Starting Spellbooks

[Sadface]

Everyone hopes their wizard/druid/etc. starts with decent spellbooks, right? Well, I guess sometimes you just start off with spellbooks that are just *too* damn good...



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Ramba Zamba St:11 Le:19 Wi:20 Dx:18 To: 9 Ch:10 Ap:18 Ma:19 Pe:17 N+
DV/PV: 14/1 H: 19(19) P: 27(27) Exp: 1/0 Vlge Sp: 101

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Character Information
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Ramba Zamba St:11 Le:19 Wi:20 Dx:18 To: 9 Ch:10 Ap:18 Ma:19
Pe:17 N+
DV/PV: 14/1 H: 19(19) P: 27(27) Exp: 1/0 M: 127



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Background Information
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Name: Ramba Zamba Race: male Gray Elf Class: Wizard
Eye color: light blue Hair color: white Complexion: light
Height: 6'7" Weight: 149 pounds
Age: 329 (grown-up)
Star sign: Book Birthday: 15/Book (day 45 of the year)

YOUR HISTORY:
Your parents were poor people. They loved you and cared for you,
although you had to hunger more than once.
As a child your parents cared a lot for you. Despite all
circumstances you enjoyed a happy and fine childhood.
In your youth you enjoyed competition against others to the
fullest. You were a very active kid.
Your life as a young adult was characterized by steady
determination. Your goal lay clearly ahead of you and you never strayed
from your path.
You decided to become a Wizard.


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Weapon Skills
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<snip>All 0, I'd just rolled up this wizard.

Damage caused with your melee weapons:
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?Right hand: ?+0? bonus to hit, ?1d3+0? damage


Damage caused with your missile weapons:
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No missile weapons available.




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Spells
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Acid Bolt: 756, 15pp (Effectivity: +0)


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Inventory
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Total weight: 268 stones Carrying capacity: 1100 stones


<snip>Equipment sucked, anyway. basic starter wizard stuff


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Stuff
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Total weight: 202 stones Carrying capacity: 1100 stones

Two-handed weapons ('(')
quarterstaff (+0, 1d10) [40s]
Tools (']')
torch [10s]
heap of 2 torches [20s]
box with flint and steel (24) [5s]
tinderbox (3) [3s]
Rings ('=')
ring of mental stability [+0, +1] {Le+2} [1s]
ring of fire resistance [1s]
Wands ('\')
wand of light (2 charges) [4s]
Potions ('!')
potion of exchange [4s]
potion of cure poison [2s]
potion of potential willpower [4s]
Scrolls ('?')
scroll of item detection [2s]
scroll of light [2s]
Books ('"')
spellbook of Wish <---Lolwut [100s]
Food ('%')
loaf of elven bread [3s]
Valuables ('$')
130 gold pieces [1s]


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Killed Monsters
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He did not manage to vanquish any monsters.



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Achievements
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He survived for 0 years, 0 days, 9 hours, 55 minutes and 43 seconds (127
turns).
Ramba Zamba visited 2 places.
His perception score was modified by +1 during his career.

I don't really know if I should consider myself lucky or not for this, since I probably won't be able to read it for a *LONG* time...and it'll likely get drenched/burnt/melted immediately. :p

[JellySlayer]

Drop it somewhere safe and forget about it for awhile (a long while). It could be worse, though. My current gnomish necromancer started with a tract of chaos as his only book...

[vogonpoet]

Yeah, stick it on the top line of Terinyo and go level up a bit... get your PC into the teens, and up your learning a bit, then you ought to be able to learn Wish... not that you will be able to cast it yet, but the act of learning the spell at all ought to train your learning stat nicely...

[Sadface]

On a relatively unrelated note, is there another requirement to enter the bug temple besides 100 high score deaths? I've looked at the list, and it reads 100, but the same band of ghosts appear, tell me to go "see more incarnations of death", and prevent my passage :( ...or am I just going in the wrong place?

[Molach]

100 deaths _when you start your char_

So you can't start one, then fill up the Hiscore after. You, sir, must make do without the bugs.


And that wish book is mostly unlucky, yes. By the time you are close to making use of it, you should be able to jump into the Rift and pick one up for yourself.

[Sadface]

That's where I'm confused - I started up a brand new character after hitting 100 deaths and it *still* won't let me in.

[psy_wombats]

Don't drop that thing by Terinyo... Sell it off at Holeinthewall... Should fetch a fair bit. Or wait until the High Mountain Village if you want to risk it.

[Subconscious]

Spellbook of wish is in my opinion the worst spellbook in the game. Why? Becouse it is plain useless, I have never been able to cast the spell and im pretty sure im not gonna ever do it.
And the spell itself is more like a curse for your character, the cost is not worth the wish.
Wizards do not need something to pump up their literacy, with other characters use some other book - or it will kill you for being too strong.

What do you do with the book? I would prefer dropping it. 100 stones weight for nothing in exchange.

[Lich]

I've never been able to cast wish with my characters either, and I think if the PC can do it, he doesn't really need the wish. On an unrelated note, is it possible for a hurthling to start out wearing an RoDS? because that would be a million times better than a spellbook of wish. Or roll a hurthling wizard and see if you start with both.

[Silfir]

To be fair, Know Alignment is probably more useless.

The Wish spell is probably only useful if you plan on trying for an ultra. Going through the effort to learn it might be a worthwhile alternative to scumming for RoDSes in the Blue Dragon Caves.

[Sami]

Spellbook of wish is in my opinion the worst spellbook in the game. Why? Becouse it is plain useless, I have never been able to cast the spell and im pretty sure im not gonna ever do it.
And the spell itself is more like a curse for your character, the cost is not worth the wish.
Wizards do not need something to pump up their literacy, with other characters use some other book - or it will kill you for being too strong.

What do you do with the book? I would prefer dropping it. 100 stones weight for nothing in exchange.
That book has two uses: one is to make an archmage and the other one is read it to give enormous boost to learning. :)
For example <10 level wizard with ~25 learning got +3 learning in next few thousand turns after reading spellbook of wish.

[mike]

Somewhat related question (I feel the answer is 'no', but I wonder if anyone can confirm):

Does failing to learn a spell train Le? What about reading a book for a long time and then being interrupted?

[gut]

I always just sell my wish books if I start with them.
You can get a good price for them, and you can
always buy them back later.

[JellySlayer]

On a relatively unrelated note, is there another requirement to enter the bug temple besides 100 high score deaths? I've looked at the list, and it reads 100, but the same band of ghosts appear, tell me to go "see more incarnations of death", and prevent my passage :( ...or am I just going in the wrong place?


You need to have a value of >100 in your adom.cnt file, and this value is checked when your character is CREATED, not when the character tries to enter the temple.

If you open the adom.cnt file in notepad, it will show an ASCII character, which will represent a numerical value that you can look up on an ASCII table. If this value is bigger than 100, you should be able to get in. In principle, you can set the value to something larger than 100 yourself, and save yourself the trouble of having to get 100 deaths. Very useful if you are reinstalling ADOM after a crash or something.

[Epythic]

after a crash...

...you can just delete the ".adom.prc" ("adom.prc" on windows). Just thought you might wanna know.

[Xen Xander]

The only way to really learn wish is to find a room with a 'rich' flavor, eat till bloated in it, ensure you secure it up tight (IE locks) and then read... and read and read and read..

If your literacy and learning are very high (max) you 'may' be able to learn the spell but honestly many times it will fizzle out - sometimes even exploding the book (never read a cursed spell book of wish). I'd say bless it and bless yourself for best chances but honestly after you learn it, the mana it requires to cast is something I've never seen on any character I've ever rolled.

Maybe you started your character on TB's birthday? I hear strange things happen when you do that - plus it also states characters tend to be very lucky on their birthday, so maybe trying to read or cast it on the start of that day might help...

but here we go again, why waste the effort? Have you considered sacrificing it? It may give you massive piety... never tried.

[Epythic]

If your literacy and learning are very high (max)
That would be 99 then?


...is something I've never seen on any character I've ever rolled.
You won't have a chance on level 1. But if you train your character a little bit (well, a more than a little bit), it should be doable.


Maybe you started your character on TB's birthday? I hear strange things happen when you do that - plus it also states characters tend to be very lucky on their birthday, so maybe trying to read or cast it on the start of that day might help...
You get the blessed and the fate smiles intrinsics.


but here we go again, why waste the effort? Have you considered sacrificing it? It may give you massive piety... never tried.

Sacrificed a cursed book of wish with my grey elven wizard, N+, level 25, got 423 piety points. For comparison, saccing 1 blessed stomafillia gave me 295 points.

Btw do you think it is legitimate to use adombot for such testing? (The book was real, I used it to determine piety level)

[Xen Xander]

I think if you just wish to test something out (because TB doesn't reveal a whole lot about ADOM anyway) I'd say go for it - it may be "cheezing" the system a little but honestly it's one of the few ways to really learn what something does.

Also doesn't casting wish permenantely reduce stats of your PC in some way? I can't remember this off the top of my head but I believe I read something once stating that.

[Silfir]

Ten points deducted from a random stat. For this reason, you only should use the Wish spell if:

- You desperately need a wish to get a particular item and are willing to sacrifice the random stat hit,

- You can bookcast wish without having to cast from HP with Mana at 1. Welcome to the world of Archmages.