Swear This Game is Needlessly Stupid Sometimes

[_Ln_]

i can guarantee that is not a mechanic which like Dogbreath suggested, at no point did a developer decide you purposely don't get the reward just because your pet got the last hit in, surely......

How exactly can you guarantee that? There is a scripted reply from Tywat Pare concerning another being killing Kranach. Outside of pets doing that there is only one way this (someone else doing the last kill) - if a true neutral monster entered the wilderness square, decided to attack Kranach and successfully killed him. Taking into account the fact that Kranach is relatively tough among early game monsters (remember, xp level 6), you have to put a ton of effort in order to pull this.

All this lets me to believe that pet kills were deliberately added by TB as a quest ending action which denies the reward.

Don't get me wrong, I fully believe the design of this particular mechanic is pretty silly (especially animal pets are mostly mindless beasts that are ordered around; while necromantic slaves are simply the tools/weapons of their master). Level 6 and stealth 5k xp limit is borderline buggy behavior. There are a lot of other things that I disagree with. These things, however, do not mean that you can call ADOM poorly designed all over which you seem to do regularly. The size of the fan base, the fact that people donated 90000$ for a game that has not seen a release for about 10 years, means that Thomas is an excellent designer.

[JellySlayer]

So when every time poor RnG makes an end game enemy spawn early, you have to leave that entire dungeon and miss everything from exp to gold to gear to quests and everything else there? Ok.

It isn't so bad in Prerelease, but in 1.1.1, you regularly had to do this with rivers. There was a decent chance that at least one of the starter dungeons would have a river at some point, and if it was bad or you weren't a swimmer, well, then you just had to go elsewhere. Considering that there are five dungeons, VD, SMC, ID, PC, the new starter dungeon, in the immediate vicinity of Terinyo, losing access to one of them for a little while is usually not a huge inconvenience. WMoPCs are another reason to have to do this, and so is something like an early vortex or ogre magus. Part of a winning strategy is understanding the limitations of your character and not taking big risks when you don't have to.

Did you read what i said? i said i was a mist elf with 10hp that hit 3 traps in the same dungeon level, max of 10hp, it was not from walking around low hp, please actually read properly what i said before responding to it. Apparently the you shudder message is a trap *room* these 3 traps were not in the same room just on the same level, so there would not have been that message.

Well, I guess you can head to the PC and grab acid resist right away.

Too bad if learning is under 10 say from a troll character and the only way i can create a door is the slim chance i find the specific wand of door creation, and even if not, the chance of finding a book of wand creation in every playthrough to guarantee this strategy? and locking doors? There is very specific situations in which i can even do that, after doing some research. Ok cool so you have to research everything about the game first to counter the times it is clearly poorly designed, and then hope you have filled the criteria of said research to circumvent said poor design, every playthrough, also picking a priest and generally basing my entire character off *specific* random poor situations, which does not account for all the other poor situations (because you can't have everything, as it should be) is not a solution either i don't believe, but more of a bandaid for the problem instead of fixing it.

Wands of door creation are very common and happen to be quite easy to identify. Wands are also easy to test--just go into an empty wilderness square and fire your wands and see what happens. Chances are if you have five early game wands, one of them is door creation. As noted, keys are available to all PCs, though they're on the expensive side for some.

All well and good if your a wizard. Also if how do you get said physical missiles, more than enough to use on all said non threatening monsters first and to level it enough, scum farming archers and rock throwers? er.

That's an option. Wilderness barbarians are a great source of arrows, for example. Rocks are fairly common as drops, and you can get lots of them by letting the ants mine out PC:2.

Ah good to know, thanks. But again, and no offense, if you had read what i said properly, you would have seen where i said my melee attacks would not actually connect with the monster no matter how many times i swung, so i still would not have killed it and it may have probably followed me out of the darkness, i could not damage it, it was immune to my one and only offensive spell, my melee was naturally poor as a caster and i had no ranged weapon nor ranged skill anyway to help with the rolls for it, so this would not have helped that situation.

Then put your tail between your legs and RUN! With speed talents + coward speed if appropriate, nearly all early game monsters can be escaped. Depending on the monster, backing off long enough to take off your armor and true berserk might be an option.

But you wouldn't want to convert it if you are yourself a chaotic character, to use? And if you dont use your altar early and especially when you cant read, you cant id items and take a gamble with everything you equip? Again especially if you cant read for scrolls of uncursing, then there goes potions use too because you find as many bad potions as good and if they aren't ID'd, i found chugging random ones in times of need is 100% way to get yourself killed lol and **fair enough**

I almost always convert to neutral or lawful at the first opportunity. Yes, I often gamble with equipment, though, I'd prefer to think of it as a calculated risk. If I'm wearing a robe and find a studded leather armor, I know there's about a 95% chance that the studded leather is better, even cursed. So I'd probably take that bet. If it's clothes or something, I'll definitely pass. For weapons, if I think I have a decent upgrade (dagger to orcish spear, say), then I'll gamble, or I'll at least use a merchant to see which ones are most valuable. Otherwise, I'd rather wait until I find a ratling fencer to ID all of my weapons for me. I'll can zap my wands in the wilderness to see what they do. Some items you can ID by weight or material alone. And if you get really stuck, you can always sacrifice your prayers and get your deity to destroy all of your worn equipment. Randomly drinking potions is usually a bad idea, IMHO. The only time I'd do it is if it's basically the choice between that or death--if I'm poisoned by pit vipers early on and have no better options, I'll drink some potions and hope one of them is cure poison. Other than that, it's not worth the risk.

I also read converting altars is a dangerous practice, sacrificing on them may change your alignment instead, you may be pleasing that god instead and angering yours and a few other things, definitely not worth the risk, as seen here there's already enough potentially retarded RnG to get you killed.

It's safe enough if you use a large amount of gold to convert the altar. Converting altars is much less risky than using chaotic ones. Converting an altar using a live sacrifice or a non-gold item (unless it's an artifact or something) is quite risky.

How exactly can you guarantee that? There is a scripted reply from Tywat Pare concerning another being killing Kranach. Outside of pets doing that there is only one way this (someone else doing the last kill) - if a true neutral monster entered the wilderness square, decided to attack Kranach and successfully killed him. Taking into account the fact that Kranach is relatively tough among early game monsters (remember, xp level 6), you have to put a ton of effort in order to pull this.

A stray missile from one of the other monsters could also kill him, I guess. I can't say I've ever had this happen before though.

[Blasphemous]

You can easily convert C altar with an N character.
Just sac the first 1-2 non-chaotic monsters on it.
The neutral deity will protest that it doesn't like its creatures sacced but just ignore it, it's a minor piety penalty.
It works for me every time and I don't remember the last time I had it go wrong (as in change my alignment instead).
If you are NC or very low level N-, there is a chance you get converted instead but at that stage in the game I will simply ignore C altars entirely, it's not like you need them immediately.
Being N- or higher virtually makes converting C altars to N a non-issue.
Whips are very common and work very well for characters <lvl10 and even past lvl 10 so you can first switch your alignment from C to N and then switch the altar's alignment.
Just going to neutral is enough to guarantee no risks of being sacrificed when dealing with non-chaotic altars.
No creatures in the game can sacrifice a neutral character standing on a neutral altar or lawful char standing on a lawful altar.
Part of the reason I don't ever play chaotic chars unless I'm going with a CK or for an ultra, which sort of force me to be C for a prolonged period of time, whether I like it or not.

[TheCableGuy]

I occurs to me that much of the hassle with Kranach can be corrected by simply making his corpse a 100% drop
And make Tywat Pare require his corpse as requirement for the reward.

I know that it might of been made that way specifically to make it less easy for Pet classes
But it shouldn't be that one class should be singled out to make an already difficult fight harder.

Damn it. I Played a Bard who was out to kill Kranach but before I could even see him,
I was surrounded by Mobs and my pet instantly ignored them ad when straight to Kranach.
I couldn't even hack my way towards him to get so much as a hit on him (had no spells)
before my pet killed him. I couldn't even call off my pet because the way pets are programmed.
It ignored me when I told it to attack a bandit and it kept attacking as long as I was under attack.

[Dogbreath]

His corpse already drops 100% of the time...

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Seriously, this thread's level of crybabery is off the charts. In ADOM, if you are careful, you can run away from pretty much everything (including early-game WMoPC's), there are plenty of places to go and you can always come back later with more resources. And there are a lot of resources that can let you deal with a WMoPC not too far into the game: jelly slaying ammo, book of foo bolt, disabling wands/potions, wand of teleport to the stairs (guaranteed), acid spit, altar sacrifice, thrown PoCC, or just becoming a bit stronger as early-game WMoPCs are not such formidable opponents.

ADOM is a particularly winnable roguelike because of its nonlinearity (you can do most stuff in any order and if a dungeon is difficult, you can go to another one and return later) and the sheer amount of resources you can get (contrary to minimalistic roguelikes with restricted inventories à la Brogue, you can be a walking Swiss army knife and literally every problem in the game can be solved with more loot).

The majority of newfangled roguelikes are more luck-based than ADOM, precisely because they tend to have only one dungeon and be more minimalistic in terms of the resources you can use.

The only complaint I agree with is that the thing about pets not counting for the Kranach quest is lame. If an early-game character is clever enough to use a pet to kill Kranach I think that's great, and it's not like the quest reward could unbalance anything anyway.

[Dogbreath]

Seriously, this thread's level of crybabery is off the charts.

*nods* It's like we say here in Japan, "the butthurt is strong with this one."

Seriously. I play Spelunky pretty regularly, and that game is many, many times harder than ADOM but still enjoyable. ADOM is pretty consistently winnable if winning is what you're after - just roll a Dwarf Paladin and play carefully. I just like playing it for interesting R/C combinations now.

[Whiskiz]

And now, i was in the puppy cave, the cavernous level with high spawn rate, after already dropping 2 karmic lizards off a level above in 2 separate rooms, and a cat all the way at the top in a room once i finally gained enough hunger to get my full 109 speed back. After going back down from dropping said karmic lizard off then second lizard then cat all the way up on the first level, one after the other from the same cavernous level, and then going down below the cavernous level, clearing the rest of the cave and coming back up into the level, i get stuck in a long corridor between a 3rd karmic lizard (in the last 5min) and 2 cats the side i just came.

Either way it was get cursed or piss that stupid cat lord off or whatever, took one look at the situation and decided im done. Halfheartedly tried to fight my way out by trying to take out the cats even though that wasn't the exit way, figured run the karmic round a level below then go back up but more enemies just filled the corridor either way anyway from the high spawn rate. Let me guess, like the soultion to most other problems i either should have completely left the dungeon or not gone down that far, in fact maybe you should skip more of the game than you end up playing, you know, just to be safe, now that's skill right there. Knowing when to run (any time stupid RnG becomes stupid or anything gets remotely hard) and is a very rewarding solution to you being challenged.

Time to drop this crap and move on, ima look for my challenge elsewhere, im not into artificial challenge by stupid RnG, im sorry, bad luck, and unavoidable fail situations (yeah yeah tons of situations can be avoided and those are great, they don't nearly make up for the ones that aren't avoidable though, *imo.*) Hey it might be your guys thing, dunno why or how but im glad at least some people get to enjoy the roguelike openworld idea, even if its with this crap, better something than nothing i guess, but again ima move on to a proper challenging game with proper skill required.

Uninstalled and now i finally get to watch lets plays on it at least to finish it off - i didn't want to watch this being played before now for spoilers but that doesn't matter anymore. Anyway i guess i can't expect much more from a game with areas with poor design and so much procedural generation, unfortunate but meh, have fun with..... this...........

And thanks for the great feedback at least, game may not be that good but the communitys awesome, have a good one guys and see you round, thanks for putting up with me for a bit, peace :P

[Drifted]

Karmics should always be killed with ranged. Not lure them away and leave there like cats. Not hard to find 10 or so stones that are more than plenty enouggh to kill random karmic lizard or two at the beginning of the game.

[Silfir]

It's not artificial challenge - one of the skills ADOM tests is your ability to handle unexpected situations and find a solution where there appears to be none. It's a skill that requires a lot of experience and self-introspection to cultivate. It's not for everyone.

I mean, "proper challenging game with proper skill required"? Have you constructed a version of the world where you are the best at everything that matters, and anything you lose at wasn't doing it right? Must be a boring world to live in.