Page 2 of 3 FirstFirst 123 LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 29

Thread: Two Questions: Kitty Karma and Game Difficulty At Beginning Versus End

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    1,923

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by JellySlayer View Post
    Depends how early you hit it. I usually come in at level 11 or so for a non-troll, and almost always end up with a weapon and armor upgrade unless I've already found a killer weapon. You will almost always find at least one eternium 2-hander or halberd there, and a piece of armor with 8 or more PV. The golems aren't all that risky if you've got teleport control and halfway decent stealth. It's not like you're actually fighting them or anything.
    I'll go around level 15, having done the pyramid already, and obtained +TCtr from blink dogs and the wand from VDDL. The armor is virtually never worth giving up the AMW (a bit more PV in exchange for the intrinsics?); with weapons I have slightly better luck. Of course you won't fight the golems at this point, but they might clutter the up staircase.

    Something that makes me feel a bit better if I lose a PC that made it that far, is thinking I might actually have better DF loot with my next character

    Worst is ghost kings, greater daemons, and unicorns, IMHO, because they can wander the level and trap you easily. Ancient dragons can be a problem too, I suppose.
    Ghosts of any kind can't see invisible as far as I know. Ancient dragons can, except the karmic kind. I've had the audacity to make one of those pick up my gold while wearing a ring of invisibility, then bombard them with magic missiles.

    Well, DV has an upper limit of effectiveness. I don't know exactly what it is, but some hits will always go through.
    An interesting excerpt from the official changelog:
    The internal mechanics for the melee and missile combat system have been rewritten to use different mechanics: attacks no longer need to surpass the DV of the opponent on a roll of 1d20 + bonusses but rather 1d(20 + bonusses) is rolled to surpass the DV value. This adds some randomness to combat (no longer will there be automatic hits in all cases). Also monster hit bonusses (at high levels) have been increased to counter the 'a DV of X is enough -- you'll never need more' effect observed in recent versions. Everyone still has a 5% chance to score an automatic hit (actually the chance is slightly higher, especially for extremely powerful monsters, but that's the baseline).

    Greater molochs always pierce armor, IIRC
    Wow, is that so? I thought they only punched through armor a lot.

    Quote Originally Posted by sytar6 View Post
    o_O All? I'm not sure what my success rate is with DH, but I know it's pretty much the only place that kills me after I've gotten a bit into the caverns of chaos. I mean, if the game has thrown me some magic map, invis, darkness, monster detect, DIGGING (to get around those "unavoidable" tension rooms) etc. I'm somewhat likely to make it, but it is far from guaranteed. Just feels like the area has a much larger degree of RNG dependentness than any other part of the game. I'm not just talking about the stairs and the monsters that spawn. I'm talking about the magic map, invis, etc. you're provided. With some classes it's definitely a lot more RNG dependent than others, imo. Though it is pretty notable if literally all your characters get the DH without problem. I haven't been playing for very long, but I've had a handful of DHs that were essentially impossible without some pretty substantial resources, like on demand teleportation.



    Oh. Well that explains it. DH is very friendly to wizards by that time unless you've gotten ridiculously unlucky.
    Well, I do have at least some potions of invisibility and controlled teleportation at that point. Also I'm not saying I've never ever died there, but those were occasions when I was playing recklessly or didn't care about that specific character (trying to melee a mixed tension room under darkness or deliberately entering while doomed and being critically hit by a titan quarrel spring to mind), i.e. definitely avoidable. With a character I was serious about, I don't recall dying, although there were some close calls. Again, I'll usually have the above-mentioned equipment, plus luck and Fate smiles from the ankh and enough piety for emergency healing.

    Taking the wizard thing apart, teleport control is semi-guaranteed in the game, the wand is guaranteed. If you have magic mapping and monster detection on top of that, why can't you map the level, check which monsters are around, then teleport to the stairs if they're safe?

    GM's are jokes IMO. As Silfir enlightened me, once you get the rune covered trident, you can pretty much melt their faces off without any resistance. It gives like +15dex? With some moss training it up to 27, 15 added on to that, and random bonuses you might have gotten from eating a quickling, potion of dexterity, PoGA, or something, you should be able to smack it two or three times, step back, then come in for the finishing blow. Hm. Wait, you play mages. Damn, don't know what you're supposed to do there. There's only so much slaying ammo in the world. Although I do think that Titans and Greater Titans can mess you up even if you're a fighter with executor/skullcrusher/vanquisher. Luckily they're slow as hell, so you can just kind of ignore them nearly all the time.
    Sadly I'm a Candle fanatic, so the trident would arrive no earlier than level 36. When I can use the same tactic but from afar with magic missiles instead. They shrug bolts off somewhat often, but in time, you can clear a tension room of molochs by just bolting and taking distance as necessary. Just make sure you don't fumble and hit the wrong key when casting the spells...

    Perhaps I'll try this. Only thing that would worry me about this strategy is what would happen if you started with a character with very low Wi (as in single digits). You'd be confused forever by Dopplegangers, the ACW, the Archmage. My troll started with 8 Wi. Pretty much anything with mindcraft is going to completely destroy him. What's the workaround for that?
    You can train with Garth, and of course you also have PoGAs and potions of willpower. To specifically resist confusion attacks you can wear a helm/rings of mental stability, or rings of the clear mind, all of which grant resistance (the intrinsic).
    "And light there be!"

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    5,739

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by anon123 View Post
    I'll go around level 15, having done the pyramid already, and obtained +TCtr from blink dogs and the wand from VDDL. The armor is virtually never worth giving up the AMW (a bit more PV in exchange for the intrinsics?); with weapons I have slightly better luck. Of course you won't fight the golems at this point, but they might clutter the up staircase.
    I keep the AMW in reserve, and I think it's a great artifact, but most of those intrinsics aren't needed for everyday usage. I have no problem probably swap it out for something with 9 or more PV as long as the DV loss isn't too bad. So pretty much any decent adamantium or eternium or dragon scale piece. Depends how deep you are in the game, too, I suppose. In the endgame I'd be more tempted to keep it on if I don't have something else to give death resist.


    Quote Originally Posted by anon123 View Post
    An interesting excerpt from the official changelog:
    The internal mechanics for the melee and missile combat system have been rewritten to use different mechanics: attacks no longer need to surpass the DV of the opponent on a roll of 1d20 + bonusses but rather 1d(20 + bonusses) is rolled to surpass the DV value. This adds some randomness to combat (no longer will there be automatic hits in all cases). Also monster hit bonusses (at high levels) have been increased to counter the 'a DV of X is enough -- you'll never need more' effect observed in recent versions. Everyone still has a 5% chance to score an automatic hit (actually the chance is slightly higher, especially for extremely powerful monsters, but that's the baseline).
    Interesting. That seems pretty consistent with what I've observed ingame.

    Quote Originally Posted by anon123 View Post
    Wow, is that so? I thought they only punched through armor a lot.
    I'm pretty sure they do. I used to keep a list of all the monsters I found that always penetrated, but I can't find it ATM, but I believe molochs of all varieties are on it. I think there's maybe 20-30 monsters that always punch.

    You can train with Garth, and of course you also have PoGAs and potions of willpower. To specifically resist confusion attacks you can wear a helm/rings of mental stability, or rings of the clear mind, all of which grant resistance (the intrinsic).
    Morgia will also eventually train Wi up to around 25, which is more than enough for a non-caster.
    Hoping to win with every class, doomed. Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Beastfighter, Druid, Elementalist, Farmer, Fighter, Monk, and ULE Priest down.

  3. #13

    Default

    the wand is guaranteed
    I don't know about you, but I am not inclined to attempt to teleport on to every single square in the VDDL in hopes of finding the secret room. You need to find either a scroll of magic mapping (rare) a scroll of item detection (also pretty rare) or a wand of item detection (also rare). Playing through normally it's not difficult to find many blink dogs without scumming ID:3. Getting the items required to find the wand on the other hand, is not nearly guaranteed. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the incidence of certain scrolls varied between classes. There's also the potential problem of extremely limited booze. The one or two from holeinthewall might've been the only ones you found. Somewhat rare to find that few, but my current char is dealing with this issue right now. I hate leading the beggars out of town. Any time I'm walking in the wilderness, they want to join me. Over and over and over again. Also, imo, it's pretty scummy to lead the beggars out of town.


    As a side note, though it can make you boringly overpowered, I think the ability to use sickness for training with herbs was intentional. What use would devil's rose be otherwise? Even if you blind id'd some devil's rose, you almost definitely also picked some curiana mancox, so the penalty is virtually nonexistent. I don't think that starving was really intended to be used with moss or morgia though. It seems like a tremendous and boring pain in the ass to use starvation to boost your Wi and Dex. Using starvation on corpses takes only a split second. I think stomachemptia was also implemented to make starvation before eating a corpse quick and painless. Unless I have acid spit or stomachemptia, starving myself before eating a corpse doesn't sound like much fun. Then there's also the problem of the corpse rotting because you have to wait your satiation out. People call it scumming, but using devil's rose and two stomachemptia before eating a corpse isn't a whole lot more work than, say, dipping a bunch of PoGAs into holy water individually. Especially if you're eating a bunch of corpses at once. Pop a stomachemptia, eat corpse, repeat. Just seems like morgia and moss will only take you only so far, but if you're lucky enough to find devil's rose and stomachemptia too, they can take you just a bit farther. It just seems like it's intentional to me. Still, it does make you a little too powerful, which isn't much fun.

    Morgia will also eventually train Wi up to around 25, which is more than enough for a non-caster.
    Er, we were talking specifically about a challenge game where you ignored herbs to make the end game more challenging.
    Last edited by sytar6; 05-01-2012 at 08:40 AM.

  4. #14
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Esslingen, Germany
    Posts
    3,973

    Default

    Your perception pretty much matches mine, sytar6. Though I've found that playing a Friday 13th Lithium Man also helped make the endgame much harder, that was the only time I ever died on D:50. (Though I have to admit, it would've been doable if I hadn't poisoned all my potions.) I'm one of those guys who'll risk a look into the DH, but turn around at the slightest sign of danger and just brave the Animated Forest. Which can get quite nasty if you're cursed, by the way, even with two 11 DV shields.

    But yes, I also feel like the game is just about over once I've done the ToEF. Though the other temples aren't exactly walks in the park. Okay, the Earth temple isn't dangerous, just very tedious, and I haven't tried doing it without abusing the stairs yet. The Air temple can get extremely nasty depending on summons (I think I've had werewolf kings) and Yulgash's willingness to close in for melee combat. Sometimes you have to wade in yourself, and that can end poorly. Nuurag-Vaarn can do a lot of damage even if you're resistant to death rays, and if he remains upright after you've spent all disablers and slaying ammo, it will get dirty.

    I've found new respect for the D:50 balors. If you can't kill them quickly and manage to catch all of their attention at once, you're in for a load of trouble. It's what ended up killing my Friday 13th archer after a prolonged battle. I might've won out instead if my Dexterity had remained intact, or for that matter my potions.

    An ultra ending will add some more late game challenge, though. Keriax is pretty nasty with his corruption bolts and tons of PV (though admittedly I always tried to kill him way too early). Sraxxarrakex I remember being quite nasty. And Andor isn't a pushover either. Then there's tension rooms, mixed or regular, and greater undead or karmic vaults. You still have to keep your guard up. Yeah, you have loads of options and ro reason to die, but it isn't exactly boring either.



    Is ADOM easier past the early game? The answer is yes, but I think that's a good thing. When death is permanent and you have start from the beginning again and again, you want the game to be interesting right from the start. And there are ways to make it more interesting, too. I've taken to starting all my characters in the SMC down the UD, including a thief, and avoiding the ID on principle, as well as only letting fate decide to begin with. (For a time; I started playing specific characters to complete the set of classes I've won with. I've also done drakeling now, so all I'm missing in races, I think, is troll.) And once you've invested all of that effort - once you've finally managed to get off the ground - I remember it felt downright exhilarating to play through the rest of the game, discovering things for the first time and NOT dying from it. The deaths also hit you that much harder. I don't think it the late game needs to be just as deadly as the early game, is what I'm saying. It's a different, more controllable kind of deadly, and I like that a great deal.

    Which is not to say I don't share JellySlayer's enthusiasm for more powerful monsters that will negate popular strategies. Not exactly ghost vortices, but how about monsters that use blindness offensively? More monsters that teleport? Casters using Magic Missile (which will kill everything eventually, including greater molochs)? Mindcrafting ghosts that deliberately stay just out of reach? Spellbreakers that will negate your SoA and kill you that way? Doppleganger emperors, which see in the dark and have double your stats? I'm not even saying any of these are good ideas to include in the game, but it's interesting to imagine. ADOM isn't a perfect game, but compared to just about everything else I've played, it holds up extremely well even after thousands of hours of play.

    (Interestingly enough, Thomas himself has stated that he has never won ADOM 1.1.1 with a legitimately played character of his own. I'm not sure what the last version is he has actually beaten. With that in mind, I think endgame pacing is pretty damn excellent.)
    ADOM Guides - whatever you wanted to know about playing a certain class, but have been afraid to ask!

    Check out my youtube channel to see my ADOM videos, including a completed playthrough of the game. I try to give instructions, so if you want to see some place you haven't been before and get some hints on how to deal with it, this might help! There's also some other games featured there that you might find interesting.

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Kentucky
    Posts
    5,067

    Default

    > I'm one of those guys who'll risk a look into the DH, but turn around at the slightest sign of danger

    NOTICE: the 'slightest sign of danger' can and WILL include a
    greater deamon teleporting between you and the up staircase
    as soon as you venture 2 steps.
    "Whip me!" pleads the adom player. The rng replies... "No."

  6. #16
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Lithuania
    Posts
    4,280

    Default

    Regarding game balance -- i think it is not start/end it is more or less before and after scumming [herbs/banshee/Id hop/bug eating whatever fits your bill].

    On other hand even if you avoid scumming at extremes, guaranteed stuff like healing pots from dwarven elder/water orb+gauntlets of corription reduction especially if combined with HP casting can get char litterally through everything.

    Overall for roguelike to be less deadly towards end is IMHO not bad design feature. As long as you can have nice stuff like rooms full Ki-Rins.
    So far rolled 15 casters with RoDS and shamelessly killed them within 200 turns. For eternium glory!
    (after 15 I stopped counting...)

  7. #17
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    5,739

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by sytar6 View Post
    I don't know about you, but I am not inclined to attempt to teleport on to every single square in the VDDL in hopes of finding the secret room. You need to find either a scroll of magic mapping (rare) a scroll of item detection (also pretty rare) or a wand of item detection (also rare). Playing through normally it's not difficult to find many blink dogs without scumming ID:3.
    If you've got mining skill, a couple blessed pickaxes will work too. Doubly good if you're a fan of smithing. If you have a breeder handy, you can also disarm all of the traps and fill most of the level with breeders. This will make it rather likely you'll find the room with a random teleport. Or, if you don't disarm the traps, eventually one of the breeders will teleport to the stairs room, so you can find the stairs with monster detect.

    Quote Originally Posted by sytar6 View Post
    There's also the potential problem of extremely limited booze.
    There's potions of (boost) mana too. And scrolls of charging, although those are pretty rare. You can also use a wand of trap creation in Darkforge to make teleport traps and move around. Both the weapon room and the armor room will hold a trap, so you only need 2 teleports total to get everything (better to have 3 in case of emergency).

    Quote Originally Posted by sytar6 View Post
    As a side note, though it can make you boringly overpowered, I think the ability to use sickness for training with herbs was intentional. What use would devil's rose be otherwise?
    Well, demon daisies and burb roots have pretty much no practical use either (beyond alchemy). I don't think these herbs were specifically designed with stat scumming in mind, myself--honestly, I'm at least somewhat convinced that the current implementation of stat training is, if not bugged, horribly balanced at very least (easy fix: potential scores can't increase by normal training). But I could be wrong (we'll see if they fix stat training in 1.1.2). That's not to say that I don't take advantage of such things when they present themselves.

    Er, we were talking specifically about a challenge game where you ignored herbs to make the end game more challenging.
    Oh. Okay, well, one thing to remember is that luck counts as willpower. Wearing the ankh counts as about +8 Wi. Crowning, very high mana scores, +Fate, +Luck, etc. will all contribute. A character with 8 Wi, the ankh and a ring of mental stability shouldn't have any confusion problems with the ACW (the archmage could still be painful at that score). You can also train Wi, a little bit, by casting spells while confused. So you could just find a doppleganger or gibbering mouther, get confused, then cast Light over and over or something.
    Last edited by JellySlayer; 05-01-2012 at 03:49 PM.
    Hoping to win with every class, doomed. Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Beastfighter, Druid, Elementalist, Farmer, Fighter, Monk, and ULE Priest down.

  8. #18
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Louisiana
    Posts
    287

    Default

    Treasure Hunter is a gift from god. It's in the bible.
    But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, the Treasure Hunter talent and self-control.
    Use it as much as you like. Don't feel guilty. It's amazing.
    Proud member of Team Silfir in the Treasure Hunter debate.

  9. #19

    Default

    If you've got mining skill, a couple blessed pickaxes will work too. Doubly good if you're a fan of smithing. If you have a breeder handy, you can also disarm all of the traps and fill most of the level with breeders. This will make it rather likely you'll find the room with a random teleport. Or, if you don't disarm the traps, eventually one of the breeders will teleport to the stairs room, so you can find the stairs with monster detect.
    Are you supposed to just mine out the entire level? All these things seem tedious to the extreme.

  10. #20
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    1,923

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by sytar6 View Post
    I don't know about you, but I am not inclined to attempt to teleport on to every single square in the VDDL in hopes of finding the secret room. You need to find either a scroll of magic mapping (rare) a scroll of item detection (also pretty rare) or a wand of item detection (also rare). Playing through normally it's not difficult to find many blink dogs without scumming ID:3. Getting the items required to find the wand on the other hand, is not nearly guaranteed. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the incidence of certain scrolls varied between classes. There's also the potential problem of extremely limited booze. The one or two from holeinthewall might've been the only ones you found. Somewhat rare to find that few, but my current char is dealing with this issue right now.
    I get at least one of those items in the Infinite Dungeon with 80% of my characters, and booze (along potions of invis and healing) is pretty common. The ones you get from beggars is always cursed, you have bless it to get more than one charge; three on average. I get the feeling I abuse the ID too much now

    The VDDL is also nice to train Detect Traps a bit with all those diagonally-laid teleports.

    I hate leading the beggars out of town. Any time I'm walking in the wilderness, they want to join me. Over and over and over again. Also, imo, it's pretty scummy to lead the beggars out of town.
    I'm guessing you're lawful and pulverizing them isn't an option? Because I just bolt them to death after I get the pots. Sometimes it takes many attempts to get booze instead of a fortune cookie, which I make a vague justification for my murder.

    I don't think that starving was really intended to be used with moss or morgia though. It seems like a tremendous and boring pain in the ass to use starvation to boost your Wi and Dex.
    Starve yourself until the relevant stats are below 25, use a bunch of herbs (cursed morgia will have the same effect, but give less nutrition), eat something, wait for stat increase(s) and repeat. It's more or less like when you're below 25 for real, except that you must use starvation for each cycle. I don't abuse this too much, though.

    Quote Originally Posted by Silfir View Post
    (Interestingly enough, Thomas himself has stated that he has never won ADOM 1.1.1 with a legitimately played character of his own. I'm not sure what the last version is he has actually beaten. With that in mind, I think endgame pacing is pretty damn excellent.)
    That's surprising. One would think he'd have it easier than anyone else, having created the game.
    "And light there be!"

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •