Ancient Chaos Wyrm

[Metalhunter]

Ugh, damn that Ancient Chaos Wyrm. Had no idea what was in the Temple of Eternal Flame (or whatever it is called) and then ran into this guy after clearing out what seemed to be an infinite amount of Fire Elementals and Fire Demons. The Ancient Chaos Wyrm stepped into my vision for the first time and I was immediately confused by it. Confusion lasted so long that I could not get away and he just ate me in melee. I was having a really good run too. Dwarven Wizard, lvl 22 tons of spells, teleport with teleport control, awesome platemail (perion's I think it was called), great shield and the Mace of Destruction. Felt like I could take on the world, only to get wrecked by this guy. Pretty disheartening, but I guess it;s back to square one.

Some questions for my next playthough: Is there any way to stop the game from giving me the messages in the Fire Temple? I felt like I was having to hit space every square I walked just to hear I resisted the fire and my gear was saved by the blanket. Also, how is it possible to cross the living forest level with anyone but a sufficiently high Beast Fighter or a spellcaster with teleport and teleport control? I seriously had to cast farsight and put on my amulet of the eye every time just to make my teleports land properly, but I am dreading going through that level again on any character who can't do this. Anyone have suggestions?

[Dogbreath]

If you have teleport control, you can just go through the dwarven halls instead (mostly) risk free.

[Silfir]

Crossing the Animated Forest is possible without teleporting, but it requires a lot of patience and either good defences or a cloak/ring/robe of invisibility. Dual-wielding shields is recommended because it disables your melee attack, so you'll stay unseen and won't have more hostile trees than necessary.

Though with a wand of door creation, a wand of digging and plenty of booze (and/or a pickaxe to save some of the booze) you can dig a tunnel that goes around the big forest room across the right and upper edges of the screen. There's just enough space. Those aren't terribly rare magic items, so there's a chance you can do this pretty early.

I'm not sure about the new versions, but for ADOM 1.1.1 to disable messages in the fire temple I'd recommend using ADOM Sage. If there isn't a way to disable the messages in the new versions of the game, there really should be, but I didn't get that far yet.

[JellySlayer]

You can disable the messages by editing the adom.msg file. I think you need to put the exact wording under the :suppress category.

[Metalhunter]

Thanks for all the advice everybody! I actually got tired of trying to constantly teleport through the living forest so I did in fact use a wand of digging to tray and make a tunnel, but after removing only a few tiles I got a message that the level was shaking violently. I took that as a sign of a possible collapse so I didn't keep at it, fearing an auto-death or something. I will definitely try to dual wield shields in the future. I didn't do it with the wizard since i couldn't cast that way, but my next toon will definitely try it out.

[mjkittredge]

Wands of digging, digging spell, using pickaxes - I've never once collapsed a level that way. The nice thing is, once you've dug the tunnel around and sealed the stairs with doors, you only have to fight a few trees to go around. Very few spawn in the tunnels you dig.

For the ACW, at least one form of confusion resist is advisable, and higher willpower helps too (that potion of boost willpower can come in handy here). Ring of the Clear Mind and Ring of Mental Stability will do the trick.

[LexyBoy]

For the first couple of crossings of the forest, teleporting "blind" to the upstairs will work ~25% of the time. Even uncontrolled you have a good chance of getting reasonably near. I've lost a couple of characters recently to thinking I could sneak through the forest with dual shields. It can be done - make sure you move on every turn, even if it's not going the way you want - but once you're surrounded with hostile trees, you're toast. With permanent invisibility you're much safer, but not totally. One of the more dispiriting ways to die, which is why I take the DH now - at least you get to go down in flames.

Most of the message spam can be avoided by hitting enter if you use the 'w'alk command. Personally I don't mind it as it's a reminder not to get complacent.

Bad luck with the Wyrm. If you're fairly unspoiled then it's a huge achievement to get that far in the first place. The tower is definitely one of the toughest parts of the game. I think you were a bit unlucky too - his confusion spells are powerful but I would have expected a wizard to be reasonably resistant.

[DoshDoshington]

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend taking on the Ancient Chaos Wyrm without a ring of the clear mind or ring of mental stability. Alternatively you can also use a crystal helmet for the confusion resist.
Also, to make fighting him way easier, throw potions of blindness or confusion. you can also use potions of Cursed invisibility, they work the same as blindness when thrown, always save your potions of Unholy water to make cursed invisibility.

As long as you have 100% fire resist and enough piety for emergency heals he's pretty easy once you get him alone, there's also a specific spot you can dig in the wall where you can dig that will aggro him and get him to walk towards you with only needing to fight a few elementals/demons

[Metalhunter]

Thanks again for the advice everyone. I'll have to keep potions in mind for sure in the future. I end up lugging a ton of them around, only to basically never use them. Knowing I can throw them for sweet effects is really handy. As for the 'w'alk command in the temple, I did use that, but found that I still had to dismiss the messages anyhow after I landed on the final tile. I'll definitely have a look at the options mentioned here though.

[GordonOverkill]

Not sure if it was already mentioned, but thrown blessed potions of cure corruption do ALOT of damage against the ACW. I personally make use of this method very regularly.

[Metalhunter]

Good to know when I reach him again. I predict I will need those potions less the next playthrough so I might have some to spare. I picked up a couple of corruptions that game and felt like I was probably on the threshold of another one shortly so I had to hoard those just in case I got a really detrimental one. This was probably due to Dwarftown being spawned at D11 for me and not knowing I could accumulate background corruption there as well as spending too much time in the levels immediately below Dwarftown, and taking *forever* to clear Darkforge (Acid ball saved my bacon in there, but it was still a grind heh).

[Metalhunter]

*Finally* beat that pain in the @&*. Took some doing, and I had to meticulously clear the room first. Even with 31 Willpower I was still getting confused a lot. The potion of cure corruption did all but about 5% of the Wyrm's health in one go. I had to drink blessed potions of extra healing while getting in for a final acid ball, that non-elemental spell attack he has is pretty brutal. Thanks for the advice. I am not looking forward to going up again that thing again in a future play-through.

[GordonOverkill]

Congratulations on beating the Wyrm :-) Sometimes he can be really, really tough! But for some well-prepared characters he is cannon-fodder. If you've got it availible ob a future run, try blessed slaying ammunition (dragon slayers or demon slayers). If the weapons are a little skilled and you combine it with the POCC, this is really effective. Also you might equip the Ancient Mummy Wrapping for it gives you confusion resistance.

[Metalhunter]

Ah I must have had a brain fart then, I thought the wrapping gave death-ray resistance, not confusion resistance. That might have made it easier for sure :) I did indeed have about 9 arrows of demon slaying, but didn't realize they would work on the dragon. Unfortunately my Dexterity score on this character is 10, and took a bit of a hit mid ToEF when I got another corruption from a fire grue attack that left me at 8 Dex, so I wasn't even thinking about the slaying ammo at that point, but I will definitely keep that in mind for my next run.

[Silfir]

Nah, Gordon's having the brain fart. The ancient mummy wrappings get you a lot of resistances, but not confusion (http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Ancient_mummy_wrapping).

[_Ln_]

If it gave -Conf, I would almost consider wearing it!

Also, my how-to on beating the ACW (I've been doing this more or less throughout all the latest games since my own RFE made him hard to disable, unless I'm really levelled after Frost Caves):

1) Get Alertness at high value.
2) Dig a corridor.
3) Get a wand of lighting.
4) Bless it and charge to about 6-7 charges.
5) Stay in the corridor and zap him so that the range is long enough for one rebound. Make sure that there are monsters behind him to cut off his escape path.
6) Congratulations, you've killed him!

[GordonOverkill]

Holy crap, you are right! :-o
Always thought it gave -conf... probably that explains a couple of painful defeats against the ACW and Nuurag Vaarn...

[divij]

for some reason, i have never had major difficulties with the ACW. even during my early times playing adom when i didnt even know what -conf, herb training etc was. ofc a part of the reason was that i was playing wizards who always had ball spells which wrecked the ACW. also didnt realise how potent !oCC is on him...will keep that in mind the next time my hurtling farmer (is that the weakest race/class combo?) tries to face him.
my was to kill him is :
go invis, equip -conf
dig a route directly in front of him using wandofdigging
dig 1 sqaure above (and not below) that route
goto that square and dig another route back
this will give you 2 rows of space in which to move
next zap a wand of far slaying standing on the bottom row to get his attention
let him approach you
dance to the row on which he isnt so he cant cast his ranged attack on you
let him come melle doing this
blind/confuse him (!oConf, !oBlindness, Cursed!oInvis)
whack him if your are a mele guy or ball him if your are a spellcaster
profit!

[gym21]

I really like wands of poison and pocc for the Wyrm. More than once I've killed him by unloading a poison wand into the middle of the room before even seeing him

[Blasphemous]

I dig a straight horizontal corridor to avoid waking up the elementals, then activate the wyrm with a wand of far slaying.
His searching abilities are better than any other monster's in the tower so I just fall back and wait at the mouth of the corridor, slaying any stray demons or 2-3 elementals to clear the route.
High willpower and -conf items are instrumental because while the wyrm is trying to confuse me, I'm hitting him with a bouncing magic bolt from a supercharged wand.
He usually reaches melee range either severely or critically wounded and ready to be finished off with a slaying missile or a single melee hit, if my weapon is powerful enough.