paivi
03-17-2014, 11:43 PM
This was my second serious attempt at playing a bard. Everyone says they're awesome, and I'd have to concur.
I've never posted a YAVP before, or maybe I did back in the days of rec.games.roguelike.adom, can't remember. Anyway, I've won the game a few times during the years, but I tend to be a careless player and most of my characters die from sheer stupidity or oversight; and I've never managed an ultra. I've felt like going for UNE for some time and started rolling gnomish bards... And then this character happened. Thought to post this to show potential new players that even the most hopeless cases can at least aspire to a relatively effortless normal win.
From the start and up to the ToEF, this character was sort of unlucky. In some respect the bad luck lasted all through the game: for one thing, there was not a single fireproof blanket to be found in the whole game, and for a long time no decent weapons either, and the initial skillset was rather unimpressive. Sure, there were Gardening and Healing, which promised all kinds of good things later, but what persuaded me to try this character were the 6 starting talents, the Cup starsign and the combination Archery + Fletchery, which sounded great... except that there was not a single hatchet in the game, and I used fletchery exactly once on a log from the living forest. I spent ages drinking from pools and walking around the ID, but no wish and no AoLS. As a matter of fact, not a single wish (or an Aols) in the game. Also, no SoCRs except the guaranteed one in the HMV (see below for my library snafu), and no PoCCs except from Guth'Alak. Are we seeing a pattern here?
The skillset was so bad that by the time I approached level 25, I was praying for Alertness, Find Weakness and Concentration. I had even purchased every possible skill from Yergius and maxed them out to maximise my potential of getting something good. Well, here's what I got:
- Alchemy (ok, not bad, but a gnome has gemology for all her explosive needs. Never used this, and it finally hit 100 in D:50 which was a bit late.)
- Bridge Building (Let's not forget that not a single hatchet turned up in my game.)
- Food Preservation
- An improvement to Haggling, about the only skill I hadn't got to 100 by level 25
- and last but not least, Woodcraft.
Woo-hoo! \o/
I tend to play magic users and like to at least try to make casters out of my bards, but the lack of Concentration was seriously crippling this character's casting and reading abilities. At level 18, with a maxed-out Literacy and a Learning of 30+ she still occasionally failed to read Scare Monster. No matter, though, because the first corruption was babbling mouth, which pretty much kept the PP too low for any serious magic. At this point I saved my game, went away for the weekend and when I came back to the game, I promptly forgot that I had the babbling mouth and headed to the library to get the weird tome. You can guess how well that went. :p At least I got a Ring of Regeneration and some eternium armor out of it. (Got to love those chaos knights, they're like cute pink eternium gear dispensers.) Thought to get rid of the corruption and return for the tome, but in the end I didn't bother and babbling mouth kept me company until the end. So this character hardly ever used magic, a first for me. All my melee characters tend to die in mid-game, and I was sure this very much non-melee AND non-casting character was heading towards a sticky end in the tower.
Oh yes, the tower and the issue with weapons. I really struggled to find decent one-handed ego weapons that wouldn't melt in the tower. I scoured darkforge (nothing but crap), hopped around in the ID and even resorted to grave-robbing. The first grave I dug was guarded by an emperor lich. :D I also got crowned with Boots of the Divine Messenger, which were good for the tower, I guess.
In the end I really couldn't find anything better than an adamantium spear (+1, 1d8+3). Thanks to the eternium plate mail, monsters in the tower didn't manage to kill me, but it sure was taking me a long, long while to kill them, especially with less than stellar strength. Also, did I mention the lack of fireproof blankets? I needed one ring slot for ring of damage and one for the ring of ice, and the tool slot for a pickaxe. This meant no healing, no ring of regeneration and no confusion resistance. Didn't think much of my chances against the Wyrm, so my strategy was to thin out his crowd of followers, then run back to D:1 to switch rings. On my way to the stairs with the wyrm in pursuit, he happened to step on a light trap... and duly started staggering. Ever the opportunist, I waded in with the trusty old spear. Had to switch tactics to Berserk to even bypass his PV. He went down surprisingly easy, and suddenly I was a rather surprised owner of the fire orb.
And this is where the bard's luck finally changed and everything suddenly started being ridiculously easy. The Casino yielded Skullcrusher, a greater giant vault gave Robes of Resistance and D49 gift was the Iron Crown of Havlor. I still occasionally used the same adamantium spear as far down as the Earth Temple for the DV bonus (and I never did find a better spear). I was really quite attached to it by then. :) Anyway, nothing much managed to hurt me, the biggest scare was a a tension room of doppelganger kings in D20, didn't realise they start to appear that early and thought they were lords, waded in with the trusty useless spear... Came to my senses quickly after one hit took me down from full health to 34 hp. Wand of teleportation to the rescue.
Nuurag-Vaarn fell easily to arrows of humanoid slaying. Didn't bother with Sharad-Waador's quest.
The one last random artifact was Jet-Black Glaive dropped by someone in D:50, and the rune-covered trident had the good sense to appear exactly as I was battling the first ghost lords in D:50. Great timing, I say. The final 13 character levels all came in rapid succession as balors fell to the trident, and then that was that. Pack and go home, the usual.
Bards really are awesome, I can't remember the last time when I had such an easy time in D:50. Even my wizards have sweated more.
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^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^
^^*^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^=====^^^^^^^^^ ^ ^ ^^^..^
^===""""~~~^^^ ~~~~~~~~^*^^=======^^*^^^^^^^^^^^^.@^^
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^&&&&&&&&&&""""""=^^"""~^^^^^^ ^o^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^+^^^^^^ ^^^
^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^
Oyaf St:35 Le:45 Wi:31 Dx:53 To:47 Ch:41 Ap:33 Ma:35 Pe:30 N=
DV/PV: 91/68 H: 822(822) P: 216(513) Exp: 50/15748826 DrCh Sp: 134
Blessed Satiated
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I've never posted a YAVP before, or maybe I did back in the days of rec.games.roguelike.adom, can't remember. Anyway, I've won the game a few times during the years, but I tend to be a careless player and most of my characters die from sheer stupidity or oversight; and I've never managed an ultra. I've felt like going for UNE for some time and started rolling gnomish bards... And then this character happened. Thought to post this to show potential new players that even the most hopeless cases can at least aspire to a relatively effortless normal win.
From the start and up to the ToEF, this character was sort of unlucky. In some respect the bad luck lasted all through the game: for one thing, there was not a single fireproof blanket to be found in the whole game, and for a long time no decent weapons either, and the initial skillset was rather unimpressive. Sure, there were Gardening and Healing, which promised all kinds of good things later, but what persuaded me to try this character were the 6 starting talents, the Cup starsign and the combination Archery + Fletchery, which sounded great... except that there was not a single hatchet in the game, and I used fletchery exactly once on a log from the living forest. I spent ages drinking from pools and walking around the ID, but no wish and no AoLS. As a matter of fact, not a single wish (or an Aols) in the game. Also, no SoCRs except the guaranteed one in the HMV (see below for my library snafu), and no PoCCs except from Guth'Alak. Are we seeing a pattern here?
The skillset was so bad that by the time I approached level 25, I was praying for Alertness, Find Weakness and Concentration. I had even purchased every possible skill from Yergius and maxed them out to maximise my potential of getting something good. Well, here's what I got:
- Alchemy (ok, not bad, but a gnome has gemology for all her explosive needs. Never used this, and it finally hit 100 in D:50 which was a bit late.)
- Bridge Building (Let's not forget that not a single hatchet turned up in my game.)
- Food Preservation
- An improvement to Haggling, about the only skill I hadn't got to 100 by level 25
- and last but not least, Woodcraft.
Woo-hoo! \o/
I tend to play magic users and like to at least try to make casters out of my bards, but the lack of Concentration was seriously crippling this character's casting and reading abilities. At level 18, with a maxed-out Literacy and a Learning of 30+ she still occasionally failed to read Scare Monster. No matter, though, because the first corruption was babbling mouth, which pretty much kept the PP too low for any serious magic. At this point I saved my game, went away for the weekend and when I came back to the game, I promptly forgot that I had the babbling mouth and headed to the library to get the weird tome. You can guess how well that went. :p At least I got a Ring of Regeneration and some eternium armor out of it. (Got to love those chaos knights, they're like cute pink eternium gear dispensers.) Thought to get rid of the corruption and return for the tome, but in the end I didn't bother and babbling mouth kept me company until the end. So this character hardly ever used magic, a first for me. All my melee characters tend to die in mid-game, and I was sure this very much non-melee AND non-casting character was heading towards a sticky end in the tower.
Oh yes, the tower and the issue with weapons. I really struggled to find decent one-handed ego weapons that wouldn't melt in the tower. I scoured darkforge (nothing but crap), hopped around in the ID and even resorted to grave-robbing. The first grave I dug was guarded by an emperor lich. :D I also got crowned with Boots of the Divine Messenger, which were good for the tower, I guess.
In the end I really couldn't find anything better than an adamantium spear (+1, 1d8+3). Thanks to the eternium plate mail, monsters in the tower didn't manage to kill me, but it sure was taking me a long, long while to kill them, especially with less than stellar strength. Also, did I mention the lack of fireproof blankets? I needed one ring slot for ring of damage and one for the ring of ice, and the tool slot for a pickaxe. This meant no healing, no ring of regeneration and no confusion resistance. Didn't think much of my chances against the Wyrm, so my strategy was to thin out his crowd of followers, then run back to D:1 to switch rings. On my way to the stairs with the wyrm in pursuit, he happened to step on a light trap... and duly started staggering. Ever the opportunist, I waded in with the trusty old spear. Had to switch tactics to Berserk to even bypass his PV. He went down surprisingly easy, and suddenly I was a rather surprised owner of the fire orb.
And this is where the bard's luck finally changed and everything suddenly started being ridiculously easy. The Casino yielded Skullcrusher, a greater giant vault gave Robes of Resistance and D49 gift was the Iron Crown of Havlor. I still occasionally used the same adamantium spear as far down as the Earth Temple for the DV bonus (and I never did find a better spear). I was really quite attached to it by then. :) Anyway, nothing much managed to hurt me, the biggest scare was a a tension room of doppelganger kings in D20, didn't realise they start to appear that early and thought they were lords, waded in with the trusty useless spear... Came to my senses quickly after one hit took me down from full health to 34 hp. Wand of teleportation to the rescue.
Nuurag-Vaarn fell easily to arrows of humanoid slaying. Didn't bother with Sharad-Waador's quest.
The one last random artifact was Jet-Black Glaive dropped by someone in D:50, and the rune-covered trident had the good sense to appear exactly as I was battling the first ghost lords in D:50. Great timing, I say. The final 13 character levels all came in rapid succession as balors fell to the trident, and then that was that. Pack and go home, the usual.
Bards really are awesome, I can't remember the last time when I had such an easy time in D:50. Even my wizards have sweated more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Screenshot
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^
^^*^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^=====^^^^^^^^^ ^ ^ ^^^..^
^===""""~~~^^^ ~~~~~~~~^*^^=======^^*^^^^^^^^^^^^.@^^
=="""~~~~~~o^ &&&o& &~~~~~~~&&&========="""""""&&^~^^*^.^^
"""~~~^^^^^^^ ^^^&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&==""""""""""&&~~~^....^
"~~^^*^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^&&&&&&&&&""""=""""""""""&&&&&o..~^^^
~~~^^^^^^^*^~~~~~~^o^^^*^"""""""""""""""""""=="""""""""&&&&&&&&&&^^^
~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^""""""""""""""""""""=""""""""&&&&&&&&&&&~~^^^
^^~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"""""&&&&"""*&&&&""""=="""""&&&&&&&&&&&&~~~^^^^
^~~~~~~"o""""^^"""""""""&&&&&&&&&......^^^^=="""""""&&o&&&&~~~~^*^^^
~~~~"""""""""""""""""&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&.^^*^^= ""&&&&&&~~~^^^^^^
~~"""""""""""""""&&&&&&&*&*&&&&&&&&&....^^^ "&&""&&&~~~~~^^^
""""""&&&&&&&&&&&&&*&&&&&&&&&."""" ===="""""~~~~~^^^^^^
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&""""""==""====""~~~*^^ ^*^
&^^^*^^^^&&&&&&&&&&&&&&"""""===""""""""~~~~^^^ ^~^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^&&&&&&&&&&""""""=^^"""~^^^^^^ ^o^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^+^^^^^^ ^^^
^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^
Oyaf St:35 Le:45 Wi:31 Dx:53 To:47 Ch:41 Ap:33 Ma:35 Pe:30 N=
DV/PV: 91/68 H: 822(822) P: 216(513) Exp: 50/15748826 DrCh Sp: 134
Blessed Satiated
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