History VideoGame / AncientDomainsOfMystery

* TheBadGuyWins: The bonus endings for chaotics.

* BeefGate: Comes in weak, strong, and instant death varieties.
* BeardedBaby: Playing with tiles will depict the dwarven children as this.

* DescriptionPorn: Many of the monster descriptions, in particular the bosses.

* FreudianExcuse: Most of the backstories for the chaos knight [=PCs=] will give them one.

* FreudianExcuse: Most of the backstories for the chaos knight PCs will give them one.

* BonusBoss: Several, as with the optional dungeons. Also note that while not every powerful NPC is hostile, everyone is (theoretically) killable.

** The Scroll of Omnipotence is finally obtainable in the most recent release, dropped by an extremely well hidden BonusBoss that requires a very, very long quest chain to access. At the moment, nobody knows how to read or use it.

** The newer versions add the Ultimate Dungeon. Entering it requires you to close the Chaos Gate (read: win the game) while also completing a ''very'' long quest line, including completing the Minotaur Maze, luring an NPC halfway across the game world, and intentionally screwing up the Rolf quest. At the bottom lies the ''[[BonusBoss Ultimate Balor]]'', who drops the Scroll of Omnipotence...[[BraggingRightsReward which nobody knows how to read or use]].

** Put off entering the Pyramid or the Minotaur Maze until you have better gear? Oops, they close up once you reach a certain level. Talked to a certain NPC who immediately died? No Ultra Ending for you! An even crueler example resides at the end of a particularly painful sidequest. After you defeat a nasty BonusBoss, you get a unique scroll to take to a NPC to get the InfinityPlusOneSword. The scroll can be destroyed like any other inventory item. If you read it, you can use a rare item to rewrite it. If you didn't… goodbye, Ultra Ending.

* BladeOnAStick: Halberds, scythes, spears, and tridents. Experienced players tend to favour polearms due to their very high DV bonus.

* ProbabilityPileup:
** One of the game mechanics is that items you've identified become slightly easier to find more of. ''Slightly''. This is partly to make it so that spellcasters can actually use their spells without worrying about permanently running out of their good spells before finding a new book.
** What are the odds that a jackal kills you? Depends how many you've killed, since killing monsters makes other, future iterations of that monster slightly stronger.

* CastFromHitPoints: If you run out of PP, you can cast with HP instead, although it heavily abuses several of your stats and is likely to result in permanent stat loss. Necessary for an [[RealityWarper archmage]], however.

* ExtremeOmnivore: By the end of the game, your PC will have munched his way through half of Ancardia's [[ImAHumanitarian human]], humanoid, and animal population for the various [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity resistances]], the stat boosts, or just because they were hungry. Usually raw corpses, if they don't have the cooking skill.
You can even eat your own clone (in the form of a doppelganger), if you're hungry enough. Some races are pickier than others. Trolls are the least picky; they will eat anything, at any time.

[[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1266820/Ultimate_ADOM__Caverns_of_Chaos/ Ultimate ADOM Caverns of Chaos]] goes into Early Access on Feb 18th, 2021. Hopefully.

** A more complex example: there is a special reward a player can get for avoiding [[spoiler: killing any cats, even hostile ones]]. However, there [[LoopholeAbuse isn't a rule against]] [[spoiler: using a BalefulPolymorph to make it ''not'' a cat, leading it repeatedly over an acid trap, wearing a ring of fire resistance and placing yourself in between a cat and a fire-breathing lizard, or exposing it to TheCorruption until it becomes a twisted alien being]]. 'Course you may want to [[DemonicSpider avoid that last one]].

* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: [[OrderVersusChaos Order and Chaos]], in this case, but the principle still applies. The Neutral God actively works to maintain the Balance between Law and Chaos, which is a force in its own right, and protect the world from the danger of extremes.

* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: [[OrderVersusChaos Order and Chaos]], in this case, but the principle still applies. The Neutral God actively works to maintain the Balance between Law and Chaos, which is a force in its own right, and protect the world from the danger of extremes. Interestingly, the God of Law also worked to maintain this balance in the past [[spoiler: by turning the last Hero of Law into the Eternal Guardian, preventing him from defeating Chaos completely and instead setting him to defend the lower reaches of the Caverns of Chaos]].

* VillainProtagonist: Your character is fully capable of worshipping Chaotic gods and performing quests in evil ways... and there is a specific ultra ending just for evil characters. You [[spoiler:go to the Chaos Plane and fight the ''suprisingly ordinary'' Chaos God]] just like in the goody-good ultra endings... and then [[spoiler:[[YouKillItYouBoughtIt kick his ass. But you are not debilitated by assuming the chaos god position like they were - this is why they never went through the Chaos gate themselves - and on taking his place immediately storm through the gate and overrun the universe]].]]

[[http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/ADOM_Wiki Fulfills the]] WikiRule.

* BraggingRightsReward: True Strength, the best artifact girdle in the game, can only be gotten by reaching [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the fiftieth level of the main dungeon]] without ever committing an unlawful act. Not only is this ridiculously hard for normal endings and nigh-impossible for the others, but it's past a PointOfNoReturn so you can't use it for anything else, and chances are that if you've made it this far, you're ready for the horrors of D:50. Also, if you commit a chaotic act while wearing the girdle, it will squeeze you to death.

* BreakableWeapons: One reason artifacts are so useful is their [[UnbreakableWeapons immunity to damage]].

* ClingyCostume: Any cursed item that is wielded/worn. This is why scrolls of uncursing and holy water are precious.
** And woe to the player who finds "trapped" armor, which uncursing will not remove…
* ClingyMacGuffin: The si. It has a few uses, though.

** Averted with special Halberds of Defense; since special weapons can't receive modifying prefixes or suffixes, a Halberd of Defense of Defense can't exist. This can lead to confusion however, as regular halberds ''can'' obtain the "of defense" suffix.

* EarlyBirdBoss: [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Keethrax, the evil druid]], one of the two options for your first quest. He's high level, corrupts by hit, immune to fire, ice, and lightning, and a [[LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards druid]], at that.
** [[spoiler:His level adjusts to that of the PC, but as higher-level [=PC=]s are generally better-equipped and have more HP, one will have an easier time at level 12 than level 8.]]

* EnemyScan: Stethoscopes reveal a surprising amount.
** Inverted by the Insight spell, as well as potions of insight, which reveals hidden information about the ''player character''. This actually makes sense because the player can gain new abilities from various sources, such as corpses, pools, and items, without knowing it.
* EnemySummoner: Quite a few, with the summoned things sometimes being able to summon as well.

*** In the same manner, doing alchemy incorrectly will kill you (and doing it correctly will still probably kill you), even with completely mundane ingredients. Mixing a potion of carrot juice with a potion of water (or ''two potions of water'') can result in a [[MadeOfExplodium huge explosion]].

* EvilSorcerer: Keethrax, the black druid; Nonnak, the master necromancer; Yulgash, the Master Summoner; Nuurag Vaarn, the Chaos Archmage. Plus all the dark sages and lich variants running around. Be very afraid.
** YOU can also be an EvilSorcerer if you want. If you really want to be evil, you can [[KickTheDog kick the cute puppy to death]] and then laugh at the girl who just wants her dog back (after eating the puppy's corpse as she watches, no less). And then fry everyone in the village with lightning bolts.

* ExplosiveBreeder: Worms of any kind and jellies should be killed before they have the chance to multiply. Kill them all. ''Kill''. '''Kill'''. Sorry, flashback.

** You can even eat your own clone (in the form of a doppelganger), if you're hungry enough. *burp*
** Some races are pickier than others. Trolls are the least picky; they will eat anything, at any time.

* FinalBossNewDimension

* TheGoomba: The game tries to avert this by making enemies stronger the more of them you kill, but it's rather buggy at the moment.
** Monsters also get stronger the deeper into the dungeons you go. A goblin a few hundred levels down in the infinite dungeon is as dangerous as any endgame monster.

* GraveHumor

* HealingFactor: [[PlayerCharacter [=PC=]s]] born in the month of Candle already inherently heal faster than Healing at 100 would let you. Trolls heal the fastest of all races. Being a healer has self-explanatory benefits. What happens when you roll up a Candle-born Trollish Healer? Near ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}-class HealingFactor! Especially since healers double, then triple their HP recovery at [[MagikarpPower level 6 and 12]].
** Not enough? Start collecting items. You can wear [[spoiler:a crown of regeneration, the artifact amulet Preserver, bracers of regeneration, two rings of regeneration on your hands and one in the missile slot and wield two knives of endurance. That's eight HP healed ''per turn'' through items alone.]]
*** Still not enough? One of the {{c|ursedWithAwesome}}orruptions grants another layer of HealingFactor. Don't forget to actually kill your enemies, though.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Shooting a [[ProjectileSpell Magic Missile]] in a narrow corridor? [[TooDumbToLive Bad idea]]. Chances are, a typo makes you cast it straight at the wall, so it constantly rebounds at you and hits you again and again and again until you're dead.

* HumansAreAverage

* InfinityPlusOneElement: Magic Missile can be useful in ways that the elemental bolt spells aren't. It's cheap to use. There is no elemental immunity to it. It doesn't destroy loot that has been dropped on the ground. It bounces off walls, letting you shoot people around corners. It won't make you unlucky if you attack a nonhostile or Karmic enemy.

* JokeCharacter: The Chaos Knight. You start out corrupted, most [=NPC=]s range from unhelpful to hostile whenever you play to type (forcing you to [[ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption murder your way past most of the quests]]), and if you convert from Chaos to another alignment, you lose all class powers and suffer from a burning gut until you die or fall back to Chaos. To drive the point home, [[spoiler:you can't get a normal ending either, unless you're redeemed; if you close the [=ChAoS=] Gate, you're immediately zorched for being a moron. If you ''are'' redeemed, you still perish, but at least it's a HeroicSacrifice]].

** Killing even a single feline of any type makes an enemy of a powerful NPC, causing many to refer to them as [[GoddamnBats "those damn cats."]] [[invoked]]

* KingMook: Haggar the frost giant jarl, [=MaLaKaI=] the Chaos Knight, and many of the randomly generated boss monsters.

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards:
** Played straight, but... Since any spells you learn are completely dependent upon you finding their (very fragile) spell books, a wizard may be forced to become a MagicKnight. Yes, a wizard with a few elemental bolt spells will be able to fry legions of {{Mooks}} with one hand tied behind his back, but he'd do better to save those spells and use the mooks for training his weapon skill in anticipation of an artifact. Elementalists are similar in that a lot of later monsters are [[WeaksauceWeakness immune to fire and ice]].
** Subverted by the TrueFinalBoss.
* LizardFolk: Drakelings, one of the PC races.
** There are also regular old savage lizardmen. The Drakelings insist they are not related.

* LuckStat: The Mana attribute.
** There's a hidden Luck stat as well. Gaining Lucky and/or Fate Smiles increases it, while being cursed and ''especially'' doomed decreases it. There's also artifacts that can increase it even more, like the Ankh.

* TheManyDeathsOfYou: Overlaps with DevelopersForesight. Kicking a stairway can cause the entire level to collapse, resulting in instant death. Kicking an empty space or wall causes damage to the PC, and this damage can kill you if you're trying hard enough to do it. Doomed [=PC=]s have something on the order of a 1-in-50 chance per turn of being [[DarknessEqualsDeath eaten by a grue if they're in a dark space]]. The list goes on, and on, and on.
** A particularly rockstar one — ''choking to death on your own vomit''. [[spoiler:Suffer an attack of fever whilst Sick and Paralyzed.]]
** There's also a death by exploding frog...

* MercyRewarded: Leading the BrainwashedAndCrazy village carpenter to a healer benefits you far more than killing him, including learning the essential Healing skill.

** Having said that, gnome or hurthling classes with high mana are likely to start with enough talents to acquire Treasure Hunter (increases amount of equipment [[RandomDrop randomly dropped]]) at level 1.
*** There is more than one way to start with three or more talents. The maximum number is ''six'' talents, for which you have to be a hurthling or gnome farmer, bard or merchant with 17+ Mana, Candle or Falcon as starsign, and some completely unrelated luck (you get a bonus talent if the sum total of your stats is divisible by 7). This would allow you to get Treasure Hunter and the truly game-breaking SevenLeagueBoots, at level 1. Yet — while gunning for extra talents is one aspect of min-maxing, it rarely does more than make the start a little bit easier. Also, while in this particular case you maxed the crap out of your running speed, you sadly happened to min your combat prowess.

* MonsterCompendium: And with colorful descriptions to boot. Just hit &.
** [[http://l.j-factor.com/misc/adom.html Here]] is a list of all monster descriptions in the game.

* MultipleEndings: There are many ways to win — some have a better outcome than others.
** Even the regular ending has quite a few variations depending on your alignment and amount of corruptions.

** Also, any missile with the "penetrating" prefix or weapon with the "of penetration" suffix. [[HehHehYouSaidX Hur hur hur.]]
* ArtifactOfDoom: The Chaos Orbs can be used for various powerful magical effects, but doing so causes significant corruption.
** Several artifacts corrupt, curse, or doom the player, and some weapons can be generated that automatically doom the player as well.

* BoringButPractical: The Farmer doesn't have the cool powers of the other classes, but carrying more stuff, needing to eat less, picking better herbs, gaining marks in polearms (the most balanced weapon class) faster than anyone else and making their own rations are all at least somewhat useful. {{Downplayed}}, however, as an early-game food source makes the food-related abilities less useful, and if carrying too many items is a problem, you can clear the limited monsters from a fairly early location to make it a safe storage locker. Farmer is generally considered a less powerful and more difficult class.

* BossInMookClothing / KingMook: ''All the time''. Essentially, most monsters whose name begins/ends with in 'greater', 'king', 'emperor', or, Andor Drakon help you, an ''[[NominalImportance actual name]]''.
** Emperor liches cast various nasty spells, including Death Ray and confusion, summon loads of monsters as meat shields, are immune to most mindcraft powers due to being undead, see invisible and have a paralyzing touch.
** Great Wyrms are ancient and extremely powerful dragons. They can cast spells (unlike lesser dragons), and are immune to their respective element (ice, acid, lighting or cold). Special mention goes to Great Karmic Wyrms, which are immune to ''all four'' elements, making most magic useless against them. Plus, they are karmic beings, meaning that hitting them in melee makes the player unluckier with each hit.
** Doppleganger kings have identical speed and defense power to your character, making them hard to hit and run away from, and they do about ten times as much damage as you.
** [=MaLaKaI=], the Chaos Knight guarding the Scepter of Chaos, is probably the best example. He appears to just be an ordinary chaos knight, but he always generates with an ''extremely'' high level. Thankfully, he can only attack in melee and he isn't fast, but woe unto anyone who doesn't realize who they're dealing with and tries to just mash him to death.
** {{Parodied}} in [[http://web.archive.org/web/20130905221139/http://poro.tontut.fi/~adom/mkoddd/masterk.html this page]], which describes a NinjaPirateZombieRobot monster with an OverlyLongName and all of the [[ThatOneAttack most notorious abilities]] of various monsters.

* JokeItem: The si — an artifact that multiplies, and cannot be gotten rid of easily.
** Actually it may be considered a [[LethalJokeItem lethal joke item]], as you have a supply of renewable projectiles as well as sacrifice fodder for your god. Even more mundanely, they're also an excellent source of easy money. The "you can't get rid of it" applies to an area that you can never return to (e.g. the Infinite level dungeon, which generates a different level each time you move up or down a floor).

* BladeOnAStick: Halberds and spears.

** Actually it may be considered a [[LethalJokeItem lethal joke item]], as you have a supply of renewable projectiles as well as sacrifice fodder for your god. Even more mundanely, the sis make excellent VendorTrash. The "you can't get rid of it" applies to an area that you can never return to (e.g. the Infinite level dungeon, which generates a different level each time you move up or down a floor).

* CastFromHitPoints: Not a good idea unless your life is on the line, because it abuses your permanent stats (resulting in potential stat drain). Necessary for an [[RealityWarper archmage]], however.

* AutoRevive: Amulets of life saving will automatically revive you if you're killed while wearing one (with some exceptions). They work better when blessed. The Amulet of Resurrection is even better, functioning as an ''indestructible, infinite use'' amulet of life saving, but it's only available one day of the year.

* BoringButPractical: The Farmer doesn't have the cool powers of the other classes, but carrying more stuff, needing to eat less, picking better herbs, gaining marks in polearms (the most balanced weapon class) faster than anyone else and making their own rations are all useful.

* OurElvesAreDifferent: Four varieties. High Elves are close to the Wood Elf model; natural fighters and mages, long-lived, beautiful and agile but a bit frail, and while they're naturally Lawful, they get rather arrogant and are disliked by most other races. Gray Elves fit the High Elf mold; even more beautiful, arrogant, frail and magical than their High cousins, they are not really strong enough to be fighters but are incredibly powerful mages, and are racially neutral. Dark Elves are the standard drow model; agile, sneaky, not ''as'' magical as their cousins[[note]]Their Mana stat is as high as Gray Elves', but their Learning is sub-par by elf standards[[/note]] but still good at it, with a knack for sneaking and naturally chaotic. They make some of the best agility-based fighting types (such as Archers) in the game. And then there's Mist Elves, who are a fairly alien version. Born of mist at the beginning of time, their lifespans are as long compared to Gray Elves as Gray Elves are compared to humans, and they're practically made of magic to the point where touching iron is painful to them. They also practice a unique form of necromancy that allows them to awaken magical constructs instead of raising the dead.

* OurElvesAreDifferent: Four varieties. High Elves are close to the Wood Elf model; natural fighters and mages, long-lived, beautiful and agile but a bit frail, and while they're naturally Lawful, they get rather arrogant and are disliked by most other races. Gray Elves fit the High Elf mold; even more beautiful, arrogant, frail and magical than their High cousins, they are not really strong enough to be fighters but are incredibly powerful mages, and are racially neutral. Dark Elves are the standard drow model; agile, sneaky, not ''as'' magical as their cousins but still good at it, with a knack for sneaking and naturally chaotic. They make some of the best agility-based fighting types (such as Archers) in the game. And then there's Mist Elves, who are a fairly alien version. Born of mist at the beginning of time, their lifespans are as long compared to Gray Elves as Gray Elves are compared to humans, and they're practically made of magic to the point where touching iron is painful to them. They also practice a unique form of necromancy that allows them to awaken magical constructs instead of raising the dead.

* OurElvesAreDifferent: Four varieties. High Elves are close to the Wood Elf model; natural fighters and mages, long-lived, beautiful and agile but a bit frail, and while they're naturally Lawful, they get rather arrogant and are disliked by most other races. Gray Elves fit the High Elf mold; even more beautiful, arrogant, frail and magical than their High cousins, they are not really strong enough to be fighters but are incredibly powerful mages, and are racially neutral. Dark Elves are the standard drow model; agile, sneaky, not ''as'' magical as their cousins but still good at it, with a knack for backstabbing and naturally chaotic. They make some of the best agility-based fighting types (such as Archers) in the game. And then there's Mist Elves, who are a fairly alien version. Born of mist at the beginning of time, their lifespans are as long compared to Gray Elves as Gray Elves are compared to humans, and they're practically made of magic to the point where touching iron is painful to them. They also practice a unique form of necromancy that allows them to awaken magical constructs instead of raising the dead.