty blows are very helpful too, as they take only one turn and enemies die faster. Paralysis is really a minor nuisance, the only reason why it kills so many chars is that people are careless. Just remember all paralysing monsters (mimics, dark elven priestesses, ghouls, stone oozes, lich royalty) and adjust tactics accordingly. Don't enter abandoned shops and watch for shiny objects .

Dwarf barbarian is a fun choice, they start with potions of booze for teleportation charges and are almost guaranteed to get Rolf's combo. The later could be sold to accelerate crowning but it is also decent enough to win the game with.