meh
06-21-2008, 08:31 AM
Having played ADOM for several years (but with very long breaks in between), I've finally completed my first ultra ending. And I did it without a single divine intervention. This is actually only my second win at all, although that is partially just because doing a second regular win didn't really motivate me. I started the game last weekend, so some details have already been forgotten, but here are some notes:
My first kill was an outlaw leader. This was quite convenient. Filk was on level 20 and I got the courage skill soon after.
I found two cloaks of invisibility above Dwarftown and plenty more later on. I also got seven league boots quite early. I also had two girdles of giant strength at one point, but both were (separately) destroyed in the middle part of the game by fire breathing creatures.
I didn't find any wish granting equipment in the entire game. My only two wishes (AoLS and concentration) were from pools.
I dug up both graveyards and ate all toughness boosting corpses. This naturally made me very chaotic. I checked my alignment after sending Blup home: about -8000. I converted to NC on a neutral altar. This angered the N god and he constantly tried to destroy my equipment. Converting to LN on a lawful altar was easier. I went to L+ with my amulet of order and just killing chaotic creatures. Once I was L+, I decided to immediately get crowned as I was carrying a lot of gold at the time. My reward was fire immunity and the boots of the divine messenger.
I forgot that the Dwarftown altar was neutral and accidentally converted it to lawful. The priest was upset, but the rest of the town didn't care, so I left him in the ogre cave. Later on, my unholy aura caused muscular dwarfs to be summoned. I killed one of them and then left as I didn't want to let my alignment slip.
I mostly used an adamantium flail early on, but switched to polearms as soon as I found a good one. The first such weapon was an eternium halberd of lightning. Then I found Soaker in a greater vault and switched to that. Soon after I upgraded to Wyrmlance. Then it was the rune covered trident and finally the trident of the red rooster. I went back to Soaker for the quickling tree, but otherwise only switched to a phase dagger or sword on penetration when facing monsters with extra high PV. I did most of my fighting in defensive mode, since I was wielding two-handed weapons. I also trained my bow skills every now and then. Farsight + longbow makes the top level of the bug village a great place for this.
I picked the book-casting talents, which was a mistake. By the time I finally had all the talents, I was getting about 500 castings per book, which was enough for most spells. I didn't get any ball spells or even burning hands. In the end, the only spells that I used a lot were frost bolt, strength of atlas and teleport. The latter two were bookcast most of the time. I got the mana battery corruption in the ToEF and decided to drain all my useless wands for some extra PP. Later on, when I again had the corruption, I accidentally drained all my wands, even the good ones. My mana was quite high by the endgame, but writing a bunch of scrolls of defense took it down massively.
The water temple was easy. The fire temple was not, as my strength was fairly low. I didn't dare to bring my GoGS along, and I naturally didn't have the fire orb boost either. It turned out to be a long battle which caused three corruptions. The air temple appeared to be very easy, but there was a scary moment when a summoned rust monster touched my crown of lightning. The earth temple monsters fell easily enough with penetrating weapons. The biggest challenge in the mana temple were the extremely experienced chaos servants. They poisoned me many times. I decided to melee the archmage in darkness. He didn't cause much damage, but did drain several stats.
I got the ring of the master cat, but didn't use it until D50. I instead took full advantage of my ability to kill cats without consequence and hunted down a slug corpse on DD7. This is the only thing I did that I might call scumming. Well I did go to the ID to look for a wand of monster creation, but actually found it in the first room of the first level. I didn't identify it for a while, though.
The ratling was fed the Torc, Phial, CoS, Nonnak, Moon Sickle and Big Punch. Apart from the wand mentioned above, I had no problems delivering what the crone wanted. I barely missed out on entering the stone circle on day 90 and had to wait for another month. Because of this, it was one of the last things I did. By that point, it was no challenge at all. I killed the ancient blue wyrm and then the karmic one. Filk was then killed with a wand of fireballs and the emperor moloch with demon slaying arrows.
The RNG kept giving me the wrong corruptions. I lost count, but got mana battery or stiff muscles at least ten times before gaining access to the quickling tree. Eventually I just decided to ignore them and take any corruptions I got. I had done the white unicorn quest and was going to go get the reward after the tree anyway. I didn't gain as much speed as I wanted. I think your current speed affects the gains, so I should have worn my boots of the slow shuffle.
I went to the minstrel to cash in the weird tome (it's safer to carry an artifact book than destroyable scrolls) and decided what gear I was going to wear for the final fight. I had death ray and stun resistance, but needed confusion and paralyzation from my equipment. I then drank all stat raising potion and read all scrolls of defense or protection. Then I wrote some more scrolls of defense and read them as well. I decided to clear the bug cave before my final dive, naturally keeping my best gear out of harms way. This was the first time I've done this using only melee, and probably the last one as well. Even with the TotRR, the killer bugs are still a tough opponent. Before the final dive, I dropped enough equipment not to be burdened even without the SoA spell or any strength increasing equipment.
I forgot to throw my potion of uselessness on D49. It probably didn't matter, though, as there were only a few artifacts that I would have had any use for, most notably Preserver and bracers of war. I was still only level 48 when I reached D50, and with no corruptions, so I decided to clear the entire level. There were only two monsters that could hurt me. Meleeing the greater balor was a foolish mistake. In fact, he managed to kill me! Luckily, I was wearing my AoLS and finished him off the next turn. The other dangerous monster was those damn chaos servants. The balors were easy to kill in comparison. I tried melee, but the servants kept on poisoning me all the time. Then I came up with a better plan. The middle room was nearly full, but there were a couple of gaps. Whenever a wizard was next to one, I teleported in and killed the wizard. This soon stopped the summoning. I then started blasting frost bolts and reading scrolls of power when needed. The crowd eventually thinned out and I cleared up the remaining monsters without much trouble. I equipped slaying arrows, drank all boosting potions, put on the chaos artifacts, read a scroll of uncursing and entered the gate to fight the chaos god...
...which turned out to be a complete anti-climax. I took off the amulet and crown, but didn't even bother to drop them. I never fired a single arrow. He was next to me right from the start, so I just hit him on berserk. It took a while, but worked. What surprised me was the lack of offence on his part. He drained stats quickly and summoned chaos mutants (luckily not chaos servants...), but never managed to hurt me at all. So I killed him without losing a single HP!
My first kill was an outlaw leader. This was quite convenient. Filk was on level 20 and I got the courage skill soon after.
I found two cloaks of invisibility above Dwarftown and plenty more later on. I also got seven league boots quite early. I also had two girdles of giant strength at one point, but both were (separately) destroyed in the middle part of the game by fire breathing creatures.
I didn't find any wish granting equipment in the entire game. My only two wishes (AoLS and concentration) were from pools.
I dug up both graveyards and ate all toughness boosting corpses. This naturally made me very chaotic. I checked my alignment after sending Blup home: about -8000. I converted to NC on a neutral altar. This angered the N god and he constantly tried to destroy my equipment. Converting to LN on a lawful altar was easier. I went to L+ with my amulet of order and just killing chaotic creatures. Once I was L+, I decided to immediately get crowned as I was carrying a lot of gold at the time. My reward was fire immunity and the boots of the divine messenger.
I forgot that the Dwarftown altar was neutral and accidentally converted it to lawful. The priest was upset, but the rest of the town didn't care, so I left him in the ogre cave. Later on, my unholy aura caused muscular dwarfs to be summoned. I killed one of them and then left as I didn't want to let my alignment slip.
I mostly used an adamantium flail early on, but switched to polearms as soon as I found a good one. The first such weapon was an eternium halberd of lightning. Then I found Soaker in a greater vault and switched to that. Soon after I upgraded to Wyrmlance. Then it was the rune covered trident and finally the trident of the red rooster. I went back to Soaker for the quickling tree, but otherwise only switched to a phase dagger or sword on penetration when facing monsters with extra high PV. I did most of my fighting in defensive mode, since I was wielding two-handed weapons. I also trained my bow skills every now and then. Farsight + longbow makes the top level of the bug village a great place for this.
I picked the book-casting talents, which was a mistake. By the time I finally had all the talents, I was getting about 500 castings per book, which was enough for most spells. I didn't get any ball spells or even burning hands. In the end, the only spells that I used a lot were frost bolt, strength of atlas and teleport. The latter two were bookcast most of the time. I got the mana battery corruption in the ToEF and decided to drain all my useless wands for some extra PP. Later on, when I again had the corruption, I accidentally drained all my wands, even the good ones. My mana was quite high by the endgame, but writing a bunch of scrolls of defense took it down massively.
The water temple was easy. The fire temple was not, as my strength was fairly low. I didn't dare to bring my GoGS along, and I naturally didn't have the fire orb boost either. It turned out to be a long battle which caused three corruptions. The air temple appeared to be very easy, but there was a scary moment when a summoned rust monster touched my crown of lightning. The earth temple monsters fell easily enough with penetrating weapons. The biggest challenge in the mana temple were the extremely experienced chaos servants. They poisoned me many times. I decided to melee the archmage in darkness. He didn't cause much damage, but did drain several stats.
I got the ring of the master cat, but didn't use it until D50. I instead took full advantage of my ability to kill cats without consequence and hunted down a slug corpse on DD7. This is the only thing I did that I might call scumming. Well I did go to the ID to look for a wand of monster creation, but actually found it in the first room of the first level. I didn't identify it for a while, though.
The ratling was fed the Torc, Phial, CoS, Nonnak, Moon Sickle and Big Punch. Apart from the wand mentioned above, I had no problems delivering what the crone wanted. I barely missed out on entering the stone circle on day 90 and had to wait for another month. Because of this, it was one of the last things I did. By that point, it was no challenge at all. I killed the ancient blue wyrm and then the karmic one. Filk was then killed with a wand of fireballs and the emperor moloch with demon slaying arrows.
The RNG kept giving me the wrong corruptions. I lost count, but got mana battery or stiff muscles at least ten times before gaining access to the quickling tree. Eventually I just decided to ignore them and take any corruptions I got. I had done the white unicorn quest and was going to go get the reward after the tree anyway. I didn't gain as much speed as I wanted. I think your current speed affects the gains, so I should have worn my boots of the slow shuffle.
I went to the minstrel to cash in the weird tome (it's safer to carry an artifact book than destroyable scrolls) and decided what gear I was going to wear for the final fight. I had death ray and stun resistance, but needed confusion and paralyzation from my equipment. I then drank all stat raising potion and read all scrolls of defense or protection. Then I wrote some more scrolls of defense and read them as well. I decided to clear the bug cave before my final dive, naturally keeping my best gear out of harms way. This was the first time I've done this using only melee, and probably the last one as well. Even with the TotRR, the killer bugs are still a tough opponent. Before the final dive, I dropped enough equipment not to be burdened even without the SoA spell or any strength increasing equipment.
I forgot to throw my potion of uselessness on D49. It probably didn't matter, though, as there were only a few artifacts that I would have had any use for, most notably Preserver and bracers of war. I was still only level 48 when I reached D50, and with no corruptions, so I decided to clear the entire level. There were only two monsters that could hurt me. Meleeing the greater balor was a foolish mistake. In fact, he managed to kill me! Luckily, I was wearing my AoLS and finished him off the next turn. The other dangerous monster was those damn chaos servants. The balors were easy to kill in comparison. I tried melee, but the servants kept on poisoning me all the time. Then I came up with a better plan. The middle room was nearly full, but there were a couple of gaps. Whenever a wizard was next to one, I teleported in and killed the wizard. This soon stopped the summoning. I then started blasting frost bolts and reading scrolls of power when needed. The crowd eventually thinned out and I cleared up the remaining monsters without much trouble. I equipped slaying arrows, drank all boosting potions, put on the chaos artifacts, read a scroll of uncursing and entered the gate to fight the chaos god...
...which turned out to be a complete anti-climax. I took off the amulet and crown, but didn't even bother to drop them. I never fired a single arrow. He was next to me right from the start, so I just hit him on berserk. It took a while, but worked. What surprised me was the lack of offence on his part. He drained stats quickly and summoned chaos mutants (luckily not chaos servants...), but never managed to hurt me at all. So I killed him without losing a single HP!