YAGBU: applied herbology
Przemyslaw Brojewski
Hello there.
This post explains how to raise some of your stats to about 50.
It contains 1 piece of genuinely new information. (at least,
unpublished so far). The rest is just the consequences.
It is extremely spoily.
Many thanks to Dark Fox for initial inspiriation.
Stop reading now, it's not fun to have
overpowered character in the early mid game.
Still here?
I'd say, you are a bit stubborn.
Take off that amulete of perseverance of yours.
You appear to be not listening to me.
Did
I
mention
already
that
this
post
is extremely spoily?
-----------------------------------------------------------
1. Known facts.
- you can train your strength naturally to 20, provided
you go strained! for a long time, and rely on herbs to
restore your dexterity.
- you can train your Wi, To and Dx up to 25 with basic use of herbs.
- you can raise your St to 20 using lots of ogre corpses
and to at least 25 using lots of giant corpses.
- you can raise your Le up to 25 with crystals of knowledge.
- you can raise your Pe to 20 with potions of carrot juice, and
then receive +5 bonus if you happen to find carrot room.
- you can train your stats with Garth.
If you temporarily lower your stats, you can raise the above limits
for herbs corpses and crystals, natural training, and reduce costs
of training with Garth. Unfortunately, you can't reduce cost of
trainig your Charisma this way, Lowering Ch makes Garth squeezing
more money from you.
2. The new fact:
It is only important, to have your stats lowered _at the moment
of training happening_. If the stats is not lowered when ADOM makes
check if the stat can be increased, it will still be increased.
It may require more training, e.q. 5 blessed morgia roots
to increase Wi, 10 to increase potential, but it will work.
3. How to lower your stats:
- becoming sick gives you:
-2 to St,
-3 to Wi,
-5 to Dx,
-5 to To,
- becoming starved gives you:
-4 to St
- starving for long halves St, Le, Wi and Dx, after the initial
penalties have been taken into account. For example, if your
character has 31 St, and then becomes sick and then starves the St
can be lowered to:
(31 - 2 - 4) / 2 = 12. (as always in ADOM, fractions are rounded
down)
Thus, you can still you ogre corpse to increase your St, with some
luck.
4. Theoretical limits:
stat long becoming becoming limit
starving starved sick
St, ogres only: (19 * 2 + 1) + 4 + 2 = 45
St, giants: (24 * 2 + 1) + 4 + 2 = 57
Wi: (24 * 2 + 1) + 3 = 51
Dx: (24 * 2 + 1) + 5 = 54
Le, crystals: (24 * 2 + 1) = 49
To: + 5 = 30
5. The practice.
Currently, I play human wizard. His starting stats hoovered above
or below 10, save for Le, which was 24 and thus allowed it to survive
the early game entirely on magic. I walk through all its stats and
descrie how they were raised.
St(31). Raised from 9 to 20 in about 20 game days, just by walking
strained! all the time. Dx lowered by one in the proces, but I did not
care as I discovered herbs in the PC. Then I became sick and trained it
to 22. Meanwhile I got crowned and postcrowned with stomafilia
herbs, as there was an altar in the PC too. It takes about 40
blessed stomafilias to get crowned (I used one prayer to restore
my HP) and then it takes about 30 blessed stomafilias to get postcrowned.
then I had too low level for another postcrowning. Then I cleared
ogre tribe, become sick, starved, ate ogres and my St is now 31.
Waiting for more corpses.
Le(31). Nothing special here. I'm describing it for completness only.
I started with ring of mental stability +4, and got one increase
from reading books, and 2 increases from a poton of learning.
I have not been given a chance to verify crystals of knowledg,
having only useless piece of green glass, But I expect them
to work as well.
Wi(38). Trained in a usual fashion up to 25, then I become sick
and raised it to 28. Then stopped scumming and proceeded with
a game. whenever I noticed that my stats improved, I'd hid in a corner
somewhere, get sick, starved till my Wi was 24, ate morgia root,
starved a bit till Wi was again at 24, and reapeat. After that,
I would immediately eat curaria mancox, and cooked lizard.
While Wi increases, the 4 hebrs for increasing stat and 8 for
increasing potential does not work all the time. Every 5 - 6 increases,
you have to repeat training so that it works. I tried eating 6
herbs to increase stat, and 12 to increase potential, and the game
would still not increase the stat immediately. But it would after
repeating the training.
Dx(48). Trained in exactly the same way as willpower. The only
difference is that using 3 blessed herbs to increase stat and 5 to
increase potential is more then enough, as the game would allow
second increase without further training. I kept using 3 and 5 herbs
because I harvested about 300 blessed moss patches of marreilon.
To(36). Trained up to 30 with herbs and using sickness. Unfortunately,
starvaton does not affect toughness. then I ate few wights,
protecting my alignment with amulet of balance and order. Needles
to say, I was sick while eating them. Got To raised to 32.
the remaining 4 points are from bracers of thoughness.
Ch(14). Payed 5000gp to raise it from 12.
Ap(1). Don't care. it's at 9 after drinking potion of beauty. I wear
Ancient mummy wrapping. I was crowned with robbes of resistance,
but wrapping has that nice see invisible, death reay, sleep and
confusion resistance.
Ma(31). I cast revelation from a book whenever my PP are at max.
earlier I used to cast acid bolt from a book.
Pe(14). Payed about 8000gp to get it increased twice. I got three
potions of carrot juice, but wait for one more before I bless them
and quaff them. I wear orcish helmet {Pe -2}. Anyone willing to
sell the one with {Pe -5}? :-)
6. Drawbacks.
- It is a bit risky to get sick and starved in a randomly chosen
dungeon. One trainig session (getting sick, getting starved
using moss, eating morgia, using crystals, eating corpses) takes
about 200 turns. Plenty of time for out-of-depth monstet to
appear and score a critical hit for more then 100HP. Be lucky,
have fate smile.
- Harvesting huge amounts of herbs for later training takes lots
of time. It's been 65 game days, I'm level 19, have yet to do
Darkforge, ToEF and library. I spent about 20 game days harvesting
herbs. And I almost never had to wait for them to regrow. First
I spent 15 game days just harvesting herbs and getting St to 22 in
the PC. Then 2 game days to pacify big room and form herbs there
into harvestable patterns. Then at least 3 game days to harvest
some more herbs, as I run out of morgia roots.
7. Advanteges.
Awesome stats. Lots of money -- pepper petals sell for 100gp each.
I squeezed about 30000gp out of Munxip, keeping it broke all the time.
And I had lots of herbs to sell to Leggot, and then to Waldenbrook.
If it wasn't for Waldo, I'd end up with lots of herbs I couldn't sell.
Well, It's your choice. But I think it's cute you don't have to
walk sick and starved all the time to get your stats increased.
It is enough to do so only for short period of training.
Once again, many thanks to Dark Fox for initial inspiration.
brojek.
Malte Helmert
> Hello there.
> This post explains how to raise some of your stats to about 50.
> It contains 1 piece of genuinely new information. (at least,
> unpublished so far). The rest is just the consequences.
>
> It is extremely spoily.
> Many thanks to Dark Fox for initial inspiriation.
>
>
> Stop reading now, it's not fun to have
> overpowered character in the early mid game.
>
>
> Still here?
>
>
> I'd say, you are a bit stubborn.
>
>
> Take off that amulete of perseverance of yours.
>
>
> You appear to be not listening to me.
>
>
>
> Did
> I
> mention
> already
>
> that
>
> this
>
>
> post
>
> is extremely spoily?
>
>
> It is only important, to have your stats lowered _at the moment
> of training happening_. If the stats is not lowered when ADOM makes
> check if the stat can be increased, it will still be increased.
> It may require more training, e.q. 5 blessed morgia roots
> to increase Wi, 10 to increase potential, but it will work.
Very interesting, thanks!
Malte
Jukka Kuusisto
>Very interesting, thanks!
One point I didn't see mentioned is corruption. If you have, for
example, -12 to dexterity from corruptions, you can train dex
effectively to 37 with herbs even without other tricks. Added to
the other methods it seems that you can gain pretty high dexterity
this way, as dex-lowering corruptions are quite common.
-Jukka
--
Jukka Kuusisto
Reese Shadro David
> Hello there.
> This post explains how to raise some of your stats to about 50.
> It contains 1 piece of genuinely new information. (at least,
> unpublished so far). The rest is just the consequences.
Nice work! This is definitely lacking in the Guidebook, and my
anecdotal experience points to similar reasearch.
S
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Didn't know about the "really starving" state. That's news.
> Le(31). Nothing special here. I'm describing it for completness only.
> I started with ring of mental stability +4, and got one increase
> from reading books, and 2 increases from a poton of learning.
> I have not been given a chance to verify crystals of knowledg,
> having only useless piece of green glass, But I expect them
> to work as well.
Unfortunately, it seems crystals of knowledge don't seem to work, at
least for the sickness trick. Didn't get a chance to try the starving
trick, as my current character met a gorgon at an inopportune moment
:-(
Wim Benthem
<bro...@zly.kis.p.lodz.pl> wrote:
>
>Hello there.
>This post explains how to raise some of your stats to about 50.
>It contains 1 piece of genuinely new information. (at least,
>unpublished so far). The rest is just the consequences.
>
>It is extremely spoily.
>Many thanks to Dark Fox for initial inspiriation.
>
>
>Stop reading now, it's not fun to have
>overpowered character in the early mid game.
>
>
>Still here?
>
>
>I'd say, you are a bit stubborn.
>
>
>Take off that amulete of perseverance of yours.
>
>
>You appear to be not listening to me.
>
>
>
>Did
>I
>mention
>already
>
>that
>
>this
>
>
>post
>
>is extremely spoily?
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>
>3. How to lower your stats:
>
> - becoming sick gives you:
> -2 to St,
> -3 to Wi,
> -5 to Dx,
> -5 to To,
>
> - becoming starved gives you:
> -4 to St
>
> - starving for long halves St, Le, Wi and Dx, after the initial
> penalties have been taken into account. For example, if your
> character has 31 St, and then becomes sick and then starves the St
> can be lowered to:
>
> (31 - 2 - 4) / 2 = 12. (as always in ADOM, fractions are rounded
> down)
>
> Thus, you can still you ogre corpse to increase your St, with some
> luck.
>
Trying this I got a rather comical situation at Garths'. My trollish wizard
hadn't found a girdle of carrying yet, and had become Overburdened! while
starving, and Garth didn't want to step next to him.
Imagine a giant, but nearly starving troll, lying on the floor, still clasping
all his possessions, a few dwarvish children around, just waiting to pinch a
climbing set when he drops it on the floor, garth 2 squares away at his desk
, immersed in the morning paper doesn't hear the whisper of "could you please
step over hear and train me?"
Another option for training is becoming Old or very Old. Of course this is
very risky, but if it happens anyway, try to exploit it before trying to
become younger again.
With a long-lived character who starts out young you could let yourself age to
grown-up, wich raises several stats and doesn't have any drawbacks AFAIK.
--
Wim Benthem
Michael Will
>
>Hello there.
>This post explains how to raise some of your stats to about 50.
>It contains 1 piece of genuinely new information. (at least,
>unpublished so far). The rest is just the consequences.
.
.
.
.
.
>1. Known facts.
> - you can train your Wi, To and Dx up to 25 with basic use of herbs.
Dx will go to 27 and possibly higher using herbs alone.
For example, at 23 use five herbs instead of two, and ten at 24*. The
extra training will carry over past 25. Higher numbers have given me
Dx:27. Now I've only tried this by also using more herbs past 25, but
something tells me those are unnecessary.
Similar tactics for Wi and To have no effect for me.
- Michael
* these are just numbers I've tried. I may just have to save a PC at
Dx:23 or so for some experimentation to get hard data. If nothing
else this will tell me how to make sure I get to 27 rather than having
it stop at 26. Hmmm <goes to roll a PC>...
Zaxx
>
> - becoming starved gives you:
> -4 to St
>
Err I always thought becoming starved meant death :)
(of course, not mentioning the odd bug after which a char tagged with
"Starved" continues to live... as an undead maybe?... and doesn't need
to eat food anymore...)
Sam Blanning
Never heard of that bug. How do you do it?
Zaxx
Bug report #1446... just eat a cursed stomafillia while already
"Starving".
Przemyslaw Brojewski
Huh? it just recovers you from deep starvation, and you may wait for
your stats to drop again...
brojek.
Przemyslaw Brojewski
: Malte Helmert <hel...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> writes:
:>Very interesting, thanks!
You know what...the first moloch (NOT greater moloch!) I met dropped hulking
armor. -19 Dx. nice. I'm starting to seriously consider potions of balance.
brojek.
Malte Helmert
The bug is probably fixed (even though the bug report is not yet
closed). It was reported against gamma 15, so it is quite dated.
Malte
Malte Helmert
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> You know what...the first moloch (NOT greater moloch!) I met dropped hulking
> armor. -19 Dx. nice. I'm starting to seriously consider potions of balance.
Why? Potions of balance are only good if one of your stats is much
higher than the others, certainly not if one is much lower. Or do you
mean "equip moloch armour, train dexterity, unequip moloch armour
(massive dexterity), potion of balance"? While that would work up to a
level, potions of balance no longer raise your stats above a certain
threshold and are thus mostly useless.
Malte
Przemyslaw Brojewski
: Przemyslaw Brojewski wrote:
I hoped to push my Le to forties this way, but alas, died from
overconfidence. in the ToEF. my first deafth in this place since years.
Igor D. WonderLlama
> You know what...the first moloch (NOT greater moloch!) I met dropped hulking
> armor. -19 Dx. nice. I'm starting to seriously consider potions of balance.
Or how about potions of exchange (if you can spare a few)? If you can
get one stat much higher than the others, such as Dx with moloch
armor, starvation, and sickness, then swapping it with another stat
could lead to two crazy-high stats. I could see repeating this 2 or 3
times before the odds of swapping the right stats aren't worth the
potion of exchange. Am I interpreting this correctly? I may have to
try it.
Al
> Przemyslaw Brojewski <bro...@zly.kis.p.lodz.pl> wrote in message news:<bf8p8n$q08$1...@kujawiak.man.lodz.pl>...
> > Le(31). Nothing special here. I'm describing it for completness only.
> > I started with ring of mental stability +4, and got one increase
> > from reading books, and 2 increases from a poton of learning.
> > I have not been given a chance to verify crystals of knowledg,
> > having only useless piece of green glass, But I expect them
> > to work as well.
>
> Unfortunately, it seems crystals of knowledge don't seem to work, at
> least for the sickness trick. Didn't get a chance to try the starving
> trick, as my current character met a gorgon at an inopportune moment
> :-(
Le can be trained to an average of 48 with *CoK but it is _extremely_
dangerous. One must be careful not to starve to death with waiting for
inflated Le to drop to below 20 (guaranteed increase). Once Le falls
below 20 'u'se a crystal then wait for it to fall below 20 again and
repeat. You can burn 10 or more crytals before eating if your Le is
average. Once you hit > 36 reduce consumption to 3 or less. In
general; watch your stats carefully, have good speed, and make you
don't have the Stiffened Muscles corruption. Le trained to 40 seems
safe enough, but beyond that is risky/stupid. Waiting for 45+ stats to
deteriorate to <20 is near suicidal.
On a related note. Sick/starving claw bug ranchers can get the same
benefits of sick/starving herbalists without the long wait. The risks
or starving to death are the same though.
Reese Shadro David
Good point... I guess I just tried Le < 25. Didn't remember that. Next
time, I'll try < 20 (which pretty much requires starvation with most
wizard characters).
