My first crack at Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM)

I just started playing ADOM (far too much) a couple of days ago. I'm just curious, for people who've played this game a good bit (possibly even completed it), do you remember how many P Cs died before you made it past Terinyo (the mad carpenter, Karnach, and the puppy)? From everything I've read about this game, I'm probably doing fine, but I do wonder sometimes if I'm just dying a little early.

Oh, and once I make it deeper into the game (so to speak), how scared should I be of the "uber-jackels"? Is there away to avoid that problem?

Of course, any fun, strange stories about your ADOM adventures are also welcome here.

It's a Rougelike. You're expected to die early, often, and ignominiously.

Ahh, I used to play this game a fair bit. Quite a bit of fun. I still want to try out a character who's a Trollish Healer born under the Cup Sign.

I tried this game. Got killed by wolves before i made it to the first town. Uninstalled this game.

Then you had exceptionally bad luck, my friend.

When I played the game, all I could see was a grid of various ASCII characters in place of normal graphics. I assumed that this meant that I had immediately attained utter mastery of the game and complete knowledge of its code, similar to Neo at the end of The Matrix. Sadly I immediately died anyway so I went back to playing easier games like Nethack.

I will grant that this doesn't have the puzzle game aspects of Nethack, but I'm somewhat skeptical that it's harder.

Also, isn't Nethack text-based as well?

^ Trigger Loaded, yes, Nethack is also ASCII graphics, but it has tilesets you can lay over that, if you're not hardcore enough to handle straight ASCII. (OK, I admit it, I use tilesets.) ADOM does not have those available (that I know of).

And yes, you can get killed before you even reach the first town. Roguelikes make a joke of the phrase Nintendo Hard. If a Nintendo game was Bruce Willis, a roguelike is Chuck Norris . . . in a bad mood.

I realized an interesting difference between ADOM and Nethack that's keeping me at ADOM longer: Nethack only has one major goal. ADOM has smaller quests on the way. Smaller, more reachable goals hold interest better.

The ASCII will only be a problem for like the first 30 minutes or so. It becomes perfectly readable if you just take the time to look at it for a bit.

Adom remains my favorite roguelike to this day. I only stopped playing it at all due to instability of recent versions on my system, very depressing.

And yeah, don't worry about dying tons. I'm not sure if Adom would qualify as harder than Nethack per se, but it's certainly roughly as unforgiving and just as willing to screw you over with RNG from time to time, as well as having its own challenges for those going for 100% completion or special endings. But then, that's the charm of the genre. If you're uncomfortable with the genuine possibility of death in your very first random fight, chances are the lethal sandbox of roguelikes isn't your cup o' tea.

^ Karkadinn, which system and what kind of instability? I'd just prefer not to get really involved in something that's going to fall apart soon.

I'm playing it on Windows 7 and I've had absolutely no problems whatsoever...

I've had occasional save-nuking crashes with Adom ever since the Windows versions started coming out. But, please do keep in mind that I'm running an extremely outdated rig with Windows XP. If you're running anything decent you're probably safe, although there's no hard rule to be sure besides just waiting for a crash that can be a long time in coming. (And, for all I know, the bug may have been fixed by now... I do check back in periodically but it may have escaped my notice.)

I lost over a hundred characters before i realized i should probably stay out of that small cave.

Don't feel embarrassed that you've lost too many characters in ADOM. Someone out there has lost more.

I do love the game, but I've never even completed a quarter of the game. I should head back in with the knowledge I've gained after filling up so many adventurer graveyards.

I once played the game through with rampant save-scumming. It is quite expansive. The sheer number of sidequests and places you can explore makes it worthwhile to save scum at least once to see everything.

And while there's, I believe, five normal endings, I wonder if some of those endings have degrees to them. Especially the ending I got hinted that if I hung around a bit more, I might have gotten a bit of a better ending.

So far I've only had one character make it into the actual Caverns of Chaos, and that was a Troll Healer born under the Candle. It turns out that having a Wolverine-esque healing factor does wonders for your survivability.

Trolls are awesome.

As long as you don't run out of food.... <.<

Yes, when I start out under the Candle, I fully intend to become a Troll Healer. I've heard that's an amazingly powerful combo, almost Min-Maxing.

I did that. It was amazing. I'd heal things faster than people could damage me. I eventually found the scorched spear with her and wrecked stuff real good. She eventually died when she was trapped in a room full of traps while an army of overlevelled monsters flooded in. She was poisoned, on fire, disarmed, surrounded by teeth and being hit by lightning.

edited 6th Sep '11 3:33:44 PM by ShirowShirow

Don't know how much you know...sorry if I cover old ground.

1, If your character starts with the healing skill, talk to Guth'Alak in Terinyo and get the Keethrax quest. If your character doesn't, you'll have to talk to the village sage and get the carpenter quest instead.

The main reason to do the carpenter quest is to get Jharod to teach you healing. The formal quest reward is largely irrelevant.

You can only do ONE of these two quests. Starting one will mean you don't even get to find the dungeon for the other. If your character didn't start with the healing skill DON'T TALK TO GUTH'ALAK.

If your character starts off Chaotic AND lacks Healing then Jharod won't teach you until you've moved your alignment into neutral. This may mean (if you can't find the right altars) doing the Puppy quest in the first 4 days (before the puppy dies). Note that my first umpteen characters were Grey Elven Necromancers. I had to do this a lot.

2, The Puppy quest I generally attempt regardless. It's very possible to complete the carpenter quest OR dive deep into Keethrax's dungeon (for the much needed experience and levels) and then get to the puppy cave in time to rescue Kenny. It's very PROBABLE that attempting this will get you killed on PC 2 or PC 5. On the other hand a character who can pull it off is usually left fairly buff by the experience, and will probably survive for quite a while. When doing the Puppy Cave, do not linger on the 2nd or 5th levels, just find the stairs and keep going. Once the dog is back in Terinyo you can go back and clean the place out. It's usually worth it. Again though, avoid staying long on level 5.

Accept that if you can't find the stairs quickly on PC 2 and 5 first time in, you are probably going to die.

3, Not much to say about the Carpenter quest that you shouldn't be figuring out for yourself. You probably had it spoiled anyway.

4, Keethrax is a problem. The hardest boss you'll have to fight before Nonnak, who comes in MUCH later. Keethrax corrupts, regenerates, casts darkness, sees in darkness, throws attack spells, resists most magic, stat drains, and has his own monster army. He is apparently vulnerable to magic missile and web, if you've got those. Otherwise you'll just have to try taking him apart in melee assuming you can get to him in the sudden darkness. Don't be afraid to run away and try again later.

5, Once you get past level 10 the Terinyo sheriff will give you a quest to hunt down Hotzenplotz the crime lord. He's an easy enough man to find. Don't attempt to take him in melee. Magic-Users can generally take him down very quickly, archers with some discretion and persistance (he doesn't heal), pure sluggers may find him a problem.

That's the main quests for the starting game.

Some more general tips:

1, Spear+Shield is not flashy but it's weapons combination that will keep you alive. Polearm skill comes with a big Defensive (DV) bonus. The important thing about spears is that they're one-handed and can be used with a shield (skill in which also gives a DV bonus). Spears are also easy to find in handy dispensing machines. Some call them "spear traps". Try to get a good spear and a shield early on.

2, These opening dungeons often come with underground rivers that can completely mess you up, even if you do have the swimming skill. It's almost worth playing a High Elven Necromancer just to (ALMOST) ensure you start with Frost Bolt (which creates ice bridges as well as causing damage).

3, Getting good equipment is very helpful for success and survival, so many recommend taking Alert>Miser>Treasure Hunter as your first three Talents. Note that Treasure Hunter (finds more items) is the one you want. It's just that you need the other two to get it. Alert can only be picked during character generation. You can't pick it up during the game.

4, Elven characters are generally forebrain-heavy and physically wimpy. HOWEVER Elven fighter types (including Paladins, Archers, and Priests) start with Elven Chain Mail, which is extremely good starting armour. I've had a lvl 1 Grey Elven Priest club his way through a bandit ambush simply because none of them could beat his armour value.

5, If you start with a character with two weapon fighting...don't do it. Get a shield. At least until you've got the skill to 100 and you've got two weapons worth using plus a lot of armour. The negative to-hit modifier just kills you on low levels and leaves you with inadequate defense.

6, Having a missile weapon is good. Even if it's just thrown rocks. Pick them up and use them rather than charging at things, or using magic points you may need later.

Oh God, THIS GAME IS &@$#^@# EVIL!!!!

(Takes a deep breath)

The rest of this will be very spoilery for those who have not gotten to the mid- to end-game, so be warned:

My first time I lived past the Temple of Elemental Flames and have a decent chance of winning the game, and what do I do?

I get killed by a FRIENDLY Cat Lord.

So somehow I managed to get through the game without killing any cats. I've spoiled myself, so I know the Cat Lord is coming up soon, but my mind was on the vault of Frost Giants that I cleared out on the level above (nice strength bonus, that). I'm walking down an empty corridor, not really paying attention, when a message pops up. I think that I've run into an invisible stalker or an ogre magus, and move in for the kill — and the next thing I know, I'm dead. A posthumous look at the message buffer shows that the Cat Lord originally growled at me in a friendly matter — I just didn't expect him to be INVISIBLE. Way to make me feel welcome, asshole.

Truth to tell, my character deserved a much less ignoble death, given the legitimately perilous situations that he ran into — a Karmic Dragon in the Dwarven Halls (ran far away from that one, but not before getting pelted with lots of bolts and rays) and a moloch lair in the Temple of Elemental Flames (after some initial panic, creative uses of wands of digging allowed me to detour around it). Grumble grumble grr grr.

edited 19th Dec '11 9:49:43 AM by BokhuraBurnes

Most of the time I go play a High Elven Archer. Or Grey Elven. That chainmail is just too good.

...Too bad I end up dying most of the time anyway...

Some serious necromancy, but I had a question for anyone knowledgeable.

I wanted to give this game a shot and followed the link we have on the work page. That link goes to the official ADOM site and their downloads mirror to Indie DB. The download there was blocked by Chrome as malicious. No idea if it's a false flag or if the official download for the game has been compromised.

It seems clean to me. However, Indie DB's ads are often virus vectors, so I suggest you use a flashblocker and adblocker when on that site.

That may be the problem.

edited 15th Jan '17 8:48:32 AM by Ramidel

I own the game now on Steam, having a lot of fun. It's a bit frustrating though because I can't get past the first three dungeons. It's so annoying that most of your inventory is going to be cursed, random sticks and rocks, any worthwhile weapon you find, monster corpses you killed. Supposedly altars will identify items but I've never seen one of my god after about 17 hours of play.