The worst nightmare on D50?

[divij]

ok guys, what is one thing u dnt want to see on d50?
i was a drakeling barbarian at a decent level.
had decimated all b4 me.
crowned with vanquisher saved kelly.
i made only 1 mistake...i killed a difficult to find monster as first kill...in lewiathon and didnt complete the courage quest.
fast forward to d50.
i thot this is gonna b yavp but i found a............greater earth elemental tension room!!!
i had amulet of life saving ankh 500hp AND fireball at full charge but these mofos ALWAYS hit me all the time cause i didnt have courage and they obv surrounded me
anyways i used healing potions spells prayers and got them down to 5 or so and then....
i was surrounded by 5, all at low hp AND 1 AWAY FROM ME
used a fireball at 150 hp left
killed 3 badly injured 2...
now its their turn to act
1 of them goes fight till death in blind rage other normal. bam bam bam bam bam bam..i live
then the 3rd one throws a rock at me from distance
I DIE :(
game over the end
didnt even use aols zz
so are greater earth elementals the worst thing u can face on d50?
cause even balor tension room is better in my opinion.. they cant walk tru walls so u only tackle 2 at a time and they are slow as hell so u can kite them

PS: i had a speed of around 60 cause of d49 which didnt help much either

[Blasphemous]

Courage is totally useless. I doubt it would have made any difference in your case.
There are enough choke points everywhere to kill monsters one by one.
I don't remember a single past game (at least during the prerelease) when I bothered to get courage.
Of course (greater) earth elementals are nasty because they go through walls but stealth is readily available so it's best to just close the door and leave them there.
Once D:50 is clear, you can open the door with a wand and lure them out one by one with well placed arrows/quarrels from outside of their line of sight.
Get a greater titan tension room on D:50 and tell me what's tough again. Those bastards can hit you with a quarrel from a distance while on coward with 100+ dv and damage you for 100+ points each time.
Plus they are resistant to all elemental magic and have a shitton of HP and a powerful melee attack.
Also as a drake you should have made certain that your speed is at least restored if not buffed to ~200 with fire.

[Tyrnyx]

I also lost a Drakish Barb on D50. Was impatient with speed and didn't have any fire to hasten the process. I opened a door and instantly died to a Quickling queen. Clearly, the worst depends a lot on your character. Some monsters being magically immune and other being physically very difficult. Personally, I've never faced greater titans in mass. That sounds rough. Yet I've never faced greater earth elementals for that matter. RNG'd to the face.

I hate high level quicklings for one but I wouldn't say they are the absolute worst. Just pretty bad.

[divij]

yeah im not convinced abt grater titan > greater earth elemental cause u need to fight them only 1 at a time and they cant insta kill u cause u will fight them from ranged and 200 odd damage is nothing. also u can just leave them b as opposed to gee who search u out and surround u.\
but mayb ur right!

[JellySlayer]

For lawful characters, probably the dreaded white unicorn threat room would be up there. Especially hilarious slap in the face for platinum girdle characters.

Greater earth elementals are definitely pretty bad though. They can detect you through the walls so you don't even need to open the threat room before they start swarming you.

[GordonOverkill]

I had a greater titan threat room on D47 during one of my youtube runs (24:30 of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=260-KEQn-JM&list=PLOdHNY3MGPauYP4YOT0d_XJh1s8u9t-F4)... actually managed to kill them for a whole lot of experience, although I didn't play very clever back then and got quite a beating.

[SirTheta]

Quickling queen threat room is far, far worse. (I'd say it's probably worse than greater titans)

[Joe]

I got a greater Titan room no D50 once. As a wizard I had some trouble with them but with alot of running around, using digging wands and using missile weapons I killed them all at some point. I think Earth Elementals are worse for non-spellcasters because titans can be killed with slaying ammo and dont walk through walls.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

The common lore is that Courage is useless. I personally think it's underrated. I feel the difference clearly.

[GordonOverkill]

Courage is useless only to those who play so carefully that they fight each single enemy at a bottleneck one on one. To everybody else the skill is definitely useful.

[JellySlayer]

I don't think it's so much that Courage is useless; it's that being surrounded is so tactically undesirable that you should really avoid it at all costs. Except in Big Room, cavernous levels, Earth temple, etc. it's pretty uncommon to have more than one or two monsters attacking you at once if you're fairly careful. This is one of the rare situations where being surrounded is very difficult to avoid and you don't have much room to retreat.

[GordonOverkill]

I personally consider the Earth Temple a real challange in the current ADOM version. All of my last chars (those who got that far that means) got surrounded several times by the minons of the ancient stone beast.

[szopin]

So the bonuses to berserk output are worthless? RFE time?

[Alucard]

For lawful characters, probably the dreaded white unicorn threat room would be up there. Especially hilarious slap in the face for platinum girdle characters.
This, same with neutral chars.

I had an altar on D:48 the one time though :)

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Except in Big Room, cavernous levels, Earth temple, etc.
That's right, and balors in D:50, and any teleportitis+tension room disaster, and unicorn threat rooms, and ghost lord threat rooms... i.e., it's useless except in some of the most dangerous situations in the game, where deaths tend to occur most often.

That's what I call highly useful.

[SirTheta]

If you are fighting more than two balors at once on D:50, you are doing it VERY wrong. Courage is completely unnecessary and does very little for you - aside from the Earth Temple, when it can actually come in handy, it's almost always better to just get the heck out of there or go defensive and blast wands (also valid for Earth Temple). There is rarely a good reason to fight more than two monsters at once at any given point in the game.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Yeah, I've read that multiple times. Well, I have completed the game several times and I always had situations where I was fighting several monsters at the same time.

I'm not a perfect player. I suppose most players aren't, either, or they wouldn't die. If I were a perfect player I certainly wouldn't need Courage, but I wouldn't need most skills or items either.

[asdf]

The worst nightmare on D50 will be p21.

[Qui]

Hopefully. Because barring random nasty tension rooms, it's sort of a joke now.

[Soirana]

That's what I call highly useful.

To be useful courage ought to be reliable. And it is not.

I guess since to hit penalty is displayed player can wait on coward until courage kicks in and when go offensive on safer turns. But if you do what you are either not in so much danger or not the type of player who gets surrounded.

For situation listed boozed up teleport wand is best solution.

[Harwin]

To be useful courage ought to be reliable. And it is not.

I guess since to hit penalty is displayed player can wait on coward until courage kicks in and when go offensive on safer turns. But if you do what you are either not in so much danger or not the type of player who gets surrounded.

For situation listed boozed up teleport wand is best solution.

I never realized it wasn't reliable. I assumed it was either a constant reduction in my penalties based on my score, or added 1 additional monster before penalty every X skill levels or something.
The Earth Temple is always kind of dangerous to me for this very reason.

[JellySlayer]

That's right, and balors in D:50, and any teleportitis+tension room disaster, and unicorn threat rooms, and ghost lord threat rooms... i.e., it's useless except in some of the most dangerous situations in the game, where deaths tend to occur most often.

In most of those situations, allowing yourself to be surrounded and trying to fight your way out, courage or not, is usually a good way to get yourself killed. If it's that bad, you should be running, kiting, or teleporting.

[Carter]

I had a threat room of ghost kings on D50 once... with a troll.

luckily he was a wizard with huge WI so it didn't really matter.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

In most of those situations, allowing yourself to be surrounded and trying to fight your way out, courage or not, is usually a good way to get yourself killed. If it's that bad, you should be running, kiting, or teleporting.
Maybe I'm surrounded enough that it's not trivial to run, and I don't have a lot of booze (not uncommon since I don't like scumming), or I'm confused or blind. Or maybe I'm just not playing very well and yes, I'm unnecessarily risking getting killed. As I said, I'm very far from a perfect player and that can happen. If Courage can help me in all those situations, it's useful in my book.

If you always play optimally, fighting one monster at a time, not being in low HP (because you would run or teleport), not being disabled, etc... well, then courage is useless, but so are most skills. A really good player probably needs very few resources to beat the game reliably, but that doesn't make the rest of the available resources bad.

[divij]

i want to clarify that i mentioned courage only in my specific case of gee tension room..i agree in all ohter cases its useless since u fight with max 2 or 3 monsters at a time.
also gee auto detect u since they can see thru walls so leaving them alone is not an option
also i think wot+ booze is delaying the inevitable i think in my case i had full fireball 20 charges i had to go big or go home
e1 in hindsight i dnt think i did nething wrong..mayb cud have prayed at 160 hp but thats being paranoid
neways this is a very rare case where i died late game..im usually money in the bank in the late game..so much so that the only hing which concerns me is paralysis (i perma equip aofreeaction )and ageing cause no1 else can e1 touch me..

[Stingray1]

If you still have the memorial file, it would be dandy if you could post that. Then one can better evaluate the options you had.

[vdweller]

Usually reaching D50 with a character results in a victory. The problem with me is actually getting there alive :)

My only (and latest) failure was with a Ratling Duelist. Few means of corruption removal resulted in nasty accumulation rate (balors were quite accurate despite my >150 DV). Quit at ~15 corruptions when all means of removal were exhausted and D50 was half full of monsters...

[divij]

sadly i dnt i usually dont do that will start doing now..i chkd full folder its nowhere to b found..

[SirTheta]

Maybe I'm surrounded enough that it's not trivial to run, and I don't have a lot of booze (not uncommon since I don't like scumming), or I'm confused or blind. Or maybe I'm just not playing very well and yes, I'm unnecessarily risking getting killed. As I said, I'm very far from a perfect player and that can happen. If Courage can help me in all those situations, it's useful in my book.

If you always play optimally, fighting one monster at a time, not being in low HP (because you would run or teleport), not being disabled, etc... well, then courage is useless, but so are most skills. A really good player probably needs very few resources to beat the game reliably, but that doesn't make the rest of the available resources bad.I don't think you really understand how Courage works at all. Whenever Courage would be of use outside the Earth Temple - which is rarely [and your balor example holds zero water imo] - you're much better off escaping somehow because (a) being surrounded by dangerous monsters is very dangerous regardless of whether they get improved to-hit (b) only your to-hit and the monsters to-hit is affected. Yes, you'll get -14 to-hit if you're completely surrounded on D:50, but that isn't a large penalty and you've got a lot of other problems if you've managed to get yourself surrounded on 8 sides by very dangerous monsters . Sure, the +to-hit for monsters can be a problem, but that's just as easily nerfed by changing tactics. If you are fighting more than two "very dangerous" monsters at once on D:50, you're nuts, and Courage [i]is not going to help you because the increased number of hits is much worse than the increased chance they have to hit.

There are very few situations where you should be confused/disabled (mainly, Fire Temple, Mana Temple, Mino Maze, GUV). Being disabled has basically no relevance outside of that and only extremely rarely when you are surrounded by dangerous monsters.

I'm very far from a perfect player, either (you'd be horrified if I recorded some of my runs). I still manage to not get surrounded by many dangerous monsters at once.

[Stingray1]

sadly i dnt i usually dont do that will start doing now..i chkd full folder its nowhere to b found..

The folder under 'My documents'?