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11-23-2015, 06:17 AM
To celebrate ADOM on steam I decided to try playing with my favorite race (Mist elf) with a class I've never tried before - the Thief! I've tried a few games with Assassins trying to roleplay a dagger class, but for some reason I always felt they were underpowered and inevitably switch to a different weapon. As I lost a number of ME thieves to those damn vortices at the late-early game (~lvl 15), I decided to always go for the Black torc for use in an emergency situation.
I started the game with the Candle birthsign and was lucky enough to get 4 talents (Heir + prep for treasure hunter!), but only 1 PV. Killed a beggar, and headed to Small Cave - in there I found a [+0,+5] gorgeous leather armor which was very welcome. Dive in UD was uneventful to my memory, although I did create a blink dog farm to get one corpse for me and one to stash in HMV for pool sipping activities.
Went to Village dungeon to spawn the Druid, and headed over to PC. While there I found a [+1,+2] cloak of invisibility and a 7LB! After PC went to one of the random dungeons and found a scroll shop which I ended up robbing later in the game. Hit the CoC at lvl 12 and got to Dwarftown - on the level before the split a lightning vortex blocked my path so I used a wand of door creation and locked it for now, and ran back to Druid to get the black torc. Used that to get past the Vortex (actually managed to kill it with arrows as I recall), and went through the forest with the invis cloak. With the dagger of penetration it was a breeze and generated decent loot too! On the level below was Khelly but I had no AoLS (but had high piety) so decided to go pool sipping. On my way back up through the forest a tree dropped a steel amulet which I found out later was my AoLS! There were two pools in CoC levels 1-10 so I sipped those and got a some great resists (-para, -stun, -sleep, lost fire, lost acid, lost shock, lost poison, cursed, +str potential). Ate an ankheg and fire beetle and headed over to Darkforge to see what they had in there, but first dropped by pyramid and got the Ancient wrappings and ankh (still wearing the torc for resistances at this point).
In DF I easily dispatched the golems with my dagger and found absolutely nothing in the armor and weapons department. After I realized I already had an AoLS I skipped further pool sipping for now. Went back to save khelly, killed chaos snake, and dove to fire wall. Came back up and went to collect ring of high kings so I could ditch the torc for the ankh. As I was climbing up the last cavernous level there was a zombie that was a few spaces away that I almost skipped but decided to kill it - graced me with worn boots [+4,+0] - now I had a backup. I had a few spell books which I started to learn (aside from ice ball which burned up when I tried to read) but I successfully read teleportation, identification, and a few combat spells. Teleportation was great for training mana (reading from book).
Next I went to Ice Queen domain to get her quest, and headed to the Frost Jarl caves. The greater vault was a Giant vault with ~10 Titans in there. I was getting hammered by them (missiles knocked me to 30% HP from full health with a direct hit), but luckily there was an altar near the stairs on the floor above me! I killed 2 with magic missile but I had the blathering mouth corruption which made it unreliable - it also almost got me killed a few times failing to teleport away from near death (resorted to scrolls). After saccing ~9 of them (and getting a ton of eternium quarrels in the process - shame I was using bows), I eventually cleared the vault and was granted 3 piles of gold, Robes of Resistance, and Brannalbin's Cloak of Defense. I also received Wooden Shield artifact in random loot, but had an eternium large shield [+11,+5] so never really used it. Completed the quest, but I began to understand how lacking my melee damage was with daggers - giants took a long time to kill. I went back to DF to pool sip for a wish and lost sleep, lost fire, lost acid, lost tctrl, lost para doomed twice (went back to sac to remove each time), cursed, -petr, -death, -see invis, +2 learning, -1 strength, and a wish! All that from 2 pools (there were still 6 or so left there). Wished for Find Weakness. I happened to have fire beetle and ant corpse stashed in dwarftown so bought and ate them, and went back to HMV to eat the blink dog corpse. Aside from para resist (and sleep, but minor) I was all set.
Went to Mino Maze with 6 scrolls of magic mapping, and as usual, took the wrong initial staircase down. Used up my scrolls at level 2 on the correct path down, so I left to go to back HIWL and used my magical writting set to write 4 more scrolls, as well as visiting the library. Went back and was out of scrolls on D5 so resorted to walking normally from them on. I had a WTF moment when I was sure I had the correct D:6 when I saw a second staircase up, but realized I took the wrong stair down. Got to last level and used monster detection to port next to Mino emperor. Wasn't sure how he was in melee so I killed him with magic missile and was rewarded with 3 potions of str, 1 PoGA (bad luck I guess, I remember getting 4 or so), Mino axe, and Long spear (really bad luck...). Climbed back out and ate the corpse in wilderness
Next I went to fire tower, a tension room of baby red dragons netted me ~100k gold and dispatched the ACW without issue (arrows of dragon slaying). On my way down to the casino I decided to try seeing if there was anything interesting in DH, so I climbed up after passing through the forest. In the room immediately to my right was a room filled with ~16 greater molochs! I was lvl 29 at the time and dragged 7 of them 1 by one downstairs where I killed them with magic missile. The point was to hit lvl 32 for the class power giving better loot from pick pocketing. I stupidly tried to slow myself (down to 50 speed) for experience bonus but with writhing tentacle corruption failing to cast several times in a row nearly died when one caught up to me.
Dove to the casino which had absolutely nothing (first time I've ever seen it that empty). To be fair, it had Wyrmslayer, but nothing else halfway decent. Stashed everything in the corner hoping for a decent restock (which happened much later but again nothing). Went down to Cat level to get ring but while searching came across a named Black Slayer - I hadn't even noticed the surge in power message (figured it was cat level message). Lying next to him was the silvery arrow - score! I had already been using bows and this was a great arrow that now returns, which also trained my dex up ~7 points over the rest of the game. Got the cat ring, and on the level below found my second GV of Giants. Cleared it without incident pick pocketing everything and in addition to the decent loot I pick pocketed an AoLS, RoDS, ~4 scrolls of defense, ~4 scrolls of increase melee accuracy/damage, ~3 potions of x attribute. Was rewarded with Hammerhead and Boots of Divine Messenger (helped with final fight with -para and freeing up an amulet slot). Cleared the air temple losing a lot of fodder in the process (important destructible items I stashed) dragged the Summoner out and dispatched him. Took his body to Terinyo's shop (using remove curse spell to stop it from decaying), and went to crumbling random dungeon. Right next to the stairway was a potion shop that was 4x8 which was amazing - I bought it out 3 times over the course of the game (each time was 20-40k, but I was rolling in gold)... Gave me enough water for my needs as well as 1 PoGA. Cleared Crumbling dungeon - it is 7 levels and there were THREE royal vaults. All relatively small, but still more money. Killed a few more Greater Molochs as well, netting 3 hulking armors. IT was approaching day 90 now so I went to Stone Circle and killed Keriax with ~8 shots of silvery arrow - corpse was stashed in Terinyo.
I was level 42 at this point and really wanted Needle+Sting already, so I went back to CoC, cleared the Earth Temple, pick pocketing a glowing wand (1 charge) from a random enemy. Ancient Chaos Beast dropped very quickly with my dagger of penetration, and brought corpse back to terinyo to stash for later. Went to Blue Dragon caves and just before the stairs down pick pocketed another RoDS (I won't mention attribute potions anymore - will make a tally at the end with my rough estimations). Wished for spellbooks of farsight and cast it ~50 times so it would last for the rest of the game. Nothing eventful happened in BDC - used the Silvery Arrow + Farsight to clear it with ease picking off dragons from far away. Quest Wyrm dropped scorched spear (meh). Turned in quest and went up to assassin's guild to get quest, clearing it in the process. Killed Filk, visited the Mad Minstrel (giving in the weird tome I'd be carrying around) and went to scintillating cave. Dove to Emperor Moloch and killed him rather easily with Sting+Needle and arrows of demon slaying. Somehow became C during this last foray (I ping ponged back and forth so much this game), converted back to NC and got the ToRR. Went to do Dwarven artificer quests and pissed off Terinyo before turning in the Chaos corpses for PoCC. Funny anecdote here - when clearing dwarftown (they should have given me better prices) I decided to kill the ratling and shot my silvery arrow at him. Well, he caught it, ate it, and said "thanks brudder!". A nice WTF moment, but he thanked me so I let him live. I had ~5 corruptions at this point and decided to try eating the corpses to see what would raise, and I needed more corruption anyway. Got some pretty good stat gains despite the fact that everything was 40+ and a few more corruptions (cleaned writhing tentacles a few times). Gathered up my remaining wishes (5 RoDS + WoW 1 charge) and used 4 of them SoCR.
Dove down to Mana temple, cleared rather quickly and ate the Archmage's corpse. D:49 PoUselessness gave me Black Thumb. Yay. All I needed now was the Black Tome and Cat's Claw to complete the set. D:50 was cleared uneventfully, and I started creating potions of raw chaos for needed corruption level. Became extremely corrupted, drank all my boost potions and wished for speed twice. Entered and used my SoCR to remove ~11 corruptions, using it again periodically. Fight with Andor was more difficult than I've had in the past (although my previous win was with a ME Wizard Archmage with 99 in everything). Firstly I had no light source (stupidly ditched my amulet of light when dropping unneeded items), and when I crit him he started teleporting all over the place. I was eventually able to whittle away at this health (using up 7 SoCR to keep corruptions at a decent level), and then I must have got a pretty good crit (using Twin daggers) that brought him from ~60% health to ~15% health which was pretty impressive. I switched to ToRR to be safe and pelted arrows at him but with darkness being re-cast every few turns it was pointless. I went berserk and hit him a few times with ToRR to slay him. During the fight he must have drained about 20-25 stat points from me, both in melee and spells, but in the end he went down.
All told was a very fun character to play - early game was difficult, but Black Torc really helped with survivability against vortices (Mist Elves' major weakness IMO - lightning especially). Level 32 class power was really cool - I made a point of pick pocketing everything I could, which actually wasn't nearly as annoying as I thought just to see how powerful it would be. Once you have 100 in skill, 100 in Stealth +Invis + Stealthy talent a lot of monsters are generated neutral which had ~90% success rate on first shot. Hostile monsters had ~30% success rate. From level 32 onwards I would roughly estimate the following items gained from pick pocketing ONLY:
4-5 RoDS
1 Wand of Wishing
8-12 PoGA (not counting what I got from loot / black unicorn quest - all told I found ~20-25 PoGA this game)
2 AoLS (not counting what I found as loot and gave to Khelly)
~35-40 Potions of Attribute (Strength, Willpower, Toughness, etc)
~40-50 Potions of Potential Attribute
3 PoCC
1 SoCR
~15-20 scrolls of defense/protection
~20-25 scrolls of increase melee accuracy/damage (great for my Heir dagger!)
2 potions of education (gave Alchemy + Survival)
1 scrolls of danger
4 scrolls of peace
1 writing set [6} (Never used, still in inventory..)
~3 gray daggers (never used/needed)
Below is the FLG- I dropped most of my fodder item to keep it more concise, and made a few comments (look at the weapons section :))
I started the game with the Candle birthsign and was lucky enough to get 4 talents (Heir + prep for treasure hunter!), but only 1 PV. Killed a beggar, and headed to Small Cave - in there I found a [+0,+5] gorgeous leather armor which was very welcome. Dive in UD was uneventful to my memory, although I did create a blink dog farm to get one corpse for me and one to stash in HMV for pool sipping activities.
Went to Village dungeon to spawn the Druid, and headed over to PC. While there I found a [+1,+2] cloak of invisibility and a 7LB! After PC went to one of the random dungeons and found a scroll shop which I ended up robbing later in the game. Hit the CoC at lvl 12 and got to Dwarftown - on the level before the split a lightning vortex blocked my path so I used a wand of door creation and locked it for now, and ran back to Druid to get the black torc. Used that to get past the Vortex (actually managed to kill it with arrows as I recall), and went through the forest with the invis cloak. With the dagger of penetration it was a breeze and generated decent loot too! On the level below was Khelly but I had no AoLS (but had high piety) so decided to go pool sipping. On my way back up through the forest a tree dropped a steel amulet which I found out later was my AoLS! There were two pools in CoC levels 1-10 so I sipped those and got a some great resists (-para, -stun, -sleep, lost fire, lost acid, lost shock, lost poison, cursed, +str potential). Ate an ankheg and fire beetle and headed over to Darkforge to see what they had in there, but first dropped by pyramid and got the Ancient wrappings and ankh (still wearing the torc for resistances at this point).
In DF I easily dispatched the golems with my dagger and found absolutely nothing in the armor and weapons department. After I realized I already had an AoLS I skipped further pool sipping for now. Went back to save khelly, killed chaos snake, and dove to fire wall. Came back up and went to collect ring of high kings so I could ditch the torc for the ankh. As I was climbing up the last cavernous level there was a zombie that was a few spaces away that I almost skipped but decided to kill it - graced me with worn boots [+4,+0] - now I had a backup. I had a few spell books which I started to learn (aside from ice ball which burned up when I tried to read) but I successfully read teleportation, identification, and a few combat spells. Teleportation was great for training mana (reading from book).
Next I went to Ice Queen domain to get her quest, and headed to the Frost Jarl caves. The greater vault was a Giant vault with ~10 Titans in there. I was getting hammered by them (missiles knocked me to 30% HP from full health with a direct hit), but luckily there was an altar near the stairs on the floor above me! I killed 2 with magic missile but I had the blathering mouth corruption which made it unreliable - it also almost got me killed a few times failing to teleport away from near death (resorted to scrolls). After saccing ~9 of them (and getting a ton of eternium quarrels in the process - shame I was using bows), I eventually cleared the vault and was granted 3 piles of gold, Robes of Resistance, and Brannalbin's Cloak of Defense. I also received Wooden Shield artifact in random loot, but had an eternium large shield [+11,+5] so never really used it. Completed the quest, but I began to understand how lacking my melee damage was with daggers - giants took a long time to kill. I went back to DF to pool sip for a wish and lost sleep, lost fire, lost acid, lost tctrl, lost para doomed twice (went back to sac to remove each time), cursed, -petr, -death, -see invis, +2 learning, -1 strength, and a wish! All that from 2 pools (there were still 6 or so left there). Wished for Find Weakness. I happened to have fire beetle and ant corpse stashed in dwarftown so bought and ate them, and went back to HMV to eat the blink dog corpse. Aside from para resist (and sleep, but minor) I was all set.
Went to Mino Maze with 6 scrolls of magic mapping, and as usual, took the wrong initial staircase down. Used up my scrolls at level 2 on the correct path down, so I left to go to back HIWL and used my magical writting set to write 4 more scrolls, as well as visiting the library. Went back and was out of scrolls on D5 so resorted to walking normally from them on. I had a WTF moment when I was sure I had the correct D:6 when I saw a second staircase up, but realized I took the wrong stair down. Got to last level and used monster detection to port next to Mino emperor. Wasn't sure how he was in melee so I killed him with magic missile and was rewarded with 3 potions of str, 1 PoGA (bad luck I guess, I remember getting 4 or so), Mino axe, and Long spear (really bad luck...). Climbed back out and ate the corpse in wilderness
Next I went to fire tower, a tension room of baby red dragons netted me ~100k gold and dispatched the ACW without issue (arrows of dragon slaying). On my way down to the casino I decided to try seeing if there was anything interesting in DH, so I climbed up after passing through the forest. In the room immediately to my right was a room filled with ~16 greater molochs! I was lvl 29 at the time and dragged 7 of them 1 by one downstairs where I killed them with magic missile. The point was to hit lvl 32 for the class power giving better loot from pick pocketing. I stupidly tried to slow myself (down to 50 speed) for experience bonus but with writhing tentacle corruption failing to cast several times in a row nearly died when one caught up to me.
Dove to the casino which had absolutely nothing (first time I've ever seen it that empty). To be fair, it had Wyrmslayer, but nothing else halfway decent. Stashed everything in the corner hoping for a decent restock (which happened much later but again nothing). Went down to Cat level to get ring but while searching came across a named Black Slayer - I hadn't even noticed the surge in power message (figured it was cat level message). Lying next to him was the silvery arrow - score! I had already been using bows and this was a great arrow that now returns, which also trained my dex up ~7 points over the rest of the game. Got the cat ring, and on the level below found my second GV of Giants. Cleared it without incident pick pocketing everything and in addition to the decent loot I pick pocketed an AoLS, RoDS, ~4 scrolls of defense, ~4 scrolls of increase melee accuracy/damage, ~3 potions of x attribute. Was rewarded with Hammerhead and Boots of Divine Messenger (helped with final fight with -para and freeing up an amulet slot). Cleared the air temple losing a lot of fodder in the process (important destructible items I stashed) dragged the Summoner out and dispatched him. Took his body to Terinyo's shop (using remove curse spell to stop it from decaying), and went to crumbling random dungeon. Right next to the stairway was a potion shop that was 4x8 which was amazing - I bought it out 3 times over the course of the game (each time was 20-40k, but I was rolling in gold)... Gave me enough water for my needs as well as 1 PoGA. Cleared Crumbling dungeon - it is 7 levels and there were THREE royal vaults. All relatively small, but still more money. Killed a few more Greater Molochs as well, netting 3 hulking armors. IT was approaching day 90 now so I went to Stone Circle and killed Keriax with ~8 shots of silvery arrow - corpse was stashed in Terinyo.
I was level 42 at this point and really wanted Needle+Sting already, so I went back to CoC, cleared the Earth Temple, pick pocketing a glowing wand (1 charge) from a random enemy. Ancient Chaos Beast dropped very quickly with my dagger of penetration, and brought corpse back to terinyo to stash for later. Went to Blue Dragon caves and just before the stairs down pick pocketed another RoDS (I won't mention attribute potions anymore - will make a tally at the end with my rough estimations). Wished for spellbooks of farsight and cast it ~50 times so it would last for the rest of the game. Nothing eventful happened in BDC - used the Silvery Arrow + Farsight to clear it with ease picking off dragons from far away. Quest Wyrm dropped scorched spear (meh). Turned in quest and went up to assassin's guild to get quest, clearing it in the process. Killed Filk, visited the Mad Minstrel (giving in the weird tome I'd be carrying around) and went to scintillating cave. Dove to Emperor Moloch and killed him rather easily with Sting+Needle and arrows of demon slaying. Somehow became C during this last foray (I ping ponged back and forth so much this game), converted back to NC and got the ToRR. Went to do Dwarven artificer quests and pissed off Terinyo before turning in the Chaos corpses for PoCC. Funny anecdote here - when clearing dwarftown (they should have given me better prices) I decided to kill the ratling and shot my silvery arrow at him. Well, he caught it, ate it, and said "thanks brudder!". A nice WTF moment, but he thanked me so I let him live. I had ~5 corruptions at this point and decided to try eating the corpses to see what would raise, and I needed more corruption anyway. Got some pretty good stat gains despite the fact that everything was 40+ and a few more corruptions (cleaned writhing tentacles a few times). Gathered up my remaining wishes (5 RoDS + WoW 1 charge) and used 4 of them SoCR.
Dove down to Mana temple, cleared rather quickly and ate the Archmage's corpse. D:49 PoUselessness gave me Black Thumb. Yay. All I needed now was the Black Tome and Cat's Claw to complete the set. D:50 was cleared uneventfully, and I started creating potions of raw chaos for needed corruption level. Became extremely corrupted, drank all my boost potions and wished for speed twice. Entered and used my SoCR to remove ~11 corruptions, using it again periodically. Fight with Andor was more difficult than I've had in the past (although my previous win was with a ME Wizard Archmage with 99 in everything). Firstly I had no light source (stupidly ditched my amulet of light when dropping unneeded items), and when I crit him he started teleporting all over the place. I was eventually able to whittle away at this health (using up 7 SoCR to keep corruptions at a decent level), and then I must have got a pretty good crit (using Twin daggers) that brought him from ~60% health to ~15% health which was pretty impressive. I switched to ToRR to be safe and pelted arrows at him but with darkness being re-cast every few turns it was pointless. I went berserk and hit him a few times with ToRR to slay him. During the fight he must have drained about 20-25 stat points from me, both in melee and spells, but in the end he went down.
All told was a very fun character to play - early game was difficult, but Black Torc really helped with survivability against vortices (Mist Elves' major weakness IMO - lightning especially). Level 32 class power was really cool - I made a point of pick pocketing everything I could, which actually wasn't nearly as annoying as I thought just to see how powerful it would be. Once you have 100 in skill, 100 in Stealth +Invis + Stealthy talent a lot of monsters are generated neutral which had ~90% success rate on first shot. Hostile monsters had ~30% success rate. From level 32 onwards I would roughly estimate the following items gained from pick pocketing ONLY:
4-5 RoDS
1 Wand of Wishing
8-12 PoGA (not counting what I got from loot / black unicorn quest - all told I found ~20-25 PoGA this game)
2 AoLS (not counting what I found as loot and gave to Khelly)
~35-40 Potions of Attribute (Strength, Willpower, Toughness, etc)
~40-50 Potions of Potential Attribute
3 PoCC
1 SoCR
~15-20 scrolls of defense/protection
~20-25 scrolls of increase melee accuracy/damage (great for my Heir dagger!)
2 potions of education (gave Alchemy + Survival)
1 scrolls of danger
4 scrolls of peace
1 writing set [6} (Never used, still in inventory..)
~3 gray daggers (never used/needed)
Below is the FLG- I dropped most of my fodder item to keep it more concise, and made a few comments (look at the weapons section :))