ADOM: The Game, The Controversy, The Lifestyle (Mewtarthio keep out.)

[Maeglin_Dubh]

Unspoilered conversation on that game that for some people rewrites the nature of law, order, and society.

Get on it, people.

(The tagline about Mewtarthio is so that people in this thread can converse without having to constantly use spoilers. His LP thread still requires them for anything he hasn't encountered, so if you only popped into the last few pages without bothering to read his journeys thus far, you should probably be posting anything about game mechanics or late-game play in this thread rather than that one.)

[Bucky]

Alright, I guess that means I should put my next 'lightly spoilered progress report' here.

I had a relatively recent game as a melee-focused Elementalist where I hit a few more benchmarks. Most notably:
*Discovered the basement to VDDL
*Banshee killed
*Water Temple structure breached.

The second item was the first time I'd ever seen the Banshee. However, it was pretty obvious how to avoid the instant death attack.

The third item was a lucky find from casting the magic mapping spell on the right level. I breached the temple with a wand of digging, blasted most of its contents, forced the boss snake to flee and got sacrificed at the altar while chasing it.

[Ozymandias]

The third item was a lucky find from casting the magic mapping spell on the right level. I breached the temple with a wand of digging, blasted most of its contents, forced the boss snake to flee and got sacrificed at the altar while chasing it.

Ouch. That's a real shame, as the snake from beyond is either relatively or extremely easy, depending on whether or not you knowThat it, as with all the monsters in the water temple, can't see darkness. Altar deaths always hurt. Watch those underscores!

Also, you were about at the point where the game's difficulty peaked. Of course, it drops down quite a bit soon after. Stupid Fire Temple.

[Winthur]

Yup, never ever stand on a Chaotic altar, or an altar opposite to your alignment when there are monsters around, it hurts.

[Bucky]

Oh, and one other item should have been on that list:
*First wish (from a ring of djinn summoning)


That's a real shame, as the snake from beyond is either relatively or extremely easy, depending on whether or not you knowThat it, as with all the monsters in the water temple, can't see darkness.

Funny, I avoided using that particular tactic because there were grues in the area. And the boss seemed pretty tough (tanked a lot of spells) but not difficult (couldn't do anything through my armor)


Yup, never ever stand on a Chaotic altar, or an altar opposite to your alignment when there are monsters around, it hurts.

Two things that combined to make this death feel unfair:
*I did not know I could be sacrificed from outside of melee range
*The monster that sacrificed me was out of my vision range the turn before I moved onto the altar.

[Yarpenn]

You can be sacrificed on N altar too. Especially when a stone giant is near you ;) I've tried that on my orcish mindcrafter two days ago :D

Btw. Banshee is very good to get her to the living forest and pick many many many items up. And trees keeps summoning and summoning... :D

[Xefas]

Savescumming is the only legitimate way to play a roguelike!

Reposting for epic relevance.

Anyway, I just read through Mewt's Let's Play ADOM thread over the past few days (almost 40 pages of awesome), and it has kinda gotten me interested in trying some Roguelikes out. Anyone got some recommendations for a good entry Roguelike? ADOM seemed very fun, but I'd prefer to start out with something a bit more forgiving, with a few less obscure fiddly keybindings. I'd plan on working my way up, obviously...

[Maeglin_Dubh]

Reposting for epic relevance.

Anyway, I just read through Mewt's Let's Play ADOM thread over the past few days (almost 40 pages of awesome), and it has kinda gotten me interested in trying some Roguelikes out. Anyone got some recommendations for a good entry Roguelike? ADOM seemed very fun, but I'd prefer to start out with something a bit more forgiving, with a few less obscure fiddly keybindings. I'd plan on working my way up, obviously...

Unfortunately, obscurely fiddly keybindings are kind of a hallmark of the genre.

The new TOME Engine 4 is a bit more WoW-like, but I had a hard time figuring out how to play it, since I've played so many 'real' roguelikes.

[Domochevsky]

Reposting for epic relevance.

Anyway, I just read through Mewt's Let's Play ADOM thread over the past few days (almost 40 pages of awesome), and it has kinda gotten me interested in trying some Roguelikes out. Anyone got some recommendations for a good entry Roguelike? ADOM seemed very fun, but I'd prefer to start out with something a bit more forgiving, with a few less obscure fiddly keybindings. I'd plan on working my way up, obviously...

Well, there's always Stonesoup (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138669). That one's relatively friendly. :smallcool:

[Maeglin_Dubh]

Friendly Roguelike. Bahahaha!

[Bucky]

Anyway, I just read through Mewt's Let's Play ADOM thread over the past few days (almost 40 pages of awesome), and it has kinda gotten me interested in trying some Roguelikes out. Anyone got some recommendations for a good entry Roguelike? ADOM seemed very fun, but I'd prefer to start out with something a bit more forgiving, with a few less obscure fiddly keybindings. I'd plan on working my way up, obviously...

Seven-day quest (here (http://www.wichman.org/7dayquest/game/7dayquest.html)) seems like a good introduction to the genre. It's extremely simple as far as roguelikes go and has a finely-adjustable difficulty. It won't teach you many of the common tactics, because it's that simple.

[Fri]

Doom roguelike is also one of the simplest roguelike there and I'd say it's a good way to start your journey if you want to start by getting yourself aquinted with things like ascii interface and how to move your @ around..

[Yarpenn]

You can always try a ... Rogue :) The very first roguelike game. I think.

Like someone above said: DoomRL is also very fine and easy roguelike. One day to finish the game without problems by the absolute begginer.

[Cespenar]

Doom roguelike is also one of the simplest roguelike there and I'd say it's a good way to start your journey if you want to start by getting yourself aquinted with things like ascii interface and how to move your @ around..

Seconded. Though, unlike ADOM, DoomRL is plays more like a FPS. Which means, it's easier to be punished by a single round's indiscretion.

[Silfir]

Well, my advice would be to just play ADOM and don't worry about getting far. The sooner you can accept bad things that happen to you and learn from them instead of crying out "OMG unfair", the better. Otherwise you might end up save-scumming and cheating yourself out of the greatest thing since sliced bread.

That, of course, is only half-serious advice; meant to mask the fact that I honestly can't help you all that much. I can barely play any roguelike, except for ADOM. Well, I did get introduced to the genre myself by another roguelike game, Castle of the Winds (http://www.exmsft.com/~ricks/). Used to be shareware (I completed only the first part, back in the day), is now completely free. It has a graphical tileset that looks okay (it's from 1989 and sports 16 exciting different colors) and doesn't have nearly the depth ADOM has. That means, of course, that it's much more accessible than your average roguelike - and it fits your requirement for much simpler controls, since it needs much fewer and it has drop down menus for much easier overview, being created in a day when Windows 3.1 was new and shiny. And it doesn't have permadeath, but death does come just as quickly (early on especially) so you better save regularly. I advise starting with a Cure spell and Magic arrow. If you can play Castle of the Winds proficiently and grow bored of it, you're more than ready to play ADOM.

(Also, between ADOM and Nethack you're still better off with ADOM, just to point that out)

[Ozymandias]

Funny, I avoided using that particular tactic because there were grues in the area. And the boss seemed pretty tough (tanked a lot of spells) but not difficult (couldn't do anything through my armor)


Interestingly, ADOM grues are in fact susceptible to <that tactic>. Presumably they, too, ought to be afraid of their lurking cousins.

And yeah, all the bosses take tons of bolts especially because they tend to shrug them off. Shrug-able bolting is my least favorite part of playing wizard, although granted wizards are so incredibly powerful that it's not much more than a minor inconvenience. You can't really afford to Shift+Z certain dangerous monsters a hundred times in a row, which is why you really need ball spells eventually.


I don't understand how you were "sacrificed from outside of melee range," though; that simply isn't possible, I'm reasonably sure (maybe only for orb guardians?). As a rule of thumb I don't stand on altars unless I am actively using them, and then only coaligned altars. Okay, non-coaligned if I'm converting, but you know what I mean.



The new TOME Engine 4 is a bit more WoW-like, but I had a hard time figuring out how to play it, since I've played so many 'real' roguelikes.

Someone else has played TOME 4! I agree that the system is a bit WoW-like (insofar as it's Diablo-like which I think is the sort of system WoW uses, although I've never played it). I don't really like the underlying philosophy - it's supposed to be more complex skill-wise than other roguelikes but it really just ends up being a little too "traditional" ARPG for my tastes. I feel they should have gone with a class/level system like the one that uses 3.5 D&D rules (don't remember the name offhand). A lot of the rest of the beta seems solid - I really want more content, though!

[Bucky]

I don't understand how you were "sacrificed from outside of melee range," though; that simply isn't possible, I'm reasonably sure (maybe only for orb guardians?). As a rule of thumb I don't stand on altars unless I am actively using them, and then only coaligned altars. Okay, non-coaligned if I'm converting, but you know what I mean.


Exactly what I said; I stepped onto the altar while chasing the guardian, and a random Raider about 7 steps away apparently sacrificed me.

(either that or there was another invisible Raider adjacent to the altar)

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I've been sacrificed enough times on an altar to never EVER step onto one unless I am sacrificing items. Even then I make doubly sure there are no hostile enemies nearby to sacrifice me.

[Xefas]

Thank you all for the many suggestions. I'm going to attempt to go through and try all of them (I think I've downloaded each one now).

I've started up and did a little in Castle of the Winds so far, and also found two games while searching for "Roguelikes" called DesktopDungeon and Lost Labyrinth. Desktop Dungeon doesn't seem like a roguelike at all, but Lost Labyrinth seems to have at least a few hallmarks of the genre.

By which I mean I've died more times due to starvation and dehydration than from opening a door, getting hit by a poison trap, and then being teleported into a room where I then get dogpiled and murdered instantly - which is impressive, considering the latter has happened to me frequently.

[Winthur]

I don't understand how you were "sacrificed from outside of melee range," though; that simply isn't possible, I'm reasonably sure (maybe only for orb guardians?). As a rule of thumb I don't stand on altars unless I am actively using them, and then only coaligned altars. Okay, non-coaligned if I'm converting, but you know what I mean.

I did manage to sacrifice monsters from a longer range than melee, you don't have to stand near the creature to sacrifice it, you can make a gap of few spaces (not sure how many), which is pretty convenient, especially against monsters slower than you.

[Maeglin_Dubh]

As far as I know, all you need is line of sight.

[plllizzz]

well, first post on teh GiTP forumz, hi, nice to meet you all, etc.

after lurking a while, I saw this thread and the discussion about a 'friendly roguelike'

one of the friendliest I know is GearHead [mecha-fights themed roguelike]

it has a quite high difficulty spike, but it has a save function that doesn't erase your save after death, and usually when you die in a 'civilised' place you can still be taken to a hospital

at first it seems like a blasphemy to a RL player, but the game is still quite hard and complex...

other things that are interesting in GH: randomized plot, random quests that let you gain money and reputation, customizing your mecha and much, much more

it has two playable parts: GH 1 is the first game, very complex but still quite like a polished beta, and GH 2, still in early beta phase

oh, and on topic of ADOM: just got my 8th unscummed win, human priest :3

[Bucky]

=
And yeah, all the bosses take tons of bolts especially because they tend to shrug them off. Shrug-able bolting is my least favorite part of playing wizard, although granted wizards are so incredibly powerful that it's not much more than a minor inconvenience. You can't really afford to Shift+Z certain dangerous monsters a hundred times in a row, which is why you really need ball spells eventually.


Being an Elementalist, I had a ball spell - I just thought bolts were more efficient due to elemental weak/resists.

(Since then all my Elementalists have died to Keethrax. Yeah it's a tough fight as an Elementalist, but it seems to be totally worth it if I get a useful herb farm going.)

[plllizzz]

it a good idea to train missile weapon, ANY missile weapon in ADOM

most early game enemies fall quickly even to thrown rocks, the black druid is one of the guys you'd like to take from a distance [he tends to drain stats]

and bows/xbows are ridculously powerful in the mid/end-game downing most boss-level monsters in 3-4 shots [with proper slaying ammo]