just like ADOM?

[Dlightfull]

Hi guys,

i may have asked this same question before.

Is there any other RPG game as good and as deep as ADOM? With a thought out quest system and stuff like that?

I don't really like other roguelikes that are just dumb dungeon crawlers.

I have made the big mistake of spoiling myself, so i intend to find another game similar to ADOM (if there is one) and play it completely unspoiled.

[Silfir]

The game I've played that felt the most like ADOM was FTL. It's science fiction instead of fantasy, not strictly an RPG or a roguelike (there are no dungeons or grid maps, combat is not strictly turn-based, but freely pausable, so you get all the time in the world to think your actions through), and unless you amend it with mods, it's not open world, either. What it does do great that ADOM does as well is story. You will go through something between 80 and 100 star systems in a successful playthrough, and many of them play out like mini-quests, with choices to be made, unexpected twists and turns, and all woven into cohesive world building.

I have yet to see a fantasy roguelike RPG that was not ADOM that I felt like playing for the long haul. To me ADOM is the pinnacle.

[Dlightfull]

The game I've played that felt the most like ADOM was FTL. It's science fiction instead of fantasy, not strictly an RPG or a roguelike (there are no dungeons or grid maps, combat is not strictly turn-based, but freely pausable, so you get all the time in the world to think your actions through), and unless you amend it with mods, it's not open world, either. What it does do great that ADOM does as well is story. You will go through something between 80 and 100 star systems in a successful playthrough, and many of them play out like mini-quests, with choices to be made, unexpected twists and turns, and all woven into cohesive world building.

I have yet to see a fantasy roguelike RPG that was not ADOM that I felt like playing for the long haul. To me ADOM is the pinnacle.

I've played FTL, finished it a couple of times on normal difficulty with different ships, but after that i lost interest, since i'm not a completionist type. FTL is a bit too random for my liking. What i disliked about FTL is that it pushes me forward constantly. ADOM does it a lot less, with background corruption.

Besides the story and the depth of the game, i love to build powerful PC's in ADOM, like archmages, overpowered AotME monks etc.

[Silfir]

I thought as much - I noticed before we approach the game very differently.

[Dlightfull]

I thought as much - I noticed before we approach the game very differently.

what is your approach? :)

[Silfir]

I want to save the world without frills or needless extracurriculars, and minimal amounts of grinding. How powerful my character becomes is an afterthought to me; I only want them to be just powerful enough that I can win, whatever way I can think of.

Because it pushes you forward constantly, grinding isn't an option, and you have to adapt to whatever you get along the way, FTL is a perfect fit for me.

[Dlightfull]

I want to save the world without frills or needless extracurriculars, and minimal amounts of grinding. How powerful my character becomes is an afterthought to me; I only want them to be just powerful enough that I can win, whatever way I can think of.

Because it pushes you forward constantly, grinding isn't an option, and you have to adapt to whatever you get along the way, FTL is a perfect fit for me.

I see. So you try to save the world with every peasant, while i think that only a true hero can do it :D. And i, indeed, get into a lot of grinding. I also quit the char right from the start if i don't like the stats or equipment.

There's also something to think about - is closing the gate=saving the world? or only ULE/UNE can be considered as truly saving it?

[Soirana]

Of not strictly roguelikes I quite like Darkest Dungeon. Dungeons, psychotic adventurers and turn based combat.

Except the fact how so graphically limited game can have so many issues while trying to run on laptop [not just for me, there is lot of whining from people who try to get it working on lap top, most usaully succeed although]

[JellySlayer]

I think a lot of RPGs from the 80s or so have a lot of similar properties. It depends exactly on what features in ADOM you are looking for most. Do you care most about difficulty? Complexity? Story or quests? Random dungeons etc.? Does it have to be rogue like?

For the other bit, closing the gate is saving the world. Ultra is something you do once or twice just to say you did it.

[Dlightfull]

I think a lot of RPGs from the 80s or so have a lot of similar properties. It depends exactly on what features in ADOM you are looking for most. Do you care most about difficulty? Complexity? Story or quests? Random dungeons etc.? Does it have to be rogue like?

For the other bit, closing the gate is saving the world. Ultra is something you do once or twice just to say you did it.

well, i don't think i can identify exactly what i like about ADOM, it's probably how it succeeds to combine everything so good. I don't think it has to be roguelike. I don't really like first person games, like Daggerfall, for example. I absolutely love turn based, since i need to pay attention to my kids often.

I liked Morrowind though, especially how you could build a mage that could obliterate everything, that was cool. I love Fallout 1&2, but i hate the new wasteland game, i guess i like to play solo, not with a group. When i played Baldur's Gate, i did it solo too.

[JellySlayer]

Ever tried Wizardry 7? It's designed for multi-party, but it's possible to solo it (though it really helps to generate at least a partial party and kill them off for solo runs, since inventory space is pretty limited and there are LOTS of quest items to carry around). It's pretty challenging both in terms of combat difficulty, and has some tricky quests/puzzles. Making ridiculously overpowered characters is definitely a possibility, too.

[sylph]

Silfir and Dlightful - you'd probably both really benefit from checking out doomrl if you haven't already - for different reasons!
Dlightful, because you enjoy finding powerful combinations and builds, and doomrl is a game all about finding those extremely complimentary combinations and quirks.
Silfir, because doomrl pushed you onward relentlessly, and all that matters at the end of any given run is whether or not you could manage to win. Your progress through the game, in effect, is how many challenge games you've successfully got a win with!

[Dlightfull]

Ever tried Wizardry 7? It's designed for multi-party, but it's possible to solo it (though it really helps to generate at least a partial party and kill them off for solo runs, since inventory space is pretty limited and there are LOTS of quest items to carry around). It's pretty challenging both in terms of combat difficulty, and has some tricky quests/puzzles. Making ridiculously overpowered characters is definitely a possibility, too.

i've tried it, but for some reason i didn't stick to it, maybe i should give it another look.


Silfir and Dlightful - you'd probably both really benefit from checking out doomrl if you haven't already - for different reasons!
Dlightful, because you enjoy finding powerful combinations and builds, and doomrl is a game all about finding those extremely complimentary combinations and quirks.
Silfir, because doomrl pushed you onward relentlessly, and all that matters at the end of any given run is whether or not you could manage to win. Your progress through the game, in effect, is how many challenge games you've successfully got a win with!

Although i prefer fantasy settings, i might give it a go. Does it have some quests/story or it's only a dungeon crawler?

[auricbond]

Out of the games I've played, no, not even close. And unlike you I'm not sure I want to come across another such game of such depth. I'm a mere 30-year-young baby and I feel like I could blink and be 80. Tempus Fugit.

[Fizanko]

For the similarity with ADoM you should give a try to Tales of Maj'Eyal ( ToME4 )
http://te4.org/

It's a roguelike that has an actual a story and some twists (and lots of various lore to find), same as in Adom it's not just a dungeon but you have a world map to explore with several locations (cities/dungeons/etc..), and every class/race combo (lots you will unlock during gameplay) are playing differently so there's a lot of replay value to have even if you complete it.

Then there's additional game modes that add to the game (arena, infinite dungeon, and various addons/mods) for even more replayability.

[Dlightfull]

Out of the games I've played, no, not even close. And unlike you I'm not sure I want to come across another such game of such depth. I'm a mere 30-year-young baby and I feel like I could blink and be 80. Tempus Fugit.

I'm also 30, but i have plenty of time. Although sometimes i wish i'd have spent it reading rather than playing games, but i do that too, so i guess it's not that bad.


For the similarity with ADoM you should give a try to Tales of Maj'Eyal ( ToME4 )
http://te4.org/

It's a roguelike that has an actual a story and some twists (and lots of various lore to find), same as in Adom it's not just a dungeon but you have a world map to explore with several locations (cities/dungeons/etc..), and every class/race combo (lots you will unlock during gameplay) are playing differently so there's a lot of replay value to have even if you complete it.

Then there's additional game modes that add to the game (arena, infinite dungeon, and various addons/mods) for even more replayability.

I didn't really like ToME4, i played it, won it a couple of times, but i got bored.

Now i have found a game that keeps me hooked the way ADOM did. The strange thing is that it's very different :). It's Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and i absolutely love it.

It's a brutal game, especially in the beginning, but it has a lot of depth and is still under construction, so new cool stuff keeps coming from time to time.

Good luck getting a steady water supply while avoiding being butchered :).

[Fizanko]

Yes, i agree that Cataclysm DDA is a great game, full of very good features (the crafting system is fantastic as you can build so much) but to keep with the thread "similar to Adom", it's indeed different in its system, as there's no map -> dungeon , the world map is continuous and the locations are all part of it without having to enter/exit a location (and probably why the save system produce thousands of files) like in classic rpg/roguelikes .

[Zifmia]

I'd give Caves of Qud a recommendation, it's another roguelike that's due to hit Steam around the same time ADOM does. The public version's old as hell by now but still good.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Legerdemain. It's a RPG-roguelike hybrid (not pure roguelike due to saving at inns circumventing permadeath, and non-random dungeons) with a really really deep story and lore.

I'm playing it again after 5 years and it's still awesome. The most underrated RPG/roguelike that I know, I seriously don't know why it didn't get to be famous. And it's the game that feels most like ADOM (apart from ADOM I mean ;)) to me.

[Dlightfull]

thanks guys for the recommendations, will check them up.

[Universal]

About ten or more years ago, game called Avanor was under construction. It was basically copy of Adom (same look, interface, fantasy setting etc.) but with different environment. Couple of rather short alpha version were released before it was abandoned.

http://avanor.sourceforge.net/

Nothing special at that stage, but can be fun for hour or two.

[Feorg]

Every now and then I return to a game called Ragnarok, a roguelike (with graphics) from 1992. It's based on Norse mythology. There is a simple bigger story with quests.There are several world planes to explore, with ghosts of dead characters and chances to learn many skills, gaining powers from eating corpses etc. You can even change your class, grow extra eyes or swap bodies with monsters. Even though there are only 6 classes, you can play the game in many different ways, which is probably why I still occasionally return to it.

There's a wiki with download links at:

http://dos-ragnarok.wikia.com/wiki/Ragnarok_/_Valhalla_Wiki

[Scooter Fox]

While waiting for ADOM's Steam release, I've been playing DCSS (http://crawl.develz.org/) lately and it sure seems a vastly different experience. It's also the first other roguelike I've taken a liking to, after failing to stick with Nethack and Rogue in the past and Elona some time earlier this year.

Now I don't know DCSS very well yet since I've only managed to beat it once so far and with the way it's constructed it means I haven't seen a lot of it yet, but let me list the differences I've been writing down over the hours I've been playing the game (note that I'm playing 0.16.2, not the trunk/alpha versions of 0.17):

- Limited inventory space - gold doesn't take space but everything else does; scrolls, potions, food and ammo of the exact same type stack, the rest does not. For all that you have 52 slots. I believe it's a limitation from the way the game was designed - to have every item available always under the same key, from a to z and A to Z. (Imagine you have a potion of curing at 'x' in your inventory. q->x will drink it, Q->x will set it up as your thrown missile.) Overall it feels cramped though you will always manage to have essentials with you and will only lack things that you maybe might have used once but probably wouldn't anyway. It works but it was hard for me to get used to.
- 'Find' functionality - this one is amazing. Ctrl+F lets you find where any item already seen by you is. Type "MR" and you'll have a list of all items with magic resistance intrinsic you already found along with their location and possibility to auto-travel to them. You can also search for altars or shops this way. Let me say it again, it's absolutely, incredibly amazing to have such functionality in the game, especially if you suddenly realize you do need a scroll of amnesia on your fighter but you have no idea where you left any of them.
- No wilderness/overworld - imagine if ADOM only consisted of CoC, except it now has around 100 levels and only 20 of them are linear, the rest branching into several side paths. This puts a lot less focus on travelling between locations but if you encounter something nasty in the early to mid Dungeon levels (first part of the main path), you can't just go somewhere else to level up and come back, you'll need to either walk around or beat it somehow. You also have one-time bonus levels that are available for a limited amount of time.
- Races are far, far more diverse - you have some standard ones like humans or deep elves, but most of the other races bring significant gimmicks along. Formicids being able to wield any two-handed weapons in one "hand" but not able to ever teleport is a mild case. A severe case would be Felids which can't use any weapons, armor or ranged weapons but are in turn stealthier and faster than average. Also races are imbalanced on purpose and some are much more difficult to play than others by design.
- No class powers - meaning the class choice only offers different starting equipment, skill levels and stat bonuses. After that you can play however you want and if you wish so, your wizard can be a melee fighter and vice versa.
- Variety of different gods - do you even remember the names of gods in ADOM? I don't. In DCSS you have to though, because worshipping each god gives different bonuses and abilities, you increase your piety with each god in different ways and each god will not like you doing different things. Also leaving one god for another in many cases will have worse consequences than in ADOM.
- You can't easily outrun monsters - unless you play spriggans, centaurs or felids. In ADOM you'll often find yourself at 130-140 base speed late in the game; in DCSS your speed stays the same for the whole game (which is probably why what amounts to boots of +10 speed is such a good item). There are also more monsters which, when speaking in ADOM terms, have movement speed of 120-200. Usually this means if you want to run, you need to blink/teleport, which brings us to the next point:
- Teleport control is harder to obtain - no more blink dog corpses (see the point below)! It's only available through a ring or a spell, neither of which is reliably available without investing significant amounts of experience into relevant skill levels, especially the spell. Also even with teleport control (which is a status, not an intrinsic, and you will need to recast/reuse the spell/ability) you won't land the teleportation exactly where you want it and it also delays the already delayed teleport a few more turns. I believe something like this was discussed in an RFE about changing teleportation in ADOM recently. :) I remember reading something about cTele being removed in 0.17 but I don't know how it affects the game.
- Intrinsics are more important - you can't gain them from corpses, couple that with a lot of spellcasters you find later in the game and limited inventory space and suddenly managing them becomes very important. Also imagine fire/frost giants in ADOM using Fireball or Frost Bolt respectively. Imagine undead being able to drain your weapon/shield skill or your max HP. On the other hand almost all draining and item corrosion disappears on its own with time. Magic resistance is another intrinsic and represents how resistant you are to negative enchantments. You don't want to get banished to Abyss by that elven spellcaster, do you? Generally a lot of things you just do early on in ADOM and forget about it like eating a spider corpse for poison resistance are not there in DCSS, meaning e.g. a poison resistance source is pretty important for Snake Pit or Spider Nest.
- More informative monster descriptions - flavor texts are worse, but as soon as you see a monster for the first time, you will know how sturdy/evasive it is, what it resists, what it's suspectible to and what spells can it cast. You will even get a rough estimate how dangerous it generally is for your character at this exact moment (basically "extremely dangerous" may be able to kill you alone, you should not fight "dangerous" more than 1-2 at a time and so on). There's no guesswork involved, if you decide to fight that monster and die in the process, it's 100% your fault. I feel it's a very important and good design decision, but then again monster abilities are more diverse in DCSS than they're in ADOM and there are more threats you really should now about beforehand.
- Unique monsters can be difficult - I wish ADOM had this too. In DCSS you often run when you encounter Sigmund or Grinder in early game. Rupert can really mess you up. Jorgrun can kill you in two spells under certain circumstances. You probably don't want to face Nikola without electricity resistance. These are some of the predefined but not guaranteed unique monsters in the game, like their ADOM counterparts, except encountered far more often and posing much higher threat. Some of the other uniques are complete pushovers though.
- Clear indication of harmful effects - see that chunk of flesh you made from a kobold corpse and about to eat? It's clearly stated that it's poisonous. Are you sure you want to eat it? See that helmet? Your minotaur can't wear helmets so the one on the ground is described in dark grey letters, meaning it's not useful to you. See that dagger of venom? Because your god is the Shining One, he forbids you from using poison, so the weapon is marked as potentially harmful to you. And so on, and so on...
- Using abilities or spells can fail - if your skill is not high enough, you can fail. If it's casting spells, there are negative effects of failure too. Your chance for success is dependent on relevant stat and skill level. Basically imagine if ADOM's spell learning mechanic was applied to casting spells too, except you know how high exactly the chance of your action's failure is.
- Spellcasting is severely limited by wearing heavier armor - wizards can no longer wear plate armors, not even ring mails or shields without heavily affecting their spell casting chances. This can be diverted with putting a lot of experience in Armor and Shields skills and having a lot of Strength, but then you're not playing much of a wizard anymore. :) It also means fighters will only ever use more basic spells or none at all while wizards will generally stick only to light armor and will stay away from shields.
- Spells cost satiation - if you cast too much, you'll get hungry. One of the skills available in game can lessen the effects of this mechanic but won't remove it entirely.
- Limited space for spell knowledge - if ADOM were to implement a similar mechanic, each character could have only certain number of spell knowledge (e.g. 1000) to spare for all known spells and the number would depend on one of the available skills. There's no spell knowledge in DCSS though. Instead there's spell level assigned for each spell, which acts both as a "number of spell slots required to learn this spell" as well as MP cost on cast.
- There are only three main stats - Strength, Intelligence and Dexterity. A lot of ADOM's stats influence went into different things or are not a game mechanic at all. For example ADOM's Willpower's spell resistance went into DCSS magic resistance intrinsic while Mana, Charisma, Appearance and Perception don't exist at all.
- Increasing main stats is limited - players can choose to put one point in a stat of their choice every 3 experience levels (with level 27 being max) and you will get another increase every X levels (what and how often is increased depends on your race and RNG). You can have stat increasing modifiers on items and that's it. No potions of dexterity or gain attributes. There are equivalents of potions of boost stat though, making them A LOT more useful than in ADOM.
- All skills are available to all characters - no more wishing for Concentration! You can train any skill as long as you have means to use it, e.g. you can train Evocations if you have a wand or Axes if you have an axe in your inventory. Sadly you can train any magic school skill just by having a relevant spellbook in your inventory, you need to learn a relevant spell first. Skill aptitudes define how well you can train each skill and they vary between races - a similar mechanic is in ADOM in form of skill increase dice, except they would also have to apply to weapon skills and spellcasting to be a closer equivalent.
- Damage formulas are hidden - it's the main gripe I have with DCSS - you have no way of telling how much damage you can do. Weapons have "base damage" listed but the actual damage relies on a cryptic formula that's only available if you can read the source code and differs a lot from that "base damage" you can see. The +X slaying modifier is actually close to +1dX and the game won't tell you about it. Your damage dice on anything won't be found in the game itself ("power" indication on spells is similar to spell effectiveness in ADOM). To add insult to injury, the damage ranges, once you do find formulas e.g. on wiki and calculate them, are ridiculously large, often resulting in something like 1-16 or 3-42.
- DV and PV equivalents work differently - DCSS's PV, called AC, is not a flat reduction. Instead, each armor has a hidden stat, GDR (guaranteed damage reduction), and the damage reduction is max(1dAC, GDR), so if you have 20 AC, you roll 1d20 and choose higher value of the result and your GDR (which is percentage, not flat amount by the way). Oh, and some damage just ignores AC. DV is divided into evasion (EV) and shield (SH). I don't have enough patience to work out the formulas on that or on to-hit though. It's horrible. The damage dice in plain sight and clear PV functionality are probably the two most important things that I'm missing in DCSS.
- Random artifacts - meaning they generated with a random name, modifier and intrinsics, completely unique to your game. The bad part about this is they often suck as negative modifiers are possible too and the positive ones can be of no use to you.
- Non-random artifacts are mostly a non-factor - while many of them are pretty good, the two or three you'll find in your standard three rune run will likely not be of much use to you. This contrasts with ADOM where it feels artifacts are a vital part of player's equipment. Honestly they feel more like a worse version of yellow items from Diablo 2, whatever they were called, rather than actual artifacts.
- Average play time is much shorter - my first (and only so far) game winner had a bit over 10 hours on the clock and that was with one additional dungeon branch I didn't have to go to. Compare that to ADOM's ~25 hours.
- There is late game - the game is constructed in the way that allows you to finish rather early or tackle late game locations. Saying it in another way - there are 15 runes to collect but only 3 are necessary to win the game. Also late game is not a cake walk at all, the difficulty in my opinion actually increases as the game goes on, but maybe really experienced players have a different opinion on this, I haven't asked. After all in general DCSS is considered significantly easier than ADOM, even though for me it's exactly opposite.
- Different grinding restrictions - I can't really say much about it since I haven't actually tried grinding in DCSS, but I think I've read the monster generation gets slower and can eventually run out on any level and if you stay long enough in one, the possibility of out-of-depth spawn gets much higher. Also the monster loot is rather weak and I think it never contains any scrolls or potions, so grinding for items doesn't make much sense. The slow additional monster generation may also make you run out of food sooner or later. You can still grind for experience somewhat though.
- No background corruption - self-explanatory. The game clock is on food generally, though I have never run into a situation where I'd have problems with that yet.
- Some corruptions are explicitly good - as in there's a distinction between detrimental and beneficial corruptions and there are even potions you can use to gain the latter. You also can't die just from having too much of either. Corruptions are called mutations in DCSS by the way.
- Wishing is limited - or rather it's replaced by scrolls of acquirement, which are what you would get when if you joined ADOM's scroll of treasure creation with a scroll of item creation and added a lot of actual usefulness to the mix. You can only wish for anything that you could have otherwise in your inventory - weapons, food, books etc. - or gold and the result is usually really good (now whether the intrinsics on the gained item are useful to you is a different matter). Scrolls of acquirement are also much more common than wishes in ADOM but they are still rare.
- Online servers and spectating support - they're available on the official site of DCSS, as well as possiblity to play online. You don't even have to register to spectate. I'm aware there are 3rd party servers for ADOM too, but you won't know about that unless you search for them yourself and I have to yet encounter an ADOM server allowing you to play the tile mode.
- Graphics are worse - unless you're a hardcore ASCII fan, in which case there's no difference for you, ADOM has a lot better graphics. Those in DCSS are still OK, but moving from ADOM to DCSS is a downgrade in this regard.
- The whole inventory displayed on the main game screen - in tile mode only and not when playing online though. Still, a great feature. Of course it's only available because inventory slots are limited in the first place.
- Active game development - the game has been in active development for years. Each major patch brings new things or rebalances the existing ones. On the other hand there's a design approach present that says duplicate or irrelevant things should be removed to not clatter up the space. There used to be four different elf and three different dwarf races available, now there's only one of each and it's only one of available examples.
- Open source - yeah, that.

Wow, after pasting and editing all this it sure looks like an advertisement, huh? Well try it out, it doesn't cost anything except a bit of your time.

[sweetnothing]

I tried to play Wizard Ocropodes in DCSS some time ago without any spoilers. It was quite interesting and challenging, to figure out the best spell and so on. The only bad thing that I can say about DCSS is that you have so many options that they overwhelm. For example, which weapon to specialize in, how to distribute skill points etc. Without spoilers it's quite hard to say which choice is optimal. It's even hard to say if there is only one optimal choice or several.

[Jink640]

Elona is similar to adom in many ways, quests, world map, multiple dungeons, and so on. But it doesn't have permadeath

[Nobbse]

Has anybody played Caves of Qud yet?

It seems heavily influenced by ADoM

[hapro]

Has anybody played Caves of Qud yet?

It seems heavily influenced by ADoM
It's alright but I feel like it needs some more development before it's fun/worth sinking a lot of time into. Simple things like w+arrow typically just walks until you hit a wall instead of stopping at corners/etc. like ADOM... but make it extremely difficult to play. There's an early-game enemy I've randomly run into a few times who starts sleeping and if you're close it will wake up and essentially instakill you, which I find not particularly fun as I don't understand stealth mechanics, because the game seemingly doesn't have stealth otherwise and never explains it. It has some nifty features like you need a torch in your off-hand, and the shield goes on your arm instead of hand - then you can find, say, a floating light source that follows you, which frees up your second hand for dual wielding. Then you can get a mutation for multiple arms, and now you're quad-wielding. The overworld is a lot more comparable to Dwarf Fortress than ADOM, though, and item diversity/drops follows more closely to Crawl.

[shockeroo]

I've found Dragon Age: Origins to have an interesting plot, surprising replayability, and enough character customization to keep me coming back over and over again.