TDau
03-15-2013, 05:07 AM
My first win, after about eight years since I met ADOM! Just for this occasion, I'll write a more lengthy than necessary chronicle of the game.
I played a ratling merchant, specialized in potions. I like how one "feature", that I value greatly about ADOM, pervades this class, namely the humor (if in every game you try to talk or to shoot arrows at yourself, you can understand me; it never gets old for me...). I mean, merchants start with Pick Pockets; it reminds me of Hermes, the ancient greek god of merchants *and* thieves. Also, the ability to use gold coins as missiles, apart from the hilarity, came handy in some situations, and not only in the early game: when I encountered a doppleganger king, deep in the CoC, I started throwing coins at him, and what did the guy do? Exactly! He did not move, he just stood there, picking up the gold, while I killed him one coin at a time... talk about the perils of greed :-).
I took the game very slowly, both in Ancardian time and in real life, because rushing killed many of my promising characters in the past (as did overconfindence, and I must say that choosing a weaker class, for once, helped me play more carefully). I played it a bit at a time, saving after major steps/locations; in fact, I am surprised I saved the game "only" 25 times, I thought it would have ended up much much more.
So, without further ado, I present to you the story of Mery'Sssaass:
When he entered the Drakalor Chain, our merchant still had the name Gsnl. After valiantly defeating a vile kobold, to commemorate this feat he changed his name to Gsnldokb. Only later, having realized how much his deity loved him, and out of gratitude for the favors the gifts the generous interventions, he decided posterity should remember him as Mery'Sssaass.
He threaded his first steps in the dungeons very cautiously. Sent to rescue an imprudent carpenter, he had still in mind the fate of a cousin of him, also a ratling merchant, who managed to arrive at the last level of that very dungeon, only to die to the conspicuous bashing of an invisible stalker (not to mention that ME mindcrafter who found two DE priestesses and one DE princess in VD6... because the RNG just loves you!). Things went pretty smoothly, however, and, at the touch of a cave-dwelling healer, his mercy gained him the Healing skill.
Having an heart of pure gold, he set off to rescue Kenny. Disturbing clicking sounds in the second level made him speed up to the down staircase as fast as he could.
In the third level, a coaligned altar allowed him to gain the favors of Sssaass by roasting chaotic critters on the gray stone. Soon he felt his sacrifices deserved a crowning, but, truth to be told, he had some mistrust as to what he would have received: the history of the relationships between merchants and deities showed a twisted sense of humor on the part of the latter. "I'll end up with some Shezestrubbish and antifreeze", he thought. Instead Sssaass surprised him with the staff of the Wanderer and shock immunity (he used this staff for some time, before switching to axes and then, for most of the game, to a sword of sharpness). An even more pleasant surprise came with the postcrowning: the shield Protector; thanks to this nifty toy, no monster managed to confuse him for more than a couple of turns (with only one notable exception, Nuurag-Vaarn; he really confuses *a lot*).
Cheered up by these events, he descended further into the dungeon, but, alas!, the cute dog had become an empty corpse. He proceeded very carefully to clear a mixed vault.
Next he went through the usual path: Dwarftown, Thrundarr's quests, the Pyramid.
The Dwarven Graveyard taught him a lesson about carefulness: digging a grave made him realize that even a lich amounted to a very difficult opponent at this moment. But he also had some luck: one of the rotting abominations dropped a ring of invisibility; time had come for the unremarkable dungeon. In UD5 he met a fellow ratling who sold potions. Two levels later, he found a pool and drunk it, hoping for a wish, but he got none; instead he obtained various resistances and See Invisible (nice!) and had Teleport Control removed (not so nice; in conjuction with teleportitis from a pixie archer corpse, you can imagine how he had a lot of "fun", until he found again a blink dog).
Back to the CoC, Khelavaster must die, sorry. Made the Water Temple, then down to the wall of flames, then back to the surface for the ToEF. In the meantime, corruption started to taint his body, but he got the best he could hope for as first corruption, the long stilts legs.
So, the tower of eternal flames, a very nasty place. Our hero had to choose what to wear under the elemental gauntlets, two blessed rings of ice or one ring of ice and one of fire resistance? At the beginning, he picked the second option, but, after his long bow of accuracy turned into a heap of ash, he changed his mind and opted for some damage over valuable equipment destruction. Somewhere in the second floor, he opened a door and found a room full of shadow wyrms... "ok, they didn't notice me, I'll just close the door and go for the opposite corner of the level", and, luckily enough, he found the staircase at the opposite side. In the final level, he lured out the ACW from the temple and killed him from a distance; quite a tense fight, the energy rays hit hard and often, but he persevered and managed to prevail.
At this point, he went to the Tomb of the High Kings. He had some wands of cold, and he began freezing the lake. First step on it... the ice creaks... breaks... Of course, forgot about the weight limit, and the fishes ate his HP from 307 to 67... whew, close but not too close.
Since almost 90 days had passed, he thought, "let's go to the library and get the tome for our dear minstrel". Guess what: waited in silence for 2500 turns, "Shh!" then retried for more and more time, 3000, 5000, "Heed the silence!", up to 10000 turns... he did not manage to get the tome, and he got 2 corruptions in the meantime. But, on the way back, a monster dropped a RoDS, which he used to get three SoCRs, so he didn't waste his time there after all.
For the moment, books had little utility to him. Even before the Library, he had found and identified many spellbooks, but, every time he tried to read one, the funniest things happened: pits opened in the ground; confusion muddled his thought; the book exploded; he saw flying reindeers... ok not really, but it wouldn't have been surprising if it happened. Only much later he succeeded in learning some spells. Most of the time, he just glimpsed magic knowledge through potions of wonder and a babbling mouth which grew on his forehead (the latter happened after the library, in case you are wondering).
On the eternal guardian level, he killed a giant slug with some eternium quarrels of hunting (kindly dropped by Kherab) and got its corpse. Can you guess the next joke moment of the game? He could acquire acid immunity, but right now he felt bloated! So he wandered around, keeping an eye on the corpse and dipping it now and then in holy water, until he finally managed to eat the glibbery meat (yuck!).
In the casino shop, he bought a pair of 7LBs, the silver key and a fire crown. Armed with the latter and the rings of ice, he decided to take his chances with the bug temple via alchemy-bombing. There he had his closest brush with death: in the statues room, the bugs took him down to one hundred and something HP; he prayed and Sssaass healed him; next turn, the killer bugs hit him hard and took him to one single HP! Another prayer, another healing; phew! Then he continued without too much trouble.
Back to the CoC, he tackled the Air Temple, which he found easy enough (the only nasty surprise? The vapor rats, didn't know they corrupt-hit that much): he had some quarrels of slaying - about a dozen, used just for special occasions - so he lured Yulgash towards the left side of the level and killed him easily.
Just below the Air Temple, he came across a lesser blue dragon vault, an experience which convinced him to avoid the blue dragon caves quest; altough his lightning immunity and a decent situation corruption-wise had tempted him to take that detour, the lesser vault led to the realization that the hits in melee and the destruction of items would have been too much for him.
He skipped the Earth Temple for the moment, diving deeper down. On D46, he stumbled on a greater giant vault, which gave him Wyrmlance, the staff of the archmagi, Soaker and the hammer of the gods. He soon found himself near level 30, and decided to complete the vault later and attempt the minotaur maze instead.
First, a brief stop in Dwarftown to sell some stuff and sacrifice at the altar. While he was doing his sacrifices, the babbling mouth had no better idea than to fireball Ruun! Honestly, he knew something like that would have happened sooner or later. However, it did not kill the priest, the rest of the town didn't react, and he just locked him in his temple. He had another altar some levels above Dwarftown, so no harm in losing that one.
Enter the maze: with the help of ten blessed SoMM and the antenna corruption (not to mention controlled teleportitis), it didn't take too much time to reach the final level. Once there, he stunned the mages one by one and dispatched them with from afar. Then he paralyzed the minotaur emperor and defeated him effortlessly.
And now comes the next sketch of the game, I guess we could title it "Read the guide before your ride": he managed to bring the corpse of the emperor to Guth'Alak, only to discover that the druid didn't want it (my bad, I should have checked the guidebook more thoroughly, I just saw that his corpse corrupts and jumped to the wrong conclusion). Whatever! He sold the corpse to Munxip for 9gp, you can bet it will make a good attraction for the locals: "Feel free to look around and admire our mummified Big Cow!". Anyway, he got the Yrruir quest. Oh, and he also made Blup happy; he had the gills corruption, and even before that, he had found helmets and amulets of water breathing.
Then he returned to the CoC to do the Earth Temple. He had a lot of fun - this time for real - honing his weapon skills and destroying the elementals with a phase dagger. For the ASB, he used his trusty quarrels of slaying and took it down in a few hits.
At this point he had to face the Mana Temple. He found it harder than he expected. Well, the first part felt rather easy, only a little tedious: wait for Nuurag to exit into the corridor, and dispatch his minions in the meantime. Then the hard part: dealing with him directly, trying to not get killed in the many confused turns. Our valiant merchant had to drink many PoEH and use a LOT of quarrels, of all types; his stubborn shots "critically injured" the archmage many, many times, until, at last!, the dreadful foe drew his last breath.
Time to prepare for the last stage. Back to Dwarftown, he took some stuff he had stored in the ogre cave (potion of uselessness, wand of destruction, etc), and he made some PoGA, PoEH and potions of booze(he had obtained the booze recipe just now, as the ninth recipe, when he advanced a level after killing Nuurag). Recharge your wands! Bless your potions! Make some shopping! And now let's dive towards our destiny!
On D48, a spectre dropped a potion of education, which gave him Concentration (finally! After getting Woodcraft and Mining, he wasn't expecting anything good anymore).
As uselessness gift, he got the Iron Crown of Havlor, which he weared for the final battle.
D50 then. Since the Guidebook states "The Mana Temple will have provided an idea of what CoC 50 will be like for PCs that make it this far", and the Mana Temple had our PC in pains, we had reasons to worry. However, all in all, it turned out easier than the temple. He didn't need to use any of the PoEH, just some spenseweeds now and then, and he never took more than fifty or so points of damage. On the other hand, in no other place he made that heavy an use of spells and wands.
At first, he planned a wand of destruction ending: dig the two corridors, clear them, handle and destroy. After he executed this plan, he decided to clear the entire level anyway: he had enough blessed quarrels of demon slaying to deal with the balors, and the Destroy Undead spell took care of the ghost lords. Besides, he hoped for a RoDS. And, sure enough, one of the last ghost lords to get destroyed dropped one! "Thankssss, very nice of you!". In the process of clearing D50, he advanced from level 37 to 50.
He returned to Dwarftown for his last sell (we are talking about a merchant, after all; btw, I never saw Waldenbrook run out of money before in a game), and also to bid farewell to Thrundarr. The ancient dwarf greeted him with a huge grin: "Ye hast succeeded!" *Grin* "Me is relieved. May all the gods bless ye. Now go home and enjoy ye rewards -- ye earned them." Thanks Thrundarr, and bless be upon you, too!
Left those caverns behind, he undertook the unicorn quest. Riurry fell easily to his quarrels. Yrruir cleansed him of all the corruptions, and decided to follow him when he departed.
Just before leaving the Drakalor Chain, he visited Terinyo for the last time, and he used the RoDS to create an exact clone of Kenny for the tiny girl. Then he left this remote mountain range, with the thought of all the strange people and creatures and adventures, and with the company of a greater white unicorn...
Thus ends the tale of Mery'Sssaass deeds. If you haven't fallen asleep by now, it means you have sleep resistance.
I played a ratling merchant, specialized in potions. I like how one "feature", that I value greatly about ADOM, pervades this class, namely the humor (if in every game you try to talk or to shoot arrows at yourself, you can understand me; it never gets old for me...). I mean, merchants start with Pick Pockets; it reminds me of Hermes, the ancient greek god of merchants *and* thieves. Also, the ability to use gold coins as missiles, apart from the hilarity, came handy in some situations, and not only in the early game: when I encountered a doppleganger king, deep in the CoC, I started throwing coins at him, and what did the guy do? Exactly! He did not move, he just stood there, picking up the gold, while I killed him one coin at a time... talk about the perils of greed :-).
I took the game very slowly, both in Ancardian time and in real life, because rushing killed many of my promising characters in the past (as did overconfindence, and I must say that choosing a weaker class, for once, helped me play more carefully). I played it a bit at a time, saving after major steps/locations; in fact, I am surprised I saved the game "only" 25 times, I thought it would have ended up much much more.
So, without further ado, I present to you the story of Mery'Sssaass:
When he entered the Drakalor Chain, our merchant still had the name Gsnl. After valiantly defeating a vile kobold, to commemorate this feat he changed his name to Gsnldokb. Only later, having realized how much his deity loved him, and out of gratitude for the favors the gifts the generous interventions, he decided posterity should remember him as Mery'Sssaass.
He threaded his first steps in the dungeons very cautiously. Sent to rescue an imprudent carpenter, he had still in mind the fate of a cousin of him, also a ratling merchant, who managed to arrive at the last level of that very dungeon, only to die to the conspicuous bashing of an invisible stalker (not to mention that ME mindcrafter who found two DE priestesses and one DE princess in VD6... because the RNG just loves you!). Things went pretty smoothly, however, and, at the touch of a cave-dwelling healer, his mercy gained him the Healing skill.
Having an heart of pure gold, he set off to rescue Kenny. Disturbing clicking sounds in the second level made him speed up to the down staircase as fast as he could.
In the third level, a coaligned altar allowed him to gain the favors of Sssaass by roasting chaotic critters on the gray stone. Soon he felt his sacrifices deserved a crowning, but, truth to be told, he had some mistrust as to what he would have received: the history of the relationships between merchants and deities showed a twisted sense of humor on the part of the latter. "I'll end up with some Shezestrubbish and antifreeze", he thought. Instead Sssaass surprised him with the staff of the Wanderer and shock immunity (he used this staff for some time, before switching to axes and then, for most of the game, to a sword of sharpness). An even more pleasant surprise came with the postcrowning: the shield Protector; thanks to this nifty toy, no monster managed to confuse him for more than a couple of turns (with only one notable exception, Nuurag-Vaarn; he really confuses *a lot*).
Cheered up by these events, he descended further into the dungeon, but, alas!, the cute dog had become an empty corpse. He proceeded very carefully to clear a mixed vault.
Next he went through the usual path: Dwarftown, Thrundarr's quests, the Pyramid.
The Dwarven Graveyard taught him a lesson about carefulness: digging a grave made him realize that even a lich amounted to a very difficult opponent at this moment. But he also had some luck: one of the rotting abominations dropped a ring of invisibility; time had come for the unremarkable dungeon. In UD5 he met a fellow ratling who sold potions. Two levels later, he found a pool and drunk it, hoping for a wish, but he got none; instead he obtained various resistances and See Invisible (nice!) and had Teleport Control removed (not so nice; in conjuction with teleportitis from a pixie archer corpse, you can imagine how he had a lot of "fun", until he found again a blink dog).
Back to the CoC, Khelavaster must die, sorry. Made the Water Temple, then down to the wall of flames, then back to the surface for the ToEF. In the meantime, corruption started to taint his body, but he got the best he could hope for as first corruption, the long stilts legs.
So, the tower of eternal flames, a very nasty place. Our hero had to choose what to wear under the elemental gauntlets, two blessed rings of ice or one ring of ice and one of fire resistance? At the beginning, he picked the second option, but, after his long bow of accuracy turned into a heap of ash, he changed his mind and opted for some damage over valuable equipment destruction. Somewhere in the second floor, he opened a door and found a room full of shadow wyrms... "ok, they didn't notice me, I'll just close the door and go for the opposite corner of the level", and, luckily enough, he found the staircase at the opposite side. In the final level, he lured out the ACW from the temple and killed him from a distance; quite a tense fight, the energy rays hit hard and often, but he persevered and managed to prevail.
At this point, he went to the Tomb of the High Kings. He had some wands of cold, and he began freezing the lake. First step on it... the ice creaks... breaks... Of course, forgot about the weight limit, and the fishes ate his HP from 307 to 67... whew, close but not too close.
Since almost 90 days had passed, he thought, "let's go to the library and get the tome for our dear minstrel". Guess what: waited in silence for 2500 turns, "Shh!" then retried for more and more time, 3000, 5000, "Heed the silence!", up to 10000 turns... he did not manage to get the tome, and he got 2 corruptions in the meantime. But, on the way back, a monster dropped a RoDS, which he used to get three SoCRs, so he didn't waste his time there after all.
For the moment, books had little utility to him. Even before the Library, he had found and identified many spellbooks, but, every time he tried to read one, the funniest things happened: pits opened in the ground; confusion muddled his thought; the book exploded; he saw flying reindeers... ok not really, but it wouldn't have been surprising if it happened. Only much later he succeeded in learning some spells. Most of the time, he just glimpsed magic knowledge through potions of wonder and a babbling mouth which grew on his forehead (the latter happened after the library, in case you are wondering).
On the eternal guardian level, he killed a giant slug with some eternium quarrels of hunting (kindly dropped by Kherab) and got its corpse. Can you guess the next joke moment of the game? He could acquire acid immunity, but right now he felt bloated! So he wandered around, keeping an eye on the corpse and dipping it now and then in holy water, until he finally managed to eat the glibbery meat (yuck!).
In the casino shop, he bought a pair of 7LBs, the silver key and a fire crown. Armed with the latter and the rings of ice, he decided to take his chances with the bug temple via alchemy-bombing. There he had his closest brush with death: in the statues room, the bugs took him down to one hundred and something HP; he prayed and Sssaass healed him; next turn, the killer bugs hit him hard and took him to one single HP! Another prayer, another healing; phew! Then he continued without too much trouble.
Back to the CoC, he tackled the Air Temple, which he found easy enough (the only nasty surprise? The vapor rats, didn't know they corrupt-hit that much): he had some quarrels of slaying - about a dozen, used just for special occasions - so he lured Yulgash towards the left side of the level and killed him easily.
Just below the Air Temple, he came across a lesser blue dragon vault, an experience which convinced him to avoid the blue dragon caves quest; altough his lightning immunity and a decent situation corruption-wise had tempted him to take that detour, the lesser vault led to the realization that the hits in melee and the destruction of items would have been too much for him.
He skipped the Earth Temple for the moment, diving deeper down. On D46, he stumbled on a greater giant vault, which gave him Wyrmlance, the staff of the archmagi, Soaker and the hammer of the gods. He soon found himself near level 30, and decided to complete the vault later and attempt the minotaur maze instead.
First, a brief stop in Dwarftown to sell some stuff and sacrifice at the altar. While he was doing his sacrifices, the babbling mouth had no better idea than to fireball Ruun! Honestly, he knew something like that would have happened sooner or later. However, it did not kill the priest, the rest of the town didn't react, and he just locked him in his temple. He had another altar some levels above Dwarftown, so no harm in losing that one.
Enter the maze: with the help of ten blessed SoMM and the antenna corruption (not to mention controlled teleportitis), it didn't take too much time to reach the final level. Once there, he stunned the mages one by one and dispatched them with from afar. Then he paralyzed the minotaur emperor and defeated him effortlessly.
And now comes the next sketch of the game, I guess we could title it "Read the guide before your ride": he managed to bring the corpse of the emperor to Guth'Alak, only to discover that the druid didn't want it (my bad, I should have checked the guidebook more thoroughly, I just saw that his corpse corrupts and jumped to the wrong conclusion). Whatever! He sold the corpse to Munxip for 9gp, you can bet it will make a good attraction for the locals: "Feel free to look around and admire our mummified Big Cow!". Anyway, he got the Yrruir quest. Oh, and he also made Blup happy; he had the gills corruption, and even before that, he had found helmets and amulets of water breathing.
Then he returned to the CoC to do the Earth Temple. He had a lot of fun - this time for real - honing his weapon skills and destroying the elementals with a phase dagger. For the ASB, he used his trusty quarrels of slaying and took it down in a few hits.
At this point he had to face the Mana Temple. He found it harder than he expected. Well, the first part felt rather easy, only a little tedious: wait for Nuurag to exit into the corridor, and dispatch his minions in the meantime. Then the hard part: dealing with him directly, trying to not get killed in the many confused turns. Our valiant merchant had to drink many PoEH and use a LOT of quarrels, of all types; his stubborn shots "critically injured" the archmage many, many times, until, at last!, the dreadful foe drew his last breath.
Time to prepare for the last stage. Back to Dwarftown, he took some stuff he had stored in the ogre cave (potion of uselessness, wand of destruction, etc), and he made some PoGA, PoEH and potions of booze(he had obtained the booze recipe just now, as the ninth recipe, when he advanced a level after killing Nuurag). Recharge your wands! Bless your potions! Make some shopping! And now let's dive towards our destiny!
On D48, a spectre dropped a potion of education, which gave him Concentration (finally! After getting Woodcraft and Mining, he wasn't expecting anything good anymore).
As uselessness gift, he got the Iron Crown of Havlor, which he weared for the final battle.
D50 then. Since the Guidebook states "The Mana Temple will have provided an idea of what CoC 50 will be like for PCs that make it this far", and the Mana Temple had our PC in pains, we had reasons to worry. However, all in all, it turned out easier than the temple. He didn't need to use any of the PoEH, just some spenseweeds now and then, and he never took more than fifty or so points of damage. On the other hand, in no other place he made that heavy an use of spells and wands.
At first, he planned a wand of destruction ending: dig the two corridors, clear them, handle and destroy. After he executed this plan, he decided to clear the entire level anyway: he had enough blessed quarrels of demon slaying to deal with the balors, and the Destroy Undead spell took care of the ghost lords. Besides, he hoped for a RoDS. And, sure enough, one of the last ghost lords to get destroyed dropped one! "Thankssss, very nice of you!". In the process of clearing D50, he advanced from level 37 to 50.
He returned to Dwarftown for his last sell (we are talking about a merchant, after all; btw, I never saw Waldenbrook run out of money before in a game), and also to bid farewell to Thrundarr. The ancient dwarf greeted him with a huge grin: "Ye hast succeeded!" *Grin* "Me is relieved. May all the gods bless ye. Now go home and enjoy ye rewards -- ye earned them." Thanks Thrundarr, and bless be upon you, too!
Left those caverns behind, he undertook the unicorn quest. Riurry fell easily to his quarrels. Yrruir cleansed him of all the corruptions, and decided to follow him when he departed.
Just before leaving the Drakalor Chain, he visited Terinyo for the last time, and he used the RoDS to create an exact clone of Kenny for the tiny girl. Then he left this remote mountain range, with the thought of all the strange people and creatures and adventures, and with the company of a greater white unicorn...
Thus ends the tale of Mery'Sssaass deeds. If you haven't fallen asleep by now, it means you have sleep resistance.