Trouble with Thrundarr quest.

[melphen]

I have gotten back into form enough that most of my games get to Thrundarr again. To be honest most of my games didn't get too far past the living forest even when I played a bit so to be back here consistantly is fun. Anyway, the issue I'm having is I keep getting monsters I don't know where to find or know too much about as his first quest. Last night is was a hill giant, this morning it is a berserker lord.

I have read the manaul and the improved guide book and I go back to them when I need to know something, but they really aren't helping me much with this stuff. Is there a list of monsters by location of something I can use to help? Anything really. I have no idea where to reliably find these things. Last night's character died looking for a hill giant. The current character is on hold pending learning enough to know where I might find a berserker lord and what kind of trouble I'm looking at killing him.

This is the kind of thing that stopped me in the past so I want to learn something this time. I get a character to this point with the right gear (in my experience anyway), decent stats, and things are looking ok for me to advance more in the game but I get this and I have no idea how to clear it. Why isn't this EVER a rat, or an orc? It is always a monster I haven't seen in the game yet (or maybe I have seen one) and have no good idea how to find.

So, I could use some advice. I thought reading all the stuff I could find would help but at the end of the day even metagaming isn't enough. On a side note, the guide book describes the location of each dungeon in the game, and even shows pictures from inside the dungeon, is there a world map labeled to show each dungeon in the wilderness? That would help too.

[Qui]

Well in p20 Thrundarr is being a pain with his choices. Supposedly it will be toned down a bit for the next prerelease. Actually, berserker lord isn't all that bad, there's a reasonable chance to find one between Dwarftown and animated forest. Or in the Big Room. Possibly also in the Pyramid, TotHK, or the darkforge entrance level. I'd say if there isn't one on the level or two below DT, scumming the big room for a bit is the easiest choice.

As for trouble, isn't that hard, a competent melee character shouldn't have a problem taking one on.

[GordonOverkill]

That's actually a rather unpleasant changing in one of the recent version, making it a very tough quest 80% of the time. Most of us hope to see that changed back in a future prerelease. You might try to look for the monster in rather dangerous places like the Pyramid or the Tomb of the High Kings. If you don't find it there, you might just try to continue without being able to finish Thrundar's quests (or finish them much later).

[LexyBoy]

I've been thinking, what is the point of Thrundarr's quest?

It seems to be designed as a help for beginners - to guide them along and provide some pointers and experience. However, the fact that the AF is often just below DT and the fact that the first quest is arbitrary and often difficult means that many beginners will have already explored down to the AF and thus get *another* random monster quest. Ditto the Arena. So unless you know to avoid the AF until the quest is complete, you're likely to just get annoyed with Thrundarr and ignore him (at least until the portal is found).

As it is, the first quest just means a choice between grinding for a bit or ignoring the quests and continuing down, which isn't that satisfying for me.

Why can't the first quest be something more fitting - to me, becoming champion of the arena seems a more obvious way to prove yourself (if a bit hard at the moment). Or maybe a "bring me <item>" which would be in another cave like the ogre quest.

[mewmew]

My last game he told me to kill a shambling mound -_- I didn't find one in upper CoC and ToHK, so I dived and tried to guess which of stairs leaded to forest and chose the wrong one, so I lost the reward for the next quest and, of course, as soon as I lost the second quest, I began to meet a few shambling mounds everywhere. Also the second random monster to kill it was an ochre jelly... if only it was vice versa.
I think I completed that quest exactly 1 time, that game which I managed to win. And I still remember my hurthling archer who got a quest to kill a shadow lord. Poor girl digged some grave to summon a master lich which would summon shadow lords... well the plan worked in that part :3 She died chain confused and aged to death.

Also berserker lord is a good quest, they are easy to find. In my current game I met one on the bottom floor of PC.

[melphen]

Thanks for the advice. I took it and found what I was looking for standing on staircase to AF.

I went back up a level to look around first. I left that level early because it was extra windy. D:10 had a spider vault and a vortex room. My blessed ring of cold resistance surely saved my life this day...

Moving onward.

[Blasphemous]

When I get some rarity from Thrundarr, I eventually find it on the cavernous levels in the tomb of the high kings.
It's a dangerous place but it has high monster generation rate that has a chance to spawn some really rare monsters.
Also danger level is high enough there to allow wands of wishing and rings of djinni summoning to just randomly drop.
That way you typically cover many bases, like finding your Thrundarr quest monster, getting a wish for Khelly and leveling up past 20.
However, if you're a melee char, I'd advice against going to the TotHK without amulets of free action and petrification.
Gorgons and master/greater mimics are typical there and those can quickly kill you if you're unprepared.
High risk, high gain case, but I usually take it.

[melphen]

I feel I'm missing something in the progress of the game here. As I understand it the best coarse of action is finish the early quests you can, make your way to D:1, Progress to arena and win all but last fight or two, progress to DT, take random monster quest.

When I get to this point I'm normally level 10ish. Meaning I haven't been invited to the pyramid at all. So going to ToHK would seem to be a bad idea. Blasphemous says he is looking to level past 20 in ToHK (or I'm reading that wrong I'm not sure). This means I have things out of order... Can someone shed some light on this for me?

[JellySlayer]

In pre20, the Thrundarr random monster quest is currently... borderline unplayable. The typical monsters that are called for are simply too rare and usually too strong for the characters that they are assigned to. In earlier versions of the game, you could usually finish this quest about 95% of the time before visiting the Pyramid, typically around level 10-13, depending, naturally, a bit on luck. In rare cases, you'd get assigned something nasty (a vapor rat, cyclops, etc.) and would have to wait for awhile or just give up on the quest completely. In pre20, now it's nearly the opposite--maybe 5% of the time, you'll be assigned a monster that you're likely to be able to find/kill early on, and 95% of the time, you'll probably finish the quest by the late midgame, if at all.

This behaviour will be fixed in pre21. Right now, most of the time you'll just have to skip the Thrundarr quest.

[melphen]

So, if you can't complete the Thrundarr quest for a random monster you can't complete the quest to move him from his lever. So, unless you want to "cheat" you simply can not advance past the portal...

I'm normally 100% ok with ADOM being unfair. If I wanted to play a game I know I could win I would buy an xBox. However, I do like to play the game in the way it should be played. I have never been the kind to do something that wasn't in the spirit of the game just because I could do it. I guess I'll have to be 99.9% ok with ADOM being unfair for now.

Honestly the odds of my making a large leap in game progress all of the sudden are so low I don't mind in the slightest that I might not be able to advance natrually the more I think about it.

[Utnapishtim]

The portal quest is independent from other quests. You can activate it by speaking to Thrundarr about "portal" regardless of whether you have taken any of the other ones.

[Qui]

You get the portal quest irregardless of the other quests. Just ask him.

[Utnapishtim]

I feel I'm missing something in the progress of the game here. As I understand it the best coarse of action is finish the early quests you can, make your way to D:1, Progress to arena and win all but last fight or two, progress to DT, take random monster quest.

When I get to this point I'm normally level 10ish. Meaning I haven't been invited to the pyramid at all. So going to ToHK would seem to be a bad idea. Blasphemous says he is looking to level past 20 in ToHK (or I'm reading that wrong I'm not sure). This means I have things out of order... Can someone shed some light on this for me?

Actually the Portal quest answer partially answers this one as well. At least in p20 it is quite common to do that quest (Griffyard) before the other Thrundarr quests. Having done that, the Terinyo quests, and explored CoC until the level above the forest, any race other than troll should already have access to the pyramid.

Another part of the answer is that many players begin with going through the small cave and unremarkable dungeon, getting quite a lot of experience already before visiting the CoC and doing the Terinyo quests.

You might want to consult this thread (http://www.adom.de/forums/showthread.php/12964-Your-typical-play-sequence) to see some typical play sequences, although it might be spoily.

[melphen]

I wasn't thinking about the portal quest being different. Some times I'm kind of dumb you see.

I don't mind spoily anymore. I tried to stay away from it for a long time but the game really isn't playable without some spoilers I'm afraid. Thanks for the link.

[Tyrnyx]

I don't mind spoily anymore. I tried to stay away from it for a long time but the game really isn't playable without some spoilers I'm afraid. Thanks for the link.

I personally agree with you. Adom is hard enough even with spoilers. However. Do keep in mind that many of the spoils are totally unnecessary and will make you end up doing (risky) unnecessary things. I recently checked my first win. I saved khelly, wished for an emperor moloch, and even got the twin daggers. All so completely unnecessary. So be careful with your spoilage.

My current technique for the first quest is to drive ASAP to dwarftown. Don't clear anything (especially not random monster vaults or random monster rooms). That way it's more likely to find a monster on the way up. Nothing bites more than being assigned a monster you just killed. I avoid killing hill giants and berserker lords as they are both common assignments.

If your lucky the monster will appear after a time in the Big Room provided a high enough level (i've had a gorgon kill me in the big room for instance - your level increases danger of monsters generated). If your unlucky it most certainly can be generated in the TotHK. If your super unlucky and it doesn't spawn (pretty rare but happens) thats just the RNG kicking you.

[Sardaukar]

2 last characters I got to Thrundarr got Ghost Lord and Doppelganger Lord to kill... Ouch...

[mewmew]

I was assigned an ogre lord this game and then suddenly meet the ogre lord in the Pyramid :3


I personally agree with you. Adom is hard enough even with spoilers. However. Do keep in mind that many of the spoils are totally unnecessary and will make you end up doing (risky) unnecessary things. I recently checked my first win. I saved khelly, wished for an emperor moloch, and even got the twin daggers. All so completely unnecessary. So be careful with your spoilage.

My winning game I saved Khelly and I dunno what I would do if I didn't, because I got mana battery 4 times (the game literally gave it to me again as soon as I removed it several times) and poisoned hands 2 times and if I didn't have those SoCR... Oh, and tentacled mouth too, but my character wasn't a caster anyway. There should be a corruption to prevent reading scrolls to make you completely cut of any magic means (:
Mystic gave me potions, other sources, apart may be Rift were kind of unavailable and with no food preservation I couldn't even exchange most of corpses to PoCC.

Also about spoilers, when I played ADoM for the first time long ago, I checked manual mostly for non-spoily information like game skills, races, suggestions etc, but if you play a game and use some chat/forum about it, some spoilers are unavoidable (I discussed ADoM on a couple of other non ADOM-specific forums those times), so when I recently began to play ADoM again I eventually began to use the wiki. Regardless of reading some spoilers a few things are taught by practice though.

[littlebrather]

I have to ask you, what do Thrundarr quests give to the character?
First quest — is the sweetest for non-literate non-foodpreservin' char. Really advantage early on but *after* Graveyard and Pyramid is just of little help.
That this *change* of First Quest brings in my play style is an extra days spending on roaming around the map. Without certain wand there is no real sense to dive for the King, and without this location it sometimes impossible to find certain monster.
Second Quest — WoFB Wow, thanks a lot except I've already kill the Mummy. At least it could be useful against The King and The Snake.
Ogre Quest — such a pity.
Arena Quest — OK little-man-long-beard that may be handy but not ultimate.
Demon Quest — for the RNG sake. The only auditory for this piece of lead is the speedrunners (oh, wait...), while in the process of roaming for certain monster I must have found a better weapon already.

The *hardening* of the first Thrundarr quest in addition with herbal training fix does make the early-to-mid stage of game boring.
As for me it was always better to complete sane chain of properly fitted quest, than put it on RNG and just run around in the expectation of artifact, altar, SLB and so on.

[mewmew]

Well, you can make portal quest the very first and then clear the Pyramid with the wand of fireballs from that quest, Dwarven Graveyard isn't harder than Pyramid. It will be given with low charges or empty but it's not that hard to get several potions of booze.
Also not like you really need the wand if you go there at lvl 16, I think I rarely used it there (and when I did it was the wand from portal quest), my first character who cleared the Pyramid did it throwing stones, my current one simply entered the top chamber with a giant boar from a nearby forest and ordered the beast to slay Rehetep :3 It usually takes some stairdancing though so I rather prefer to have a wand of teleport than a wand of fireballs there.
Also, speaking of ToHK, I think it should be possible to grind for monsters and levels (it sounds tedious though so I usually avoid that) near the stairs to the first cavernous level which make it rather safe.

[littlebrather]

Well, you can make portal quest the very first and then clear the Pyramid with the wand of fireballs from that quest, Dwarven Graveyard isn't harder than Pyramid. It will be given with low charges or empty but it's not that hard to get several potions of booze.
Nope. Doing Graveyard w/o some source of =Cold surely is a game with too high stakes. Not to mention that achieving lvl17 by killing Master Necromancer is not that impossible.

My message was that far away, long ago first and second quests were nice start boost for every noncaster, especially because of WoFB and early access to some sort of identification. But the good old days are gone.

[Qui]

As it was said before, the monster choice is supposedly altered for the next prerelease, so this discussion is hopefully pointless.