Kurt Kuorma - Dark Elf Wizard who had to settle for closing the gate
First time victory after 20 something years of playing ADOM (thanks to corona virus for too much time at home!).
Lately I've been playing lots of wizards, since I find collecting spells in the early game a nice "mini game" of its own. Also it's nice to be able to blast through masses of enemies instead of getting stuck in melee, and after getting teleportation it's just smooth sailing all the way down the dungeons. Haven't played much dark elfs before, but since realizing the actual power of find weakness and alertness, it's pretty clear these weirdoes are the go-to wizards for me from now on.
My usual early-game pattern is to kill a beggar or mugger as first kill, then go to SMC, then get the head of the raider gentleman to the sheriff person. After that I head to UD, where usually an altar is generated which pretty much always gives a pre-crowning with a bit of tedious sacrificing (since I'm grinding, might as well get that pick pocketing challenge done there). Then I usually get the Tome of Donors and head down to CoC to get the quests from the dwarf guy (by this time it's probably clear I'm not gonna try look up how the names of these creatures are actually spelled).
In this game I was still alive after the steps above, and found Bracers of Pure Might in the big room in CoC, which took care of corruption for now. The next really challenging places were the burning tower thing and the big snow/ice person's lair. There I got like 10 levels due to having a greater vault of some kind of fire lizard creatures. Thanks to leveling up enough, I went to get the trident from the water dinosaur, and destroying molochs, undeads and balors became almost trivial. Oh, and at some point I got a wish from a random pool, so I got the amulet that keeps you somehow alive, even if you die. So I decided I would go give a stern slap on the wrist to that Andy D. man upstairs (or downstairs, who knows). However, fate decided otherwise later.
I fed the ratling, did everything for the old woman person and got crowned as L+ to make things smooth with the higher powers. Got Ring of Immunity as some kind of a crowning gift too. At this point I wanted it all, ultra ending, ring of the cat lord and complete Rolf's quest, since I had found the random map piece at some point as well. But all these dreams fell down one by one.
I had been careful not to kill any cats, since I thought having the ring from the cat master would be nice when defeating this Andy person. Then at some point I wanted to cast Stun Ray to a random tiger, but thanks to my sausage-like fingers, ended up casting the other ray instead. Ok, no cat ring for me in this game.
Next, I ventured on to Rolf's fortress. Got a nice stack of his wine from the cellar, talked to him and got the quest to slay the stoner lizard. I was saddened by the fact that I had to give out my shiny dwarf-axe and shield, but was reassured that I will get the improved versions back later. I ventured into the cave quickly to realize I wasn't strong enough to deal with all the marijuana enthusiasts there. So I just went to check out the rest of CoC instead. Going up and down I got annoyed that the Kebap guy in Darkforge doesn't allow controlling teleportation, so like a true psychopath, I brutally murdered him in his workshop without giving it a second thought. That made Rolf very sad, and he refused to talk to me even after killing his big pothead nemesis (sidenote: Improved Fireball is like cheating against this old hippie). Ok, no Rolf's axe or shield for me in this game.
However, since I fucked up Rolf's quest, I decided to turn the whole place into volcanoes just for shits and giggles. So I corrupted the stoner heart and popped up volcanoes all around the place. I dived into the volcano in hopes of retrieving whatever consolidation prize there was for me. The necklace thingy was indeed there on the bottom floor, but laying in a river of lava. I stripped off all non-artifact items and dived in. Came back and picked it all up, thinking all is well and life is wonderful after a nice refreshing dive in molten rock. There was only one but: I had the poison hands and mana battery corruptions, and was not wearing thick gloves. So all my potions turned into poison and wands lost their charges. Did I mention before that I had taken all of Rolf's wines? They were now poison, so sobering up the drunk dude just became impossible. Ok, so Ancardia will turn into volcanoes then. Luckily this Dark Elf is not sticking around when all is said and done.
The final task I had was to go get the better Trident and go shove it up Andy's chaotic cavity of darkest magic. Without any of my boost potions and wands I had accumulated so far, of course. Well, in order to get the trident (or whatever fork it is), you need the artifact dagger Needle. So you have to go do that murdering thing for that blue lizard person (Sarah-Whaador? Yea, I'll go with that.). It turned out that those blue caves were much more dangerous for me than I could handle, so I decided to nope the fuck out of there. However, the blue lizard did not like that, and was hostile even after I came back to do some actual murdering. Still, I went down to the lair of the other blue lizard, who was just hanging out there with his pals, and brutally murdered all of them. Even after that this Sarah-lizard was hostile, so I had to murder him/her as well, which of course did not result in me getting the dagger. Ok, so not going to visit Andy this time (not even for the ordinary chaos-Jesus, since I was already a crowned L champion).
At this point I had enough dreams crushed so I just decided to go get all the Orbs (I only had fire Orb at this point), which turned out to be a cakewalk for a L50 wizard. I also cleared a greater vault full of Liches with impressive titles, which resulted in this Whip of Extinction. Man, beating the shit out of your enemies has never sounded as satisfying, it's literal ass whipping! Then I decided I was ready to go close the damn gate. Interestingly, just after inserting all the Orbs and reversing the stairs, I got corrupted with the blabbing mouth corruption. This could have been devastating for a spellcaster at this point, but luckily I had a magical writing set and just generated a few scrolls of corruption removal. Then I went to D:50, whipped and fire bolted my way through to the big winged monster, to whom I gave a good taste of my acidic balls. Throwing the trident to his buddies worked also like a charm.
Then I closed the gate, returned to the surface, got all my corruptions removed and fucked off leaving the place turning into an uninhabitable mess of volcanic rock and mountains. At home I told everyone I saved the day and they made me their king. Which is good, since I got like 300 years of unnatural aging on me, and someone's gonna have to pay for all the Botox to clear that up.
