Back to the slaughter.

Im getting burnt out on ADOM 1.2 pre 10. after I kill off my current wizard Im going to fire up some IVAN. I want to get an early Mjolak and enchant it up. It's still my favorite way to play, just slaughtering Mofo's with my giant evil halberd.

Mjolak is my weapon of choice too. Builds up arm strength too. Latest character is dual whips of thievery though, wanted to try something different

All you people and your Mjolaks, and here's me who always ends up using dull iron daggers. Or Vermis, which is one of my favourites.

Vermis's teleportation gets annoying sometimes. I just want you to DIE, stop disappearing!

But seriously, iron daggers? I've definitely never beat it without some kind of special weapon

I've gotten right up to Elpuri multiple times by dual wielding daggers and hardening/enchanting them whenever possible.
Then again, my playstyle is more focused on underhanded tactics and item and wand abuse than it is on actually fighting things fair and square.

Vermis is fun if you have telecontrol, and has saved my ass quite a lot.

I still love my winning strategy. Started with a Turok. Got a Neerc se'Ulb. Trained aSTR until I could wield both... then I got another Neerc. Proceeded to turn everyone in my path into mushy piles of life-drained goo. Also proceeded to starve to death three times between GC and Attnam while carrying Elpuri's head.

I still have never been able to get Neeeerc. I did the dual whips thing once, but i had cerumen scummed so i could change them to angel hair. unfortunatly my gnome wizard is on its way to an ultra, so I will be a few more days until i can play.

The Ivan gods must be perusing the forums. Shortly after posting i fired a magic missle the wrong direction in the water temple and knocked myself down to -327 HPs. :^( so i decided to fire up an IVAN victim. UT2 had a bones with some decent swag, 10 steps later, a magic lamp. Hello Mjolak. clear jenny and sprint to attnam to find a helemt of uinderstanding and wand of mirroring in the shop. 2 scrolls of chargining in the library. Niiiice.

AAAARRRGGHHH!!!!! no fire resistance, but i did have a wand of poly., so i went back to the ut to collect items to create a 5x5 line of items to try and generate a ring or cloak. was stressed and didnt realize - an imp showed up and one shotted my head off. the end. no bones. GRRRAHHHH!!!!

next time up - found a runed whip +3 and an ommel hair whip +2 in UT1. plus dexterity gloves and other goodies. will descend to UT2 tonight when i return home.

the RNG continue to haunt me on UT3 I found a bones with turox and made the switch. now i am running around with my +5 turox on GC2 fighting wolves. my idea is to train my astr up to 13 so I can dual wield it with one of those whips.

Its not quite the same as destroying mofos with a +9 Mjolak, but i do like the idea of flatenning someones skull with a mace and then having a massive explosion go off.

My only wish was that its explosions didn't affect you and became more powerful with enchantments, similar to Legifer's prayer explosions and their power as compared to his favor.

Sadly, I always find Turox in UT and end up killing myself because I'm stupid.

my +5 cloak of fire resistance seems to be working fine against the splosions. will dual wielding turox and a whip train both dex aND ASTR?

STR on one hand, DEX on the other. What you see is the medium between the two, I believe.

Hmmmmm just found another Turox.....should I dual wield or will that send the danger level through the roof>

OK - Ive cleared down to GC 4 - I want to pause and think of the best wayto move forward, some advice sought.

I am wielding a +7 turox, but have in my bag another turox, a broken Mjolak, and an octiron staff of wonderous smells. should i switch to mjolak, dual wield Turox(eS) or go with the staff?

also i am training Astr really slow, would I train it faster if I was swinging Mjolak vs. Turox?

Dual-wielding Turoxi(sp?) isn't going to win the game, as any wands/scrolls you keep in your inventory outside a box is very likely to break/burn at some point. Effectively this means that you either burn through teleportation sources very rapidly, or using a teleport takes one additional turn for retrieving them from the box. Potions might also be in danger from the explosions, though I'm not completely sure whether Turox was capable of breaking those.

GC4 isn't too far down to change weapon skill yet, so both Mjolak and the staff are both possible choices. Mjolak is easier to play with, but forces you to the chaotic side of things. It's also more effective as a weapon off the bat.

However, the staff can arguably be a better weapon in the long run as with careful play it effectively conveys the same buffs as Justifier does. The clouds are quite tough to manage properly and require you to think out your fights very carefully to keep hostiles out of the blue clouds. 1-wide tunnels will become nasty places to fight in, as chasing mobs will force you to move through the red clouds and backing up lets them get to the blue clouds. With patience, planning and a good lot of enchants, you might find more success with it than Mjolak.

maybe

If you've got enchants and intend to continue past Elpuri, I'd go with Mjolak. Otherwise, keep the Turox and maybe possibly even dual wield them for maximum explosive entertainment value. Because more explosions > less explosions.

Regarding Astr, Mjolak trains it much faster than Turox does due to Turox only requiring 13 Astr to wield with one hand. For Mjolak it's much higher, though I can't recall how high.

its all moot because a skeleton 1-shotted me in the chest in UT4 - SO ANNOYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

is killing bears a bad idea? I always got the feelingthere was some cosmic connection between the death of bears and how hard the game gets.

Nope, don't think I've ever noticed any connection between killing bears and nastier spawns.

What were you running for armor? Seeing as you're getting one-shotted by mobs that should normally be very weak, your AV might have been a tad too low for your other gear and stats. I don't think I've ever gotten one-shotted by skeletons, imps and the likes after like GC2 myself.

The one thing I disliked about LIVAN was that there were "skeleton of a ____" (similar to how zombies work) which seemed to be a bit out of line with the current danger level. Skeleton of a guard on UT2? Yeah, pretty scrappy.

Yeah that often led to early deaths for me in LIVAN.

JoKe, pretty sure i have been one-shotted by a zombie past GC7... but i think he had picked up a mithril halberd +8 from an orc

Yeah, zombies of <insertnastyhumanoidhere> are a whole different matter. Especially your own corpses-turned-to-zombies.

Oh yes, and hostile clones/mirrors of yourself. Gotta be careful where you fire those wands.
The purchasable slave in Attnam can get pretty damn deadly too, on account of him using the same code as the player.

I need to stop drinking from fountains. The charecter mentioned above drank from a fountain on GC4 and got sucked to GC 6. Managed to escape downstairs but forgot about the <spoily> hanging out there. By th time i realized what was going on it was too late. Super frustrating because after I died I realized I could have easily dispatched said creature. No bones :^( .

Next game after that I drank from a fountain on UT1 and got sucked to UT 3. promptly found a lamp (yay!) which generated a hostible Genie :^(. managed to escape via wand of tele and get to attnam. still alive , got the arcanite plate mail and an angel from atavus. Woke up this morning and reliazed I wasted the angel because i could have taken him back to UT3 to kill the genie.

any suggestions for killing the genie? I would like his nifty belt.

Wands. LOTS of wands, especially wands of striking and wands of haste for yourself. If you've only been so far as UT3 your chances of beating him are pretty low I'd wager, even with an arcanite plate.
Maybe you could practice more with your chosen weapon on the earlier levels first, or even just leave him alone, run away and come back to deal with him later?