Need help with a spear-throwing archer...

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

Hi all, the folowing post is a little spoily, so...
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Just a quick question - how should an archer tackle the tower of flames?

I recently managed to get a spear-wielding archer past the early game, I'm
hoping for an ultra ending, but I'm scared of trying the tower since all my
spears will burn. The rune covered trident isn't going to help much because
it doesn't return often enough to be reliable, and I daren't just tank the
place in case I get killed or corrupted to uselessness.

The only thing I could think of was doing the library and hoping for an
iceball spell, then using the water orb, sword of nonnak and amulet of
perseverance to boost my willpower to 50 and blast them with ball spells.
Trouble is, I didn't get iceball from the library.

I'm currently level 20, raven birthsign, with some nice items:
'protector' shield,
rune-covered trident,
10 scrolls of chaos resistance,
stack of 30+ spears,
level 12 thrown spear mastery,
water orb,
Seven league boots,
'perfect' herb garden (all herbs available in any number I wish)
Already given Khel the amulet of life saving




I have level 7 melee spears, so I could use the rune covered trident as a
standard weapon, but I'm not convinced I could do the tower with it, mainly
because it's 2-handed and I have been relying on dual-wielded shields for
most of the game (protector is very valuable too). I also have an eternium
spear which could help, no dragon slaying ammo though, and no skill with
bows or crossbows (I'm kinda challenging myself to make an archer without
relying on bows). Also no frostbolt spell.

I am intrinsically invisible (darkforge pools, though I never got a wish
like I'd hoped for), randomly teleport, have the 'close attunement to astral
space' corruption (as my only corruption), and control teleportation, plus I
have 2 wands of teleport and a teleport spell with about 96 points
remaining. I alo have a blessed fireproof blanket, but I've not found a ring
of ice in the last year or so of Adom playing, they're far too rare.

My main difficulty is carrying all the spears without a girdle of carrying,
and even with beast of burden it's difficult.

I'm thinking of maybe sitting in the animated forest with my ears plugged
hanging out with the banshee that I've already lured there, until a ring of
ice shows up, but that could take ages.

Any thoughts?

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

DarkFox wrote:
> Hi all, the folowing post is a little spoily, so...
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> Just a quick question - how should an archer tackle the tower of flames?

A spear throwing archer... I like that. I once got a knife-throwing
Dwarven Thief to the ToEF, but was unable to deal enough damage to
really do much of anything, and he got toasted by a Grue on the 4th
level. The lack of slaying spears/hammers/daggers make the
"non-traditional" missile weapons unattractive to use, even if you do
train up their levels.

First of all, I'd try to bless as many of the spears as possible. You
can use the repair scroll "bug," where you read a cursed scroll of
repair on a heap, then a blessed one on the same heap, and you end up
with a blessed heap of spears (cursed scroll breaks them all, blessed
one repairs + blesses all of them). This is so that they get the
benefits of being blessed (less prone to breakage [and melting away too,
I think], + 50% damage to undead/demon).

From your herb garden, gather a bunch of blessed Spenseweeds; they are
very valuable in the ToEF for healing.

As far as my experience goes (6 successful trips through the ToEF, maybe
2 deaths), a Ring of Ice isn't necessary; just keep your spears in your
inventory until you need them. It does take a game turn to swap out
missile weapons like that, but I think that's going to be your best bet.
Just melee what you can, and see if your spears can do enough damage
when thrown. You'll lose a couple to melting, no doubt, but if you keep
them protected behind a few Blessed Fireproof Blankets (I once did the
ToEF with just 1 Blessed Fireproof Blanket and had no problem with it),
you should be alright.

I think your most challenging task will be having a +to hit high enough
to pass the DV check... I don't really have a solution to that other
than "throw more spears". Melee would be really really difficult,
especially if you've gone most of the game with dual shiels, and have
low weapon skill levels.



> My main difficulty is carrying all the spears without a girdle of carrying,
> and even with beast of burden it's difficult.

This is probably going to be less of a problem when tackling the ToEF,
because you're probably going to want to drop all non-essential items,
including any backup armor, scrolls, wands, excess food, etc.

It's going to be an uphill battle, but I think it can be done with
proper preparation. Good luck.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

"Nick Strnad" <strnadSPAM.2@SPAMosu.edu> wrote in message
news:ddbh3i$i87$1@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu...
> DarkFox wrote:
>> Hi all, the folowing post is a little spoily, so...
>> A
>> R
>> C
>> H
>> E
>> R
>> S
>>
>> H
>> A
>> V
>> E
>>
>> S
>> O
>> M
>> E
>>
>> T
>> R
>> O
>> U
>> B
>> L
>> E
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>> W
>> H
>> E
>> N
>>
>> T
>> H
>> E
>> Y
>>
>> G
>> E
>> T
>>
>> H
>> O
>> T...
>>
>> Just a quick question - how should an archer tackle the tower of flames?

Well, I got my answer - Use invisibility, lure the ancient chaos wyrm off
the level, so that I can use teleportation to my advantage, keep my HP high,
and then...
Kill him with a SINGLE throw of the rune covered trident.
Obviously he is classed as a demon.

Still, I had a close call from those energy blasts of his, so it wasn't that
easy, just quick. I'm thinking of going back and getting treasure for all
those fire demons. Hmm...

Now to answer Nick:

> First of all, I'd try to bless as many of the spears as possible.

This advice helped. I didn't bless any, I just used my heap of 11 blessed
spears and that did the job.

> can use the repair scroll "bug," where you read a cursed scroll of repair
> on a heap, then a blessed one on the same heap, and you end up with a
> blessed heap of spears (cursed scroll breaks them all, blessed one repairs
> + blesses all of them). This is so that they get the benefits of being
> blessed (less prone to breakage [and melting away too, I think], + 50%
> damage to undead/demon).

This is excellent advice, thnaks.

> From your herb garden, gather a bunch of blessed Spenseweeds; they are
> very valuable in the ToEF for healing.

Indeed, with copy/paste they are almost fun to rub in like that...
UV%a UV%a UV%a UV%a UV%a

Since I have no herbalism skill though, I can only get uncursed. Still, out
of a heap of 200 I only actually used 40

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

I've re-ordered your post so I can address a non-spoily point first:

I failed miserably to keep a straight face when I read that
on Wed, 10 Aug 2005 17:31:02 +0100, DarkFox <darkfox@uscm.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

(snip spoily details on what to rub)

> Indeed, with copy/paste they are almost fun to rub in like that...
> UV%a UV%a UV%a UV%a UV%a

If you use ADOM Sage (obtainable from www.jbc.edu/~josh/adom-sage/,
server seems to be down at the moment...) you can use the 'repeat last
command' feature to do stuff like this easily. You could also map the
set of commands to a macro and use that. Of course, without Sage you
could also equip the spoily items in your tool slot and just use 'u';
this has the disadvantage that they're no longer protected by certain
other spoily items.

now some space for a spoiler regarding repairing things...

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>> can use the repair scroll "bug," where you read a cursed scroll of repair
>> on a heap, then a blessed one on the same heap, and you end up with a
>> blessed heap of spears (cursed scroll breaks them all, blessed one repairs
>> + blesses all of them). This is so that they get the benefits of being
>> blessed (less prone to breakage [and melting away too, I think], + 50%
>> damage to undead/demon).
>
> This is excellent advice, thnaks.

For the record, I never exploit that bug, because it feels way too much
like cheating to me. I'm positive a lot of people feel the same. If
you want to use it, go ahead; but it might be prudent to mention it in
any YAVPs.

regards,
Leon (aka Oliphaunt)

--
I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did
the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much, of
course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the
century was going to end. -- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

Léon Planken wrote:

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> For the record, I never exploit that bug, because it feels way too much
> like cheating to me. I'm positive a lot of people feel the same. If
> you want to use it, go ahead; but it might be prudent to mention it in
> any YAVPs.

Yeah, I've never actually used that bug... it does seem kind of on the
iffy side of cheating, even if the game is acting exactly as it was
programmed to do in that situation. However, in such a difficult /
uncommon situation as "spear-throwing vs. ACW", I thought it would be
prudent to add it as an available, if unsavory, option.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

"Nick Strnad" <strnadSPAM.2@SPAMosu.edu> wrote in message
news:ddfsgo$srm$1@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu...
> Léon Planken wrote:
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>> For the record, I never exploit that bug, because it feels way too much
>> like cheating to me. I'm positive a lot of people feel the same. If
>> you want to use it, go ahead; but it might be prudent to mention it in
>> any YAVPs.
>
> Yeah, I've never actually used that bug... it does seem kind of on the
> iffy side of cheating, even if the game is acting exactly as it was

> programmed to do in that situation.

Well, it's not a bad thing that I had no scrolls of repair to do it then.

As for repeating commands - I prefer the clipboard and copy/paste method
(and I do use adomsage). It lets you set up, for example, an action that
consists of running around your garden picking all the herbs and cancelling
any attempts at teleportation, cutting down all that boring gardening time
(out of character time).

I also use the following regularly:
ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt in(a
to equip throwing spears. It lets you clear a room of unthreatening monsters
like spiders without having to spend ages reloaing through inventory screens
(since melee weapons do not auto-reload). It also double up as a macro to
reload the next stack of spears even when you *are* being cautious and
firing each shot seperately.


> However, in such a difficult / uncommon situation as "spear-throwing vs.
> ACW", I thought it would be prudent to add it as an available, if
> unsavory, option.

Actually, the raven birthsign has made it pretty easy.

After getting the fire orb I ran down the dungeon with absolutely no
problem. Did the blue dragon caves while wearing my 7 league boots (I have 2
rings of djinni summoning back in darkforge), finally conceding and using
bows/crossbows with slaying ammo. I then realised I was only level 33 and
thus couldn't yet get the red trident.

I decided, at level 33, to go do the mana temple for experience, again
relying on slaying ammo to complete the task (and 4 blessed scrolls of
charging + wand of fireballs).

Still only level 35 after that, I decided to just go on down to D:47 for
experience. On the way I found a threatening room of greater titans, at
least 30 of them. Checking my pack I had 28 quarrels of giant slaying, so a
short moment later I was level 45.

Now I've got the red trident, which will be a nice partner for my
rune-covered trident in killing Andor. I've got the quickling tree, unicorn
glades, then the big plunge to victory. Wish me luck.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

DarkFox <darkfox@uscm.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

> "Nick Strnad" <strnadSPAM.2@SPAMosu.edu> wrote in message
> news:ddfsgo$srm$1@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu...
> > L?on Planken wrote:
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> >> For the record, I never exploit that bug, because it feels way too much
> >> like cheating to me. I'm positive a lot of people feel the same. If
> >> you want to use it, go ahead; but it might be prudent to mention it in
> >> any YAVPs.
> >
> > Yeah, I've never actually used that bug... it does seem kind of on the
> > iffy side of cheating, even if the game is acting exactly as it was

> > programmed to do in that situation.

> Well, it's not a bad thing that I had no scrolls of repair to do it then.


I think that scrolls work as should. Just a kind of magic. And perfectly
logical in case of spears. However some items like potions, or glass
wands should be destroyed when broken. Just like they are destroyed
when kicked.

brojek.