The tale of Barak-Vaarn (long)
Thomas Biskup
Hi everyone!
Since folks quite often complain to me about not being able to reroll
stats as often as they like or about not having enough food and many
other things I'd like to share the story of Barak-Vaarn, the valiant
dwarven warrior, with you.
Although this dwarf is pretty typical for the characters I play his
story is a story of a valiant struggle against a world wanting to
hinder every step he made.
Barak-Vaarn was born under the sign of the tree, not really a sign
many folks would deem appropriate for a warrior. Nonetheless the
steady determination given to him because of this probably helped him
to become more succesful than I would have thought.
His attributes were pretty average (ok, he had 19 strength and 20
toughness but also a 6 charisma, 7 learning, 8 dexterity and 8 mana).
His trusty battle axe (1d6+4) looked fine, all the other equipment was
pretty average.
So Barak-Vaarn set out to find his luck. First he ventured to Terinyo
and talked to the sheriff to offer his help to slay Kranach. Then he
chatted with the village elder to help the poor village carpenter
(having no Healing skill I figured that it would be good to get this
soon).
To collect some experience Barak-Vaarn ventured to the small cave to
the NW of Terinyo. Luckily he quickly found the down stair and then
decided (now at level 5) to return to the surface to slaughter
Kranach. After searching for a *long* time (living among other things
on dog corpses due to lack of food and money) he finally encountered
the vile bandit and quickly killed him (one lucky strike). After
collecting the reward from the sheriff he ventured to the outlaw
village, but to his disappointment the shop contained no useful goods
at all. Thus he quickly made back his way to the small dungeon to
explore the deeper levels. Since he already was level 6, things were
not looking very well (the cave really is pretty dangerous at that
level).
Things happened as fate deemed appropriate and BV was surrounded by
monsters. he fought valiantly and luckily managed to slaughter them.
Low on hitpoints he raced towards the downstairs chased by a horde of
monsters. Luckily he reached it before they could get him. Then I
noticed that I had forgotten to purchase food in Terinyo. Left with
one large ration BV tried to explore the unknown depths, his way back
effectively barred by a horde of potentially deadly monsters on the
level above. In the next room a shadow lowered his strength to 18,
causing him to become strained. After slaughtering the shadow BV
explored the next couple of levels, always on the brink of being
Strained!. He barely managed to survive on a couple of corpses and
even had to pray once to prevent starvation. On level 5 (I think) he
encountered a vault full of orcs stronger than him (at least in the
masses). He also couldn't carry anything more without becoming
Strained! and decided to continue deeper onwards.
On the next level his battle axe was destroyed by gray oozes and a
rust monster made quick work of his chain mail. His other metal
weapons also were destroyed before he could kill off the rust monster
except for one orcish knife he now was wielding. An admantium tower
shield helped somewhat but his PV of 5 was not that great. Then he
again got surrounded by oozes and suddenly his hitpoints were at about
10. In a stroke of panic I made him quaff down his potions after
slaughtering the last ooze (some new monsters already could be seen in
a tunnel) and this dumb move naturally made him quaff down a potion of
exchange and a potion of poison (no poison resistance gained up to now
either). His toughness of 22 (Athletics help with this) was exchanged
with his meager 9 learning and his strength 18 was exchanged with his
10 appearance (great :-P ). Naturally he suddenly was overburdened
and had to leave behind lots of stuff. From then on I simply raced
through the dungeon to quickly find an exit.
Moderately injured he managed to find the exit and got to the mountain
village. The shop contain a normal hand axe (+0, 1d6) which he bought
to get rid of that pesky orcish knife and a potion of water and some
food. He quickly left the village to get back to Terinyo and barely
made it (again running low on food... maybe he should have tried
swimming through the river but having found about a dozen scrolls I
decided not to risk it [Swimming 23 isn't that great either]).
There he bought as much food as he could carry (not much considering
his strength by now raised to 11). Then he ventured down the village
dungeon to save Yrrigs, the mad carpenter. He managed to find him
without major problems (and without finding any useful items) and
tried to get him back to the healer. Naturally this time I was going
to be the victim of a bug. Yrrigs stepped onto an explosion trapped
and killed himself afterwards (I really thought I had fixed this
problem :-( in Gamma 7 it will be fixed ;-). The healer denied the
healing skill to him and lacking potions of healing and similar stuff
I at that point had no means to exert mercy. *Great*
Thus I decided to quickly get down the caverns of chaos to find the
dwarven village to sell some items, get some quests and train
strength. He again nearly starved trying to get to the caverns of
chaos (I couldn't get myself to drop all those items in order to be
able to carry more large rations since I needed some money to train).
He ventured down the caves, exploring only as many rooms as he needed
to find the stairs downward. In the big cave he got surrounded by
summoned monsters and also had to note a surge of power. Naturally
the artifact guardian (a named gargoyle) was located next to the
stairs downwards. Barak-Vaarn got one critical hit after the next
until I gave up the struggle. I also didn't manage to find the
artifact in my retreat downwards (tactics set to coward). At that
defense level the gargoyle luckily didn't hit me that often and I
actually managed to put some room (exactly one space :-}) between BV
and the beast. Two levels below that I finally found the dwarven
village. I offered lots of stuff at the altar, created some holy
water, received the quest to slay a lizard man and bought a decent
mithril axe in the shop (a cursed one... I forgot to check that, too
;-( ).
Venturing back upwards I managed to kill the named gargoyle after a
long and bloody battle (with tactics again set to coward... praise to
the gods for the mithril battle axe). I got to the big room and found
a rune-covered club (oh joy, Skullcrusher, +4 to strength which was
badly needed). Training also slowly took effect and with Skullcrusher
BV's strength right now is back at 17. His learning is at 23 (I
didn't even notice when it was raised, although a blessed potion of
gain attributes helped a little bit). I just found elven chain mail
(after I had to rely on a piece of leather armor as my last bit of
protection).
Ok, what can you learn from this story:
1. I can be a pretty lousy player at times.
2. No character is worthless and birth signs really are not that important.
3. Never give up a character. If you are in a desperate situation, try
something desperate. It just might work.
4. I don't feel like proofreading this text ;-)
A short log of BV has been appended fr your enjoyment:
Barak-Vaarn St:17 Le:23 Wi:20 Dx:12 To:10 Ch: 9 Ap:23 Ma:13 Pe: 8 L
DV/PV: 29/11 H: 73(109) P: 20(20) Exp: 12/58876 D: 9 M: 14873
Satiated
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Background Information
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Barak-Vaarn Race: male Dwarf Class: Fighter
Eye color: black Hair color: black Complexion: brown
Height: 4' Weight: 182 pounds
Age: 64 (grown-up)
Star sign: Tree Birthday: 15/Tree (day 345 of the year)
YOUR HISTORY:
Your parents belong to the nobility. They are rich, respected,
wealthy and own more than they can count.
In your childhood you were tortured by your cruel parents. They
seemed to thoroughly hate and despise you.
As a youth you spent a lot of time in the wilds exploring woods and
generally enjoying your freedom. You had a lot of fun and learned to value
the treasures of nature.
As a young adult you had to work a lot to finance your
apprenticeship. You were often tired and exhausted but all this was
forgotten, when you finally achieved your goal.
You decided to become a Fighter.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Weapon Skills
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Melee weapon Lvl Hit Dam Dv Level Required marks
--------------------- --- --- --- -- ------------- --------------
Unarmed fighting 1 +1 +0 +0 basic 24
Daggers & knives 1 +1 +0 +0 basic 18
Clubs & hammers 6 +5 +2 +1 skilled 236
Maces & flails 0 +0 +0 +0 unskilled 15
Swords 4 +2 +1 +1 skilled 85
Axes 7 +5 +3 +2 skilled 192
Whips 0 +0 +0 +0 unskilled 15
Pole arms 0 +0 +0 +0 unskilled 15
Twohanded weapons 0 +0 +0 +0 unskilled 15
Staves 0 +0 +0 +0 unskilled 15
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Skills
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archery .................. 17 (mediocre) [+4d4]
Athletics ................ 83 (great) [+2d4]
Climbing ................. 41 (fair) [+3d4]
Detect traps ............. 14 (mediocre) [+3d5]
Dodge .................... 69 (good) [+2d4]
Find weakness ............ 71 (great) [+1d3]
First aid ................ 70 (good) [+1d5]
Haggling ................. 31 (fair) [+3d5]
Listening ................ 47 (fair) [+3d3]
Literacy ................. 44 (fair) [+1d5]
Metallurgy ............... 15 (mediocre) [+3d5]
Mining ................... 68 (good) [+1d3]
Smithing ................. 30 (mediocre) [+3d5]
Stealth .................. 37 (fair) [+2d4]
Swimming ................. 47 (fair) [+2d4]
Two weapon combat ........ 51 (good) [+3d4]
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Inventory
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total weight: 2504 stones Carrying capacity: 3600 stones
He: blessed metal cap [+0, +1] [50s]
Ne: uncursed amulet of order [3s]
Bo: uncursed elven chain mail [+0, +5] [10s]
Gi: blessed girdle of carrying [+0, +0] [15s]
Cl: blessed cloak of adornment [+0, +2] {Ap+4} [40s]
RH: blessed rune-covered club "Skullcrusher" (+12, 3d6+2) [-3, +0] {St+4}
LH: uncursed tower adamantium shield (-2) [+13, +2] [108s]
RR: uncursed ring of cold resistance [1s]
LR: uncursed ring of acid resistance [1s]
Br: cursed bracers of defense [+2, +0] [10s]
Ga: -
Bo: uncursed seven league boots (+1, -1) [+1, +0] [30s]
MW: uncursed short bow (+1, +0) [20s]
Mi: bundle of 5 uncursed arrows of construct slaying (+3, 1d6+3) [10s]
Tl: uncursed whip (-4, 1d3) [15s]
He survived for 0 years, 21 days, 19 hours, 44 minutes and 32 seconds.
Barak-Vaarn visited 31 places.
His strength score was modified by -6 during his career.
His learning score was modified by +15 during his career.
His willpower score was modified by +1 during his career.
His dexterity score was modified by +3 during his career.
His toughness score was modified by -10 during his career.
His charisma score was modified by +1 during his career.
His appearance score was modified by +10 during his career.
His mana score was modified by +6 during his career.
His perception score was modified by -4 during his career.
--
Thomas Biskup
ADOM maintainer
Official ADOM webpage available at http://users.aol.com/ADOMDev/index.html
john thomas flanagan
Thomas Biskup (r...@saranxis.ruhr.de) wrote:
: level above. In the next room a shadow lowered his strength to 18,
: causing him to become strained. After slaughtering the shadow BV
: explored the next couple of levels, always on the brink of being
: Strained!. He barely managed to survive on a couple of corpses and
This reminds me of something that many players might benefit from:
Spoiler...
Being Burdened exercises your strength. It's not hard for low-strength
characters to rapidly gain strength without hardly trying. Just make
sure you're always Burdened.
But I think being Strained or worse abuses your strength, so don't get
too overloaded.
Johnf
Chris Underwood
Thomas Biskup (r...@saranxis.ruhr.de) wrote:
: Since folks quite often complain to me about not being able to reroll
: stats as often as they like or about not having enough food and many
: other things I'd like to share the story of Barak-Vaarn, the valiant
: dwarven warrior, with you.
A touching story :)
Sounds just like 95% of my chars. I actually enjoy inventing methods of
getting out of desparate situations!
: Barak-Vaarn St:17 Le:23 Wi:20 Dx:12 To:10 Ch: 9 Ap:23 Ma:13 Pe: 8 L
: DV/PV: 29/11 H: 73(109) P: 20(20) Exp: 12/58876 D: 9 M: 14873
That's one fine looking Dwarf! Damned clever too...
I have a couple of questions about generic strategies:
: Archery .................. 17 (mediocre) [+4d4]
Why not train this? You can use it to some amazing affects.
: First aid ................ 70 (good) [+1d5]
Why train this? You only ever get a couple of points back, or stop bleeding
that stops itself a couple of turns later. I find you can recover these
losses by plenty of other means usually.
: Mining ................... 68 (good) [+1d3]
Why train this? There are plenty of digging methods, and enough pick axes to
waste a few. There's also lots of more worthy skills to train.
: Cl: blessed cloak of adornment [+0, +2] {Ap+4} [40s]
Like your appearace was low in the first place :)
: RR: uncursed ring of cold resistance [1s]
: LR: uncursed ring of acid resistance [1s]
A grand bunch of use these must have done you ;) Still, if you don't have
anything else handy...
: Bo: uncursed seven league boots (+1, -1) [+1, +0] [30s]
Lucky sod. I like these, but very rarely find them.
: Tl: uncursed whip (-4, 1d3) [15s]
How come you have this in your tool slot? I thought this could just be used
to hurt yourself (very dubious use). Does it have some kind of deeper use? I
have noticed that it will not kill you though. I wanted to have the death in
my high-scores list: 'He whipped himself to death in a dodgy act'!
Cheers,
CMU
Gunnar Opsommer
Chris Underwood wrote in article <5vdult$7...@lupin.csv.warwick.ac.uk>...
...a lot snipped...
>
>: Tl: uncursed whip (-4, 1d3)
[15s]
>
>How come you have this in your tool slot? I thought this could just be
used
>to hurt yourself (very dubious use). Does it have some kind of deeper use?
I
>have noticed that it will not kill you though. I wanted to have the death
in
>my high-scores list: 'He whipped himself to death in a dodgy act'!
>
You can use a whip to disarm monsters I think....
Gunnar.