So I decided to play ADOM again...Archmage style

[Lucentdepths]

In honor of JADE finally going public.

Man I played the hell out of ADOM  back in the day.

Forgive my (lack of) post count, I'm actually a really longtime lurker here

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So I read about the archmage 'challenge' and thought, hrm, I havn't played ADOM in a while, let alone TOO many wizards, that could be fun. And difficult.

So I make myself a female gray elf Wizard named Aiyra.

I couldn't POSSIBLY have gotten a better start.

I started with only two spell books but they were GREAT.

Fire Bolt! (beam damage for multiple enemies that has no risk of bouncing! WEE)
and
Freaking Strength of Atlas!

So already I have no issues with my weak strength and can carry anything and everything.

I read each book a few times but not enough for them to break / vanish.. because I'm going for an epic book caster.

Book casting usually takes x4 the power points to cast or so, but with talent trees taken all the way up to 'great book caster' I reduce it down to only x1.5 the cost of the spell, or 50% more. Book casting does not use up spell stocks (but requires you have them) and also does NOT increase spell expertise by using them (but cast the spell at the power of your expertise if you've trained it up through regular casting).

So I can normal cast all my spells til the stocks are at 100 or a bit lower and get them nice and strong basically.

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Ok so I am now level 12 but here is what happened so far.

1: Created Wizzie, Started with awesome stuff. Wand Birthsign btw.
2: Grabbed Carpenter and Doggie quest.
3: Cleared puppy cavern. Did not let puppy survive (Didn't want TOO much of a lawful boost to where i might stop being neutral), but returned corpse to girl and told her what happened.

Puppy cave had 3 or 4 pools (saving for later when I can better deal with the bad effects), A neutral alter (right near a gnoll tension room.. LOVE it)

Puppy cave also has a specialty shop for SPELLBOOKS in it. Couldn't afford to buy them yet but I moved them all onto the same space so that there is room for more books to spawn while I'm away . Once I have money to come by the Mystic Shovel spellbook (and only read it once, til I find another copy) even more tactical options open up (and carefree stealing if I want to save time instead of taking forever in the infinite dungeon.. but as a book caster its not that big a deal not having tons of books)

Oh and the last floor had two lesser vaults where I got Seven League Boots to drop...


Yeah. Seven league boots at like level 3 or 4. Wizard is ROCKING. With those I can dance around everything in the game except quicklings (unless I did some major speed boosting). Putting myself into position for safe castings of spells, moving away when i need to recast Strength of Atlas etc.
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4: Dangerous Cave (or whatever it was called.. the one where everything spawns like at 3x your level). Spent some CAREFUL time in here grabbing stuff and fire bolting lines of high level enemies for xp until I got the blanket etc, then I skidaddled. Seven League Boots + Coward mode for more dodge made this possible at level 9 without dying.

5: Infinite dungeon exploration for gear and extra spell books.

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How I read my books now as a book caster.

I get a new book.. I read it 4 times. If it survives I keep it for book casting (books typically seem to have a max of 5 reads if your lucky, might go higher but if it does its super rare).

Right now I have Cure Disease and Cure Light Wounds (my last spell aquisitions). The Cure Light wounds book I only read TWICE because I wanted to be sure to save it til I found another. Its base cost is only 4 to cast, so I will level it to at least 10 (reducing it by 2 points to 50%, or the lowest possible cost of 2PP) and then I can book cast it for only 3 PP.. I have magic missile and ice ball, knock, light, slow monster and poison, stun ray! (yay), summon monsters (actually useful if you know what to do with it) and web.

I have spellbooks that survived for future bookcasting of these spells.
Cure Light Wounds
Fire Bolt
Ice Ball
Light
Magic Missile
Strength of Atlas
Stun Ray

I'm level 12 now and got my Greater Bookcasting talent. Book casting uses 3000 energy (food points) but I barely use any energy moving or attacking so I always have a surplus of food anyway.

I have a climbing set and need to get climbing up to 100 for the library to be .. easier.. to access. Going to get a couple more climbing sets in case they break etc. Then I should find a book of wish (and every other damn book).

Only 6 more levels til I can attempt to get to the library and get every damn spell in the game

[Darren Grey]

The 3000 energy points cost of book-casting isn't just food cost, it's also time cost.  Essentially it means it takes three turn to recover from casting a spell, instead of the usual one turn.  You bookcast a spell, monster gets to hit your 3 times, and then you get to act again.  This means that bookcasting is mostly only useful for utility spells like Teleportation (though it can be risky if you land somewhere dangerous), Invisibility, Magic Map and Strength of Atlas.  You really shouldn't use it for general combat unless you know it'll kill the enemy in one round.

[Lucentdepths]

proper positioning and using coward if they will reach before you recover helps .. as do the seven leagues.

i'm still doing normal casts, its just, once I get low on them I know I wont run out of the spells because I can book them, so I dont have to bother being frugal, i just keep my stocks at about 100 or more to keep the cost low. Not solely book casting means my spells ARE being trained and quite often only one cast is needed. If its something dangerous I can maneuver to a safer spot to cast teh spell from the book if needed (assuming I dont just cast a different spell)

As of right now I have reached level 13 and have 25 different spellbooks in my inventory

I need to figure out what talents I want to take for the rest of my leveling though, now that I have great book caster everything else is in the air. Gotta take a look at the talents and see what looks good.

I'm not dumb enough to try book casting while fighting something like a quickling. (unless it was right next to me and i was casting a ball spell nicely leveled up. Those always hit

Lots of fun so far though. Pyramid is open. I'll do that soon.