[guide] gnome wizard - the easiest race/class combination
Hi, I returned to playing adom after five year pause. As player I could do ultra regularly, so I tried how my tactics work in 1.2. On 1.1.1 gnome wizard was easiest class followed by other wizards then other spellcasters, then everybody else. A gap become bigger in 1.2 as other classes become weaker with exploits fixed (for example in 1.1.1 game with no restriction wizards were basically race to get lvl 15, when they hit it just get SoA from ID stairhop, two rings of acid resistance and hunt black dragons in swamp, with dragon doubling get some millions of gold that you use to buy out shops until you get girdle of greed, then proceed to gold doubling into 2000000000 gold and train all stats to 99 with Garth.) and gnome fast leveling helped that.
So I decided to write a guide to convince others that gnome/wizards is too easy class and you could do ultra ending with at least 1/3 characters, other two dying in early game. Main problem here is that easy doesn't translate to fun so while I playtested following script with 4 ultras in last week I usually play several parts more risky for more fun. This guide contains light scumming tactics that don't take much of time. While in no scumming game gnome wizards also shine its harder to describe strategy as it depends on luck of what items RNG gave you.
When I read this forum I found many misconceptions like that wizards are frail while opposite is true as they have easy early game when played properly. As you kill most monsters before they could go next to you main threats are doors and traps.
At character creation you need to start answering question, always choose one that increases learning, talent progression is alert, miser, treasure hunter, long stride, careful, potent aura, strong aura, good book caster, extended magic, mighty aura, great book caster. Female is better gender in ADOM as it uses apperance instead charisma for shop prices and AP is easier to boost with common items.
To maximize stat gains you should wait with PoGA until I will explicitly mention it as you should use first potions of potential foo and raise stat to 25 and there are tricks to raise to and de potential.
Then on first turn you need to press > to enter wilderness, equip weapon and rings, set tactics to coward read books and repeatedly cast foo bolt.
If you are unlucky and get less than hundred castings of bolt and stats suck then easiest curse is just leave and create new character, otherwise you need do ID scumming instead of following path to get survivable character.
First go to Terinyo to get sheriff and tiny girls quests. Its better to wait with druid/elder quest until you hit 100 alchemy and if you could generate PoGA with ultra healing then village quest, otherwise druid to get one more disposable artifact for ratling.
Then eat/buy rations just to become burdened and just be satiated, early there is no reason to become eat once satiated if you stash some large rations at dungeon entrances, so you could avoid speed penalty. On other hand you need burdened to train strength.
If its ressurection day head to swamp otherwise outlaw settlement, every time you recharge mana enter wilderness again and cast bolt. When you reach destination kill beggar/mugger/cutpurse find frog/lizard as first kill for filk quest. Then head to small mountain cave where you enter and immidiatedly leave just to generate weak monsters.
One of my discoveries when I tried to optimize 1.2 gameplay was that its best to go directly Kranach hunting to rapidly get level 6, so you don't have to worry so much about traps in dungeon. These encounters are easily winnable by running from monsters until you could line 3+ behind you, then kill them all with bolt and repeat running away. Here preparation that you casted spells in wilderness on turn 1 and folllowing will pay of as you will have 100 concentration potential which you should max ASAP(this is not optimal as you could get better skill increases by waiting for that but its hard to do that correctly.)
After that you should get around 5 keys from ratling and if you could lure him to Terinyo then do Hozenplotz quest. I will repeatedly use locking doors tricks which are very powerful and once you have lot of gold you could exchange them for magic writing sets. Then explore hills to generate hill orcs for spears.
Now we are at first dungeon stage with not so weak character.
When you enter dungeon always use torch if you could for increased visibility. Then unless its ID drop all spellbooks, and everything else you dont need and close/lock starting room if possible. Exceptions are SMC and when you are running low on spellbook so you could read it.
You should put your points to gemology, herbalism, alchemy, mining, stealing trying to always be able get maximum increase without reaching gap.
On first dungeon you start also playing on gnome strengths as first dungeon to visit should be puppy cave, question is if you are playing game or metagame. In both cases you want to do several w5 on l2 to let ants train you gemology potential to 100 difference is if you want to descend or just lock door and return back after training. A gamer would return back and go to id scumming phase. On other hand metagamer would descend. Difference is that while gamer would likely survive in same amount of time metagamer would try 3-5 characters and obtain likely one much stronger due to vault drop in same amount of time. Try to avoid finding/killing ants if possible as they will be crucial to mining later.
This could be followed by ID scumming or if you are feeling brave directly by SMC descend. While ID isn't stairhopping is considerably worse than 1.1.1 its still very good for wizards and reason are item levels. You should hop between levels 1--2 until you generate tension room that you clear for likely book (as danger level 1 maximizes book probability), here treasure hunter comes into play to make books more likely.
Ideal combination is invisibility + teleport + soa, with these spells and hunting blinking dog at levels 4-5 you basically won. Its possible to reach lvl 10 in ID by the time you should go to CoC. More funny alternative is explore other random dungeons.until you got teleport or slow monster.
Somewhere in between you should get whip to whip yourself into lawfull. You need to do it only once to convert one white altar/generate one at dwarftown. It greatly simplifies changing alignments later and you could sac almost everything without risk to L altar.
Sometimes in early game you complete spear+shield combo that means switch from pure spellcaster to mainly spellcaster, you should kill/pickpocket easy ID tension rooms as well as easy monsters to increase ranks for better DV. Also jackal... wilderness encounters are good way to train ranks once you got 8-10 pv and they couldn't harm you.
Also herbs play role depending if you find any stable 2x2 patch outside of big room or not. If you do then it suffices to semipacify level by locking all rooms using wand of door creation to generate doors that you could lock if you lack key for existing ones. Then you need to change patch to two 2x2 patches that generate stomatofillia, morgia and moss. A basic herb growing procedure is first use ~4 holy waters and gather herbs to create following pattern
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that grows into
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which you need to trim to
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After several generations it expands into
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by trimming middle and then waiting you could move herbs to desired position. Unlimited blessed spenseweed will solve all your healing problems but it isn't that necessary.
Otherwise you need to tame big room for which you need wand of door creation and lot of booze and paying ratling for full set of keys. Make vertical line of doors around 6 tiles from corner. Then lure some worm there and lock all
doors and teleport out room (or use slow monsters). You need to partrol room for while until monsters no longer spawn to kill ones that could smash doors.
Gnome part begins to shine when you reach dwarftown as you could get smithing, then teleport glod and cast slow monster on him and lure him off level for anvil and hammer. That will make character practically untouchable by having 100 dv on coward. As most tedious part of getting ores being gnome wizard helps a lot. First if you have SoA you could pick all ores in one go instead doing several trips, also bookcasting teleport+control makes reaching dt much faster.
As for ores you will lot of them by ant mining, which is quite managable with teleport. First you need get pickaxe from pyramid and dig corridor, then make door that you could lock to make closet ideally in corner. Buy ~20 large rations/stomatofillia there and hit w5 while ants dig entire level. Possible problems are worms (pray for breeder control) or trap that will kill all ants. If that doesn't happen you could continue by digging lvl 3 and more. First go there and lock all doors you can. Then lure ants in groups of three and bookcast teleport to them.
Rewards are huge, First you get 10-20 crystals of knowledge. After dipping these to holy water and using them all they increase learning to around 30, but you need to use several crystals after Le 25 to get increase.
Second is that with decent mining ants generate enough ores that you could kill Glod and don't worry about fixing pickaxes.
Third is that crystals of power mean basically unlimited mana as when you run out of it either pray or use crystal for recharge.
And last is that selling them gives you lot of money, limited by what shopkeepers have. You need to force restock by buying out cheap items if shopkeeper runs out of money.
With money from gems you should get early training on climbing and stealth dices to max these. You want to enter rift at lvl 18 and stealth helps lot on killing monsters before they could spot you part.
Also get one precrowning with money or if you have enough money/patetience and handy converted altar you could go for two precrownings.
As you are likely lvl 14-16 do pyramid which is easy with ball/burning hands/firebolt. Best way to avoid traps is teleport right into stairs as its fixed layout level.
Then ask Thundarr about portal to get sword of Nonnak which will be your weapon of choice until endgame. Do not open graves unless you have weapon of hunting as you could raise toughtness to 27 later.
If you got ball spell then do greater claw bug farming below otherwise explore with buffed character random dungeons until you reach lvl 18, if it isnt fireball then do darkforge.
Rift and library. That depending on what spell you got will mean good way to fit gap in knowledge of spells. For taking library you only need magic missile and teleport and decend dv. First you should take spell books in secret passage at bottom by bouncing magic missile to kill guardian monsters, when mana/hp runs low teleport back to stairs, go out to learn spells, drop spellbooks next to librarian and repeat until you got all spells. Here raised stealth will pay off as you could kill sleeping monsters in following bookshelf by bouncing magic missiles followed by spenseweed to fix damage from your magic missiles. Trick here is preferably wake one monster at time.
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After library you have ligthing ball that makes darkforge easy by spamming it and retreating/using crystal of power when you run out of mana. Take nerfed crown of science so number of spell casting shouldn't be problem unless its acid ball that you should bookcast if its near 100 casting and you didn't find second tome, also drink all boost learing you have.
Now comes raising Dex To and speed part aka greater claw bug farming. For wizards its one of most risk free ways to level in midgame once he could (book)cast ball spell and raised his Pe with blessed carrot juice. On post-library farsigth and bless help.
You need to lure claw bugs few at time by going forward and back. Then cast ball before they could hit you. When they generate corpse cook it with firebolt and carry them to hmv. Continue doing so until you are at post-library stage.
You need to increase speed bit to tackle temple level welcoming party, here spellbook of wish comes into play. Its great when you don't learn wish of it. You need to wear anhk and AMW and be strained for that. So after you harvested enough gcb corpses, morgia and blessed stomatofillia eat bugs until wi is smaller than 7 and then do routine of eat for 4 morgia, bookcast create item to train mana, and read wish to get back to hungry. Same applies for killer bugs.
With 120 speed, invisibility and bless you could tackle actual bug temple. As I write it as ultra attempt when you still didn't save Khelly you don't have water orb that make it lot easier. Luckily extended magic talent also makes improved fireball bigger so you should use it to clear bottom part so you dont get completely surrounded. Rest of temple is considerably easier as you could with farsight to approach killer bug room from range and clean it with improved fireballs and cooking+stash corpses for another round of raising speed/DE. If bugs got into corridor use death ray so you could use improved fireball next turn.
As reward you get trident of hunting, bless it and now its time to graverobbing great treasures. Keep master liches alive as they summon wraiths and spectres. Kill these with weapon of hunting and eat one if it could raise potential, otherwise teleport and sell it in black market until morgia raises To (unless its past 25 where you should eat it as well).
Next step is minotaur maze that is again almost trivial for wizards. For early levels teleport in, cast magic map until you reveal two stairs and teleport to surface to recharge mana. For bottom levels read blessed scrolls of magic mapping instead. Kill emperor, eat corpse and raise back Wi with wish book trick.
After that you don't need to use trick so teleportilis ins't that much deal so you could drink pools for possibility of wish and instrincs.
Now its time to start drinking blessed PoGA, I sometimes ran in problem of not having enough water.
On lvl 30 do black unicorn quest for more PoGA.
Collect rest of easy artifacts (torc, RoHK, phial), use crown last time for reading books before you give it to ratling and get one from dwarf mystic if rest are have good ones. Once you satisfy ratling do crone quests for medal.
Here comes biggest problem of doing ultra ending, lack of farmer corpse. Hunting trident helps but in some games I needed to wish several times for farmer to get corpse.
First booze/convert potions to booze and give it to fool for other potions. Then proceed on turning rest of useless potions into potions of raw chaos, equip porc and dip it to porc in wilderness until you end with PoGA, PoE or other great potion, and repeat this cycle. Obviously finding potion shop helps lot in this. With blessed PoE first try to convert stacks of rings on lvl8 to get rods. With rest of PoE go to cloaked ratling and buy hundreds of keys. Polypile them into magical writing sets at lvl 5.
You should have enough hp/mana to cast 1500 pp wish, if you don't explore crumbling cave/frost giant caves until you get mana battery to drain wands, recharge and drain them again. First wish should be AoLS. For second one first make following closet
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and wish for emperor moloch. Pray to heal and for mana. Key spells in upcoming fight are invisibility and slow monsters. Use slow monster on yourself and invisibility on molochs Then kill them with acid ball for extra xp.
Then do ToEF and dive into CoC by magic mapping followed by teleport when you find stairs and using crystal of power when you are out of mana. Possibly become archmage with elemental orb of mana
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Originally Posted by luser
