First Victory: Grnia the Cornac Summoner (Normal/Adventure)

[jbd]

http://te4.org/characters/144078/tome/d ... e66a6e1ab3

Random observations:

1.) Found Inertial Twins ring early, kept it the entire game. I seriously didn't find anything I felt was better and I enjoyed the 100% knockback resistance.

2.) Did a complicated strategy with the early skill points where I used the fact you can retract the last 4 skill points to get the war hound high for the early game back take back the skill points later. (I found on a different run the war hound was having too much trouble getting in damage; still useful to summon for the grand arrival reducing physical resistance.)

3.) +.4 summoning (augmentation) +.4 summoning (distance) necklace turned out to be insane. I think it's the first time I've found an ability item that helped me like that. After that it was constant waves of fire drakes (with an occasional flamespitter, but it was only later in the game did I realize how good the reduction to fire resistance on grand entrance was).


4.) I had the most trouble at the end. The Guardian's Totem turned out to be essential; I hadn't even used it much because of arcade disruption, but in seriousness the only thing I was using was a Chant from one of the escorts, so on my second to last life I took a Hail Mary and it switched to it. The positioning of the sorcerers on my third iteration helped a lot too. I guess I needed them to be a.) close together and b.) near one of those wall cross things.

5.) I tried closing one of the portals during the battle but couldn't. Stepped on, nothing happened. Bug? At least I got an achievement for it.

6.) Also the final battle I spent several minutes on each move. I don't think I've ever played even a roguelike with that kind of intensity (and I've beaten ADOM twice).

Speaking of, I'm probably going to get at a few other roguelikes I've been neglecting lately before I get back to this -- maybe normal nightmare mode. Anything super-overpowered to recommend? Cornac Summoner rocked but it wasn't like a one-button win. I had to use a lot of tactics.

[Micbran]

I too noticed that the hound seems to die before it can actually do anything. It's biggest impact would probably the amount of physical resistance it reduces with grand summon, a perfect complement to drake and Minotaur. As for the portals, you can close them by using the orbs. But I usually just say screw it and go for the achievement. That being said, I would definitely suggest closing the portals as any high mobility class, though or any class that can't deal with big crowds easily. Those multi-hued wyrms hit like trucks.

Quite frankly, I'm curious about how much of a use you got out of not going antimagic. I always see antimagic as a boon to any willpower building class.

[jbd]

In prior runs I've found antimagic annoying and stopping some cool abilities/stuff I wanted to use.

In retrospect, in this run it would have been just fine.