I've been playing ADOM since version 1.1.1 but it wasn't until Resurrection that I really started to make it far into the game. I had a couple characters get close to victory in pre-releases 5-13, but once this guy got crowned with Justifier it was pretty much over, hard to lose with a paladin after that.

Early and midgame were pretty standard, as far as ADOM goes at least. One problem I ran into was the lack of decent armor generated, I used the Ancient Mummy Wrappings until well into D:50 where I found my eternium platemail. Cat lord was bypassed as the stair rooms were generated right next to each other, he just never showed up. A greater vault of undead on D:46 proved to be too much for me and I decided to skip it. A major problem I ran into was finding an amulet of light so the Chaos Archmage wouldn't destroy me in darkness. I think I lost 2-3 trying to get past the darn traps, never had a spare so I had to go hunting every time one got destroyed. The background corruption of moving around that much forced me to do something else I had never done before, visit the Library.

Took little damage and lost some useless potions on the way down, so not a bad fall. Got almost all my spells in there. Didn't clear out the level though. After zapping a wand of monster detect, I decided I didn't want to anger the several dragons and black wizards on some of the northern books, so I just read. After removing mana battery for the umpteenth time, I used trap detect to avoid most traps around the mana temple. Archmage attacked me after only a few rounds in combat with his minions. It looked bad when he kept confusing me, but I had him close to death. A quick use of the water orb restored my health and sealed his doom. From there it was a climb out to the wilderness and then a descent to Dwarftown to collect the last of my gear. It was an uneventful trip back down as I teleported through most of the levels. Potion of uselessness yielded Trusted One, decent gift but not a match for Justifier (though after winning I did dual wield them back to the surface, just cuz).

D:50 was more a pain than difficult. Most enemies fell quickly to my blade and failed to penetrate my armor. Did finally get to use those jelly slaying arrows though! The downside was the loss of my crossbow and a new one just would not show up. It was quite unfortunate since most of my slaying ammo was quarrels. After felling many lesser chaos creatures it was time to take on the balors. I tried handling the levers and teleporting in quick succession to try and avoid fighting them at all but they wouldn't have it. After killing the normal balors, Fisty came out to play. Turns out he was harder to hit then the others of his kind. At one point he fled from me, opening a wall to let enemies stream in from the center room. I fought them until he showed up again. Shot him with a random arrow to get his attention and he rushed at me. When I noticed he could barely hurt me, I upped my tactics and slammed into him. Once he started actually taking my attacks, he didn't last long. A few teleports and handles, and I was out of there. Did the unicorn quest (which I had also never done before) and left the Drakalor Chain.

A lot of the end game was beaten through generous tips from a friend who has several wins under his belt, including a human paladin not too long ago

A quick note about the name, I often name my characters after the song or artist that I am listening to at the time of creation, thus why I have an entire line of dwarven weaponsmiths named "Hall" (Hall the IV was the last character who made it close to the end). My next win will be with a weaponsmith dangit! Hall the XI has got what it takes, I can feel it!

Next few posts are the nitty-gritty, for those that are into it.