I had such a bad day already and then this

[Nate]

So I've been on a melee kick for a while but I decided to get back to the basics and see what I could do with a grey elf wizard. As a side note, I've been playing since 0.9.9 and still don't have a victory; my personal best was a lvl 34 grey elf wizard who got killed by Nuurag-Vaarn.

So, this Nate had some really cool starting spellbooks - Acid Bolt and Improved Fireball. I was cautious with him because he was about the fifth grey elf wizard named Nate I had rolled last night; many others died before he came into Ancardia. Didn't mess with the PC or SMC like I usually do (usually my order of operations on starting a character is to get the 3 initial quests, hit loheintlewalh for a mugger if possible and something decent otherwise, bum rush SMC for blanket and down stairs location, bum rush PC to generate live puppy before lvl 6 if possible, then wander in search of the raider lord). Both of them had nasty locked doors or environmental hazards that kept me from making any progress in them. So I killed Kranach and then dashed off West without even telling Tywat Pare about my deeds.

I found the dwarven elder pretty quickly and asked about portal, then quest. Had to kill a ratling warrior; ran off and did so then got the next quest.

Saved, went to sleep, came back tonight.

Still hadn't run into any on-demand teleportation and still paranoid after the (not unusual) run of deaths last night, so I decided to head back East and get in Hotzenplotz's face. Killed him and his ungies and Kranf Niest too for fun, then learned the Law skill back in Terinyo. Was all the way to L at this point just from character actions, so much for that N altar in dwarftown. Like L better anyways. So, quests at this point are for Keethrax and to descend past the trees. That and to go after Griff and Nonnak. No Acid Ball, still no on-demand teleportation. Improved Fireball and Destroy Undead both in my arsenal. Hmmm, time to bring Griff peace. Peace in the form of righteous fire.

However, a pit trap put that all to a sad end before I ever saw Griff.



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Nate St:10 Le:28 Wi:16 Dx:20 To:11 Ch:17 Ap:19 Ma:26 Pe:23 L
DV/PV: 39/13 H: -11(47) P: 146(161) Exp: 13/82997 GY: 2 Sp: 102
Coward
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Inventory
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Total weight: 2061 stones Carrying capacity: 27000 stones

Head : uncursed adamantium cap [+0, +2] [36s]
Girdle : blessed adamantium girdle [+0, +3] [18s]
Right Hand : - <--- was a spear moments before. Water trap rusted it. Had a bad feeling right then...
Left Hand : uncursed large mithril shield (-1) [+7, +2] [96s]
Right Ring : uncursed ring of mental stability [+0, +1] {Le+1} [1s] <-starting gear
Left Ring : uncursed ring of protection +4 [1s] <- starting gear

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Skills
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Alchemy ..............100 (superb) [+2d4]
Climbing ............. 62 (good) [+1d3]
Concentration ........100 (superb) [+2d4]
Dodge ................ 48 (fair) [+1d5]
First aid ............ 58 (good) [+1d5]
Haggling ............. 30 (mediocre) [+3d4]
Healing .............. 74 (great) [+1d3]
Herbalism ............100 (superb) [+2d4]
Law .................. 36 (fair) [+2d4]
Listening ............ 68 (good) [+3d4]
Literacy .............100 (superb) [+2d4]
Pick pockets ......... 1 (poor) [+4d4]
Stealth .............. 67 (good) [+1d5]
Ventriloquism ........ 26 (mediocre) [+3d4]


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Spells
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Acid Bolt : 524, 10pp (Effectivity: +10)
Darkness : 1097, 4pp (Effectivity: +0)
Destroy Undead : 580, 6pp (Effectivity: +6)
Farsight : 874, 13pp (Effectivity: +5)
Frost Bolt : 762, 6pp (Effectivity: +20)
Improved Fireball: 394, 23pp (Effectivity: +6)
Knock : 1656, 10pp (Effectivity: +4)
Magic Missile : 184, 4pp (Effectivity: +16)
Mystic Shovel : 820, 80pp (Effectivity: +2)
Neutralize Poison: 730, 8pp (Effectivity: +0)
Revelation : 1003, 27pp (Effectivity: +0)
Slow Monster : 1562, 6pp (Effectivity: +1)
Strength of Atlas: 946, 7pp (Effectivity: +8)
Stun Ray : 981, 7pp (Effectivity: +0)
Web : 1029, 10pp (Effectivity: +0)

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His achievements during his adventures:
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Nate, the gray elven wizard, broke his neck by falling into a pit.
He scored 83745 points and advanced to level 13.
He survived for 0 years, 23 days, 2 hours, 49 minutes and 15 seconds (14642
turns).
Nate visited 25 places.
His learning score was modified by +2 during his career.
His toughness score was modified by +4 during his career.
His mana score was modified by +6 during his career.
His perception score was modified by +6 during his career.
He ended his adventuring life in an ancient dwarven tomb.
855 monsters perished under his attacks.
The following two artifacts were generated during his adventure:
the si
the elemental gauntlets
He possessed the following intrinsic:
He was fire resistant.
He was able to resist confusion attacks (gained through an item).
He had the following talents: Alert, Mighty Aura, Miser, Potent Aura, Strong
Aura, Treasure Hunter.
He had a final speed score of 102 (final base speed: 102).
He was not particularly religious.
He asked for 3 divine interventions.
He was lawfully aligned.
He was slightly tainted by Chaos.



I was so looking forward to throwing fireballs at Griff.

I really hope someday I get to join the ranks of those who've beaten this game. I've been very spoiled for a long time and still no joy; I'm sure I must be doing some things wrong but wow this is frustrating. That, and when it's not a pit trap I'd already evaded once it's a game crash instead. I know from experience that I can't handle having backups, so crashes are pretty much guaranteed fatal.
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[lotuskip]

Just a couple of comments:

- Why take off the rusty spear? Even if you don't attack with it, it still gives a DV bonus (assuming you have some skill).
- St 10? You must use way too much Strength of Atlas, I reckon. Without it, your St would have trained at least a little.
- I always get trap detection and train it a bit before going to the dwarven tomb. Unless I have alertness.
- And the obvious: using herbs, even in a non-scummy way, can help quite a bit. But maybe you didn't have a chance to do that safely yet.

[Silfir]

I think playing on jaakos' ADOM server relieves you of the backup trouble somewhat if your own PC is prone to have ADOM crashes.

As for your death, 47 HP *is* just dreadfully low. You have to play very, very carefully in the midgame with that. Instead of going for the Griffyard you should probably have farmed herbs in the Big Room. Not endlessly - just enough morgia to get your toughness up to 20 and you can survive much better.

The maximum with morgia (unless you use sickness or starvation) is 25. That will give you a lot more safety in general, and reduce the death rate.

[Nate]

I totally should have herbed it up. I'll note that and not forget again.

I've never pickpocketed anything useful so of late it's been hard to make myself do it; I'll focus on that as well.

The Nate two before this one actually wandered into Preserver in the PC without even feeling a surge of power or seeing a named guardian. That was another tough one to lose, especially because I was indeed playing on ancardia.ath.cx and something weird happened to my session and when I logged back in starting ADOM generated a new ADOM session. It's the only problem I've ever had on the server so I just shrugged it off; I only bring it up since you mentioned it. The problems I was complaining about in my original post are native to my machine running winbeta4.

The next Nate did pretty well and died, but that one was totally my fault. It was late, I must have been delirious with exhaustion: I threw something at a lightning vortex in the DH that hadn't even noticed me... can't actually complain that I died that time, I deserved that completely.
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[Elone]

The maximum with morgia (unless you use sickness or starvation) is 25. That will give you a lot more safety in general, and reduce the death rate.


Toughness does not drop with starvation, only the first four stats do.

[Silfir]

I'll happily admit my sheer ignorance on that topic - I always stop at 25 and feel fine :)

Also, don't start pickpocketing if it's taking away the fun. You're fine without usally. Herbs and spellbooks can't be pickpocketed anyway, and wizards don't need much more.

[Elone]

I discovered that regular pickpocketing doesnt yield all that much in form of rewards. Unless you set up a gremlin bomb or something similar, pickpocketing doesnt seem so scummy at all. You can get lucky and get some really good things, but the same is with regular monster drops, isnt it? Thieves, however, often steal stat potions and other very valuable stuff.

[gut]

> maximum with morgia (unless you use sickness or starvation) is 25

27

[Grey]

The 27 is from overflow on the last uses, as far as I know - far from guaranteed.

[gut]

Yep. 26 is pretty much guaranteed, but sometimes the
last of the carry-over goes into just raising the potential
to 27 : (