ADOM (and other roguelikes)

[Azarkon]

Not to mention ADOM, unlike most roguelikes, has multiple actual endings, including ultimate endings where instead of defeating the Elder Kaos God (which is already a huge step up from the "normal" ending where you close the chaos portal), you become him (alternatively, you can become his arch-nemesis). If you're into the whole non-linear gameplay thing, ADOM is it among roguelikes.

I really can't understand why people would say that Nethack has more depth than ADOM. ADOM pretty much set the bar for what roguelikes can do, at least for me. Nethack might be a more entertaining game, depending on your preference, but no roguelike has the diversity of features, items, monsters, dungeons, lore, etc. that ADOM has. Except maybe TOME, which has gotten alot of attention as of late.

 

[Azarkon]

Wait until you run into herbs.

I have. My only beef with them is that, unless I'm missing something, alchemy is way too disconnected from herbs to make it satisfying. All of my recipes require things I've never (in 50% of the cases) come across or things that are very precious. And then they make things like cure poison. I guess the recipes are randomized, but mine have wound up being kind of blah. I think it would've been more fun if the raw herbs were less effective and they played more of a role in potionmaking (right now I feel like I wasted all my investment in Alchemy).

Herbs aren't really for alchemy in ADOM. Growing and eating herbs will "train" your stats, which make it ultimately possible to max them out without potions of raise stats (which are extremely rare in ADOM). Some herbs, when blessed, also serve as some of the best food in the game, and others cure poison/disease, among other afflictions.

I think the purpose of this design is to offer something for non-alchemy users, since herbs are, understandably, one of the original "ADOM trademark" features and are central to the success of the Farmer class, who are supposed to mass produce these things.

EDIT: My favorite pasttime in the days when I played ADOM was to bless scrolls of familiar summoning and scum until I get an emperor lich or greater balor out of them. Nothing like beating the game where I never have to do anything, as my pet solos all the monsters and bosses while summoning hosts of cannon fodder (monsters summoned by friendly monsters in ADOM count as neutral monsters that will fight for the summoner).

 

[Gwendo]

ADOM is simply the best roguelike game available. I've tried Nethack (didn't like it very much), Angband, ToME, Rogue, GearHead 1&2, DeadCold, Unreal World, DoomRL, DiabloRL and some other more obscure ones.

GearHead 1 (and 1 only), URW and DoomRL are the ones I advise to take a look, besides ADOM.

DeadCold is unfinished, almost worthless to spend time playing due to its incompleteness, but it had the potential to be a great roguelike game. A sci-fi roguelike game! It's from the same author of GearHead. I hope he will revive it someday.

 

[Higher Game]

ADOM is the king of roguelike games. Even Nethack fails to reach to ADOM's greatness.

 

[Human Shield]

Are there any graphical or interface plugins for ADOM?

 

[Gwendo]

Thankfuly no.

 

[Zomg]

Wow, ADOM appears to get a lot of support over Nethack in this thread. I don't think I want to actually make any apologetics for Nethack, so, yeah. I'll just register the opinion that the game has some really bewilderingly clever interactions along the lines of WBC's poisoned meat example, particularly in the use of Nethack's signature polymorphing system. I can nerdishly remember some fairly old Nethack anecdotes in detail, just from how extreme the interactions were.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

DeadCold is unfinished, almost worthless to spend time playing due to its incompleteness, but it had the potential to be a great roguelike game. A sci-fi roguelike game! It's from the same author of GearHead. I hope he will revive it someday.

DeadCold had a lot of potential, yeah, but I think the superhero rogulike he mentioned at one point (Nova City?) would be an even cooler idea.

 

[wendigo]

The different "feel" one gets when playing Nethack v. ADOM may come from the extremely different dev. style -- "design by committee" for Nethack, "enlightened despot" for ADOM. Nethack might be more robust, but ADOM is more *focused*. I definetly tilt towards ADOM; Nethack's superior monster AI is really the only thing that an ADOMonaut has to envy.

Supposing JADE ever comes thru (seems iffy to me) it'll probably be the best thing since... uh... ADOM.

Anyway, which races and classes do you chaps play with?

(playing version 1.0)

Trollish Elementalist has to be my all time fav, though you tend to get hosed at the sinister library with this combo-- maybe with elementalists in general, come to think of it.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Are there any graphical or interface plugins for ADOM?

something like this?
http://www.jbc.edu/~josh/adom-sage/

(Just stumbled across this on Google)

 

[Gwendo]

I think not. I suppose he was talking about graphic tiles.

 

[wendigo]

...an interesting util, tho. Good find.

The install for this sure is strange. Does Mr. Biskup approve? He seems to keep the source close to his chest & it looks like the folks involved w/ the Linux port might be screwing around. The kids screw around too much.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid= ... 1&q=biskup

 

[fraunclein]

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=6458000638798026851&q=biskup

Hey, he killed that wild cat over there even when he could have just locked it behind the door...omg liek noobz!

Oh, and I'm certainly happy that ADOM doesn't really feature backround music by Dragonriders of Metal Kingdom or whatever that artist is called. Would like totally kill my immarszhun.

 

[Castanova]

I just started NetHack about 2 months ago. My best character (Barb) killed Medusa but then got toasted by the Quest baddie (Thoth Amon or something).. I didn't have magic resistance (doh!).

The game can be really fun but I feel like it's really an exercise in trial and error mostly in the realm of resistances (which is not too much fun). You can read spoilers up the wazoo but some things you just need to learn yourself.

Like my second best char yet (Samurai)... I find my first black dragon and, not paying attention, I stand down a straight hallway from him. ZAP. Half my hard-earned equipment is disintegrated. Live and learn I think that was the last resistance I had to "learn" about though so hopefully my next good character gets much deeper.

I booted up ADOM recently and was simultaneously awed and daunted by the scope. It seemed like it had about 3 times the number of keyboard commands that NetHack does. Also, the less discrete character classes and the flood of skills and feats meant that I felt like I was only playing about 10% of the game.

I read some stuff about how you dont need to use every command and skill in ADOM and that kind of turned me off... since I feel like roguelikes should be more of a test of resourcefulness.

 

[Elwro]

Frankly, for me ADOM's interface is way better than Nethack's, especially when it comes to inventory.
And of course you don't need to use all the commands; but you can and all of them are useful.

 

[Surgey]

SLASH'EM FTW

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Gearhead, you jews

 

[SanguinePenguin]

If for some reason you thought dopers don't play these kind of games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGNV6JKe5jc

Speaking of which, I've been messing around with Nethack lately and from reading a few forums all the depth seems to be reduced to following a set amount of optimal steps + hope. Could be I'm just missing something here but, I haven't really found a decent guide that's not just a list of spoilers.

 

[RuySan]

Has anyone ever tried either Mordor or Demise? I like both, but they're unforgiving hard

 

[Binary]

ADOM is great, but I also like TOME (Tales of Middle Earth).

Not because of the game itself but because of the "Lost Soul" playing mode: You start in the house of mandos, lvl 50 (equivalent as lvl 50 in Angband), as a level 1, and you have to escape.

I also enjoyed Mordor. It's one of those games that I dont know why I dont get back to it occasionally

 

[Elwro]

Has anyone ever tried either Mordor or Demise? I like both, but they're unforgiving hard

I tried both. I liked them, but they were unforgiving hard.

Frankly, I really had fun with Demise. Unfortunately, I always had problems with the patch (to play multi iirc) and the Polish version of the game. Also, the game crashed quite frequently and occassionally corrupted the saves. It could've been a true gem were those glaring issues fixed.

 

[RuySan]

Has anyone ever tried either Mordor or Demise? I like both, but they're unforgiving hard

I tried both. I liked them, but they were unforgiving hard.

Frankly, I really had fun with Demise. Unfortunately, I always had problems with the patch (to play multi iirc) and the Polish version of the game. Also, the game crashed quite frequently and occassionally corrupted the saves. It could've been a true gem were those glaring issues fixed.

the version that i have is patched and i never seen one single bug in it.

 

[Elwro]

Hah, now that's perfect.

I bought the Polish, box version of Demise. It was buggy as hell. I applied a patch and the game became a mess of English and Polish, iirc. And I could never, ever connect to the multi server.
Considering I bought the game, I downloaded Demise from eMule and also had no luck 1)playing the multi and 2)with bugs.
Could you tell me what is the number of version you're playing?