Scooter Fox
07-24-2015, 08:37 AM
R59 came out a few days ago. Random dungeons, no more scroll of aggravation cheese, some more stuff maybe? I decided to check it out.
After a very fast death with a human ranger and quitting a random druid roll (I didn't want to play a spellcaster) I rolled a gray elven merchant. Merchant, THE weakest starting class, probably. Except this one wasn't weak at all. 4 starting talents let me pick Heir and the [+0, +5] leather armor coming with it. I got very lucky with outlaw shop too - a large mithril shield [+7, +2] was waiting for me there along with a girdle of carrying. I could only afford one (2.5k starting gold is actually pretty awesome), so I got the shield first.
With 7 PV early game was pretty easy, especially since I had to start with VD to get Healing. Compared to my last merchant, who struggled horribly with VD, this was a breeze. After acquiring Healing from Jharod, I went to SMC and UD and got through it without much of a problem. PC was next and I found a neutral altar there. After a lot of tedious sacrificing I got fire immunity (yeah!) and Iron Crown of Havlor (YEAH!); at this point I realized this is a potential game winner right here. I stayed around for one post-crowning and got Wyrmlance. I really start to think Wyrmlance is a guaranteed artifact only neatly disguised as a random one.
On my way to CoC I stumbled upon a few random dungeons. R4 greeted me with a surge power right away, so I noped out of there in fear of my life. In R1 I found a statue granting permanent invisibility. Pretty neat! What I didn't know at the time is that you can't enter the Arena when invisible. Ooops.
Pyramid and dwarven graveyard were a breeze as usual - to think they used to be a challenge to me back when I was a noob! Since I had no weapons I considered good (I was still running around with an adamantium spear), I decided to try visiting Darkforge. Steel golems, as expected, turned out to be pretty resistant to my futile attacks, so I had to switch to Wyrmlance. They were still pretty resistant, but a good supply of healing herbs helped me survive. Darkforge's item stashes turned out as usual - tons of crap, a good two-handed weapon (when I want a one-handed one) and one decent piece of armor. Equipped with that, I went back to R4 for the surge of power artifact. The highly experienced named griffon was also highly unimpressive; the reward for defeating him was Skullcrusher, which became my main weapon and stayed for the rest of the game.
R2 dungeon contained a pair of seven league boots, which made trips around the wilderness a lot faster. I went for the rune-covered trident (god bless Raven birth sign), then to Ice Queen Domain and FGJC.
Note to self: read room effect descriptions. Especially "deadly and chilling silence" ones. Cyclops critting me for 200+ HP almost killed me right there.
FGJC had a giant greater vault and boy was it tedious. Giants were actually pretty good at hitting criticals and I had to do a lot of kiting and backtracking to kill all of them. The rewards were Ironfist (neat!) and two other random-but-almost-guaranteed artifacts: black tome of Alsophocus and scorched spear.
With no AoLS or RoDS I decided to go for Tomb of the High Kings and Minotaur Maze. The former was nothing to write home about, the latter was, as always, an exercise in masochism. I swear if it wasn't for those rewards, I'd never go there willingly. Random artifact from the emperor was Trusted One, which turned out to be useful... not. Axe of the minotaur emperor on the other hand came in handy a lot of times.
Note to self: don't wear seven league boots in the Minotaur Maze. Just don't.
Tower of Eternal Flames was uneventful really. Ancient Chaos Wyrm is nothing once you have demon slaying weapons. Still without AoLS or RoDS in sight I decided to not wait and search any longer (screw pools and their lottery). Khelavaster died and I descended with whopping 5 PoCC and 1 SoCR. I was really lucky with corruptions though and only had to cleanse 3 of them, one of which could have easily stayed too. By the way, I found a ring of djinni summoning at D:22 and two more later in the game. Thanks a lot. At least I got my seven league boots back.
You know those named boss monsters, whose entry music lasts longer than actual fight with them, right? Well one of them turned out to be a named doppleganger king and I sure as hell wasn't going to see how good he is in melee. Wand of fireballs and 7LB got the job done. Same with cat lord powered by 3 cat kills.
D:41 had a greater moloch tension room. I question the balance of ADOM. You play it for 15 or 20 hours to get to this point, accumulating 5 milions of experience points, then one tension room gives you 60% of that. It's weird, as if your experience level on D:50 depended entirely on how many of those funny tension rooms you find. But I digress.
CoC greater vault was an undead one. I zapped a wand of item detection, saw Lust for Glory plus piles of gold and left the level right after. Nuraag-Varn was kind of interesting, as in I had to actually think how to organize my equipment to fit in death ray resistance, a source of light and means of killing him. In didn't work out all that well, the bastard dodged all missiles like crazy, so it all boiled down to berserk swinging at him with Skullcrusher in darkness. Fun times.
Note to self: don't think the game is done once you get all elemental orbs.
Another note to self: wear necklace of the eye more often, that shit is useful.
No, really. I was walking down the corridor in D:48 when I saw some weird purple bolt flying at me, fired from outside of my vision range. My PC "barely avoided it". OK. Not thinking about anything in particular I moved another tile forward. Another purple bolt from outside of vision range, again barely avoided. Then I realized what was happening. HOLY CRAP WHAT AM I DOING INVENTORY SWITCH ANKH TO DEATH RAY RESISTANCE OH SHIT OH CRAP. It was an emperor lich firing at me from afar, though I only saw him after walking another tile or two forward.
So yeah, pay attention or you will die like an idiot. I was really lucky there.
The rest of the game was easy. D:49 gave Nature's Friend, stashed in backpack and never used. I also found out that ammunition of jelly slaying isn't only for early to mid game and it actually works on writhing masses of primal chaos. One of the chaos warriors dropped an eternium long sword of devastation. I love these guys. I cleaned up the whole D:50 and went to leave the game, grabbing crown of science on the way back because why not.
That's it, a win with one of the worst classes in the game. No Alertness, no Find Weakness, no Concentration, very bad potentials on Dodge. I think I'm done with ADOM until the Steam release, just so I don't burn out too early. I want those achievements after all, ha ha.
Pastebin with the character memorial file: http://pastebin.com/j3pD6zgv
After a very fast death with a human ranger and quitting a random druid roll (I didn't want to play a spellcaster) I rolled a gray elven merchant. Merchant, THE weakest starting class, probably. Except this one wasn't weak at all. 4 starting talents let me pick Heir and the [+0, +5] leather armor coming with it. I got very lucky with outlaw shop too - a large mithril shield [+7, +2] was waiting for me there along with a girdle of carrying. I could only afford one (2.5k starting gold is actually pretty awesome), so I got the shield first.
With 7 PV early game was pretty easy, especially since I had to start with VD to get Healing. Compared to my last merchant, who struggled horribly with VD, this was a breeze. After acquiring Healing from Jharod, I went to SMC and UD and got through it without much of a problem. PC was next and I found a neutral altar there. After a lot of tedious sacrificing I got fire immunity (yeah!) and Iron Crown of Havlor (YEAH!); at this point I realized this is a potential game winner right here. I stayed around for one post-crowning and got Wyrmlance. I really start to think Wyrmlance is a guaranteed artifact only neatly disguised as a random one.
On my way to CoC I stumbled upon a few random dungeons. R4 greeted me with a surge power right away, so I noped out of there in fear of my life. In R1 I found a statue granting permanent invisibility. Pretty neat! What I didn't know at the time is that you can't enter the Arena when invisible. Ooops.
Pyramid and dwarven graveyard were a breeze as usual - to think they used to be a challenge to me back when I was a noob! Since I had no weapons I considered good (I was still running around with an adamantium spear), I decided to try visiting Darkforge. Steel golems, as expected, turned out to be pretty resistant to my futile attacks, so I had to switch to Wyrmlance. They were still pretty resistant, but a good supply of healing herbs helped me survive. Darkforge's item stashes turned out as usual - tons of crap, a good two-handed weapon (when I want a one-handed one) and one decent piece of armor. Equipped with that, I went back to R4 for the surge of power artifact. The highly experienced named griffon was also highly unimpressive; the reward for defeating him was Skullcrusher, which became my main weapon and stayed for the rest of the game.
R2 dungeon contained a pair of seven league boots, which made trips around the wilderness a lot faster. I went for the rune-covered trident (god bless Raven birth sign), then to Ice Queen Domain and FGJC.
Note to self: read room effect descriptions. Especially "deadly and chilling silence" ones. Cyclops critting me for 200+ HP almost killed me right there.
FGJC had a giant greater vault and boy was it tedious. Giants were actually pretty good at hitting criticals and I had to do a lot of kiting and backtracking to kill all of them. The rewards were Ironfist (neat!) and two other random-but-almost-guaranteed artifacts: black tome of Alsophocus and scorched spear.
With no AoLS or RoDS I decided to go for Tomb of the High Kings and Minotaur Maze. The former was nothing to write home about, the latter was, as always, an exercise in masochism. I swear if it wasn't for those rewards, I'd never go there willingly. Random artifact from the emperor was Trusted One, which turned out to be useful... not. Axe of the minotaur emperor on the other hand came in handy a lot of times.
Note to self: don't wear seven league boots in the Minotaur Maze. Just don't.
Tower of Eternal Flames was uneventful really. Ancient Chaos Wyrm is nothing once you have demon slaying weapons. Still without AoLS or RoDS in sight I decided to not wait and search any longer (screw pools and their lottery). Khelavaster died and I descended with whopping 5 PoCC and 1 SoCR. I was really lucky with corruptions though and only had to cleanse 3 of them, one of which could have easily stayed too. By the way, I found a ring of djinni summoning at D:22 and two more later in the game. Thanks a lot. At least I got my seven league boots back.
You know those named boss monsters, whose entry music lasts longer than actual fight with them, right? Well one of them turned out to be a named doppleganger king and I sure as hell wasn't going to see how good he is in melee. Wand of fireballs and 7LB got the job done. Same with cat lord powered by 3 cat kills.
D:41 had a greater moloch tension room. I question the balance of ADOM. You play it for 15 or 20 hours to get to this point, accumulating 5 milions of experience points, then one tension room gives you 60% of that. It's weird, as if your experience level on D:50 depended entirely on how many of those funny tension rooms you find. But I digress.
CoC greater vault was an undead one. I zapped a wand of item detection, saw Lust for Glory plus piles of gold and left the level right after. Nuraag-Varn was kind of interesting, as in I had to actually think how to organize my equipment to fit in death ray resistance, a source of light and means of killing him. In didn't work out all that well, the bastard dodged all missiles like crazy, so it all boiled down to berserk swinging at him with Skullcrusher in darkness. Fun times.
Note to self: don't think the game is done once you get all elemental orbs.
Another note to self: wear necklace of the eye more often, that shit is useful.
No, really. I was walking down the corridor in D:48 when I saw some weird purple bolt flying at me, fired from outside of my vision range. My PC "barely avoided it". OK. Not thinking about anything in particular I moved another tile forward. Another purple bolt from outside of vision range, again barely avoided. Then I realized what was happening. HOLY CRAP WHAT AM I DOING INVENTORY SWITCH ANKH TO DEATH RAY RESISTANCE OH SHIT OH CRAP. It was an emperor lich firing at me from afar, though I only saw him after walking another tile or two forward.
So yeah, pay attention or you will die like an idiot. I was really lucky there.
The rest of the game was easy. D:49 gave Nature's Friend, stashed in backpack and never used. I also found out that ammunition of jelly slaying isn't only for early to mid game and it actually works on writhing masses of primal chaos. One of the chaos warriors dropped an eternium long sword of devastation. I love these guys. I cleaned up the whole D:50 and went to leave the game, grabbing crown of science on the way back because why not.
That's it, a win with one of the worst classes in the game. No Alertness, no Find Weakness, no Concentration, very bad potentials on Dodge. I think I'm done with ADOM until the Steam release, just so I don't burn out too early. I want those achievements after all, ha ha.
Pastebin with the character memorial file: http://pastebin.com/j3pD6zgv