chromesto
09-13-2019, 10:52 PM
Tyrni, a female human wizard, was my second winning character. A week ago I was sick and felt like playing something. I saw ADOM's icon still in the desktop from a year ago when I finished the game as a human weaponsmith. I had heard that wizards are strong so that got me curious enough to launch up the game and restart the journey again.
I started with Alert and Miser to be able to get to Treasure Hunter as soon as possible.
Right at the level 1 I grabbed the pick pockets skill for her as I knew that I'd want to have the 'detect traps' -skill in my arsenal. I went to the small cave right away as I wanted to travel through it asap. This journey was pretty much the most harsh part of this whole playthrough as I was all the time low on health and power points. Even when I finally managed to rest to regain my PP in the very next level I met a room that drained my PP all the way to 0 and then there was a monster I really did not want to fight with the quarterstaff. I ended up using the last charge of the wand of fire bolt I started with to get past that enemy.
After the High Mountain Village it was more or less smooth sailing. Went down to the Dwarf Village. Got a quest to kill a stone statue. Finished it by farming the big room. Already had a nice array of spells learnt from all the books I had looted. Ventured past the living forest. I had both teleport (spell) and teleport control as the very first Blink Dog I met nicely left me with it's corpse. Along the way I did the mushroom caves and was lucky enough to get the Horn of Plenty this time. On my previous attempts when I've reached this point I've always gotten Cornucopia and I'll have to say that I really liked Horn of Plenty more. The free herbs and water from it were very helpful. (Or would have if I had bothered to take advantage of the herbs. I pretty much just ate a couple of Stomafillias and ignored the rest.)
Since I had plenty of point in the Light -spell I went to have some fun in the Gremlin cave. I'm not goint to lie. Dealing some serious aoe damage with it felt very satisfying. I got the Phial of Caladriel even though I didn't need it.
At this point I returned to the east side of the map, dealt with the Dwarven Graveyard, finished the druid quest (to get gardening), got crowned (unfortunately I received the Staff of the Wanderer) and farmed infinite dungeon for some XP and basic supplies. I think I was level 21 when I finally got out, sold most of the loot I didn't need. I tend to pick up more or less everyhing after I get Strength of Atlas so I always had a lot of stuff to sell when I passed by shops. Killed the Skeletal King to get the Ring of the High Kings and then I did the 2 first quests of the Ice Queen. The greater vault had 1 Great Red Wyrm and plenty of Ancient Red Dragons. I think I got around 10 levels in the Frost Giant's caves. I don't think I got anything too useful as the random artifacts. Later on I returned there as I had noticed that I missed a room in the greater vault and it was 100% worth it to come back. Amulet of Indomitable Life was there guarded by some more XP... eh Ancient Red Dragons. Once I got that necklace it started feeling like I wouldn't have to worry about dying too fast ever again.
At this point I went into the Tower of Eternal Flames and the Ancient Chaos Wyrm went down surprisingly easily. Sure my DV/PV were closer to 50/50 at that point and I had a really nice arsenal of spell to guarantee that I'd do a lot of damage but still I expected at least some sort of problems. I might have lost a bow in ToEF but I definitely did not lose anything important.
Since ToEF was so easy I started going down the CoC. I teleported through the Dwarven Halls. Water Temple was really easy and the 10 Wi from the water elemental orb was enough to increase the range of my ball-spells. Air and earth temples were about equally easy. All I had to do was go in and pew pew all the hostiles away. At the casino giftshop I was able to find 2 artifacts: The Wall and Bracers of Pure Might. I did have around 500k gold before gambling so I gambled until I could afford those artifacts and a couple of other minor assorted items (like water or unknown potion/ring/wand if there was any). I'm not sure if I won or lost with those bracers when it came to background corruption but I only got like 1.5 corruptions from all the gambling which was easily removed.
As I continued the trip it didn't turn any harder before the last few levels. Somehow I had managed to not kill any cats so the Cat Lord was nice to me. This is a minor miracle as my bolt spells had stupid long range by that point and I had used them a lot. The idea was to keep the cat deaths to minimum by not intentionally killing them but I didn't care too much if one or two had died outside of my sight.
As I was getting closer to the Mana Temple I cleared the another guaranteed greater vault. This time it had more than just 1 Wyrm but Frost Bolts and Iceballs cleared those hardest enemies in no time. I think I got Eagle's Claw from there and it ended up being my weapon of choice when I did not need the death ray resistance from the Sword of Nonnak. By this moment I had noticed that the game felt much harder. I was seeing Titans and Molochs like every second level and it was hard to keep my power points at a comfortable level since I was spending them on the ball-spells all the time.
I struggled through it and eventually found myself in the Mana Temple. I knew that I needed the Sword of Nonnak to get death ray resistance but for some reason I decided to cast Revelation just to check what instricts I was running with. To my surprise I found out that I was doomed. Took embarrassingly long to figure out where it came from. I had equipped Javelin of Doom earlier when I had cleared the missile weapon and missile slots and the game just asked if I wanted to equip something I picked up and I replied yes just so the game stops asking it. That explained why I met so many tough enemies left and right. :D
Mana temple ended up being frightening experience. As I had gone round the temple area and had reached the doorway a MOLOCH popped up from behind the corner. And I had 0 pp due to the Magebane and Magedoom eyes. I tried to equip a random bow and shoot some humanoid slaying arrows but the untrained hands were shaking a lot and the Moloch still had half health remaining when I was out of humanoid slaying arrows and when it was standing right next to me. I backed up towards the end of the hallway and to my surprise some chaos servants poured out of the temple and blocked the way from the Moloch. I was saved.
I used those Chaos Servants as shield. Due to my high DV/PV they were harmless and I could just wait to regen some PP back. Afterwards I realized that I had plenty of Scrolls of Power and that they restored a lot more PP than I thought they would. I could have just read a scroll or two and then spammed Acid balls to kill the Moloch. I ended up doing this anyway as I slowly managed to kill the PP drainers and regen some PP.
After the Moloch was dead the temple was easy to deal with. None of the lesser enemies posed much of a threat (if any) and even Nuurag-Vaarn was very cooperative and just kept standing in the range of Acid Ball casting some spells that didn't do anything (probably due to my high Wi).
D:50 wasn't any different. The balors (including Fistanarius) weren't that scary as I was faster than they so I could kite them and keep casting ball-spells until they'd go down. I cleared the portal area just for fun since I love aoe damage. I had been level 50 a while already so not even the xp was usefull to me. Since I'm a hoarder I picked up everything. With Strength of Atlas I was carrying over 60k stones worth of stuff and was still just Strained. On the way out I cleared the Darkforge. The Steel Golems very entertaining to kill with just 2 Acid Balls each.
Across the last trip home I visited the old barbarian and he finally thought that I was worthy of being taught the Courage-skill. Much needed at this point.. I stopped at the Lawenilothehl to identify all my gear and started selling my loot just to clear up the inventory a bit. That old bastard paid pennies even for my eternium plates but even still he ran out of money halfway through. Must have been the best day of the shopkeeper's life to get all that stuff so cheaply. I did zap a wand of bunny summoning just to mess up with the locals before I left after leaving a lot of tools and random stuff for the beggars to find.
Since Terinyo was along the way I threw the corpse of the Nuurag-Vaarn (or maybe it was the corpse of the Master Summoner) to the druid for the final potion of cure corruption which I ended up blessing and drinking on the way out to make sure I'd be 100% clean of corruption. Not that I needed it since unless I lost them on the way I should have had plenty of corruption removal potions and scrolls which I ended up not needing. Either the corruption build-up is really not that harsh or the Bracers of Pure Might saved me from *a lot* of corruption.
Upon checking the memorial file I was happy to notice that I did not miss a single artifact during the adventure. In the end I was only missing the Crown of Science which I sold because I was too lazy to check if it corrupts just by being in the backbag. The rumors of wizards being strong turned out being true. Although I didn't appreciate the pp cost reduction class powers until I was tackling the ToEF and elemental temples.
I started with Alert and Miser to be able to get to Treasure Hunter as soon as possible.
Right at the level 1 I grabbed the pick pockets skill for her as I knew that I'd want to have the 'detect traps' -skill in my arsenal. I went to the small cave right away as I wanted to travel through it asap. This journey was pretty much the most harsh part of this whole playthrough as I was all the time low on health and power points. Even when I finally managed to rest to regain my PP in the very next level I met a room that drained my PP all the way to 0 and then there was a monster I really did not want to fight with the quarterstaff. I ended up using the last charge of the wand of fire bolt I started with to get past that enemy.
After the High Mountain Village it was more or less smooth sailing. Went down to the Dwarf Village. Got a quest to kill a stone statue. Finished it by farming the big room. Already had a nice array of spells learnt from all the books I had looted. Ventured past the living forest. I had both teleport (spell) and teleport control as the very first Blink Dog I met nicely left me with it's corpse. Along the way I did the mushroom caves and was lucky enough to get the Horn of Plenty this time. On my previous attempts when I've reached this point I've always gotten Cornucopia and I'll have to say that I really liked Horn of Plenty more. The free herbs and water from it were very helpful. (Or would have if I had bothered to take advantage of the herbs. I pretty much just ate a couple of Stomafillias and ignored the rest.)
Since I had plenty of point in the Light -spell I went to have some fun in the Gremlin cave. I'm not goint to lie. Dealing some serious aoe damage with it felt very satisfying. I got the Phial of Caladriel even though I didn't need it.
At this point I returned to the east side of the map, dealt with the Dwarven Graveyard, finished the druid quest (to get gardening), got crowned (unfortunately I received the Staff of the Wanderer) and farmed infinite dungeon for some XP and basic supplies. I think I was level 21 when I finally got out, sold most of the loot I didn't need. I tend to pick up more or less everyhing after I get Strength of Atlas so I always had a lot of stuff to sell when I passed by shops. Killed the Skeletal King to get the Ring of the High Kings and then I did the 2 first quests of the Ice Queen. The greater vault had 1 Great Red Wyrm and plenty of Ancient Red Dragons. I think I got around 10 levels in the Frost Giant's caves. I don't think I got anything too useful as the random artifacts. Later on I returned there as I had noticed that I missed a room in the greater vault and it was 100% worth it to come back. Amulet of Indomitable Life was there guarded by some more XP... eh Ancient Red Dragons. Once I got that necklace it started feeling like I wouldn't have to worry about dying too fast ever again.
At this point I went into the Tower of Eternal Flames and the Ancient Chaos Wyrm went down surprisingly easily. Sure my DV/PV were closer to 50/50 at that point and I had a really nice arsenal of spell to guarantee that I'd do a lot of damage but still I expected at least some sort of problems. I might have lost a bow in ToEF but I definitely did not lose anything important.
Since ToEF was so easy I started going down the CoC. I teleported through the Dwarven Halls. Water Temple was really easy and the 10 Wi from the water elemental orb was enough to increase the range of my ball-spells. Air and earth temples were about equally easy. All I had to do was go in and pew pew all the hostiles away. At the casino giftshop I was able to find 2 artifacts: The Wall and Bracers of Pure Might. I did have around 500k gold before gambling so I gambled until I could afford those artifacts and a couple of other minor assorted items (like water or unknown potion/ring/wand if there was any). I'm not sure if I won or lost with those bracers when it came to background corruption but I only got like 1.5 corruptions from all the gambling which was easily removed.
As I continued the trip it didn't turn any harder before the last few levels. Somehow I had managed to not kill any cats so the Cat Lord was nice to me. This is a minor miracle as my bolt spells had stupid long range by that point and I had used them a lot. The idea was to keep the cat deaths to minimum by not intentionally killing them but I didn't care too much if one or two had died outside of my sight.
As I was getting closer to the Mana Temple I cleared the another guaranteed greater vault. This time it had more than just 1 Wyrm but Frost Bolts and Iceballs cleared those hardest enemies in no time. I think I got Eagle's Claw from there and it ended up being my weapon of choice when I did not need the death ray resistance from the Sword of Nonnak. By this moment I had noticed that the game felt much harder. I was seeing Titans and Molochs like every second level and it was hard to keep my power points at a comfortable level since I was spending them on the ball-spells all the time.
I struggled through it and eventually found myself in the Mana Temple. I knew that I needed the Sword of Nonnak to get death ray resistance but for some reason I decided to cast Revelation just to check what instricts I was running with. To my surprise I found out that I was doomed. Took embarrassingly long to figure out where it came from. I had equipped Javelin of Doom earlier when I had cleared the missile weapon and missile slots and the game just asked if I wanted to equip something I picked up and I replied yes just so the game stops asking it. That explained why I met so many tough enemies left and right. :D
Mana temple ended up being frightening experience. As I had gone round the temple area and had reached the doorway a MOLOCH popped up from behind the corner. And I had 0 pp due to the Magebane and Magedoom eyes. I tried to equip a random bow and shoot some humanoid slaying arrows but the untrained hands were shaking a lot and the Moloch still had half health remaining when I was out of humanoid slaying arrows and when it was standing right next to me. I backed up towards the end of the hallway and to my surprise some chaos servants poured out of the temple and blocked the way from the Moloch. I was saved.
I used those Chaos Servants as shield. Due to my high DV/PV they were harmless and I could just wait to regen some PP back. Afterwards I realized that I had plenty of Scrolls of Power and that they restored a lot more PP than I thought they would. I could have just read a scroll or two and then spammed Acid balls to kill the Moloch. I ended up doing this anyway as I slowly managed to kill the PP drainers and regen some PP.
After the Moloch was dead the temple was easy to deal with. None of the lesser enemies posed much of a threat (if any) and even Nuurag-Vaarn was very cooperative and just kept standing in the range of Acid Ball casting some spells that didn't do anything (probably due to my high Wi).
D:50 wasn't any different. The balors (including Fistanarius) weren't that scary as I was faster than they so I could kite them and keep casting ball-spells until they'd go down. I cleared the portal area just for fun since I love aoe damage. I had been level 50 a while already so not even the xp was usefull to me. Since I'm a hoarder I picked up everything. With Strength of Atlas I was carrying over 60k stones worth of stuff and was still just Strained. On the way out I cleared the Darkforge. The Steel Golems very entertaining to kill with just 2 Acid Balls each.
Across the last trip home I visited the old barbarian and he finally thought that I was worthy of being taught the Courage-skill. Much needed at this point.. I stopped at the Lawenilothehl to identify all my gear and started selling my loot just to clear up the inventory a bit. That old bastard paid pennies even for my eternium plates but even still he ran out of money halfway through. Must have been the best day of the shopkeeper's life to get all that stuff so cheaply. I did zap a wand of bunny summoning just to mess up with the locals before I left after leaving a lot of tools and random stuff for the beggars to find.
Since Terinyo was along the way I threw the corpse of the Nuurag-Vaarn (or maybe it was the corpse of the Master Summoner) to the druid for the final potion of cure corruption which I ended up blessing and drinking on the way out to make sure I'd be 100% clean of corruption. Not that I needed it since unless I lost them on the way I should have had plenty of corruption removal potions and scrolls which I ended up not needing. Either the corruption build-up is really not that harsh or the Bracers of Pure Might saved me from *a lot* of corruption.
Upon checking the memorial file I was happy to notice that I did not miss a single artifact during the adventure. In the end I was only missing the Crown of Science which I sold because I was too lazy to check if it corrupts just by being in the backbag. The rumors of wizards being strong turned out being true. Although I didn't appreciate the pp cost reduction class powers until I was tackling the ToEF and elemental temples.