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Last time: I started the Village Dungeon then went home for lunch. This time: I go to find the carpenter.

I head back to the Village Dungeon, kill a couple monsters on the way back down and hit level 4.




I put two picks into Pick Pockets (total 15) and one into Alertness (13).



I resume exploring the third level and find a mandoline. Musical instruments can be used by characters with the Music skill to pacify or tame animals. Handy for making cats chill out and fuck off. I also find a torch (which can be lit to counter darkness if I can find a tinderbox), an unidentified scroll and a metal girdle. I backtrack to the altar to make sure the girdle isn't cursed before putting it on. It's safe and gives me another point of PV.



I resume exploring level 3 and find the tension room I sensed last time. It's filled with a number of kobolds, two giant bats and an orc. Note that I have the Satiated status. I overate a little on monster corpses while I was exploring. Satiated reduces your speed by 5 and DV by 1. Monster corpses don't last forever in your inventory so I chose to eat them immediately to avoid having to go back to town for food again later. 5 Speed and 1 DV aren't a huge deal against the trash level monsters I'm fighting at the moment. If I do run into something threatening I can spit acid at it to reduce my satiation level back to normal.



I back up into the tunnel and fight the monsters one at a time. My Pickpocket skill is high enough now succeed quickly enough that I don't get hit much if it all before I can clean a monster out, so I pickpocket the kobolds and orc in between killing them. Most successful Pickpocket checks don't actually yield any loot - you will often see the message above. These checks still count for Yergius' quest however. I don't pickpocket anything exciting from the crowd, just a little gold. The loot they dropped isn't much better, just a pile of arrows. Not much use until I find a bow but some monsters you do not want to engage in melee even you are a hulked out barbarian, so I save them for later. I also collect the pile of rocks left by the collapsing walls to replace my throwing club in the ranged slot. Rocks don't do as much damage as the club, but they stack, so I can throw a bunch before having to spend a turn to equip something else.



This message indicates a special room that multiplies natural healing speed by 4. I take a moment to top my hitpoints up. A few monsters wander in as I do. I steal/loot a slimy potion, a spear and a ring of fire resistance. I also hit level 5.




I put one pick into Dodge (8) and two into Pick Pockets (12). I also gain another point of Appearance. The game occasionally checks your attributes, including whenever you level up, to see if they've been exercised enough to increase. Athletics at work again. Further exploration and killing nets me 2 slings, which are a better way of hurling rocks at stuff than by hand, a potion, and a scroll. With the level fully explored I head back up to the altar again to test my new loot. Everything is safe except for one of the slings. I equip the other and test out the spear, which turns out to be more accurate but less damaging than my heavy spear. I stick to the heavy one but keep the new one as a spare. ADOM loves to destroy your equipment and some monsters can disarm you. The sling is a basic (+0,+1) sling. I descend to level 4 and commence exploration.



"Well met, bother! Would you like to [l]earn or be [h]ealed?"

I meet Jharod, the Healer. Jharod will always be found on level 4 of the Village Dungeon if you take the Elder's quest in Terinyo. Jharod will restore you to full health up to seven times and will teach you the Healing skill if you can prove you are able to show mercy. I'll demonstrate the usual way to do this soon. I don't need Jharod's help just now so I continue exploring.



I encounter my first orc scorcher. I love orc scorchers. They will occasionally throw orcish spears at you and can be encouraged to do so by kiting them. Orcish spears have a base damage of 1d8+2, the same as my heavy spear, but tend to have a better to-hit modifier. Weapons and armour will not always spawn with the base damage or mods. They can vary by +/- 3 points. Encouraging orc scorchers to throw their spears will generate a lot of extra spears and odds are I'll eventually find one with a nice roll. Sometimes weapons or armour will spawn with prefixed or suffixed modifiers, such as a penetrating orcish spear of devastation. Penetrating means a weapon ignores PV, and devastation massively, massively increases its damage. Those are the two best modifiers and to find both on a weapon is like winning the lottery. I've never seen a penetrating weapon of devastation, but I have managed to generate several orcish spears of devastation in past games. Even devastation on its own is incredibly powerful and enough for a weapon to rival or exceed even most artifact weapons. The orc doesn't care about me so I kick her with Coward tactics on to piss her off. She takes the bait, I take her spear and kill her and head back to the altar again to check the spear. On the way I find a potion of water. The orcish spear turns to to be uncursed and (+1, 1d8+2), pretty standard but an upgrade in accuracy from my heavy spear with the same damage. If I had more piety I could use the altar to turn the water potion into holy water, but I don't have enough loot to sacrifice for the piety yet. Usually I could kite monsters over the altar and sacrifice them alive, but since it's in the dark it will be much more difficult to get the monsters onto the altar and I'm not sure if live sacrifices even work in the dark anyway. I have Jharod top my hitpoints off and head for level five. I've never needed all seven of Jharod's heals so I'm not shy about using them to top up.

I find another scorcher in level 5 and take his spear. I've had enough running back and forth to the altar and this new spear isn't super likely to be better than what I have now, so I'll wait until I find something I want to equip ASAP (my armour still sucks) or I'm on my way back after I finish the dungeon.



I find a wererat. Wererats are humanoid monsters that will summon rats and giant rats. Wererats can be great food generators. Not all corpses are good to eat - regular rats will make you vomit. Giant rats however are good eating. I don't get any corpses this time, but I do finally find a medium shield. I want to equip this ASAP as shields give a nice DV boost and a bit of PV too. In addition, once I have a shield equipped I can start gaining marks in the shield skill by blocking attacks with it. The game considers an attack shield blocked if the attack roll would have hit if you didn't have the shield equipped. However, a shield will not give you skill marks if your shield skill level is already equal to or higher than the DV value of the shield. Medium shields have base stats of [+3,+1]. Back to the altar, nothing is cursed, the new spear is worse than the one I have and the shield has base stats. Onwards!

Further exploration in level 5 reveals a leather cap (probably [+0,+0], I won't bother going back to the altar again) and a fire beetle corpse.



Fire beetle corpses grant intrinsic fire resistance when eaten. Unlike the other resistances, fire comes in three levels. The beetle corpse grants the first level. Eating more beetle corpses won't increase it further, but it will stack with fire resistance from gear, such as my ring of fire resistance, to put me on the second level of fire resistance. More powerful fire-based monsters such as fire drakes or red dragons will grant two or three levels of resistance respectively.

I find a pair of gauntlets and a scroll. It is risky to equip unidentified gauntlets even if you know they're not cursed. There is one type of gauntlet indistinguishable from others until identified, called gauntlets of peace. These gauntlets will immediately curse themselves when worn even if previously blessed or uncursed (seriously, fuck you too Biskup) and have stats of (-15,-15) [+3,+3]. The defensive stats are pretty nice but not worth the huge melee penalties. Even caster classes want to rock a spear and shield for the DV and kill many mobs in melee to boost their polearm skill and save on MP.



I also meet this guy. Dark Sages are the first caster monster most characters will encounter. They have a nasty magic missile attack, but I have enough hitpoints to tank a couple of those even if I fail to dodge them on my approach. Unfortunately this guy doesn't leave a corpse. Non-cursed dark sage corpses grant literacy to illiterate characters and blessed corpses also have a chance to increase Learning. I proceed to level 6.



I hit character level 6 early in the next dungeon level and gain my first class ability - mighty blows. Mighty blows are an activated ability and do double damage. The down side is that they cost 2500 energy points. Energy works with speed to determine the sequence of turns. Most actions have a base cost of 1000 energy. A character or monster's energy starts at 1000 and they do not get to take a turn until their energy reaches 1000 again after their previous action. Energy recovers at the rate of the character/monster's speed. Therefore if I have 100 speed and I fight a monster that also has 100 speed, the monster will get 2.5 normal attacks for every one mighty blow. Not really worth it unless I'm fighting a monster with such high PV more normal attacks can't penetrate its damage reduction. The level 18 ability for barbarians is tremendous blows - triple damage for 4000 energy. Combined with the lvl 40 and 50 abilities being buffs for true beserking you can see what I mean about barbarian class abilities sucking. The price of being an absolute fucking tank in the early game. Along with being illiterate and more or less unable to cast spells. The early game usually kicks my arse with other classes though so I guess it's worth it.




I take Dodge (6), First Aid (11), and Food Preservation (10). If you've been paying particularly close attention to my skill scores you might have noticed slight increases to some that I haven't gained from level ups. I haven't shown it explicitly but skills will gradually improve on their own through usage. I didn't go for Pick Pockets this time because the skill rolls are starting to get quite low and the skill is high enough level now that I can train it well enough through usage.



I also get another talent and now that I have the prerequisites take Treasure Hunter. Exactly how Treasure Hunter works wasn't fully understood last I checked, but it seems to increase quantity and possibly quality of loot. Gear is super important in ADOM, especially so for a non-caster class, so anything that means more loot is great.



I find another neutral altar. Unfortunately this one is in the corner of the room and I won't be able to lure monsters over it unless I can find a way to dig out the walls around it. I take the opportunity to check my loot for curses. The leather cap is not cursed but has base [+0,+0] stats.



Exploring the rest of the level I run into a dead end. There's no such thing as a real dead end in ADOM's dungeon generation, so I know there's a secret door here. I search to find it. Secret rooms are just normal rooms and not any more likely to contain loot or special features than any other room. This one contains a hobgoblin and an orc. I kill them and eat their corpses then continue to the seventh and final level of the Village Dungeon.



On my way to the stairs down to level 7 I encounter my first potentially dangerous situation in a while. Doppelgangers have a confusing attack which causes your character to wander in a random direction when you try to
move or attack. If the random direction chosen is into a monster you will attack it. This can lead to accidentally killing cats if they are present. The grey z in the doorway is a ghul. Ghuls are weak but have a paralyzing attack which can chain to keep you paralyzed indefinitely until you're killed. I switch to berkerk to kill the doppelganger ASAP before the ghul closes in and manage to drop him when the confusion wears off the following turn. I try to drop the ghul with my sling but miss. Fortunately I am able to dispatch him in melee without taking a hit. 99.9% of the time I'll probably be okay killing ghuls in melee as they are weak and usually miss, but that 0.1% of the time is potentially fatal so it's best to try to kill them with ranged attacks to be safe.



I enter level 7 and encounter a staring eye. Staring eyes can also paralyze and have a chance to do so whenever attacked in melee. Always kill staring eyes with ranged attacks, at point blank if necessary. I kill it with my sling and move on.



I find the carpenter. He's gone mad in the dungeon and attacks me. I'm not going to kill him though. I switch to coward tactics and kite him back to the stairs.



Monsters will follow you up or down stairs if they are adjacent to you when you ascend/descend.



I kite Yriggs back to the fourth level and over to Jharod.

Jharod, the Healer, touches Yriggs, the mad carpenter.
Jharod, the Healer, grunts "Let me heal ye, friend."
Yriggs, the mad carpenter, suddenly appears to be normal once more.
He bows to you and puts down some items before he leaves.



Yriggs leaves me a hatchet, a huge manual and a white potion. The huge manual is a Manual of Bridge Building. When I return to Terinyo Yriggs will teach me the Bridge Building skill. Bridge building is one of a handful of skills that require "material" in your inventory in order to be eligible to be increased on level up. The manual is the material required to increase the Bridge Building skill. I also need to be literate for it to count. Bridge Building is used to turn logs into bridge tiles which can be placed over water. This requires lugging the 800s logs to the water you want to bridge and then failing over and over to make anything useful because your skill level is shit. Logs are obtained by chopping down trees with a hatchet. Trees are never anywhere near the water you want to bridge. It's much less hassle in most cases to find a waterproof blanket, stow any rustable gear in your inventory and just swim (the swimming skill is easy to obtain if you don't start with it). There is another way to cross water too but I'll get to that later. The white potion is always a potion of oil. I forget what they even do but I'm fairly sure it's nothing important. Incidentally, chopping down trees for logs is where the Woodcrafting skill comes in. It makes chopping the trees down faster. That's it. I had thought that it worked with Bridge Building to increase your chance to build a bridge section, but according to the guidebook it's just chopping speed. It's even more useless than I thought.



"I will teach ye the art of healing!"
Jharod, the healer, softly touches your forehead.

Bringing Yriggs to Jharod satisfies Jharod that I can show mercy and he gives me 12 points in the Healing skill. As mentioned earlier, Healing increases the rate of natural HP regeneration. It's quite a substantial effect, especially at higher skill levels, and indisputably the most important skill in the game. Improving this skill will be a priority from now on. Note that my alignment was NC before from picking pockets but is now back to N=. Returning Yriggs to Jharod is a lawful act.

I'm done in the Village Dungeon for now and head back to Terinyo.



"Greetings friend!
Can I help ye by providing some training in bridge building?
You train for many hours. You feel hungry.

I pick up 6 points in bridge building from Yriggs.



"Latest news indicate that Kranach, the raider lord, no longer roams this part of the country.
Let's pray that he's gone for good.
Ye no longer need to look for him."

As I've hit level 6, Kranach has peaced out.



Ye saved Yriggs. Ye deserve our eternal gratitude.
I talked to Munxip, the human shopkeeper and he will adjust his prices for ye.
Now try to find the source of all this Chaos stuff!
I believe that the origin of this great evil might lie in an ancient dungeon in the western central part of the mountains.
Look out for a truly foreboding place.

Turning this quest in gives another Lawful boost, pushing my alignment up to N+.

The Elder directs me to the game's central dungeon, which is 50 levels deep. I won't head there yet though. My next goal is to make it through the Small Cave and the Unremarkable Dungeon. The Puppy Cave can wait, I don't want to be any higher than level 6 when I attempt the Small Cave. I'll inevitably have to kill some monsters to find the exit (and hopefully the blanket!) and even level 12 monsters can be dangerous at this point, let alone anything higher. First though, I'm going to pay another visit to Holeinthewall.



"Well met!
We need more men like ye!
Welcome to our guild!"
You talk to Yergius, the master thief.
"Well met, brother.
Would you like to be trained in climbing, disarming traps, trap detection, listening, opening locks, picking pockets, or stealth?"

I've picked enough pockets to finish Yergius's quest and join the thieves' guild. He will now teach me any of the above skills I don't have for a fee of ~3500-5000 gold each. For those I do have he will offer me theoretical or practical training. Practical training has the same as using the skill for a bit and can increase the current and max scores. Theoretical training increases the die roll for increasing the skill on level up. The key skill here is Detect Traps. Traps are usually avoided once detected even if not disarmed and certain levels later on containa lot of traps. I don't have enough gold to buy any skills yet though, so I'll be back later. I also visit the shop to sell off some junk loot I've picked up. The shopkeeper has generated some new stock and I am able to identify an amulet of light. These are handy for dark rooms and I could afford it but they are fairly common and I'd rather save the ~1000 gold asking price towards buying Detect Traps. I'll probably find one soon enough.



Back to the Small Cave. It's a risk leaving this until level 6 but attempting the Small Cave/Unremarkable Dungeon at level 1 with no Healing skill is just as risky.



The waterproof blanket is always generated is the furthest room from the entrance. Luckily the entrance isn't right in a corner (they often are) so I don't have as much ground to cover as I could have. I make my way southeast.



An orc blocks my way into this room. I want to try to avoid killing monsters as much as possible so as not to spawn higher level ones. I back up to the crossroads behind me and use the diagonals to move around him.



It works but the room doesn't seem to lead anywhere. It could contain a secret door but for now I'll check the other doors.



I found the stairs down and a hooded cloak, but no way east. There must be a hidden door somewhere. My gut tells me it's in the larger room where I met the orc but I check the eastern wall of this room anyway.



Yikes. As I search a fire vortex shows up. It will move quickly towards me and explode. I have two levels of fire resistance and lots of HP so I should be able to handle to damage, but the fire could burn some of my gear.



I try to take it out before it can explode but I miss with both sling and melee. The vortex explodes and kills the orc, but I don't take much damage and luckily my gear is okay. I eat the orc's corpse and head back to the larger room to look for a door as there doesn't seem to be one here.



I knew it. After playing this game long enough you kind of develop a hunch for where the level generation likes to put doors.



I run into a newly spawned goblin with lots of experience who manages to hit me a few times, but I manage to kill him and make it to the blanket. Now to head back to the stairs and on to the Unremarkable Dungeon.



I make it back to the stairs without incident and find another unIDed potion along the way. An experienced giant centipede has chased me down the stairs. To my left is a pool. Pools are a special dungeon feature and as such often show up in the UD. Pools can be drunk from for a variety of random effects, from the fantastic (a wish) to the terrible (all kinds of things which will probably come up later.) I'm not currently equipped to deal with some of the worse outcomes of pool drinking so I'll remember it's here but let it be for now. The centipede turns out to not be as tough as the goblin and I dispatch it without issue.

Also I forgot to mention at the time but somewhere along the way I hit Polearms 4 and Shield 1. More DV from both!

Next time: I tackle the Unremarkable Dungeon.