Human Wizard (Avatar of Balance)

[Xevoc]

(Read the .flg from http://ancardia.ath.cx/adom_users/xevoc/wizzy.flg)

Human was the last race I had not won with, so I decided to win easily by choosing a wizard. I started with a book of teleportation and started the game by robbing Barnabas (semi good stuff, but nothing special) and running to ID for spells. Got a blink dog corpse after scumming and would've been well set up for a speed run, but decided not to run too much. I got two rings of djinni summoning (1 was lying around in DH2 and 1 was in a ring shop in D14) from which I obtained AoLS and SLB. I also got an eternium halberd of penetration from DF, which is probably the 2nd best weapon in the game (after TotRR), so I fought quite a bit in melee also. Wizards are such an easy class so basically everything was easy except for the ACW, because I had no cheat methods to kill him and no ball spells, and he kept shrugging my stun ray.

I ran into a stupid problem: I found no water. I raided every possible place (looted water dragon, casino, everything...), but just couldn't find enough water. I even cleared minotaur maze, library and bugville, but didn't really find a lot of water. Couldn't find any morgia roots until late game either. I scummed exp by slowing myself and killing the water dragon in the dark and killed white unicorn to get nice potions, because I had a lot of SoCR's. I was preparing for the final showdown by going to quickling tree, but happened to accidently create some poison potions (> 150) in the process (I was very tempted to just quit the game at that point). I lost my 9 PoGA's, 7 PoCC's and several other nice potions and ALL my hard-fought water! I was frustrated, so I ended up finding 1 more water bottle to bless my 4 RoDS's and tried to set up a ring wish engine. I got lucky and ended up getting it work quite well - until I finally failed to get more RoDS's even with 100 potions of exchange. I did get 38 PoGA's and GoGS in the process though, so I was not very mad. I had also found ring of weakness earlier, so my STR was quite nice by now.

The worst thing was to scum blue dragon caverns for water to bless the PoGA's (this took ages). After I finally got them all blessed, I went to D50 and killed everything without really taking damage (the char was a killer in melee and really good with spells too). It was very funny to notice that greater titans could only hurt me if they scored a critical hit (and I easily killed them in melee) and in previous games I've never even dared to kill them. Andy also fell very easily in melee. I had like 120 damage reduction due to wearing the moloch armor (it rocks for low To characters!). The only prayer was used for power points in D50, because I went there with 0 and couldn't be bothered to wait for them.

Funny wizard - would've probably been even better if I didn't destroy my potions with poison hands. I scummed a lot and wasted a lot of time and still managed to do an ultra under 80k moves - probably because I started the game with teleport.

[Xevoc]

I was a bit disappointed for the score, however. I did almost everything in the game (missed Kranach, and did not save the puppy alive) and had more exp than any of my other winners. Doing ultras seems to result in a low score, so I guess I should just close the gate and leave in the future.

[Xevoc]

Collection of funny memories:

- I dropped my inventory at the casino slot machine to be able to carry the gold to buy some water from casino. A bit later in the game I noticed that my elemental gauntlets were missing - I wondered where I had left them. Then I noticed that I don't have the water orb either, so it became obvious what had happened. A goblin had stolen some of my gear while I had been in the gift shoppe! Too bad the goblin was too greedy to steal the water orb (he might've gotten away with eternium tower shield, black torc and a quite a bit of other good gear and even elemental gauntlets but not the orb)! I made him mad using ventriloquism and killed him.

- Similar thing happened in D50. I dropped the obsidian crown and amulet somewhere to avoid extra corruption. I killed all the monsters, but the amulet and crown were gone. A rogue balor had stolen them, probably hoping to get me killed upon entering the portal.

- I managed to convert more than 150 potions into poison, by forgetting about the poison hands (or actually forgetting to drop inventory before taking off the gauntlets). I always almost seem to mess up somehow with the poison hands. Initially, it almost made me quit the game, but a desperate move to create wish engine was performed succesfully and in the end I got more than what I lost. I don't know if I would've tried wishing without the loss of my potions.

- When I entered the 2nd blue dragon cavern level, I was greeted by at least 25 balors who started to summon monsters and teleport all around the level. I ended up digging a tunnel and going to the end of this tunnel, so I could bolt the balors while they approach and finish them off with my pole-arm. This encounter could've been fatal to a PC without the ability to teleport at will.

- I don't know why, but I encountered a lot of ogres during this game (145 normal, 14 magi, 72 lords, 3 kings and 66 emperors). Normally I don't ever see ogre emperors, but now they appeared all the time, even in a tension room. I also encountered a lot of white unicorns (possibly they were mad, because I did the black unicorn quest?) and ghosts, but didn't waste time killing them.

- I think I won't play a character without treasure hunter for a while because the severe lack of water was very annoying. In fact, I wished for potions of water multiple times during the game. If a potion was dropped, water made me more happy than PoGA or PoCC. I don't know why the monsters in D50 ended up dropping a lot of water though - RNG wanted to be cruel?

I also realized that mana stat (either that or TotRR) heavily influences the power of your spells. Is this documented?

[JellySlayer]

Congrats on the win!

I've had one or two water-deficient games before. It is very weird and quite frustrating. If you've got money, I guess you could shop-restock Dwarftown or something. Beyond that, I guess just a lot of fighting is all you can do.... although, in the mid/end-game, you shouldn't need more than a couple pots of water for the odd PoGA or something anyway.

I haven't heard anything about the ToRR affecting spell power. Mana does affect some spells, though. I think there's a list of how the algorithms are computed floating around somewhere (supposed to be in the manual, but I don't see it there...)

You don't get any additional points for doing an ultra versus a regular ending. If you want to play for score, there are only three things that really count big: piety, experience and turns. If you sacrifice a huge amount of gold before leaving the Chain, you can add up to 10 million points to your score. Experience points are worth about a quarter of a score point, and usually accounts for the bulk of your score. For every 1000 turns you get less than 80000, you add a million points. Other things count too, but the effects are pretty small: for example, saving Khelevaster is worth 250000. Becoming Paragon of Order (ie. receiving the platinum girdle) despite being one of the hardest things to do in the game, is only worth 2.5 million. Most other quests are 10k or less.

[Grey]

You don't get any additional points for doing an ultra versus a regular ending. If you want to play for score, there are only three things that really count big: piety, experience and turns. If you sacrifice a huge amount of gold before leaving the Chain, you can add up to 10 million points to your score. Experience points are worth about a quarter of a score point, and usually accounts for the bulk of your score. For every 1000 turns you get less than 80000, you add a million points. Other things count too, but the effects are pretty small: for example, saving Khelevaster is worth 250000. Becoming Paragon of Order (ie. receiving the platinum girdle) despite being one of the hardest things to do in the game, is only worth 2.5 million. Most other quests are 10k or less.

Most of what you've said is inaccurate to some extent. Ultras count for much less than gate-closing, especially lawful ultras. Turncount only affects gate-closers, and most of the score bonuses you list are quadrupled for gate-closers. Still, score is fairly meaningless overall - just winning the game should be an achievement in itself, and a character with a higher score in no way reflects any greater achievement or more powerful PC.