Adom

[Silfir]

I'd venture a guess that a forum of an RPG-dedicated website would not be the worst place to look for fellow players of obscure rogue-like role-playing games.

So who of you has already played ADOM (http://www.adom.de)? What is your opinion about it? Favorite class? Level of success?

[RS14]

I've played. It is aggravating. It's easy to die and the traps drive me crazy. I prefer melee brutes, and my most successful game ended at about level 20 when my troll barbarian (or maybe beastfighter?) became permanently confused due to reading an unknown scroll. Bah.

I also have the dubious distinction of having died to a giant rat at level 15. You see, I'd just made a very narrow escape from the Dwarven Halls, an escape during which I lost my only weapon to a duelist, used a wand of trap creation as an offensive weapon, escaped from being pinned in a hall by using a Ring of Djini summoning to crush one of the monsters, and was then toasted nearly to death by a fire vortex. I had single digit hp and the rat walked into the room. I started punching him. I figured he was no threat and I didn't want to waste my healing potions when I could just sit and wait to heal. Well he was critically wounded by the time he got a critical hit against me. Argh.

Adom was the game that hooked me on roguelikes. I've since moved to Nethack, and despite seven ascensions have never done any better at Adom.

[factotum]

I'm more of a NetHack man myself...I never really got into Adom, don't know why. (Maybe it's because there's no graphical tile mode, like there is with Nethack--I know it's heresy to play with such a thing, but I find it a lot easier to tell the monsters apart when they're icons rather than letters!).

[Tengu]

I'm the opposite and couldn't get into NetHack - probably because in ADOM you have rich (for a rogue-like) descriptions of creatures, rooms and stuff that's happening, interaction with creatures, quests and overland map exploration, while NetHack lacks most of those and therefore the immersion is much smaller.

[endoperez]

I completed ADOM, once. I had spoiled myself, and the game, though. :( It wasn't nearly as fun once I wasn't discovering new things every now and then. Then again, there were quite a lot of things that would have killed me without me figuring out what I could have done, if anything, if I hadn't read the spoilers.

ADOM is really nice, I have to say. You can't get stuck, because you can always go to another dungeon. You can also choose what you want to do much more so than in most other roguelikes. If you want an easy game, you can level up quite easily around the starting area around Terinyo, but you can also go straight for the main dungeon.

I've since moved over to other roguelikes. Dungeon Crawl and Doom: RL are both fast-paced, take place in only one dungeon, and are quite deadly but don't have quite as many places or monsters that just kill you the first time you meet them. The level in Doom:RL where my weapons stopped working was pretty frightening, though... and I understand Crawl has its immensely dangerous areas, just in brances not necessary to complete the game.

[JMobius]

ADOM is without a doubt my favorite roguelike. :)

The recent promises of upcoming alphas of JADE have me quite excited, as well.

[Cespenar]

I'm the opposite and couldn't get into NetHack - probably because in ADOM you have rich (for a rogue-like) descriptions of creatures, rooms and stuff that's happening, interaction with creatures, quests and overland map exploration, while NetHack lacks most of those and therefore the immersion is much smaller.

It's for these well explained reasons too that I threw away Nethack the minute I discovered ADOM and playing it ever since.

I have no direct favourite classes but I don't like classes that have a very little chance of learning magic. Versatility is the key in ADOM, because if specialize in one subject, the game is almost always bound to put something that you can't beat by that method in front of you. I personally only beat it once, and that one doesn't "count", because I savescummed several times. The main reason of dying (for me, at least) is boredom. If you play it at night or at times that you can't concentrate well, you are sure to make a mistake, and well, the mistake quota in ADOM is very, very low.

Apart from that, I've played DoomRL and loved it. It's even deadlier than ADOM, but much shorter if I recall correctly. The musics are very good as well.