First Win! (Dark Elf Ranger)

[brim]

So I've been playing ADOM pretty steadily since about 2004. Stopped for about a year while I was unfortunately addicted to World of Warcraft, but it just couldn't stand up to ADOM. This was my first win without the use of save scumming, and I also didn't scum for Herbs or do any stair hopping. Got lucky in the druid dungeon with a lawful altar and sac'd small amounts of gold until I was lawful (didn't wanna be crowned chaotic because of the increased corruption, and also wanted Courage), then mobs until i was fairly decently pious. Went from there up through UD to HMV, and from there to the CoC. Again, super lucky, found 3 lawful altars between D:1 and D:10.

Only real hiccup in the early game was my kill quest for Dwarf Elder was a dark elven lord, and i cleared pyramid, High King's cave, griffyard, gremlin cave, and darkforge before finally finding one. I played rangers before and of course loved the skills, but i found in the mid-game dual weilding wasn't offering enough survivabilty, so this whole game I went Sheild + Polearm for the DV. Was lucky in that my crowing gift was Bugbiter, which I used the entire rest of the game with great effect. Got TC and Teleportitis from corpses prior to Animated Forest, so that was a breeze (i actually am more afraid of the forest than i am the Dwarven halls). Thanks to slaying ammo, ToEF was cake. Unfortunately couldn't find any AoLS, so Kelv died. Got 7LB and eternium tower sheild not far beneath Kelvalaster, and pretty much destroyed everything until mana temple.

Unfortunately made the mistake of entering the temple and ended up surrounded my summoned mobs for a long long time, burned tons and tons of wand of fireball/lightning/acid charges and Scrolls of Charing clearing the wizards and their friends, eventually arrow of humanoid slayed archmage and slowly, slowly, slowly, made my way out. During this whole scenario I got down to 8 HP and actually screamed haha. :D

Once out of there, went straight down to D:50. Found Bracers of War and Ironfist in vaults, potion of uselessness got me Preserver on D:49. What luck! Murdered D:50, wand of destructioned the levers, and left. I chose not to do Bug Temple or Blue Dragon Caves purely out of the terror that after having won I might die and not be able to leave the drakalor chain. probably should have, cuz I was a walking tank. Cured all my corruption via white unicorn, then left the chain.

SO STOKED on my first win :) Guess I'll have to go for an ultra next....

[Harwin]

Congratulations!

[JellySlayer]

Congratulations on your first win!

I definitely agree with the decision to drop dual-wielding. Even as a ranger, the DV loss is pretty severe. I've never been able to contrive a situation where I'd consider it worthwhile. Even with certain daggers, I'm not convinced it is better than other weapons I'm likely to have at that point.

You have a pretty awesome selection of artifacts there... I'm going to give a little nudge toward looking at some of the other weapons that you've picked up for future games. Executor, Purifier, and Serpent's Bite are all fantastic--far better than Bugbiter, in my opinion, although your high polearms skill helps offset that somewhat.

[Sadface]

Congratulations on the win!

If I may advise, though, don't automatically jump into the mindset
of completing an ultra. Sure, if all the parts fall into their place,
then you might want to go for it. But striving constantly to do
one will eventually take the fun out of the game; it'll become
a grind-fest, waiting for that rare AoLS to pop up, or that right
starting character who doesn't die within 5000 turns.

Just enjoy the game, win some more, and if you get the right stuff
for an ultra, go for it! But don't try to force a regular victory
character into an ultra ending hole - you might just lose him/her
to some fluke or cruel joke of the RNG instead of achieving
yet another victory :)

[brim]

Executor, Purifier, and Serpent's Bite are all fantastic--far better than Bugbiter, in my opinion, although your high polearms skill helps offset that somewhat.

Actually, Both Executor and SB were artifacts generated that I never actually picked up. I did have purifier, but wanted to stick it out with pole's. There was a greater fire creature vault on about D:47 or 46, which I cleared the outside of, but once the named Great Red Wyrms came out I ran for the hills. I'm guessing Executor and SB were in there. I'm sure I could have cleared it all without too much trouble, but there was also a Swamp Hydra vault on the same level and there were just enough monsters surrounding me that I didn't wanna take the time to do it-or the risk.