White Rose, Dark Elf Archer, ULE

[zeteginara]

This is my first time playing through ADOM since 1.1.1. I've heard from some that it's harder, and from some that it's easier. I've also heard that it's harder if you didn't do any major scumming methods. Well, the only time I did scumming methods was when I wanted an ultra (and who doesn't?!), and I wanted to find a wish for an AoLS.

My personal opinion? The game is easier. There's a lot more stuff to do, and the difficulty curve doesn't spike mid-game like it used to.

With the guaranteed greater vault in the Frost Giant Caves, and the guaranteed greater vault deep in the CoC, there's the possibility of getting a LOT of artifacts generated. My game generated 50 artifacts, though about 32 of those are guaranteed. Still, that's nearly 20 artifacts that were not guaranteed. That's a lot! Too bad there was like, 5 of them I never found! And that sucks. I thought I was very careful, too, to pick stuff up and identify everything. Apparently the Circlet of the Pure Mind, Venom Cloak, and amulet of indomitable life dropped, and I never actually saw any of them. Scorpion's Sting also made an appearance, though apparently that's indistinguishable from a plain ol 50s spear. Good to know!

In addition, the guaranteed huge potion shop stocks you with unlimited easy-to-get booze and water.

The weapons and armor found in Darkforge, in my experience, however, aren't nearly as cool as they used to be. I might just have bad luck.

This character was AMAZINGLY lucky early on, getting precrowned with Thunderstroke. I mention this in this thread:

https://www.adom.de/forums/showthrea...rld-themselves

Shooting Thunderstroke became my primary attack throughout the game. I occasionally lost it when it didn't return, of course, but I had plenty of normal quarrels when that happened. I would also lure large groups of enemies out individually so I would never lose Thunderstroke in the middle of a room.

I had *ONE* near death with this character. The greater vault in the Frost Giant Caves was a red dragon vault. As soon as I entered, I teleported (this character got teleportitis when she went pool-sipping for a wish). I accidently tried teleporting into a wall instead of cancelling the teleport (oops), and ended up... right next to all of the Ancient Red Dragons in the middle of the vault. The one next to me crit me down to 1 HP (!!!) While the rest of the dragons breathed fire at me.

Luckily, I was wearing a wished-for Red Dragon Scale Armor (I found a ring of djinni summoning right after I got my pool wish). So the flame breath didn't finish me off. I immediately went coward, prayed back to full health, and wand-teleported myself back to the entrance.

I was able to deal with the Ancient Dragons more carefully, at range, and ended up picking up Eagle's Claw... which served me well throughout most of the game. I ended up replacing it with Whip of the Vampire Snake (from the casino) as the dex and speed better complemented my archery, and the whip weapon skill bonuses are amazing.

Other than that... there was very little challenge. All the orb guardians died with no problem. Keriax went down with no problem with dragon-slaying ammo.

Andy, I had to use 3 blessed potions of ultra healing. I brought lots of human and demon slaying ammo, but I forgot all my torches! Dammit! So, I decided to take the more boring route of drinking a few potions of Boost Speed and meleeing him in darkness with the trident. He went down fairly easily... I did have like 40 strength, thanks to the ice queen quests and eating keriax, the ACW, potions of gain attributes, etc. I kept corruption off with a wished-for staff of purification... which is a good thing considering that the only really bad luck I had in the game was corruptions. It seemed like most of the time I got a corruption, it was Mana Battery or Poison Hands.

Details below!