Gnome Thief, rock and hard place. What would you do?

[BoloDigby]

Chelacough, a 17th-level Gnome Thief, has just got his hands on his first penetration/devastation - suffixed weapons in the two-handed sword, which he immediately rustproofed and blessed. Until this point, he has been working the crystal dagger or a stone spear. Chelacough received 'Whirlwind' as a drop, but possess no other non-autocursing artifacts. Weapon drops have been horribly mundane.

Chelacough is 'stuck' at Dwarftown. He did not have the moxie to take on the Pyramid, and has been unable to stay on the Big Room due to wave upon wave of Ice Vortexes (with no cold elemental resistance). Prior to the Ice Vortex onslaught, he was able to build a pen in an attempt to pacify the Big Room, yet, while trying to find a breeder, had to flee with 2 hit points left due to 3 Ice Vortex hits. Chelacough has been unable to find the target of Thrundarr's first quest, a Werewolf Lord. Chelacough has made two major mistakes--one of stepping into the enchanted forest prior to receiving the second Thrundarr quest, the second of killing multitudes of annoying cats. (Once you kill one, why bother trying to avoid them?)

Chelacough is considering making a run for the surface in order to go for some ID grinding in an attempt to obtain a Ring of Ice or some kind of item of invisibility. Chelacough has built up good poison/fire resistance, but has yet to obtain a waterproof blanket.

Any words of wisdom from veterans? (don't say not to play Thieves. It is almost exclusively the only class I play)

Having never gotten a character higher than level 19 or 20, I consider all plays at Adom to be a learning experience, and try not to be particularly attached to any character. My player's death only serves to hopefully teach me one more thing.

(if anyone wants the SVG, let me know. I don't save scum, just have it in the event someone is interested)

[JellySlayer]

General advice:
-Never skip the Pyramid. At level 16, even a poorly equipped character can finish it easily. With a two-handed devastation weapon, it should have been a pushover.
-Never pacify the Big Room. It is almost always more work than it is worth.
-Killing cats isn't a mistake. Don't worry about it.

On your specific situation:
-Ice vortices are quite slow. As long as there aren't too many and they aren't too close together, or all congregated around the stairs, you should just be able to outrun them and/or kill them with whirlwind. Make sure you aren't burdened or satiated/bloated. You mention non-autocursing artifacts. Does that mean you have the black torc? 10 extra speed could help here. If you have a wand of webbing (or there's been a spider factory around already), that could help immensely too.
-If you can sneak passed the Big Room, head to the Griffyard and get the elemental gauntlets for cold resist.

[BoloDigby]

I did not get the 2-hander of devastation until level 17. And I am very noobish at the Pyramid, probably getting to it with less than 2% of my thief builds (the rest die before level 13). I normally don't skip it, but my two most recent attempts at it meant my doom to stone golems both times. No penetration weapon in hand both times. The few times I've gotten past the Pyramid have been with the brainless (IE, not requiring a lot of creative inventory usage) invisibility and Thief's Heir in hand. I guess as a segue, what are no-fail Pyramid strategies?

[JellySlayer]

My usual approach to the Pyramid is to immediately move to the right-hand wall, and try to hide in one of the monster spawns. With a bit of luck/speed, it's not too hard to get to the top-right corner, where only two monsters can reach you at a time. If the monsters look easier on the left side, go that way instead... usually the monsters on the opposite side to you will take a long time to figure out what is going on. This reduces the danger considerably, except that if for some reason you desperately need to escape, you're kind of stuck. Having teleport (even uncontrolled) will help with this. With ~15-20 PV, 10 spenseweed and a few curaria mancox or pots of healing, you shouldn't have anything to worry about damage-wise unless you get a really unlucky spawn (eg. living wall).

If you can make it to the corner (or even in one of the areas where only 3 monsters can get to you), then with a weapon as weak as a blessed adamantium spear, you can probably clear out the mummies and the jackal daemons, at least. You don't need to kill everything. Ideally, you can leave relatively weak monsters on your flanks as blockers, and just keep killing the monsters on one side of you. Once mummy lord shows up, kill him quickly and claim your prize.

FWIW, I normally clear the Pyramid almost as soon as I hit level 13, unless my character is profoundly weak. Granted, thieves often are, but that's usually my plan regardless.

[Yinghei]

Well, nothing can be guaranteed, but some things that can help are getting the fireball wand from thrundarr before going to the pyramid (in p20, this is hard), going into the corner where you can only be hit by two enemies at once, using potion of exchange, and making sure you have plenty of piety to pray a few times. First aid has really been buffed since 1.1.1 too, so you can level up that skill and use it in coward mode after every hit. The guaranteed teleport wand is also useful.

[Maul]

I'm not actually sure how spoily you like your answers here. Mild spoilers, I guess.


-Never pacify the Big Room. It is almost always more work than it is worth.

It's not a lot of work and may be worth a damn lot for convenience. Even if I don't want to harvest any herbs, I often pacify it unless I have invisibility.

The Pyramid is best handled as follows: secure a source of teleportation, teleport next to Rehetep, use the wand of fireballs you get from Thrundarr, collect reward, teleport out. Depending on how buff you are, you can fight your way through, or kill Rehetep through melee or missiles. Stand in a corner behind those "pillars" if you are in an extended melee, because there you can only be attacked by 3 targets. Always be invisible, because the mummies are a much smaller threat than other monsters. In a situation like yours, with stone golems (do they see invisible? I'm not sure) teleport yourself in such a way that you are surrounded by weak monsters and Rehetep. Kill him, and there's nothing else to do.

You mentioned "no other non-autocursing artifacts". I'd be curious about what autocursing artifacts you have. Some of them are quite good, or even excellent (such as Kinslayer, which my current dwarven fighter is using).

Get the elemental gauntlets and tackle the water temple ASAP. If needed, go in with only waterproof equipment. The Snake is not usually that hard to slay, and even if it is, it's not hard to survive at least. The reward, the water orb, is important because it's infinite free healing, and not that corrupting with the gauntlets on (just don't get too addicted to it, because eventually corruption removal becomes more scarce than healing itself). After that, you can enter the Tower and even in the worst case, you should survive.

[JellySlayer]

-Never pacify the Big Room. It is almost always more work than it is worth.

It's not a lot of work and may be worth a damn lot for convenience. Even if I don't want to harvest any herbs, I often pacify it unless I have invisibility.

What convenience? In the time it takes you to build your doors and find your breeder, you've probably spent 5x as many turns in the Big Room as I will have in my entire game. If you haven't found herbs anywhere else and desperately need them, fine, you have to pacify. But under normal circumstances? It's much more efficient not to bother.

[sylph]

I play a lot of thieves these days (see my signature). Did you do the healing quest? Your mention of autocursing artifacts makes me immediately think of the black torc, which features both ice resistance, and a speed bonus, which is perfect for surviving the earlier dungeon levels including the big room.

Minor spoilers will follow, but I'm trying not to include any info that shouldn't be pretty 'common knowledge' - I doubt I'll be telling you anything you don't know if you already know about pacifying the big room...
Either way, I'd say that yes, you should be going to the surface. If you have the 'extra' quest from the dwarf, then you can complete it before coming back into the dungeon, but even if you don't, the safest way of playing most characters around your area tends to be
1. Get to dwarftown as quickly as possible, refresh your prayers by sacrificing at the altar, get lots of holy water, have your god help identify your equipment (it's usually fairly safe to put on any non-cursed items to identify them, and I often start to randomly read any stacked scrolls, to help identify my potions, identify my wands, uncurse my herbs, or any other small benefits I can muster).
2. Get teleport control from a blink dog. This can be gained from the infinite dungeon if you've been unlucky enough to have none spawn up to this point.
3. Venture into the dusty area next to the pyramid, and try to find (using magical means if possible) the wand there.

Controlled, on-demand teleportation is pretty much the turning point, at which any ADOM character becomes 'safe'. You're probably ready to acheive it with this character, and doing so will 'stabilise' your game - it's pretty much the biggest boost to survivability you can manage. Feel free to skip step 2 if you have other means to find the wand, because on-demand teleportation will save you from 90% of your deaths even when you can't control your destination.

While you're seeking that, you could always venture into the infinite dungeon, wander down to level 14 or so, and keep clearing level after level at around that depth until you complete your dwarf quest. It usually doesn't take very long.

[Maul]

What convenience? In the time it takes you to build your doors and find your breeder, you've probably spent 5x as many turns in the Big Room as I will have in my entire game. If you haven't found herbs anywhere else and desperately need them, fine, you have to pacify. But under normal circumstances? It's much more efficient not to bother.

Turns? Nah. Personally, I like the convenience of being able to cross the Big Room with a couple of walk-commands. I'm just lazy like that. The few IRL minutes spent pacifying the Big Room are, to me, well worth the joy of not having to bash or cast my way out of a 5x5 block of spiders and dire wolves every second time I cross the damn place.

[shockeroo]

What's your other equipment? If you need better defensive gear, you can hunt it above or below dwarftown. Your DV should be about 20 and PV about 10 I think. If you have the si you can let it replicate and sell them for lots of gold, and train toughness with Garth for more HP, and also sacrifice some at the dwarftown altar for lots of piety for a nice safety net. Your sword is ridiculously good and Whirlwind is very effective in the earlygame with a big stack of rocks - you really shouldn't be struggling.

I agree that pacifying the big room is never worthwhile. You can lure monsters off the level by going up/down stairs and pick them off in managable quantities, then just run between the staircases on coward tactics, luring more monsters off when necessary.

Pyramid is harder for thieves than most. The traditional easymode for the pyramid was to get the wand of fireballs from one of Thrundarr's quests and spam that on coward. That's a bit harder to do now Thurndarr gives out harder monsters to find, especially with gnome thieves who level very fast. If you can't get the wand then just have get good PV/DV and a blessed weapon, and fight in a corner.

Following up on JellySlayer's comments, if you do have the Torc that means you don't have healing. I would always do the Jared quest and get the healing skill as a gnome thief, unless I was born under the candle starsign. Otherwise your HP regen is miserable.

Send me the save, I'm curious to see your situation. -email removed-

[sylph]

Following up on JellySlayer's comments, if you do have the Torc that means you don't have healing. I would always do the Jared quest and get the healing skill as a gnome thief, unless I was born under the candle starsign. Otherwise your HP regen is miserable.
Healing is overrated! The torc+wand is wonderful!

[shockeroo]

Oh, and I *think* you can hunt a werewolf lord on D: 12 now. But you want to make sure you have decent stats and defensive gear before you do, as they're quite tough!

[BoloDigby]

On its way. (re: shockeroo) Corrections. Sword is 'Mayhem', and yes, I try to always do the Herbalism quest, so I have the untouched black torc.

[SirTheta]

Healing is overrated! The torc+wand is wonderful!not on a thief it ain't...as always, the hardest part of the game is the *early* game - this is doubly true for thiefs, who start with ass-all. Healing is a huge boon to them.

[Maul]

Healing is overrated! The torc+wand is wonderful!

You had a nice long post here talking about the finer points of not getting healing, the new First Aid and whether it makes up for the lack of Healing, your experience with thieves and Pick Locks... and now you deleted it and replaced it with two exclamations... Dafuq?:confused:

[sylph]

You had a nice long post here talking about the finer points of not getting healing, the new First Aid and whether it makes up for the lack of Healing, your experience with thieves and Pick Locks... and now you deleted it and replaced it with two exclamations... Dafuq?:confused:

I didn't want to bog the topic down, but since it's relevant to SirTheta's recent post, and since you mentioned it, I'll repost it:


Thieves are actually a pretty strong exception to my usual rule of 'Healing is junk, never bother', in that I found one way of playing thieves was focusing on the pick locks from my first levelup, and overusing it + healing to play an extremely safe early game.
That said, I still don't think it's worth it. The new first aid probably out-regenerates healing on a reasonably-brisk, but not speedrun, playthrough. Add to that prayers, herbs, or potions of healing, and you're pretty much ok for the early game. As soon as the first regeneration item appears, the healing skill goes from really-rather-useful, to complete junk.
The black torc, on the other hand, gives the player enough speed to kite any difficult adversary indefinitely (especially fun combined with the gladius), enough resistances to avoid pretty much all of the early-game 'you die' situations (ogre magus and vortexes, for the most part), and good enough defensive stats to turn a poor leather armour into elven chain! It can also be reliably used to clear the griffyard, kill rehetep, kill griff bloodaxe, then offer resistance to Nonnak, all without a fireball wand! It's well worth being cursed up until the completion of the griffyard and pyramid!
On top of that, you get a wand of cold, which is an incredible 'emergency button' until you get your teleport wand.

You won't wear the black torc all game, and healing is basically useless as soon as you find an item of regeneration or a good supply of spenseweed, so the choice is basically about early-game survival, and I find the torc + wand superior for many characters, to healing.

I've felt for a long while that the ADOM community over-rates the power of the healing skill. I think the black torc is well worth playing 'cursed', and while I admit that being cursed can cause it's own slew of problems, I still think the choice between the two gets understated in people's desperation to have healing.



BoloDigby:
This sounds wierd, but try picking 'power' instead of knowledge. It's easy to think that herbalism is even more important without healing, but I find that non-spellcasters actually get more help from the wand of cold, than they do from herbalism. (Also, thieves are surprisingly good at reading spellbooks when they hit level 15 or so, including frostbolt, teleport, and fireball, provided the book is blessed)

[shockeroo]

Thanks for the save, it was really interesting. Basically your character is doing insanely well and is quite capable of winning the game from here. You're not 'trapped' at all, you just need to get your HP to max again and carry on. I think there must be some flaw in your general play that gives you problems, since you've clearly been careful and methodical about everything so far. You've got plenty of money and food, great weapons training including missile weapons (though you should definitely train up crossbows at some point as well, for slaying quarrels later), good stats, great equipment, good piety.

Perhaps you let yourself get into dangerous situations? The most obvious things I can think of are:
- As a rule of thumb, if your HP gets near half depleted, you should switch to coward and get healed ASAP, either by retreating and regenerating or using healing items or magic.
- You should never get surrounded by monsters. You should always fight and explore with a clear path of retreat, preferably on a diagonal at the end of a corridor or in a doorway, so you can't get hit by magical bolts. In cavernous rooms, lure monsters up the stairs onto another level to fight small numbers at a time.
- Never hold down move/attack, always attack once at a time or use 'w'alk (you might well not do this anyway, but I thought I'd mention it :) )

In your current situation:
- Your HP is lower than it should ever be. I chilled in Dwarftown for it to regen while training dexterity with blessed moss of mareilon and toughness and willpower by paying garth. Just 'w'alk left and right around the back of the shop while you wait.
- You only have a stack of 3 rocks for whirlwind, but you have a stack of 29 stashed in Thrundarr's room you could be using. Better to minimise reloads and have lots of ammo!
- You're burdened. Don't be, the speed penalty might kill you. Your strength won't train higher than 19 from carrying heavy equipment. I ditched some unnecssary equipment, but you could also bless your girdle of carrying.
- I would wield the spear and shield when exploring and switch to the sword when in really safe areas, when I've got monsters bottlenecked, or I really must have massive damage. With shield+spear your defensive stats are 55/24 on normal tactics; with the two-handed sword your defensive stats are 17/20. The difference in DV is MASSIVE. Start training the sword in safer areas to get your skill up.

So, after all that my Toughness is up to 20, I'm 55/24 with 157(157) HP and I wander up to sort out the big room. Lots of spiders so I start luring them downstairs to D:7 on coward, then switching to normal tactics and fighting them in the corridor of the room below. Before long the spiders are out of the way, and I start pruning the herb bushes for a spenceweed farm until a breeder turns up. Every time I run into a summoner I retreat to the stairs and lure off the summons off until the summoner is dead and there's zero danger of my being overwhelmed. Every time my HP gets near half I retreat to Dwarftown, train up DX and WI (too expensive to take TO above 20 at the moment), and heal up to max. Before long I have a pacified big room with spenceweed and stomafilla farms for unlimited healing and food, and the future is bright!

After this I'd probably hunt the werewolf lord on D:12, finish Thrundarr's quests, learn smithing from glod, kill glod somehow (with a companion ideally, but the greater demon's fire breath can do it), mine out the ogre caves for ore, and smith some really nice gear.

[BoloDigby]

Thanks Shockroo, it is really good to have a 'second pair of eyes', especially from one who has been there before. I do not get this far very often--the highest I've previously been is about level 20, and then died to something I've yet to experience. (I once dug in the griffyard to get to the riches, awoken a Lich King or something and died in one hit). That's what I mean by novice. I think I am quite reasonably skilled at getting to the arena for food, killing the Druid at level 12, I hardly ever bring back a live puppy (better chance if I start as thief heir), and then I am feel somewhat lucky to get to Dwarftown, but after that I stink due to lack of exposure. Hence the reason I am playing a conservative (careful) game.

Since the original scenario, I used a bunch of spenceweed to get some HPs back, got the Griff quest, cleaned it out (I did take a number of wight and spectre hits, though) and now have the elemental gauntlets and plan on going to holeinthewall to sell unwanted stuff, then back to COC to continue. I will take some of your tips into consideration. I am such a packrat, I have a hard time getting rid of a mithril mace or scimitar of might, even though I am not particularly trained in those weapon types.

[sylph]

got the Griff quest, cleaned it out (I did take a number of wight and spectre hits, though) and now have the elemental gauntlets and plan on going to holeinthewall to sell unwanted stuff, then back to COC to continue.

I'd really, strongly urge you to get that teleport wand before heading back into the CoC (as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, it's quite the turning point)

[shockeroo]

Cool, good luck! After the graveyard I'd train back up any lost strength and toughness with Garth too - about 2000 a point up to 15 and 4000 a point up to 20 should do you nicely.

[divij]

look i am no expert here but i can give u some advice especially for thundrarr quest.
see the following link :- http://folk.ntnu.no/houeland/adom/results/datadump
here you can find the dl of ne monster i the game. using it i found the dl of werewolf lord to be 12. that means you can only find it on d12 or below (d13 d14 etc.)
also see this link :- http://adomgb.sweb.cz/adomgb-app-L.html
here u can find dl of places.
next thing is thundrarr quest while they are not essential are pretty damn worthwhile and u shud definately have ur game revolve around completing them. here are some tips..
goto smc asap and spawn low lvl monsters there. if u dnt fear the rng 2much explore it till u find the downstairs(optional) and waterproof blanket (absolutely essential)
next if u dnt have herbalism do visit the dd and ignore the carpenter cave e1 if u dnt have healing (healing is overrated) get it and COMPLETELY IGNORE PC (its a death trap)
next goto coc and DONT EXPLORE THE ROOMS just head directly to d8 collect the sis and then goto thundrar get his quests (random monster and portal) and then u have finished ur early game and are now in the mid game.
i do this and 50% of my characters reach this point just saying!

[BoloDigby]

Postlude: Died at level 20. My first time in the Water Temple and I got subsequent criticalled by Water Grues, then ignored my 'poisoned' status and died of 'extreme blood poisoning', of all things. I have been habitually munching on Spiders and never had an issue with blood poisoning after level 6, so I was not looking... Apparently I was cursed (where'd I get that from?), which was contributing to the multiple critical hits I was taking.

Notes: Still could not see invisible at games' end. I cleared out the the 'Big Room', but the herbage was two stable 2 x 2 patches, none of which were spenseweed, and I could not 'U'se holy water to attempt to grow to a more useful direction--must need a skill I did not have.

My 'normal' game has been the following; upon generation, I would run to SMC for low-level generation and grab what ever was lying around. I try to ignore foes and just jump in, then out of the SMC. My thief's PV is a lousy 2, normally, so I am primarily looking for something to take care of the armor issue. I then go collect the Druid and Puppy quest, do a fast dive to DD7 to do what I call 'Druidgen', that is, generate the lowest-level druid I can (probably average level 4 for me). I then ascend back to the top of DD and clean out DD1 thru DD6. I then leave DD and go clear out PC, or as much as I can. That gets me to level 12, and then I go back to DD7 and collect the Druid. Things that break this pattern are lousy weapon (I don't wander far in PC2 if I don't have something that can deal with ants' PV); water on any level, (I can't swim, I hardly ever have the waterproof blanket that early), and a PV under 7 or 8.

So what you are saying, divij, is I should keep going on SMC until I get the blanket, and if I survive, ignore completely the PC? My SMC trip is embarrassing (as a thief with a short sword and a PV2) is: run run run run run run run and try not to stuck between two foes then flee!

BTW, the helm of regeneration is a nice item. Or maybe it was just the 'of regeneration' suffix. I did not miss spenseweed. And the two-handed sword of mayhem overall was more troublesome than I thought it was; I would lose 6 PVs merely equipping it, and I personally think that in the hands of a tank it is probably fine, but a thief is not a tank! (took oh so long to get this message impressed on my brain).

[divij]

well the way smc works is the monsters are approx the same lvl as u are...so it isnt hard for any race-class to survive in it till he finds the blanket and downstairs..i think wp blanket>>fp blanket.however u can micro..if u find really bad monsters u can run out and come back later with item detection and magic mapping etc.(assuming u want to do the unremarkable dungeon). and yes unless u have an op race class like troll, wizard elementalist barbarian plz ignore pc esp pc2, pc5 and pc6. if u have wp blanket or not many drencahble items and swimming skill the go str8 left on the main map..u will only have to cross 1 tile of water and u will not have to walk thru swamps and a lot of tiles so it less dangerous imo

[Maul]

To add some input of my own, I always do the SMC, with statistically zero exceptions, after completing the initial Terinyo quest of my choice. (No puppy cave. I only enter it if I need the ants to mine ores for me later on. That is the ~5% of my characters who want to do smithing.) It is a "test" for my characters. The unworthy die in the SMC or the UD - the strong persevere and catapult themselves right into the midgame, rarely encountering anything threatening up until the ACW. A matter of playstyle though - you can skip the SMC and explore it later when you can safely teleport past all threats, but I find that the UD generally powers up my characters incredibly: vaults, altars and even shops are quite common in the UD levels, all of which can help.

Oh yeah, and don't be embarrassed about running in the SMC. It's generally a good idea not to kill anything that isn't strictly blocking your way in there. Every level 1 rat you kill is a chance for a level 12 ratling warlord or dark elven priestess to replace it. (What Divij said is not quite correct. The SMC monsters are generally generated at a higher level than you - up to double your own level. In my experience the levels are higher if you're doomed. That is what makes the SMC so dangerous. Level 1 characters see level 1-2 monsters in there, which is perfectly manageable. Level 6 fighters will find that level 9-12 creatures often get the best of them in melee, though.)

[BoloDigby]

I got stuck with stabilized 2x2 patches of herbs, and was unable to 'U'se holy water on the patch to force it to grow in a better direction. Was I doing something wrong, or am in missing a skill?

[SirTheta]

You don't use holy water on the patch - you use it on a square next to it. Chance is only like 25%, though, so unless you have a lot of spare holy water, it's not always viable.

[BoloDigby]

You don't use holy water on the patch - you use it on a square next to it. Chance is only like 25%, though, so unless you have a lot of spare holy water, it's not always viable.

Re: next to it--that is what I was trying, no joy. I can't even get the holy water into my 'O' slot to 'U'se.

[Qui]

You're doing it wrong. You can 'u'se item from O slot (I don't think holy water fits there anyway), but you can 'U'se any item from inventory. So you stand on an empty square, press 'U' to use, press 'V' to view stuff, select holy water.

[BoloDigby]

Thanks for you help, all.

Quick question (on yet another GNTh) I have teleport control yet no teleport as I do not have a scroll/wand of item detection and therefore can't figure out where the teleport wand is in the DDL. I am only level 13, so I got a few levels. Should I scum DL 4 areas for a wand/scroll item detection drop? Should I spend the time systematically teleporting to every undisclosed square within DDL hoping I hit the wand? Should I make my way thru UD to HMV to check the store out for same? Should I throw caution to the wind and go attempt Rehetep without teleport? I do have Cloak of Invis this time around, so his minions may not be as problematic, yet I've gotten turffed before while Invis within the Pryamid...

[JellySlayer]

I'd just go for Rehetep if your gear is decent enough. Teleport is not necessary for Pyramid, IMHO.

If you haven't done UD yet and can safely cross the SMC, this might not be a terrible idea if you're feeling unprepared.