"Saving" your game

[Dental_floss]

Originally Posted by MeshGearFox

Additionally, ADOM is somewhat less random than many roguelikes. Substantially so, really. Repeating the non-changing bits constantly can get a bit tedious.

This is true, however this is also how people get very good at ADOM. The best players I believe can beat adom as often as 1/3rd of their games. A poster on another forum I read posted about 200 screenshots documenting a ULE game for example, and only had to play 2 characters to accomplish it. He saved the game 0 times and never asked for divine intervention IIRC.

[Congnito]

i dono if i should be proud of this but i beat the game ultra ending (lawfull) with a high elven archer, no saving what so ever and to be honist it was AWSOME, was so exciting to take on andor draken with out cheating,
i cant belive i rember the luck i got, but i found amulet of life saving from the lesser chaos servants in front of khelevaster, was awsome cos i was gonna just talk with out bothering, seriously this is so sad but that was the start of my quest to take on the ultra ending,
then it was all luck from there,
the thing that gave me a massive boost was having seven legue boots and loads of arrows of humanoid slaying, cos it gave me the ability to kill the eternal guardian, leveled up big time from him cos he respawns ofc, (spoze in a sence that could be a exploit but it was proper hard)
then it was smoth sailing all the way,
ahh man the memorys, going to take on the emperor moloch for the scroll for the trident was a super buzz,

i rember being so tence cos i couldent rember how many corruptions u needed before going in to take on andor, cos one time i had the same thing with a dwaf barbarian, had loads of luck got down there after all the LONG!!!!!! ting to get all the parts to take him on and the trident slipped out of my hand when i got in the portal was SUCH A BLOODY let down, really, cos i got round 2 of my m8s who also BATTERD the game big time and we were all there burning some tea with rollups looking to finaly see the ending and the thing slipped out, dam shame,
but i got there in the end, man i cant belive it but it was bloody amazing,

man adom, best dam game on earth,
spoze it could be me but i have to say i had some good times.

[MeshGearFox]

A poster on another forum I read posted about 200 screenshots documenting a ULE game for example, and only had to play 2 characters to accomplish it. He saved the game 0 times and never asked for divine intervention IIRC.

True. I think this also applies to Nethack to some extent, though. I was reading the @Play article on Angband and I believe they raised that point. I mean, what happens in Nethack, is more random than ADOM in the sense of when it happens, but there are certain strategies and bits of knowledge that that always apply, and certain guaranteed events.

I guess I'm a bit of a chronic experimenter. The thrill of discovery is far, far more important to me than the thrill of winning. Save scumming makes it easier for me to do that.

Anyway, additional rules I remember:

6) In general, all games end in saving or death. Whenever you go topside, you must save.
7) Optional rule: Equipping a cursed object mandates a save.
8) Very experimental/option rule: IDENTIFYing a cursed/negative object may also mandate a save.

[Travis Prue]

Originally Posted by Baranor

My greatest video game accomplishment was finishing world 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. in 11 seconds.

I can do that too :P

A poster on another forum I read posted about 200 screenshots documenting a ULE game for example, and only had to play 2 characters to accomplish it. He saved the game 0 times and never asked for divine intervention IIRC.

Impressive :O

[Dougy]

Save-scumming has is use - for example when you want to experiment with things. Do you really want to find out for the first time with a promising character? Just make sure you keep save-scummed and non-save-scummed characters quite separate.

It's quite easy for a reasonably good race/class combination to win the game by scumming the infinite dungeon. Get the "Treasure Hunter" skill and on a staircase go up-down-up-down-up-down... and so on. You'll have so much useful equipment. If you leave around level 15 or so you can go and complete a bunch of quests and equip yourself with many top-notch items.

[Rusi]

I don't have anything againts save-scumming as long as those who do it don't come bragging to forums and high score lists how they beated game with top notch scores. After all the most important thing is enjoying the game. If you get turned on when you walk through Half-Life 2 god mode on, unlimited ammo etc and you enjoy it who am I or anyone else to say "That's wrong!". As long as you don't start to float and brag or ruin someone gaming experience with your cheating or cheated accomplishment nobody got right to blame them.

I would like to see some kind of "wizard/explore" mode implemented in JADE which you can use to save/load as many times as you want but those scores wouldn't be recorded as it's only used for exploring and learning. I think this was the biggest feature I missed when I started playing ADOM and drove me doing save-scumming. Stopped doing this after I noticed my characters started constantly survive to level 10 and further. Thou now I have been stuck in level range 20-30 for many many many many years *rolls eyes* Oh well I hope I can complete the game before JADE is out.

[Dougy]

Right, why should we decide how other people should or shouldn't enjoy the game?

[warheart]

Originally Posted by Rusi

I would like to see some kind of "wizard/explore" mode implemented in JADE which you can use to save/load as many times as you want but those scores wouldn't be recorded as it's only used for exploring and learning. I think this was the biggest feature I missed when I started playing ADOM and drove me doing save-scumming. Stopped doing this after I noticed my characters started constantly survive to level 10 and further. Thou now I have been stuck in level range 20-30 for many many many many years *rolls eyes* Oh well I hope I can complete the game before JADE is out.

I kinda agree with you there, it's a good idea imo.

I must admit I've save scummed many times, but I don't think that should be considered as cheating or even as an offense for "legal" players. I did it because I've never really known much about ADOM, never finished it, and just wanted to see some places I would have never reached without save scumming. Believe it or not (I know I'm noob ) I had never seen the library for example, and save scumming allowed me to do it. I find it fine to save scum as long as people don't brag about scores and such.

[Macros]

When I started playing Adom, I used to savescumm a lot(and that was really hardcore save scumming, I usually ended up with over 600 saves). I won about four or five times, but quickly I got bored. What fun from game you can have if your character is immortal?

When I decided to start playing without save scumming, beginning was very hard. I usually died in SMC or somewhere in UD. Sometimes I was able to get to HMV, and getting to dwarf town was great achievement. But after some time, things got a bit easier; I've learned how to avoid certain dangerous situations, and that allowed my characters to live longer. Since that time I've managed to win Adom about 30 times(with 3 ultra endings), and believe me, playing without save scumming is much more exciting, and playing without save scumming is best way to learn how to play. You need to learn from previous mistakes, also playing without save scumm forces you to play more carefully, and develop your own strategies how to survive. Beginnings might be hard(or even very hard), but imo playing without save scumming gives much more pleasure, excitement and satisfaction.

[Epythic]

I don't savescum, but I always make backups of my savegames (to protect me against crashes), and I write important facts to a file. For example, if I need to remember where the next neutral altar is, I can just do:

$ cat charname.log|grep "neutral altar"

Quite handy.