KickStarter Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM) - now available on Steam and GOG

[Awor Szurkrarz]

And that is a terrible, terrible system for a game. It could maybe be justified in a game that takes 2-3 hours to finish, because if you die after an hour and learn something new and important about the game then you can stomach it easier than when you are one-shot killed after investing 10 hours into the character, and you only managed to get him that far because you had a shitload of luck with items, monters that spawned and other mechanics and you sure as hell wont be able to get it again any time soon.

I disagree, it worked great in ADOM. It gave me YEARS of fun.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The real kicker is that having access to this: http://folk.ntnu.no/houeland/adom/results/datadump
would do more for your chances of winning the game than years of experience. How else are you going to know that a stone ooze hits for 9d8 when everything else around that levels hits for around a third of that.

Oh, and here are the monsters that spawn in the water cave (cleaned the format a bit):


giant eel 22/2 1x 5d5 120 spd 35 hp Level 5
shark 22/1 1x 2d10 100 spd 52 hp Level 12
giant shark 24/3 1x 2d16+6 100 spd 92 hp Level 19
giant turtle 12/30 1x 5d10 90 spd 90 hp Level 20
dragon turtle 15/35 1x 3d20 90 spd 90 hp Level 25
giant dragon turtle 15/50 1x 5d20 100 spd 200 hp Level 35

All in the same fucking room. And you can get here at level 1. Fuck, you get sent on a quest to go here at level one.

Hmmm, 5d20, that sure seems balanced. Especially when great black wyrms are level 40 and only hit for 4d12+12.

Btw, the creator of the game and his fans don't want you to have that list of monsters (even though they use it themselves) because it's code dived information. You're just supposed to come to the forums and ask them every time you encounter a new monster whether or not it will kick your ass, apparently.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

You're just supposed to come to the forums and ask them every time you encounter a new monster whether or not it will kick your ass, apparently.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Oh, I'm sorry, I meant you're supposed to get murdered by the monster and spend another few dozen hundred hours getting another character to level 14 40.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Oh, I'm sorry, I meant you're supposed to get murdered by the monster and spend another few dozen hundred hours getting another character to level 14 40.

You're too result-orientated for this game. ADOM was always about the process. And finishing the game is actually a bad thing.

 

[Johannes]

The thing is that you can run away from most things. If you discover a stone ooze hits exceptionally hard and you can't just hack away at it, turn around, or kite and shoot it, or zap it with a wand of webbing to stop it from attacking, or pray to your god for healing and just kill it. The game gives you a fuckton of options to get out of tough spots after 15-30 minutes of playing, and if you happen to die unluckily before that to a trap or whatever, big deal, just make a new PC.

And how do you invest 10 or 100 hours into a dead character? The game can be finished easily in say, 7 hours, less than that if you're good. If you spend a fuckton of hours in the game, that's possible too, but by then you would have a p. unstoppable juggernaut.


Water cave is also ridiculously easy for anyone to figure out that it has fucking tough critters included, even if you don't plan to fuck with the momma dragon. That's what makes it exciting, there's a risk/reward analysis whether or not to enter - and if you see one of the Giant Dragon Turtles you run. Or teleport away. You'll die there once with a lowish level character and then you'll know this, big deal.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The problem is that the process for me generally involves hours upon hours of tediously trying to run characters through the early game shit to get halfway decent armor/spellbooks, followed by breezing through the CoC until the bigroom, more hours of pacifying that to farm herbs, breezing to khelly, and the dicking around for more hours trying to get him a fucking amulet because the stupid cunt can't drink a potion. If at any point I die, it's not because I had an exciting battle, but because I was suddenly killed in a situation that seemed completely safe. The 'process' of clearing out a vault of 60 zombies and skeletons and searching through all the loot for +2 gloves or whatever the fuck is not an enjoyable one. Neither is herb farming or luring shit to an altar for live sacrifices (a retarded concept, dragging corpses is already tedious enough) or pickpocketing a bajillion monsters so I can learn detect traps and then using that a bajillion times to train it to a useful level.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The problem is that the process for me generally involves hours upon hours of tediously trying to run characters through the early game shit to get halfway decent armor/spellbooks, followed by breezing through the CoC until the bigroom, more hours of pacifying that to farm herbs, breezing to khelly, and the dicking around for more hours trying to get him a fucking amulet because the stupid cunt can't drink a potion. If at any point I die, it's not because I had an exciting battle, but because I was suddenly killed in a situation that seemed completely safe. The 'process' of clearing out a vault of 60 zombies and skeletons and searching through all the loot for +2 gloves or whatever the fuck is not an enjoyable one. Neither is herb farming or luring shit to an altar for live sacrifices (a retarded concept, dragging corpses is already tedious enough) or pickpocketing a bajillion monsters so I can learn detect traps and then using that a bajillion times to train it to a useful level.

Why are you doing this to yourself ?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Because if I die someone's inevitable reaction is 'lol dumbass why u no have 25 toughness and 20 PV and detect traps lolznub'

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Because if I die someone's inevitable reaction is 'lol dumbass why u no have 25 toughness and 20 PV and detect traps lolznub'

Inevitable reaction?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Inevitable reaction?

??

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Inevitable reaction?

??

By who, why, where and when?

 

[DefJam101]

The problem is that the process for me generally involves hours upon hours of tediously trying to run characters through the early game shit to get halfway decent armor/spellbooks, followed by breezing through the CoC until the bigroom, more hours of pacifying that to farm herbs, breezing to khelly, and the dicking around for more hours trying to get him a fucking amulet because the stupid cunt can't drink a potion. If at any point I die, it's not because I had an exciting battle, but because I was suddenly killed in a situation that seemed completely safe. The 'process' of clearing out a vault of 60 zombies and skeletons and searching through all the loot for +2 gloves or whatever the fuck is not an enjoyable one. Neither is herb farming or luring shit to an altar for live sacrifices (a retarded concept, dragging corpses is already tedious enough) or pickpocketing a bajillion monsters so I can learn detect traps and then using that a bajillion times to train it to a useful level.

here you go, son: http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

 

[Damned Registrations]

I've completed 6 lawful ultra endings, 2 neutral, 1 chaotic, and 6 regular endings.

I almost never play straight fighters, I've won with bards, priests, wizards, archers, a paladin, healer, assassin, and a weaponsmith. Almost always magic and missile focused. I think my first win was the classic dwarven priest. And numerous failed ultra endings after hitting level fifty with everything from wizards to farmers to monks. All my characters do melee a lot as well as cast and use missiles. And yes, I usually use polearms, I'll farm orcs for a good one if I need to.

Wizards can be a bit tough early due to lack of HP, but rock later on. Gnomish wizards/priests/healers are probably my favorite due to starting with extra talents. Grey elves are nices to start because of the elven chainmail as well. Starting with treasure hunter makes the game a lot easier by the end. Herbs are key. I usually go through 6-10 characters up to level 8 or so before I get one that I continue onward with (or don't die).

andy williams guidebook is crazy helpful. I confess I only got one character up to level 25 before I started reading it. Lot of fun figuring things out on my own before then, though.

My usual game start is: go to village, buy as much food as possible, go to outlaw village, kill something, learn pick-pocketting if neutral/evil and don't have it, walk over everything in the shop for some early ID's, go to small mountain cave (nw) until level 4, try to find stairs down, read the scrolls there to practice literacy while levelling, leave, wander countryside until raider is encountered (often die/starve at this point), kill raider (sometimes die here), collect reward, buy food, keep strained and satiated to improve strength. Explore druid cave (come back and kill druid later at level 10-12), explore puppy cave (sometimes die here), hopefully head back down through small mountain cave and out other side, otherwise head overland. Once a character actually reaches this stage I'm dedicated to trying for a win. If I haven't encountered any herb levels, altars, or gotten some good loot though, I'll sometimes just abandon and start over.

damn it makes me want to play.

peace,
-m

Boy that doesn't sound like much farming at all.

Use 'ball' spells, they are a must later in the game. Ice Ball rapes fire tower, lighting ball rapes golems and molochs (allright its useful against them....), fireball and acidball are useful too. And with high Wi You can clear really large areas too.

Dont enter forge without lighting ball, just forget it.

Also learn death ray if possible, its an awesome spell against strong monsters (like ancient dragons and such).

Righto- farm for rare spellbooks before even thinking of entering darkforge.

Problem is, wands of knocking aren't really that available on low levels (and on high levels it's not that relevant).
Dor kicking, you can always switch tactics to coward, although I cannot say if it has any real effect on door.

One fool proof method is to carry a huge rock or an anvil an throwi it to smash the door AND the trap, safely.

Better to just get detect traps early from the thieves guild.
Or play a dwarf.
Or get afew keys from the hooded ratling if playing a woman.

If you didn't get detect traps early from the thieves guild, you DESERVE to die to a stoneblock trap or have your ring of ice destroyed in an explosion. Woo.

Official ADOM forums are far worse, filled with oldfags that claim game is super easy (because they stay in the infinite dungeon until they've gotten a billion spellbooks, trained a bunch of skills up, and found a complete set of +3 armor, shit which is too grindy and tedious even for me to attempt.)

 

[Malakal]

Well yeah farming ID makes the game too easy. I routinely left it with 20-300 blessed potions of gain attributes used. But you dont NEED to as long as youre good.

 

[Damned Registrations]

So, 4 years later and still haven't managed to beat the game with pure melee eh?

 

[Johannes]

You don't actually need all that much farming to get through the game for a normal win. Just because someone did something or recommends it, doesn't mean it's a must.

I've completed 6 lawful ultra endings, 2 neutral, 1 chaotic, and 6 regular endings.

I almost never play straight fighters, I've won with bards, priests, wizards, archers, a paladin, healer, assassin, and a weaponsmith. Almost always magic and missile focused. I think my first win was the classic dwarven priest. And numerous failed ultra endings after hitting level fifty with everything from wizards to farmers to monks. All my characters do melee a lot as well as cast and use missiles. And yes, I usually use polearms, I'll farm orcs for a good one if I need to.

Wizards can be a bit tough early due to lack of HP, but rock later on. Gnomish wizards/priests/healers are probably my favorite due to starting with extra talents. Grey elves are nices to start because of the elven chainmail as well. Starting with treasure hunter makes the game a lot easier by the end. Herbs are key. I usually go through 6-10 characters up to level 8 or so before I get one that I continue onward with (or don't die).

andy williams guidebook is crazy helpful. I confess I only got one character up to level 25 before I started reading it. Lot of fun figuring things out on my own before then, though.

My usual game start is: go to village, buy as much food as possible, go to outlaw village, kill something, learn pick-pocketting if neutral/evil and don't have it, walk over everything in the shop for some early ID's, go to small mountain cave (nw) until level 4, try to find stairs down, read the scrolls there to practice literacy while levelling, leave, wander countryside until raider is encountered (often die/starve at this point), kill raider (sometimes die here), collect reward, buy food, keep strained and satiated to improve strength. Explore druid cave (come back and kill druid later at level 10-12), explore puppy cave (sometimes die here), hopefully head back down through small mountain cave and out other side, otherwise head overland. Once a character actually reaches this stage I'm dedicated to trying for a win. If I haven't encountered any herb levels, altars, or gotten some good loot though, I'll sometimes just abandon and start over.

damn it makes me want to play.

peace,
-m

Boy that doesn't sound like much farming at all.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like farming much at all. He describes going through the basic low level dungeons. Only thing mentioned that's repetitive is herb farming, which you can skip if you don't like, though you'll have a harder time. Herb farming doesn't take that much time though, unless you do it in the big room (but doing it in the big room is fun, since you get to constantly fight).

Use 'ball' spells, they are a must later in the game. Ice Ball rapes fire tower, lighting ball rapes golems and molochs (allright its useful against them....), fireball and acidball are useful too. And with high Wi You can clear really large areas too.

Dont enter forge without lighting ball, just forget it.

Also learn death ray if possible, its an awesome spell against strong monsters (like ancient dragons and such).

Righto- farm for rare spellbooks before even thinking of entering darkforge.

Well that's just bullshit, you don't need lightning ball to go there. It helps definitely, allows you to get there earlier, but not mandatory by any stretch. And there's actually no need to ever go to Darkforge.

Problem is, wands of knocking aren't really that available on low levels (and on high levels it's not that relevant).
Dor kicking, you can always switch tactics to coward, although I cannot say if it has any real effect on door.

One fool proof method is to carry a huge rock or an anvil an throwi it to smash the door AND the trap, safely.

Better to just get detect traps early from the thieves guild.
Or play a dwarf.
Or get afew keys from the hooded ratling if playing a woman.

If you didn't get detect traps early from the thieves guild, you DESERVE to die to a stoneblock trap or have your ring of ice destroyed in an explosion. Woo.

Just gain a few levels and traps stop being lethal. They'll still cause annoyance with item destruction but Detect Traps is a p. minor skill to have.

Official ADOM forums are far worse, filled with oldfags that claim game is super easy (because they stay in the infinite dungeon until they've gotten a billion spellbooks, trained a bunch of skills up, and found a complete set of +3 armor, shit which is too grindy and tedious even for me to attempt.)

Nah, you don't need to do any of that to make the game easy.

Let's take a look at this for example:

http://www.adom.de/forums/showthread.php/636-Quick-melee-wins/page2

First I started by getting the SMC blanket. Then to herb farming, along the way I found a pool which gave me a wish, I got wands of destruction, got literacy and found really nice mithril warhammer of penetration and crystal tower shield. Was crowned around 4k, got =Fire and Deaths Blade, the latter is the suckiest gift though. Also killed a cat accidentally with acid spit, didn't look properly through all the mobs. I was maybe lvl 10 when finished here.

Next was getting tele wand (scroll of item detection from Waldenbrooks)dwarven graveyard, darkforge (paralyzation resistance, tele control and teleportitis from pools, really good even when stats were drained and got cursed), and pyramid in that order. Got eternium 2-hander from DF, which was better than the Deaths blade. For the rest of the game I used either the eternium 2-hander or penetrating hammer and shield. Levels were about 11 when entering DF and 15 when getting out.

Then tower, top level had room of shadow wyrms, and one dropped Preserver(!). Smashed the ACW with my hammer though it gave me mana battery, got out, and took the corpse to druid, and drank the potion. Those shadow wyrms would've been quite deadly elsewhere with their cold breath, but the tower negated that. Actually most promising PC before this died to a combination of ancient white dragons and earth temple on same level (because drakeling heat).

Then the final dive began. In Dwarftown I visit mystic, get scrolls. DH2 had a big room of ghosts which were tricky, but with a little use of wand of digging and teleportation I found the stairs and got through that way. Water temple, graveyard, banshee were all really basic, and notihng remarkable elsewhere either. Then EG, I spit at him and teleport on the stairs. Casino had some goodi stuff, ring of invisibility was the most notable. Then I zap the shopkeeper and teleport away.

Cat lord was hostile, he appeared near the upstairs so I make him follow me up, away from the stairs, then teleport myself down. Didn't want to fight him with no slaying weapon. Air temple goes easily, invisibility makes the day. Yulgash goes down in two blows. Earth temple is a bit more trickier, but my hammer is the best weapon there is against them. Here though acid trap destroys 2 SoCR and all my booze, not good at all.

Then mana temple, easy. Kill the mobs, and soon the main man comes out. He dies by the sword. I remember being lvl 23 before killing him, 25 after that. Also an artifact guardian on UL6, really tough ancient minotaur. Dealt over 200 damage in single turn with 3 criticals through DV70. He dies, I get wyrmlance. Also kill a balor at some point, one of the few random high xp monsters.

Then down to the final battle, which was quite tight and eventful. It was one of the most interesting ADOM fights I've had, others include an earlier D50 speedrun fight... but I lost that one. I try and explain it in a bit more detail.

D49 goes nicely, this time I had heavy crossbow and bolts to minimize time in the cold. It doesn't drop down but by maybe 80 (100 is the maximum), to around 50. 2 wands of fire warm me up to around 70 speed. I start by frontal assault, killing the mutants, servants and masses. I don't wipe them all out, but teleport to the lower corridor entrance. Then I proceed to clear the corridor, and a servant drops Nature's Companion - really good. When I've reached the lever chamber and cleared it out partially I teleport near the lever, avoid the balor and destroy it. Then to the upper one. I teleport to the corridor entrance, and there are now some remnants of the mobs and also balors in the chamber where the corridors start. I try and make it to the corridor as fast as I can, to fight only 2 opponents at a time and kill one balor who came from the room side, and while slowed too - nice xp. Then in the turning of the corridor, a balor teleports into the empty corner. I kill it. Around this place I get SLB. I try to teleport to the lever chamber, as the other balors start teleporting into the corridor though there's other mobs between them and myself. Alas, I don't find an empty spot in the room and get teleported out into the right side of level. With only one charge at tele wand (and random teleportation) I create traps to get back near the lever. I eventually make it back to corridor, but am stranded between monsters I can't kill lest I get in touch with balors. This time I am nearer to chamber though. I start zapping wand of wonder, and happy days, I get teleport. I bless and drink 2 potions of boost perception to get a good look at lever chamber. I teleport in to the empty place nearest to lever I can see. A balor is next to me as I bash my way to the lever. I eventually make it, destroy the lever and use my last teleport to get to the stairs. I am extremely corrupted now, but alive and succesful.

Then I make my way up, don't kill the cat lord, just pass by it, and come through the DF shortcut. You can use that to go up, even when you don't have ring. I hear there's some noble creature that could rid me of my corruption, but I don't want to waste time chasing rumors. I want to get home.

But sadly my life ends in loneliness and isolation. But at least Ancardia is saved, and quick, that counts for something, right?



EDIT: I'll add some more turns counters which I remember. Tower was finished soon after 8000 turns, and I was in earth temple around turn 14000-something.

Sure, I stayed in the big room for a while getting herbs, but that's hardly repetitive when monsters attack you from all directions, beyond that there's really nothing that could be called farming by any measure. Now remove the speedrun goal, and do some of the various sidequests (High Kings Tomb, Druid Quest, UD run, Assassins Guild, properly explore CoC instead of skipping everything possible, Blue Dragon Caves, Rift, Water Dragon)... Even skipping herbs completely it wouldn't be too hard.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I've completed 6 lawful ultra endings, 2 neutral, 1 chaotic, and 6 regular endings.

I almost never play straight fighters, I've won with bards, priests, wizards, archers, a paladin, healer, assassin, and a weaponsmith. Almost always magic and missile focused. I think my first win was the classic dwarven priest. And numerous failed ultra endings after hitting level fifty with everything from wizards to farmers to monks. All my characters do melee a lot as well as cast and use missiles. And yes, I usually use polearms, I'll farm orcs for a good one if I need to.

Wizards can be a bit tough early due to lack of HP, but rock later on. Gnomish wizards/priests/healers are probably my favorite due to starting with extra talents. Grey elves are nices to start because of the elven chainmail as well. Starting with treasure hunter makes the game a lot easier by the end. Herbs are key. I usually go through 6-10 characters up to level 8 or so before I get one that I continue onward with (or don't die).

andy williams guidebook is crazy helpful. I confess I only got one character up to level 25 before I started reading it. Lot of fun figuring things out on my own before then, though.

My usual game start is: go to village, buy as much food as possible, go to outlaw village, kill something, learn pick-pocketting if neutral/evil and don't have it, walk over everything in the shop for some early ID's, go to small mountain cave (nw) until level 4, try to find stairs down, read the scrolls there to practice literacy while levelling, leave, wander countryside until raider is encountered (often die/starve at this point), kill raider (sometimes die here), collect reward, buy food, keep strained and satiated to improve strength. Explore druid cave (come back and kill druid later at level 10-12), explore puppy cave (sometimes die here), hopefully head back down through small mountain cave and out other side, otherwise head overland. Once a character actually reaches this stage I'm dedicated to trying for a win. If I haven't encountered any herb levels, altars, or gotten some good loot though, I'll sometimes just abandon and start over.

damn it makes me want to play.

peace,
-m

Boy that doesn't sound like much farming at all.

Use 'ball' spells, they are a must later in the game. Ice Ball rapes fire tower, lighting ball rapes golems and molochs (allright its useful against them....), fireball and acidball are useful too. And with high Wi You can clear really large areas too.

Dont enter forge without lighting ball, just forget it.

Also learn death ray if possible, its an awesome spell against strong monsters (like ancient dragons and such).

Righto- farm for rare spellbooks before even thinking of entering darkforge.

Problem is, wands of knocking aren't really that available on low levels (and on high levels it's not that relevant).
Dor kicking, you can always switch tactics to coward, although I cannot say if it has any real effect on door.

One fool proof method is to carry a huge rock or an anvil an throwi it to smash the door AND the trap, safely.

Better to just get detect traps early from the thieves guild.
Or play a dwarf.
Or get afew keys from the hooded ratling if playing a woman.

If you didn't get detect traps early from the thieves guild, you DESERVE to die to a stoneblock trap or have your ring of ice destroyed in an explosion. Woo.

Official ADOM forums are far worse, filled with oldfags that claim game is super easy (because they stay in the infinite dungeon until they've gotten a billion spellbooks, trained a bunch of skills up, and found a complete set of +3 armor, shit which is too grindy and tedious even for me to attempt.)

That's what you get for going to forums for spoilers. Instead of enjoying the discovery of ancient mysteries of ADOM for years, you're just mentally ticking off things that you need to do to to "win", and for that you engage in ridiculous self-abuse like farming stuff for hours.

That's probably why Thomas Biskup is so much against spoilers that he didn't release the source code of the game to avoid people learning its secrets.

So, far you were shown that most probably you're going to die no matter what. If you're not enjoying the gameplay, I recommend you to simply stop playing because you're not going to win just because you "deserve it".

 

[Damned Registrations]

What exactly is the point of doing any of the sidequests when you let Khelly die, rendering the entire convoluted quest chain pointless? And how the fuck do you manage to farm herbs in the big room without getting murdered by, say, blink dogs chain summoning until you are surrounded and literally can't move? Oh, right, rely on a massive amount of blind luck, like getting an early wish from a pool

If I were to just play ADOM 'for fun' every single game would end in the dwarven halls, which I'd reach at about level 6 or 7. Because I don't want to dick around with ants in the puppy cave, or saving some douchebag carpenter for the 50th time, or sneaking past a forest of bullshit tree monsters. And I'd have to run from half the shit I see because I'd have no armor (unless I started as a warrior, in which case I'd be running because I have no spells.) I'd also just basically autolose every character that didn't start with healing, candle or troll, because again, fuck repetitive earlygame quest bullshit.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

What exactly is the point of doing any of the sidequests when you let Khelly die, rendering the entire convoluted quest chain pointless?

Ultra-Endings were added only in one of the Gamma versions. They weren't there from the start. They are for crazy people who finished the game many times. Also, if I'm not mistaken individual quests have their own rewards.
I never did the Ultra-Ending. Just got the ordinary ending once.

And how the fuck do you manage to farm herbs in the big room without getting murdered by, say, blink dogs chain summoning until you are surrounded and literally can't move? Oh, right, rely on a massive amount of blind luck, like getting an early wish from a pool

Why would you farm herbs in the big room ?

If I were to just play ADOM 'for fun' every single game would end in the dwarven halls, which I'd reach at about level 6 or 7. Because I don't want to dick around with ants in the puppy cave, or saving some douchebag carpenter for the 50th time, or sneaking past a forest of bullshit tree monsters. And I'd have to run from half the shit I see because I'd have no armor (unless I started as a warrior, in which case I'd be running because I have no spells.) I'd also just basically autolose every character that didn't start with healing, candle or troll, because again, fuck repetitive earlygame quest bullshit.

There are multiple starting quests in Teryino and different places where you can go at the start. Carpenter quest and puppy quest aren't the only one.
Currently my Gray Elf Duellist is on level 8 and was neither in the carpenter dungeon, nor in little girl dungeon, nor in infinity dungeon, nor in caverns of chaos, nor was grinding anything.

 

[Johannes]

What exactly is the point of doing any of the sidequests when you let Khelly die, rendering the entire convoluted quest chain pointless? And how the fuck do you manage to farm herbs in the big room without getting murdered by, say, blink dogs chain summoning until you are surrounded and literally can't move? Oh, right, rely on a massive amount of blind luck, like getting an early wish from a pool

No, you survive by skill. Tactics settings, wands, stepping properly, using the spense you gather, sometimes leading stuff to the stairs, with drake barbarian also timing Mighty Blows and spitting where appropriate. The wish had almost no impact on survival. If you can't pull this off you've got only yourself to blame, I could do this consistently and am pretty sure I still can.

Not sure what Khelly surviving has to do with any questline in the game unless you want an Ultra ending (which are definitely a pain in the ass to do). He drops better stuff immediately if he lives, which is cool... But not essential in any way.

And Dwarven Halls aren't so bad, just have a wand of teleportation with you and you'll likely be fine. Which kinda goes for almost everything in the game outside the teleportation blocked levels.

If you don't want to do the earlygame quests, just pick a character that can skip them reliably.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you don't get herbs somewhere, half the races have like 8 toughness, which translates to about 50 hp at level 12 or so, or in other words, getting one shot by all sorts of shit. Alternately, 8 willpower makes ball spells worthless and leaves you horribly vulnerable to confusion.

And I'd be pretty fucking pissed if I went through a sidequest and got rewarded with something like a corrupted piece of crap that is only useful for an ending I can't get.

And if you sipped from a pool, you weren't relying on skill jackass. What if you'd gotten doomed? How is the fact that you didn't get doomed or teleportitis etc. 'skill'? You just felt the RNG vibes? I assume that is also why you didn't get fucked by door traps, pure skill, nothing to do with conveniently not having an explosion go off and wrecking your shit. Preserver drop also far more lucky than the wish tbh. There's no way in hell you have a decent winrate playing this way. You mention a 'most promising pc before this', but no mention of the actual number of times you had to run though the SMC before getting this character. There's certainly no skill involved in not having blink dogs spawn in the big room while you wait for herbs to grow enough to get crowned, and once they are there, getting rid of them is basically impossible unless you burn like 20 charges on a teleport wand to hunt them all down while they're blinking around. Good luck leading stuff to the stairs if 2-3 summoners show up at the same time near the stairs while you're at the other end of the cave dicking with herbs. Of course, I'm sure you controlled what spawned by pure skill.

Edit: Grey elf duelist without raising toughness. Let me know how that works out for you. I'd lay money that you die to either a vortex or some sort of breath weapon.

 

[circ]

I think I usually died to rust monsters and chimeras if those were a thing. I seem to remember chimera from something. Or is it manticore? Something that petrifies.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Gorgon, probably. Shame there are no cockatrices or I could make a witty joke about hard cocks and

 

[kentable]

Farming in the big room "easily" and safely usually requires pick axes or wands of door creation. The trick is to have either breeders or non teleporting non humanoid summoners that you can trap into a single area (bout 16 tiles iirc). Eventually once enough monsters get bred/summoned no more monsters will spawn. It's just a matter of setting up the area and wiping out everyone else. I've been playing it for almost 20 years and still can't be arsed to get past the Eternal Guardian.