Ragnarok

[myang26]

Hey, signed up for the forums specifically because I love ragnarok.

Has anyone ever polymorphed/switch bodies/potion of transformation'd into a hel dragon?  I've become just about every other monster and the draugr is definitely the best of the ones I've become.  Fast, tons of HP, wears armor, immune to petrification (i think), etc... sadly no special abilities like a borgon vile.

Also, my technique for gaining quick levels:
1) Read a few scrolls of extinction until rangers show up... then attack them in hand to hand combat.  They keep multiplying everytime you strike a ranger.   Let's you get a ton of items from them to boot.

2) Wish for a dead draugr.  Kill, wait til it revives, kill again, rinse wash repeat.

I usually end up polymorphing myself until I become a wight, get gear til I have ~ -75AC, then do the ranger thing, then level up til i can write scroll of switch body, then find a draugr and switch.  Whenever I end up getting ~ -350AC I hit the bazaar and kill the shopkeepers.  Somewhere along the way, I learn how to ironsmith and make myself armor and weapons.

Anyone have any other tips?

[Vanguard]

Hey, signed up for the forums specifically because I love ragnarok.

Welcome to the forums!

Has anyone ever polymorphed/switch bodies/potion of transformation'd into a hel dragon?

I haven't.  I've tried in the past, but by the time I encountered one, I was higher level than it, so my scroll of switch bodies was ineffective.  I wish that it let you choose any specific body you want in the area (excluding a few choice bodies, naturally) instead of autopicking one for you.

I've become just about every other monster and the draugr is definitely the best of the ones I've become.  Fast, tons of HP, wears armor, immune to petrification (i think), etc... sadly no special abilities like a borgon vile.

With that kind of power, you really don't need special abilities.  My body of choice is the swordsman, because he's plenty strong enough to get through the game, his origami ability is pretty useful, and I like having the "human" icon represent myself on the map rather than a letter, but I'm not even going to pretend that he stands up to a draugr in terms of sheer power.

Also, my technique for gaining quick levels:
1) Read a few scrolls of extinction until rangers show up... then attack them in hand to hand combat.  They keep multiplying everytime you strike a ranger.   Let's you get a ton of items from them to boot.

2) Wish for a dead draugr.  Kill, wait til it revives, kill again, rinse wash repeat.

Those are good ideas, but risky.  A botched ranger encounter can get messy, and draugr are just plain powerful, but from the sounds of things, it seems like you know what you're doing well enough to deal with all of those problems.  Personally, I think the faleryn method is more reliable.

Anyone have any other tips?

I like to intentionally trigger the traps to release monsters in the borders of rooms, on the chance that it'll be something like a fire/ice dragon that carries a lot of treasure.  It's obviously a dangerous thing to do, but the payoff can be amazing.  It's best to have scrolls of time stop and travelling before you set it off (although those are good things to have with you anyway).

One thing that I never mentioned for newer players:

Once you make it to the ocean and river areas, you'll see manta-ray looking creatures called lorkesths.  Whatever you do, you must not fight these directly.  They can deal thousands of points of damage in a single turn, and are extremely tough and durable.  They can't move away from water, so if you want to eat a black mushroom just after seeing some and fire-vision them to death, you can do so in total safety, and get a fair amount of exp that way.  Just remember that they can take a long time to kill off.

[myang26]

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks!

I haven't.  I've tried in the past, but by the time I encountered one, I was higher level than it, so my scroll of switch bodies was ineffective.  I wish that it let you choose any specific body you want in the area (excluding a few choice bodies, naturally) instead of autopicking one for you.

That's an interesting point.   I was never sure what the game meant by "You're the most powerful being here."  Is it level based?  Strength based?  Some computation?  I've run into the same problem as you.  By the time I can find a hel dragon, I'm level 30+ and its too high I guess.  It really would be nice to choose what you want.  I kind of think that certain creatures are just off limits, the lorkseths being one of them.

With that kind of power, you really don't need special abilities.  My body of choice is the swordsman, because he's plenty strong enough to get through the game, his origami ability is pretty useful, and I like having the "human" icon represent myself on the map rather than a letter, but I'm not even going to pretend that he stands up to a draugr in terms of sheer power.

The swordsman is definitely top tier, probably second best overall, borgon vile is somewhere up there.  The speed is a surprisingly huge factor.  That's why I don't like borgon viles as much.  Terrific ability but so slow.  Makes gorms way more dangerous than they should be.  That's what makes the Draugr so great.  With natural 50 speed, an amulet of quickening bumps you up to 60.  And the amulet lasts forever at that speed because its based on number of turns.

Those are good ideas, but risky.  A botched ranger encounter can get messy, and draugr are just plain powerful, but from the sounds of things, it seems like you know what you're doing well enough to deal with all of those problems.  Personally, I think the faleryn method is more reliable.

It's definitely risky until you get -75AC.  At that point, you're safe from their mugging ability.  I always trigger them in Slaeter''s Sea.  That way, I have the water to get myself some distance if needed.  Also, a good way to clear the board when you're done with rangers is to write 4 scrolls of summoning and call out 4 allies.  They clear the board very quickly. 

Faleryns are great but when you're speed 40 or 50, I sometimes struggle with how slowly they multiply.  Rangers multiply every hit you land on them.  So regardless of your speed, they can keep up. 

I like to intentionally trigger the traps to release monsters in the borders of rooms, on the chance that it'll be something like a fire/ice dragon that carries a lot of treasure.  It's obviously a dangerous thing to do, but the payoff can be amazing.  It's best to have scrolls of time stop and travelling before you set it off (although those are good things to have with you anyway).

Great tip.  The only trouble is if (archmages/zardons/sandiffs/basilisks) spawn.  Then its an enormous pain.  I've had half the items in the game wiped out by a bad monster trap.

One thing that I never mentioned for newer players:

Once you make it to the ocean and river areas, you'll see manta-ray looking creatures called lorkesths.  Whatever you do, you must not fight these directly.  They can deal thousands of points of damage in a single turn, and are extremely tough and durable.  They can't move away from water, so if you want to eat a black mushroom just after seeing some and fire-vision them to death, you can do so in total safety, and get a fair amount of exp that way.  Just remember that they can take a long time to kill off.

I forget how much AC you need (maybe around -250?) but I agree.  These guys are deadly.  I also don't advise spending much time in Niflheim unless

• You have a war vest
• Have at least -500AC
• Have a disperser helm
• Have at least 40 speed
• Have a good magical backup weapon for when Ananaxrule rips your arms off and takes your weapon

Which btw, is my favorite demon.  There was one time where the dude, took off both my arms and legs.  I managed to kill him with Psi power.  Sadly didn't have a war vest that game. 

What do you guys do to kill breleors?  It's rather irksome that I can't swing a weapon at them.

[Z]

That's an interesting point.   I was never sure what the game meant by "You're the most powerful being here."  Is it level based?  Strength based?  Some computation?  I've run into the same problem as you.  By the time I can find a hel dragon, I'm level 30+ and its too high I guess.  It really would be nice to choose what you want.  I kind of think that certain creatures are just off limits, the lorkseths being one of them.

I think it's HP based, and hel dragons are not available for switch bodies. But both can be wrong. (That's what I remember from playing Valhalla these more than 10 years ago, I think I tested these hypotheses,
but I am not sure.)

It's definitely risky until you get -75AC.  At that point, you're safe from their mugging ability.

Mugging is bad! And faleryns can be activated quickly, without these -75 AC.

Great tip.  The only trouble is if (archmages/zardons/sandiffs/basilisks) spawn.  Then its an enormous pain.  I've had half the items in the game wiped out by a bad monster trap.

Extinct archmages first, unless you want a weird game...

You know, once there was a spoiler file, written by the authors themselves. Quite an interesting read, but might be hard to find these days. (I have it, so if you can't find it in Internet and you are interested, I could share.)

[Vanguard]

I think it's HP based, and hel dragons are not available for switch bodies. But both can be wrong. (That's what I remember from playing Valhalla these more than 10 years ago, I think I tested these hypotheses, but I am not sure.)

Speaking of Valhalla, is there any meaningful difference between the last version of that and the last version of Ragnarok?  I've only really played a lot of Ragnarok.  My understanding

The swordsman is definitely top tier, probably second best overall, borgon vile is somewhere up there.  The speed is a surprisingly huge factor.  That's why I don't like borgon viles as much.  Terrific ability but so slow.  Makes gorms way more dangerous than they should be.  That's what makes the Draugr so great.  With natural 50 speed, an amulet of quickening bumps you up to 60.  And the amulet lasts forever at that speed because its based on number of turns.

Yeah, speed is always extremely powerful in roguelikes.

I wish there were a way make a regular human body more viable in Ragnarok.  Even with an amulet of quickening, you end up with a speed that barely cuts it, and that's with no special abilities or anything.  If, say, you got a permanent +10 to speed after mastering both the Viking and Woodsman classes, or if there was a one time only alchemist-made potion of permanent speed, and these were only applicable to base humans, it would be doable.  Right now the benefit of being able to drink speed potions is crushed by the benefits of changing bodies, especially when you consider the likes of swordsmen and draugrs who are permanently at about the maximum speed potions can get you anyway, and get superb hp and strength counts to boot.

Great tip.  The only trouble is if (archmages/zardons/sandiffs/basilisks) spawn.  Then its an enormous pain.  I've had half the items in the game wiped out by a bad monster trap.

Extinct archmages first, unless you want a weird game...

Yeah, always wipe out archmages asap.  They drop great treasure, but it's just not worth it.   For the others, you may just want to time stop, travel, and never come back to that place again, or at least not until you're very prepared.

You know, once there was a spoiler file, written by the authors themselves. Quite an interesting read, but might be hard to find these days. (I have it, so if you can't find it in Internet and you are interested, I could share.)

Hmm... I can't find that either now that you mention it.  It used to be pretty easy to come across.  I wonder if it was taken down.  I've read through it already, but anyone who's having a hard time getting into this game may want to take Z up on his offer.

I'm disappointed that I've never seen a new roguelike that follows in Ragnarok's footsteps.  There's nothing out there like it.  Do you guys have any recommendations for something similar?

[Z]

Speaking of Valhalla, is there any meaningful difference between the last version of that and the last version of Ragnarok?  I've only really played a lot of Ragnarok.  My understanding

I think there are the following differences:

• Ragnarok is newer than Valhalla, even though its version is lower numbered
• Valhalla includes sounds
• Valhalla is commercial, Ragnarok is freeware
• Valhalla has two modes, Beginner (with only a minor limit for saving) and Expert (permadeath except backups each 4000 turns); I think it is different in Ragnarok
• Lycantrophy does not actually work in Valhalla
• Ragnarok includes a new monster (I think it appears at the end of the forest, deals with some kind of illussions, and is named slywert?)

I'm disappointed that I've never seen a new roguelike that follows in Ragnarok's footsteps.  There's nothing out there like it.  Do you guys have any recommendations for something similar?

No two games are the same, what exactly do you like about Ragnarok? Style of UI, Norse mythology, wilderness areas (surprisingly rare in roguelikes), any specific items, or heavy imbalance at the later stages ?

I think the elusive JauntTrooper Mission Thunderbolt is a bit similar in style (I think they are both from about the same time and had similar ideas about adapting Roguelikes to the commercial market). But this is my feeling and yours can be very different (as it is Sci-Fi, and has only dungeon).

[Vanguard]

• Ragnarok includes a new monster (I think it appears at the end of the forest, deals with some kind of illussions, and is named slywert?)

I've seen slywerts are in the final, freeware version of Ragnarok, but they weren't in the shareware version I played way back when.  I was mostly wondering if Valhalla had any exclusive content, which it sounds like it doesn't.

No two games are the same, what exactly do you like about Ragnarok? Style of UI, Norse mythology, wilderness areas (surprisingly rare in roguelikes), any specific items, or heavy imbalance at the later stages ?

I guess it's a combination of things.  Ragnarok has a big world with wildly different environments, a bunch of quests instead of just recover the macguffin/kill the bad guy, it offers the player an amazing array of abilities they can pick up through various methods, including polymorphing themselves, and I liked the extremely well hidden artifacts throughout the world better than the usual system of only getting artifacts when the RNG favors you.

It has a lot of things to discover for items, abilities, item combinations, unique uses for items, hidden areas, and all of that, and most of it is reasonably intuitive, unlike ADOM where there's so much guesswork involved that if you play without spoilers, your failure is all but certain.  I'd still say ADOM is the closest thing to Ragnarok, but I don't like it nearly as much.

The way the game handles past characters with their map, ghost, and inventory is a fun bit of persistency too.

I guess I also like how one character can be an amazing warrior and also have every spell available, as well as a wide repertoire of special abilities.  High level ragnarok characters are renaissance men - they can become not only adequate, but extremely good at everything.  In most games you pick to be a wizard and you're a horrible fighter for life, you pick to be a fighter and you suck at magic for life, or you pick some hybrid class that ends up being inadequate at everything.

[Z]

I guess it's a combination of things.  Ragnarok has a big world with wildly different environments, a bunch of quests instead of just recover the macguffin/kill the bad guy, it offers the player an amazing array of abilities they can pick up through various methods, including polymorphing themselves, and I liked the extremely well hidden artifacts throughout the world better than the usual system of only getting artifacts when the RNG favors you.

Yeah, polymorph is nice in Ragnarok. In most games you pick a race and stay it, or have a race picked for you, and polymorph is only temporary.

It has a lot of things to discover for items, abilities, item combinations, unique uses for items, hidden areas, and all of that, and most of it is reasonably intuitive, unlike ADOM where there's so much guesswork involved that if you play without spoilers, your failure is all but certain.  I'd still say ADOM is the closest thing to Ragnarok, but I don't like it nearly as much.

I don't feel that ADOM requires spoilers... (Well I won without reading much spoilers, but instead of reading spoilers I first got a savescum win, then I proceeded to a true win.)

The way the game handles past characters with their map, ghost, and inventory is a fun bit of persistency too.

That's a traditional roguelike feature, although appearing quite rarely. It also appears in Nethack and IVAN (I think Thomas Biskup accepted an RFE for ADOM, but of course he had no time to implement it). (Both of these games have nice unique uses and combinations for items, temporary polymorph, IVAN even has something like permanent polymorph (changing the materials of your limbs) - Nethack is generally not liked these days, while IVAN is).

I guess I also like how one character can be an amazing warrior and also have every spell available, as well as a wide repertoire of special abilities.  High level ragnarok characters are renaissance men - they can become not only adequate, but extremely good at everything.  In most games you pick to be a wizard and you're a horrible fighter for life, you pick to be a fighter and you suck at magic for life, or you pick some hybrid class that ends up being inadequate at everything.

But that 1) leads to imbalance, 2) makes all the characters similar in the end... (well, polymorph saves (2) in case of Ragnarok, but there are not that many options for polymorph)

[Vanguard]

I don't feel that ADOM requires spoilers... (Well I won without reading much spoilers, but instead of reading spoilers I first got a savescum win, then I proceeded to a true win.)

Savescumming for a while is probably the next best thing after reading spoilers.

Anyway, ADOM can completely screw you over for things you could never know about.  You could have a great character going, almost to the end, only to die to a superpowered cat lord because you didn't know you weren't supposed to kill all of those cats you encountered throughout your adventure.  There's also the banshee that can instantly kill you unless you knew to put wax in your ears.  Ragnarok has a lot of surprises, and some of them are deadly, but I don't think they come anywhere near ADOM's level of cheapness, and even then, Ragnarok tends to do things in a more logical manner, as opposed to ADOM's completely arbitrary randomness.

But that 1) leads to imbalance, 2) makes all the characters similar in the end... (well, polymorph saves (2) in case of Ragnarok, but there are not that many options for polymorph)

Ragnarok is interesting on unbalance.  It's gives you unbalanced possibilities for your character, and puts you up against unbalanced enemies and challenges, and the result is some kind of unbalance-arms-race that forms a sort of balance from all the chaos.  It's interesting, at the least.

A successful Ragnarok character will have probably mastered all of the classes, so they're samey in that say, but I think that with all of the abilities you can get from scrolls of knowledge, permanent effects from potions/scrolls, special effects from items (disperser helms, artifacts, etc), and, as you mentioned, polymorph abilities, you end up with a moderately good amount of variety.

[Z]

Anyway, ADOM can completely screw you over for things you could never know about.  You could have a great character going, almost to the end, only to die to a superpowered cat lord because you didn't know you weren't supposed to kill all of those cats you encountered throughout your adventure.

But you are supposed to listen to the songs of Mad Minstrel! And he sings both about the cats' energy rejoining their master after death, and about a reward for those who are good to cats. His hints are easy to understand in this case, I think. You also get a more obscure hint that something bad is happening whenever you kill a cat.

There's also the banshee that can instantly kill you unless you knew to put wax in your ears.

This one is harder. But still, the Mad Minstrel sings about her, you can ask the big dwarf about her, and there are four solutions to the problem, not counting quick kill (beewax which is suggested by the dwarf, and also by the existence of the 'clean ears' command, and also if you try to find any use for the beewax; potion of deafness; ring of wedding (although this one is broken); amulet of protection from undead (although this works only partially)). So I suppose you should beat her on your second visit to her level. (Not on the first one, because even if you analyze the hints properly and have your beewax prepared, you probably would not know that this particular level is the banshee level and that you should plug your ears NOW. Or maybe there is also some hint about that (other than in fortune cookies), I don't remember.)

That's for a normal victory in ADOM, obtaining ultimate victories without spoilers is surely harder.

[myang26]

I haven't played ADOM but I do agree with the sentiment that there should be more roguelikes in the mold of Ragnarok. 

The level of diversity in character progression, the *mostly* logical thinking regarding endgame threats, wonderfully deep ways to grow powerful, etc. are all reasons why I keep coming back to Ragnarok year after year.  I just wish there were different quests to play . 

I've always wondered how the data files were encoded and maybe modding the game enough to change the quests. 

[darkflagrance]

I'm sorry for the necropost, but I am searching for the spoilers file for this game, except that it's so old that it doesn't seem to be hosted anywhere anymore, not even by fan sites. As someone who has been inspired by this game and its mechanics to make roguelikes, I'd like as much of a glimpse into them as possible.

[Vanguard]

Could HB_WHOLE.DOC be the file you're looking for?  It should be included in the download available here.

[Z]

Here you are: http://roguetemple.com/z/raghelp.zip

[guest509]

Lol dark!

On a forum often dedicated to archaic games you are free to 'necro'.

I went to another forum and did that and got yelled at for it, I had no idea it was an issue. I still don't know why. Aren't old topics valid? Why make a brand new one and split up all the info into different threads.

Internets are weird.