When and how did you start playing ADOM ?

[anon123]

Silfir: great post, and thanks for mentioning the HoF site, which I completely forgot about. My browser says I bookmarked that on March 2008, so that must be when I found it.

The highest score for a regular 1.1.1 win at that time was a PC called Gozer. I remember I read the FLG and... well, I didn't know anything about archmages and infinite wishes, so I assumed the guy had grinded like super-crazy to get his HP, PP and speed over ten thousand, which left me pretty stunned!

Some years later, I found out they also had forums I think I basically read every interesting thread in the spoilers section from top to bottom. That's how I "discovered" the so ill-reputed scumming techniques of kick-robbing, piety overflow and wish engines, learned more about archmages, speedruns and special challenge games, and basically picked up many useful gameplay tips (like the use of darkness).

Anyway, since you were an active member there, as were many others in this forum: may I ask what happened that it's so dead nowadays? Did adom.de/forums just take it out of the picture through being the official discussion site?

[Silfir]

The adom.de forum came, basically. At the time the Hall of Fame forums had serious issues with stability; pages would load not at all or after a long time. I checked both forums regularly for a while, I'm sure, but not for very long.

It wasn't just the stability - after all, the project tools were present right from the start, and the launch of the forum signaled movement where years before there had been none. Thomas had always intended to use these forums for ADOM and JADE development, even though they went basically unsupervised and unmoderated for a couple of years as he had to focus on his job and the PhD, and there was no appointed moderator of any kind. That ended poorly, not because the members didn't get along (ADOM players are saints compared to just about any other videogame-related community); it started with the days of shoe spam ads (the most prolific of those spam posters being the famous "topler") and culminated in the insect rape porn crisis. (If you have to ask... The forum got flooded by threads featuring graphic unsavoury content and Thomas had to be frantically contacted while he was on holiday. The threads, incidentally, did not feature insects.) After that, Thomas purged the spam and eventually made Grey a moderator and gave others Spambot identification privileges, before disappearing again, and reappearing as JADE was renamed ADOM II and finally released. That is at least my recollection of adom.de forum history.

[anon123]

Thanks for the reply. I did read a bit about this Topler bot and its awful deeds here. Well over 1000 posts, right? That's insane.

[BenMathiesen]

I learned about it from a friend who was also into roguelikes, I think in '93? The race/class diversity and skill system made it immediately interesting compared to Moria, Angband, and Nethack.

I know it's old hat now, but I still remember the feelings of "Cool!" when I figured out how to save the carpenter, when I first found the HMV, and when one of my first long-lived characters (dwarf merchant) found Moon Sickle and started learning about its drawbacks.

And what keeps it fresh for me today is the abundance of role-playing choices in the game, which lets me project a personality on the '@' sign and explore the Drakalor chain through their eyes. I'm hoping that Thomas will add more ethical choices (like saving the carpenter) and mutually exclusive quests (like the carpenter/druid quests) in the mid and late game.

[Tyrnyx]

I think I was 11 or so or maybe later in middle school, early 2000... Anyway, friends of mine played ADOM and taught me the intro key strokes. I didn't die my first death from starving in the wilderness but that happened at least a million times after that when I started playing on my own. I remember distinctly watching their older brother play and being overwhelmed by dwarftown. I also remember him killing his character for my amusement being praying him to death. I realize now that that experience was probably a luxury afforded by save-scumming. Although now I've had a more than few characters reach DT where I would willingly kill them.

Anyway, they also showed me the guidebook so I was never unspoiled. I probably read more about adom than I played - I liked reading about the places because I thought they were interesting. I certainly read farther than I could get. Averaging around level 8 characters before they died. My friends also taught me save-scumming and so my first experience in getting to D50 was heavily-scummed (and by heavy I mean heavy - like draining one pool for multiple wishes heavy). Actually even then I only kind of half-won. I died while standing on top of the lever so (i believe) the game counted this as a win. I tried reloading my scums but couldn't even get close. I was a trollish beastfighter.

Adom, like most people, is my occasional addiction. play heavily, get frustrated, leave, come back, repeat.

First un-save-scummed win was just a few years ago with a High Elven Ranger who I thought was unprepared to go into D50 at level 30 something so I wished for the Emperor Moloch in the wilderness. Rather scummy. I realize now I probably would have been fine in D50 and reached level 50 anyway. I was so excited that I won that I emailed my friends who taught me images of my winning character... I don't think they could have cared less.

Anyway, my second, only a month later, was a Human Monk. The only kind of scummy activity I had in that one was sac stoma for crowning where I got some rather sad gauntlets anyway... so not too bad.

Things that helped me progress in adom aside from knowledge of the game: fear, learning to use religion (in game, not out of game ), and playing unscummed.

Kind of wish I had gone through it unspoiled but in reality I don't think I could have made it. I barely made it as is - spoiled up to my ears. I probably would have more wins if I used more missiles and magic but I'm mostly a melee guy.

Also, I remember trying to join this forum and not being able to join because of the spam. There is probably a desperate email to TB somewhere in his archives of me begging to be on here.

[gut]

In 1996 I got my first PC, a 300 Mhz budget thing I kept for prolly a decade.
I was broke, so started scouring the internet for 'free games' and quickly found ADoM.
I most loved the background text and monster memory, telling about all the races and classes and such.
I learned slow, everything from entering locations to not meleeing every monster I met head-on.

I remember getting angry when I saw a person to whom I had introduced to ADoM tearing through
monsters like they were butter. "How are you killing those monsters so easily?! It takes my monk
dozens of hits to kill.." and that is how I first understood the concept of dooming. It took me hours
of save-scumming and testing to realize how I became doomed, and much more time than that to
figure out how to fix it. It's been a love-hate relationship from the beginning.

[grobblewobble]

It must have been somewhere around 2004-2006 that I learned about the game. I was heavily into mordor: the depths of dejenol at the time and ADOM was discussed on the Braindead forums.

[Blasphemous]

I'd say I started with gamma 16p2 or around that time (could have been earlier though), it was 1999 I believe. Still had my Pentium 1 200MHz comp with Voodoo 2 and 24 megs of ram.
I had amiga before and liked playing older games (civilization 1, colonization, settlers...) even at the turn of a millennium and decided to search for some free old games that could run with no probs on my outdated rig.
Found adom and fell in love, although the game always intimidated me with the high learning curve, difficulty and complexity. I was scumming saves badly back then, so far as to get "while saving himself 841 times" when the game was finished

As for what kept me around - I guess the same thing that keeps people playing heroes of might and magic 3, civ2, diablo1 and such - replayability.
You just never know what hits you, in what sudden, painful and random way you can die or what kind of super item you can find early to make your game more enjoyable.

[szopin]

I started around 1999 or 2000. I got a summer job doing data entry for the local government. Super boring. I was actually scanning old documents and burning CDs of the data so they could move the physical files to a storage unit, but still have access to a digital copy if needed. I would slack off and play games a lot. I was young. When Yahoo pool was popular I'd play that. I eventually found ADOM. I was overwhelmed at first. I remember not knowing where the CoC was for the longest time. Once I found the Guidebook I was spoiled massively. I did everything on a pimped out caster I managed to make. Never looked back.




Didn't realise I was older than you Silfir!

Older in ADOM doesn't mean older in RL. I met ADOM last year. Probably oldest/older than most of you HC players. Doesn't matter, for what it's worth, I still enjoy random RLs.

[SirTheta]

Once upon a time, I had a laptop that my parents had locked down at night (must have been fifteen or so), so I installed a small Ubuntu partition on it (this not being my first experience--I'd started out with Knoppix [hilariously outdated even then] a year or so before) to get around this restriction. So, this would have been around 2006-2007.
One late night, I went through the entire games repository looking for something small and fun to play (sometimes the Internet was unplugged at night and I'd have nothing to do). Among many other games (TuxRacer!), I tried a sweet little game called Meritous (which you should totally check out; it's a simple, interesting diversion). To this day, I think I still haven't completed Meritous's version of ADOM's Ultra (you have to explore every room in the dungeon, as I recall).
I found Meritous to be very interesting, and decided to check out the other games like Meritous in the repositories--roguelikes. NetHack, Angband (and some variants), and ADOM (though odd in retrospect that it was stocked since it is nonfree--guess it is Ubuntu and not Debian though).
I was very nearly put off by the non-ADOM roguelikes. However, I was immediately captivated by ADOM. I think I found the Guidebook shortly after, which I kind of regret to this day; guess I was a lot more immature/impatient back then …
I think I achieved my first win just a couple years later (2009 or so?), with a GE Wiz. Despite playing very much on and off since then (once you go ADOM you'll never go back), I've come a fair ways. Odd, and frustrating, how the ADOM bug always bites during finals, though.