Your mindcrafter...

[Waffles]

Hello all this is my first post here in these forums, I've been playing ADOM for about uhh....oh i"ll say 6 years.

Anyway, one of my favorite classes--and I'm guessing one of the hardest to win with--is the mindcrafter class.
I currently have a level 29 drakish mindcrafter, he's doing...ok. I had to use my only wish to save khelly, and otherwise I've been pretty unlucky with finding anything which I attribute to my 13 Mana LOL. I've got all the orbs except the Mana orb, but I am far from ready for the final dive. I've been saving this character alot, and to make matters worse he's actually been the best shot at making a mindcrafter I've ever had. I was tyring to build one with just enough PP to confuse, and to run a little mental shield, but mainly using melee attacks to deal with a lot of the chaotic creatures. It's working...just not well.

I know this is a hard class but I"m just looking for any pointers on what I could do with my character now, or even suggestions for a new start. (I heard elven mindcrafters do ok??)

[Xevoc]

I've won with a mindcrafter myself. I used mindcraft to confuse all the difficult monsters and then killed them in melee. This strategy was used against basically every monster in the game and I don't remember any difficulties. You can also use wand of paralyzation, wand of webbing or potions of blindness (and other common tricks) against the monsters who you're not able to confuse yourself for a reason or another. At higher levels, greater telekinetic blast was used to get rid of summoners.

I think mindcrafters are difficult in the early game due to bad starting equipment, but I don't consider them hard, because the game is often really easy after the start.

[grobblewobble]

I'm fairly unexperienced with mindcrafters, but the experts around here may be better able to help you with some more info I think (as in, what equipment do you have, stats, why you think you're not ready to dive yet, etc).

[Harwin]

If you have a means of invisibility, killing the AKW can be handy. You should get enough levels (if you invis him as well) to get GTB - which is extremely handy against some enemies.

[Grey]

Harwin, how would a mindcrafter go about killing the AKW? :P

Waffles, if you post a vlg (press ')' in-game) then we may be able to help you a little more with how to improve your character for the final dive.

[Harwin]

Harwin, how would a mindcrafter go about killing the AKW? :P

Waffles, if you post a vlg (press ')' in-game) then we may be able to help you a little more with how to improve your character for the final dive.

I think that's what I did with my mindcrafter.
I think I just mindcrafted it to death with mental blast, or whatever that low level damage power is called.

I was so excited. I totally misunderstood what GTB was. I thought it was a ball spell. So I waited to clear the earth temple until I killed the AKW for the exp. Then I went to the earth temple, ready to totally go to town on those guys with my newly acquired power of awesomeness.

Well... needless to say I was disappointed.

Like ghosts, earth elementals and other things that can pass through stone are immune to telekinesis. I ended up just using mental shield and berserking the poor ASB to death - I had more DV and PV than he did.

[Silfir]

Mindcrafters get full weapon skill progression - making them very capable melee or ranged fighters, only without the skills. All that really seperates you from a closed gate victory, assuming your character isn't super weak and only got so far through sheer luck, is a stack of humanoid slaying ammo and a wand of destruction.

Maybe you should post character details for your mindcrafter. It might be you are underestimating his prowess ;)

[Waffles]

Ok well let you give you a bit more info on the PC. Like I said he's still at lvl 29, drakish mindcrafter. My PV is a little under 40, and my DV SUCKS. I got the tough skin corruption first and it destroyed my Dexterity, my DX is seiriously like 7 right now. I tried going back up to dwarftown and training. I dumped about 50,000 into dexterity training and it got me to around 12 or 13, but then it just fell again (Keep in mind, this is is all within the timespan of me luring out earth grues and bashing them to death.) I can't find moss of mareilon anywhere! =(. All of my other stats are OK, though I could use some more willpower (about 29 naturally).

Any ideas on how to get my DX up (and FYI I have about 8 corruptions on top of the tough scales one)? If I had some reasonable DV I might not be gettin so beat up.

I have a few eternium halberds so I'm good on weapons. I even have mastered polearms. I got the ring of immunity for my crowning which was actually kind of a bummer for me since I had really good resistances to all elements beforehand.


So basically, I think it's only my low dex thats really hurting. I really don't want to give up on this PC. Any tips?

[Silfir]

Create moss with holy water. As in, pacify the big room, find a row that has moss, and create a three square patch in an L-shape that has that row using the holy water. You should expect to have to spend about nine or ten potions to do this, which you should have by now. If not, visit the ID for a while, alternating between ID:8 and ID:9, until you have enough water. The big room doesn't corrupt, so once it is pacified you can spend some ages and three just harvesting moss and getting your dex up.

A high Polearms skill should net you workable DV even if you go with halberds, and I guess you need some for offense, and you have low shield skill anyway. But if you're this well-trained in polearms... Did you tell Blup about the water dragon cave yet? If yes, you'll get a weapon fully capable of carrying you through the rest of the game by level 36. Nuurag-Vaarn is doable either way, if you can disable him using potions of blindness, a cursed potion of invisibility, a potion of confusion or a wand of paralyzation. D:50 with the rune-covered trident is definitely doable even the "kill everything" route, but remember you can do it with monster creation and door creation in an emergency, if you're missing the wand of destruction.

Could I talk you into showing us an entire verbose log file, showing your complete inventory and things like that? Put it in [ CODE ] tags, if need be in several posts. I still am not sure what you're working with.

[pblack]

I think that's what I did with my mindcrafter.
I think I just mindcrafted it to death with mental blast, or whatever that low level damage power is called.

I was so excited. I totally misunderstood what GTB was. I thought it was a ball spell. So I waited to clear the earth temple until I killed the AKW for the exp. Then I went to the earth temple, ready to totally go to town on those guys with my newly acquired power of awesomeness.

Well... needless to say I was disappointed.

Like ghosts, earth elementals and other things that can pass through stone are immune to telekinesis. I ended up just using mental shield and berserking the poor ASB to death - I had more DV and PV than he did.

If i'm not mistaken elementals are considered constructs in ADOM and that's why they are immune to mindcraft. stone snakes/grues might fit in there as well. But earth elementals and other 'earth'lings are vulnerable to the telekinetic blasts. At least it would make sense that they should be.

[Grey]

I was under the impression that anything that can pass through stone is invulnerable to telekinetic blasts? Ghosts, stone grues, etc... I've never played a mindcrafter that far though.

Eternium halberds as your offense? Have you really found nothing better? If your DV is low you should really be using a good shield and have it well trained, and hopefully have a good one-hander to go with it. RCT may help you out, but personally I much prefer a one-hander and shield. Using missiles more might also be better. And do you have the Courage skill? It can help with the temple mobs.

As Silfir says, a full vlg (press ')' in-game) could be handy for more detail.

[Anonyone]

Create moss with holy water. As in, pacify the big room, find a row that has moss, and create a three square patch in an L-shape that has that row using the holy water. You should expect to have to spend about nine or ten potions to do this, which you should have by now. If not, visit the ID for a while, alternating between ID:8 and ID:9, until you have enough water.

I've heard that pouring holy water on the ground only has about a 25% chance of creating a new herb patch, so shouldn't you need about 12 potions of holy water on average to create three patches? I'd want even more than that, since if you end up getting unlucky and are unable to create three herb patches you'll have to start all over again. The more potions you have, the less chance there is of that happening.

[Grey]

It's easy to use 10 potions and not generate a single bush. Of course if you have enough holy water then it's still worth a try. It must be done on a level which still has herbs though - if the herbs have all died in the Big Room then it will be too late. If there are herbs in the room already then you may find it more efficient to turn one of the bushes into a r-pentomino (see the Guidebook section on herbs for a good description) and trim the resulting explosion into a few dex squares.

[Molach]

> It must be done on a level which still has herbs though

Really? Different from generating with herb seeds and gardening skill?

[JellySlayer]

> It must be done on a level which still has herbs though

Really? Different from generating with herb seeds and gardening skill?

Yes. Gardening will change a level from normal to herb producing. Pouring holy water will make a bush that will never reproduce. This is basically the only reason for a non-farmer to even consider using gardening.

[Silfir]

Huh? Why would having all herbs disappear turn the big room non herb supporting? Anyway, there should be herbs somewhere. If you're lucky, you have spenseweed or morgia patches somewhere, then you only need one holy water patch.

[Grey]

Once all herbs on a level die the level becomes dead to herbs, and herb support can only be restarted with gardening.

[Silfir]

Aw. That sucks.

[Sradac]

Only two things that make a mindcrafter hard: Chaos beings and Undead. Mindrcraft on undead hurts you, and Mindcraft on chaos beings corrupts you. Other than that, they're a blast to play. Drakelings of course make the best, use that spit on them undead and chaotics.

[Molach]

Or simply play the 'crafter as a fighter with some nifty tricks for backup. Only problem is weak starting out, but when basic weapons and armor are covered, you are better than any boring regular fighter. The mental shield at level 9? (I think) is also a good way to deal with non-sentient early-game-dangerous entities.

Remeber that non-see invis enemies can be safely attack with telekinetic blast. Except ghosts. It does not let them spot you, even if it is a touch-range spell.

Also you may wanna aim for book casting talents, to better abuse -foo- of wonder + corresponding spellbook trick.

[MrNiceguy]

Only two things that make a mindcrafter hard: Chaos beings and Undead. Mindrcraft on undead hurts you, and Mindcraft on chaos beings corrupts you. Other than that, they're a blast to play. Drakelings of course make the best, use that spit on them undead and chaotics.

In the early stages, ants and other bugs are problematic, since they are immune to mindcraft. Ooo... Interesting thought. I wonder, if you confuse the queen, does it effect the rest of the bugs? I doubt it, but wouldn't that be cool?

[Cripplefish]

The furthest I ever got with a dwarven mindcrafter (random, random) was around 21-22. I had no invisibility, potion of blindess, wands of paralyzation or anything and got completely destroyed by the ACW. In fact that was a really unlucky game as I recall.

As other people have suggested the best tactic is to confuse things then fight them in melee but watch out for the confusion wearing off on hard hitting and corrupting enemies :eek:

[Harwin]

In the early stages, ants and other bugs are problematic, since they are immune to mindcraft. Ooo... Interesting thought. I wonder, if you confuse the queen, does it effect the rest of the bugs? I doubt it, but wouldn't that be cool?

This is why I used a drakeling mindcrafter. Despite ants granting -Acid, they aren't particularly resistant to it.

[grobblewobble]

One more thing that works really well against the ACW is throwing a potion of cure corruption. That will weaken it, damage it, make its melee hits non-corrupting and possibly more. This I learned very recently from browsing the forum. I tried it in my current game, and it was really cool and helped me to defeat the thing.

EDIT: this was in reply to Cripplefish