Race Wars - The Legion of Chaos

[LFk]

Conan, the trollish barbarian, saved the world with his brave efforts while saving himself 27 times.

Kneel, warriors of Chaos!

The following beings are at your disposal: Dark Elves, Orcs, Trolls
You may call upon the minions of any of these races, as many times as you wish, or not at all.

Utilize this thread as a method of discussing strategy, posting .svgs to pass along, and recording information so that the other members of your team know where useful locations, objects, and dungeon features are.

I will browse this thread daily and post summaries and updates of your heroes in this first post, so those who stand by their foolish laws know the might of chaos!

Roster:
vogonpoet
Grey
Kato
siriah
Lfk

No more classes may be generated.

The following characters are spreading darkness through the lands:

Dark Elven Thief
Name: Sally
Level: 18
Star: Salamander
Current Player: Available
Progress Notes: HMV.

The following characters have been consumed by greater hatred:

Maghurak, the orcish necromancer, was wasted away by the terrible black fever.
He scored 7084 points and advanced to level 9.

Sorrow, the dark elven assassin, was electrocuted by mighty lightning strokes.
He scored 35436 points and advanced to level 12.

Inana, the dark elven priest, was killed by an owlbear.
She scored 26409 points and advanced to level 11.

Haxor, the trollish monk, was killed by forces yet unknown.
She scored ???? points and advanced to something above level 4.

[Grey]

My chaotic comrades, it is time for us to rampage forwards and annihilate this pathetic chain of worms. Chaos is of course all about treachery and the lust for power above all else, and so our number one target is of course Andor Drakon himself! We shall steal from him the title of ChAoS GoD, no matter the cost! Not all will be worthy of this, but I imagine the priest character will have the best shot. It is said that Andor Drakon was once himself a dark priest...

The road is rocky though, and we must be careful of our footing lest we fall and stumble into the abyss... And so I think we should assess carefully which race/class combos will work best for our characters. Some thoughts:

Necromancer - Trolls would be fairly useless in my opinion. Dark elves would eventually be good, but initially awful, and also kinda boring since Soirana's got one running at the mo. Orcs may be a surprisingly good choice - I'd rather like to try playing that myself in fact. I have some dark ideas, bwaha... If we manage to keep this char alive at the beginning it'll turn into one of the most powerful. It is after all the only proper arcane spellcaster in the contest.

Thief - Ugh... Well whilst a troll would at least keep it alive at the start, it would be very boring and not fitting the class. Dark elves would add excellent skills (Alertness and Find Weakness), but obviously initially weak. Orcs might again be a decent all-round choice, though would have to train well in missiles for any ghosts that are encountered. Really needs extreme caution at the start, likely involving staying in VD1/2 until level 8 at least.

Assassin - Well, dark elves aren't necessarily a sensible choice, but they're certainly a cool one. Starting elven chain would help a little too. With concentration on missiles, good use of poison, and in particular good use of RUNNING AWAY this could turn out to be a good char.

Priest - In my mind the strongest class in the whole competition; we're lucky to nab this one. All races can be suitable for this. Dark elves are obviously the best spellcasters, so in the long-run would likely be the best choice. They start with elven chain and add very nice skills. Orcs and trolls shouldn't be wholly discounted though - orcs start with that nice everburning torch after all. Any black priest will likely want to eat the oracle once piety is high enough.

Barbarian - Dark elves assassins are a classic class, and another big classic is the trollish barbarian. With St and To sometimes starting in the 30s they really are unstoppable in the beginning. A big horde of starting rocks is handy too. Orcs are also decent enough, with good starting eq and the Find Weakness skill. Dark elves are a waste of this class' potential in my opinion.

Monk - Another awesome class for us to land, these guys get great if you treat them kindly at the start. Don't forget that you can just play them as regular fighters and they're still brilliant. Dark elves are a bit redundant since they add no new skills, and of course as weak as paper. Orcs are decent starting fighters for this class, but still fairly weak. Trolls can work surprisingly well - the food rates cancel out, they begin with more food and a proper weapon, and of course they're tough enough to survive at the start.

Overall I'd say orcish necro, dark elven priest, orcish or dark elven thief, dark elven assassin, trollish barbarian and trollish monk. Would be nice to use each race at least once I think. Of course with 5 players and 6 chars we'll each get to start one up ourselves, so the choice is completely open. When making chars it would be nice to think about a personality for each, and choose an appropriate gender and most importantly a memorable name (so we don't get confused talking about them).

Personally I'd like to start off an orcish necromancer and nurse him through the early game. However I would like to do that char on the server, so beforehand I'd like to check how exactly we're going to organise matters between us.

One idea is we all choose 1 of the 6 to start up. We all play through the early game with them (max 20k turns), then start rotating between whoever's available to play at the time, and hopefully some will survive. After all 5 have finished whoever created the highest scoring char starts off the 6th and we all play on that one to completion, hopefully making a concerted effort to achieve OCG is we haven't managed with any others.

How many others are able to use the server to play? I'll give up any thoughts of that if only 1 or 2 are able.

[Siriah]

True warriors of chaos kneel for nobody!

Those randomly assigned classes are looking mighty tasty Both barbarians and monks are great melee fighters, and priests make good spellcasters (though the one I played ended up bashing everything with his Skullcrusher, Vanquisher and Emerald Dagger).

I will only be able to use the server until Tuesday because I won't have a continuous internet connection for a while after that.

[Grey]

Ah well, forget the server idea then. Would be a nice addition for making it a truly team game but if not everyone can use it then it's kinda worthless

A bit more thinking, and as chaotics we have some major pitfalls:

-awful shop prices (HMV and bandit town might be our best since dwarftown will be unbearable)
-major corruption problems
-extremely risky altars - BEWARE!
-can't use dwarftown altar (unless we slaughter dwarftown first - certainly an option if we're powerful enough)

Also, what ADOM version is everyone using? Normally we go with Windows/DOS for the competitions since that's the most generic, but I'm a big fan of Sage myself. Still, I can do whatever. Remember to check before character creation that there are more than 100 high score entries (search the threads for how to quickly achieve this if you need to).

Oh, and Vanquisher with priests? Not possible :P But certainly they are great with melee/missiles as well as with spellcasting. A brilliant class to have.

[Siriah]

Nice list of the potential problems chaotics face. They seem like a reasonable trade-off for being able to slaughter innocents all game long. With the bug temple, corruption shouldn't be too deadly for regular endings at least, although a corruption-free ending might be out of the question.

Hmm, does the priest smash doors? He's the only one who turns hostile after converting the altar, so if he could be locked up in a door prison he'd be harmless and wouldn't turn the entire town against us. Of course slaughtering the entire town is more stylish, but that'd be risky at low levels.

And I use the windows version.

EDIT: I was mistaken about Vanquisher, it was actually Purifier :P I kind of got lucky with the slaying artifacts in that game.

[Soirana]

-can't use dwarftown altar (unless we slaughter dwarftown first - certainly an option if we're powerful enough)

it is out of my bussiness of course, but since i love chaos, orcs, necros, assassins...

you do not need to slaughter dwarftown. just convert an altar, take priest out of level and lock him in some desolate room. And you have nice and happy altar.
Converting itself is risky allignment wise, but it should be considered as option

[LFk]

We rolled a GOOD set of characters. We were very lucky given how weak our guaranteed ones are.
Necros will be decent.Their biggest downside is a questionable early game survivability (Necros are my most often stone block'd PCs), they may become our best late game hope. They are no wizards, but have the best chance of finding Acid Ball, which is great. If we're looking for a CG ending, this may be the way to run it, and can save this for last.

Thieves are utter crap. I think they have the shittiest skillset in the game, which basically to say that alertness is the only thing they have going for them. The rest is an amalgam of stuff you can learn from Yeguris or Bart anyway.

The rest of our classes are extremely solid.

An eye on the competition, I think the Lawfuls made out with the best set of PCs. With PCs like Paladins and Beastfighters, they have PCs with excellent skillsets and all of them have a good degree of toughness. Their lack of spellcasters is made up for by abundance of semi-casters. They already put their Paladin on a dwarf, though: a high elf variety would've given them a double-trained Literacy PC that finds lots of spellbooks. gut has started up their farmer, also Dwarven.

The neutrals haven't made a move yet, but they've gotten the short end of the stick in terms of PC selection. My love for Rangers is far and wide. Their crappy class skills is made up for by what I think is the best skillset in the game, but the rest of their selection is decidedly mediocre. No word from their camp yet though.



The thing i'm most concerned about is corruption.

With Guth'alak out of the picture, and the mystic refusing to give us anything, we're really out of luck for an early corruption removal source. Saving Khelly is in no way guaranteed, and the only one we're really a lock for is the single SoCR in HMV.

Other alignments can at least count on a PoCC or two to reroll the corruptions if something like mana battery or stiff muscles is the first, but we really have problems there.

I can't play on the server.
My version is ADOM windows, or rather winbeta4.



I note gut is already preaching "No TH" to his team.
Just to piss him off if he's reading this, I personally say we NEED TH on almost all of our PCs.
1) I hate to say this, but we're going to need Miser. There's no casino gold, and our prices for si, for example, will be absolute feces. If we want to acquire anything useful in shops at all, we're either going to need to build up the gold, or steal it. Miser will help in the early game a lot, particularly for the ease of acquiring the 3500 to get detect traps, and maybe having some change left over to train it, and buy some stuff from HMV if we go that way.
2) Difficult to keep alive "melee" characters like Thief and Assas. rely on finding some early loot to get them off the floor. I say "melee" because with those classes i usually rely on thrown daggers to stay alive in the early game.
3) Alert can't hurt. Orcs and Trolls start out with shit for Pe, and the availability of missile weapon master is a route we can consider going on Assassins, whom train in archery.

[LFk]

Please don't put the Necro in my hands. I'm seriously cursed with them.

I finally finished an Immort Dwarven Necro a few days ago, but got 6 PCs killed before reaching it. That's not the success rate we're looking for.

I'm going to get the ball rolling with an assassin, soon.

I agree with the suggestion of a Dark Elven Assassin. It will be the toughest race to keep alive, but the most powerful later on. Doubly trained Alertness and Find Weakness? Niiice.

Sorrow    St:14  Le:14  Wi:13  Dx:18  To:13  Ch: 5  Ap:13  Ma:17  Pe:16  C
DV/PV: 17/5   H: 20(20)   P: 5(5)   Exp: 1/0   M: 0

//Seriously not bad starting stats. With D-elves, the Str/To could be worse.

Name: Sorrow              Race: male Dark Elf       Class: Assassin
Eye color: amber          Hair color: white         Complexion: black
Height: 5'11"             Weight: 127 pounds
Age: 129 (grown-up)
Star sign: Book           Birthday: 18/Book (day 48 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 you lived through happy days. Your parents tried to ease
 your life as much as possible and gave you a lot of comfort.
        During your youth you were very lazy. You slept a lot and didn't
 care too much for your duties and tasks. Your parents were not very happy
 with you.
        As a young adult you left your home because of trouble with your
 parents. They opposed your plans for the future without understanding your
 wishes. Thus you decided to live on your own. You wandered through the
 country for many years, growing older and wiser and learning many things.
        You decided to become an Assassin.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Skills
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Alchemy .................. 10    (poor)         [+3d4]
  Alertness ................ 37    (fair)         [+3d5]
  Archery .................. 26    (mediocre)     [+3d5]
  Backstabbing ............. 33    (fair)         [+4d5]
  Climbing ................. 46    (fair)         [+4d5]
  Detect traps ............. 18    (mediocre)     [+4d5]
  Dodge .................... 14    (mediocre)     [+4d5]
  Find weakness ............ 25    (mediocre)     [+4d5]
  First aid ................ 26    (mediocre)     [+3d4]
  Haggling ................. 21    (mediocre)     [+3d4]
  Listening ................ 29    (mediocre)     [+4d5]
  Literacy ................. 20    (mediocre)     [+3d5]
  Pick locks ............... 36    (fair)         [+4d5]
  Stealth .................. 51    (good)         [+3d5]
  Two weapon combat ........ 26    (mediocre)     [+4d4]

// The 2x Trained Alertness/FW will be the real moneymakers here. 

I took Alert as the starting talent.

[LFk]

Passing this character down.

Key information summary:
First Kill: large bat
VD5: Altar, Lawful
PC1: Pool, brown
PC2: Altar, Chaotic
UD3: Forge
UD8: Altar, Lawful
HMV: farmer generated
Cats locked in rooms: VD:4
We have enough pick pockets to join thieves guild, but did not do so yet. Not essential anyway, as we have Detect traps.

Knowing that we will either have healing or herbalism, and not both, I opted to "take" the quest from the Village Elder. Secretly, I struck a deal with Hotzenplotz. I grabbed the first kill in SMC, located the blanket and down staircase. Fighting was primary done with thrown daggers, which is extremely effective. Snuck into the village dungeon, and lured Yrrigs up to VD:4 promising him help. Dipped the stack of daggers into poison, got some space between us, switched to Berserker and nailed him three good ones in the face. Ran around in circles until he grew weak from the poison and finished him off. Went to the room, got healed by Jharod, and stabbed him in the back. Scary moment #1: On VD5, a blink dog appeared. Before I could take two steps back toward the stairway the summoning started and I swear this was the most summon-happy Blink dog in the world. I managed to work my way to put my back to a wall, but I was slowly losing HP and didn't have healing yet. I thought I was going to collapse to a tide of blink dogs, but I was able to zap a wand of stunning to catch a breather and recover my piles of daggers.

Chaotic Altar generated on PC:2, a godsend. The anthill + whatever random monsters = instant very close with diety. 20k turns should've gotten me further than HMV, but since I was already so close, I chose to go for a precrown, which is always turn consuming. Food was super low at this point in the game, so i made trips back and forth to Terinyo to haul rations over to the altar to hold me over. Miser helped a great deal to fund this. It was damn worth it: Serpent's Bite. One of the best 1Hmelee weapons in the game (in my opinion, loses out only to Executor and Justifier on a Paladin) The best part was it fits the theme of the Assassin so damn well. Scary moment #2: A doppleganger confused me right next to the C altar. Fuck. That was it right there, 1/9 chance of dying outright. Move onto the altar and i'm God food.

I had recovered the cute dog corpse before the precrowning, and cleared the undead vault down there. There was nothing remarkable, though it provided some nice gear like the Amulet of Preseverance, and some Dx boosting gear. Set the dog corpse in top line of Terinyo for now. When the time is right, I plan to eat the corpse right in front of the Tiny Girl, then kill her.

Descent through the UD was unremarkable (hah). And here we are... take care of 'im.

Edit: Ars' post reminded me, i really should not have gone out of the way to avoid cats. That was seriously just out of habit: We should be killing kittens left and right. The more viciously the better.

Sorrow    St:15  Le:14  Wi:14  Dx:23  To:14  Ch: 5  Ap:11  Ma:17  Pe:16  C
DV/PV: 33/10   H: 53(53)   P: 44(44)   Exp: 11/43539   M: 20094

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                Weapon Skills
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Melee weapon           Lvl   Hit   Dam   DV   Level          Required marks
---------------------  ---   ---   ---   --   -------------  --------------
Daggers & knives         6    +5    +2   +1   skilled              148
Swords                   7    +5    +3   +2   skilled              298
Pole arms                1    +1    +0   +0   basic                10


Missile weapon         Lvl   Hit   Dam   Ra   Level          Required marks
---------------------  ---   ---   ---   --   -------------  --------------
Thrown daggers           5   +10    +7   +1   skilled              11

//This is the Sin's bread and butter early. 


Shields                Lvl   DV               Level          Required marks
---------------------  ---   ---              -------------  --------------
Shields                  3    +6              basic                65


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Skills
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Alchemy .................. 37    (fair)         [+2d4]
  Alertness ................ 60    (good)         [+2d4]
  Archery .................. 52    (good)         [+2d4]
  Backstabbing ............. 79    (great)        [+3d5]
  Bridge building .......... 17    (mediocre)     [+3d5] (ma)
  Climbing ................. 67    (good)         [+4d4]
  Detect traps ............. 61    (good)         [+3d4]
  Dodge .................... 50    (fair)         [+3d3]
  Find weakness ............100    (superb)       [+2d4]
  First aid ................ 32    (fair)         [+3d3]
  Haggling ................. 21    (mediocre)     [+3d4]
  Healing .................. 62    (good)         [+1d3]
  Listening ................ 48    (fair)         [+4d4]
  Literacy ................. 22    (mediocre)     [+3d5]
  Pick locks ............... 36    (fair)         [+4d5]
  Pick pockets ............. 65    (good)         [+2d4]
  Stealth .................. 71    (great)        [+3d3]
  Two weapon combat ........ 26    (mediocre)     [+4d4]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  Inventory
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total weight: 958 stones                Carrying capacity: 1500 stones

Head          : uncursed metal cap [+0, +1]                           [50s]
Neck          : uncursed amulet of perseverance {Wi+3}                 [3s]
Body          : uncursed elven chain mail [+0, +5]                    [10s]
Girdle        : uncursed mithril girdle [+0, +2]                      [20s]
Cloak         : uncursed hooded cloak [+3, +0]                        [40s]
Right Hand    : uncursed medium shield (+1) [+3, +1]                 [100s]
Left Hand     : uncursed emerald dagger "Serpent's Bite" (+3, 3d4+3) [+3, +1]
Right Ring    : uncursed ring of cold resistance                       [1s]
Left Ring     : -
Bracers       : -
Gauntlets     : gloves of dexterity [+0, +0] {Dx+3}                    [6s]
Boots         : uncursed boots of sneakiness [+0, +0] {Dx+2}          [20s]
Missile weapon: -
Missiles      : heap of 2 uncursed daggers (+0, 1d4)                  [20s]
Tool          : -

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               Killed Monsters
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

624 monsters perished under his attacks.

The following monsters were vanquished:
      
     59 blink dogs //FYI, guys, still no teleport control. This was scary moment #1 of the early game too. Assholes.
 
      7 dopplegangers // Scary moment #2 of the early game. 

     
      1 healer // Jharod
      1 mad carpenter //Yriggs


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                Achievements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

He survived for 0 years, 14 days, 22 hours, 44 minutes and 40 seconds (20094
turns).
Sorrow visited 26 places.
His strength score was modified by +1 during his career.
His willpower score was modified by -2 during his career.
His toughness score was modified by +1 during his career.
His appearance score was modified by -2 during his career.
His perception score was modified by +1 during his career.

[Grey]

Excellent stuff - some great use of tactics there, and of course I'm loving the chaotic style. I was planning with some char to beat the tiny girl to death with the cute dog corpse... What I have planned for dwarftown with the necro is even worse (did you know dwarven children leave corpses?) Emerald dagger is a truly awesome find, especially with an assassin. I'd possibly argue that for assassins it's better than Executor, because of the increased crits - with high find weakness and the later class power we'll be stabbing eyes out left, right and centre.

We shouldn't necessarily kill kitties just for the hell of it - Chaos is about a lust for power, by whatever means necessary. What we should instead try to do is get them killed in traps or by slaves, then eat their corpses. Claim the kitty ring whilst we still have lion fur between our teeth

Oh and if confused you can stop yourself from moving by cleaning your ears (E) or applying any skill like First Aid or pickpocketing (the skill may not work but it'll use up a turn without you moving).

Edit: Oh yeah, and first kill real is utterly and completely irrelevant. The old barbarian won't even speak to us, and the Filk quest has no rewards.