ADOM Archer vs Paladin

[Majora]

which of these classes should I choose for my first victory? I am a big noob.

And race?

[LaserGuy]

Archer is probably easier--generally, missile is easier than melee in ADOM.

Good archer races are High/Gray Elf and Hurthling. Human is okay, but the others are superior.

Early game, your main priority will be to keep a good supply of missiles. Don't be afraid to improvise missiles--you'll still be effective using thrown rocks (probably the most reliable early game missile) spears (traps have lots, though they're heavy), daggers, whatever.

[Shinae]

Paladin is a very good melee option. Paladin becomes decent caster after few levels as well. If you also pick dwarf you get Detect Traps which is a very helpful skill. Paladin was my first victory. They have good chance to get one of the best melee weapon available in game ;)

[errantstar]

archer is the strongest class in the game and, conveniently, is horrendously boring to play so you'll probably quit adom after that

orc/DE archer is probably best since ranged find weakness is OP, or just play drakeling since they're the best for everything. note that DE and drake have awful starting ammo though.

[THANKS OBAMA]

Try a Duelist. If you can get enough PV early on to survive to mid game you end up with a character that is stupidly powerful and actually has a chance at casting magic eventually.

[errantstar]

i'll just repost my tier lists here i guess

Race:

S: Drakeling
A: Mist Elf, Gnome, Ratling, Dark Elf
B: Human, Orc, Dwarf,
C: other elves, Troll, Hurthling


Class:
S: startscummed Chaos Knight, Wizard, Necromancer, Archer
A: Monk, Duelist, Mindcrafter, Priest, Healer
B: Druid, Elementalist, Assassin, Paladin, Weaponsmith
C: Fighter, Bard, CK played the way it's intended (C- no startscum), Barbarian, Ranger
D: Thief, Farmer, Merchant
Beastfighter tier: Beastfighter

[vysionier]

Lol. Beastfighter tier? One of the easiest classes is somehow last, and some of the easiest races are c?

[Majora]

Originally posted by ster:

i'll just repost my tier lists here i guess

Race:

S: Drakeling
A: Mist Elf, Gnome, Ratling, Dark Elf
B: Human, Orc, Dwarf,
C: other elves, Troll, Hurthling


Class:
S: startscummed Chaos Knight, Wizard, Necromancer, Archer
A: Monk, Duelist, Mindcrafter, Priest, Healer
B: Druid, Elementalist, Assassin, Paladin, Weaponsmith
C: Fighter, Bard, CK played the way it's intended (C- no startscum), Barbarian, Ranger
D: Thief, Farmer, Merchant
Beastfighter tier: Beastfighter

Why do you consider drakeling so good?
In this guide it says drakeling is the worst archer?
http://adomguides.blogspot.com/2007/09/guide-to-being-archer.html

Also I heard mist elf is a super weak race, but you place them pretty high?


Im not saying you are wrong, I am a noob and was just wondering the reason you made the tiers like this?

anyways thanks for the tier list, I always find tier lists very useful.

[vysionier]

I agree, drakeling archer is redundant at best, why would you need acid spit on a ranged character?
However mist elf is super powered. With concentration you get at least a book caster with every class, meaning (potentially) unlimited strength of atlas and unlimited carry capacity. Also melee dmg resist and alertness with all classes.

[errantstar]

Originally posted by vysionier:

Lol. Beastfighter tier? One of the easiest classes is somehow last, and some of the easiest races are c?

Beastfighter has worse DV and damage than anyone using Big Punch, which is realistically going to be every character from dwarftown quests onwards. Your unarmed damage is barely better than a 1H sword for the first 10 levels too and BF has mediocre earlygame PV so there isn't even an advantage there. It gets good crowning gifts and can skip D:50 (mind you, anyone can do the latter) but that's not enough given that it can never cast spells and never melee competently.

BF can definitely win of course; adom is a ridiculously easy roguelike if you're spoiled, but their total incompetence in melee necessitates you use ranged combat much more heavily.

Originally posted by vysionier:

I agree, drakeling archer is redundant at best, why would you need acid spit on a ranged character?
However mist elf is super powered. With concentration you get at least a book caster with every class, meaning (potentially) unlimited strength of atlas and unlimited carry capacity. Also melee dmg resist and alertness with all classes.

Drakeling is the best race in the game due to all its skills being fairly useful (from best to worst, alertness food pres swimming to not die to UD rivers music for cats), acid spit which is essentially a medium-powered bolt spell (so it will damage things with high PV/DV without much issue) and drake also has stats in the right places in most situations.

e: also ToEF and extra xp in IQD

Meanwhile i'm heavily biased towards mist elf due to winning hard settings ultra but i wouldn't say it's actually a very good race - but some classes like CK and duelist let it shine since it gives them concentration and very good starting gear, so it's one of the more viable alternatives to drakeling, once you get part the point where traps one shot you.

[vysionier]

Originally posted by ster:

Originally posted by vysionier:

Lol. Beastfighter tier? One of the easiest classes is somehow last, and some of the easiest races are c?

Beastfighter has worse DV and damage than anyone using Big Punch, which is realistically going to be every character from dwarftown quests onwards. Your unarmed damage is barely better than a 1H sword for the first 10 levels too and BF has mediocre earlygame PV so there isn't even an advantage there. It gets good crowning gifts and can skip D:50 (mind you, anyone can do the latter) but that's not enough given that it can never cast spells and never melee competently.

BF can definitely win of course; adom is a ridiculously easy roguelike if you're spoiled, but their total incompetence in melee necessitates you use ranged combat much more heavily.

Originally posted by vysionier:

I agree, drakeling archer is redundant at best, why would you need acid spit on a ranged character?
However mist elf is super powered. With concentration you get at least a book caster with every class, meaning (potentially) unlimited strength of atlas and unlimited carry capacity. Also melee dmg resist and alertness with all classes.

Drakeling is the best race in the game due to all its skills being fairly useful (from best to worst, alertness food pres swimming to not die to UD rivers music for cats), acid spit which is essentially a medium-powered bolt spell (so it will damage things with high PV/DV without much issue) and drake also has stats in the right places in most situations.

e: also ToEF and extra xp in IQD

Meanwhile i'm heavily biased towards mist elf due to winning hard settings ultra but i wouldn't say it's actually a very good race - but some classes like CK and duelist let it shine since it gives them concentration and very good starting gear, so it's one of the more viable alternatives to drakeling, once you get part the point where traps one shot you.

Alright, for beastfighter your points are mostly true, but their pv is adequate for the early game, especially with healing skill at start. Their damage becomes obscene in the mid to late game, but it's definately passable in the early game. Plus the lvl/3 DV bonus is nice, although not as good as a shield, there's also the lvl/2 spd bonus and the lvl18 700 EC movement. Also they aren't completely inadequate with magic, they don't get the barbarian tables, they get the fighter tables for learning magic. BP does 11-43 and you can get it around lvl 14-18, beastfighter would do 16-31 at 20, but they'd do 26-51 by lvl 35, while many characters would still be using BP.

As for drakelings... yes they get great skills, and acid spit is useful, but avg lifespan, ice can slow them so bad that it becomes very inconvenient to play them at times.
Although their stats are great for melee, they will always make a mediocre magic user with poor mana and average Le. Especially with the game respecting potentials now.

Now mist elves.. pretty much my favorite, but probably because I'm a bit bored with the other races. They become very survivable as soon as you get a helmet and the black torc for resistances.

[blunk]

Archer, Paladin is a lot weaker.
For race high elf and dwarf are both very good learning races since they get decent stats all over.
Drakeling are strong but can get in some trouble because of race specifics.
Other elves are very low on str and to which makes the game a lot more difficult if you're inexperienced.
I'd suggest you try archer (extremely strong ranged), assassin (very strong melee and range) and healer (regens very fast but crappy starting gear) all very strong classes.
Don't worry if you die 10 times with every class, it takes time to learn adom.

[errantstar]

Originally posted by vysionier:

snip about BF

the thing is, you can bless big punch so it will do more damage against everything relevant in late game, and you can get better slaying weapons than BP/eternium of devastation while BF has no way to boost its damage. Finally the DV boost of bf is a joke, at level 50 you get +16 DV. that's one more than a small crystal shield with shield skill would give you, and that's something literally everyone will have by halfway through UD

BF has no concentration so you will need to either use a wish (not ideal) or play mist elf (even less ideal) to learn spells.

[vysionier]

All true, but there's a definite bonus to never switching weapons, and that's an almost guaranteed grand mastery. So you can add a bonus 12 DV from that, and the energy cost of 600 plus the spd from class bonus. I am not about to say they are the strongest class, it's just the easiest. No weapon switching, decent damage, no armor restrictions. Only need at least 60 DV anyways.
Try a ME beastfighter sometime. It was pretty fun for me at least, mine took out 2 GUV's pretty easily and had a decent spell selection. Btw, melee isn't the best way to slay things anyways, slaying ammo is the best, no stat drains plus crit dmg range of 2-5

[LaserGuy]

Originally posted by ster:

i'll just repost my tier lists here i guess

Race:

S: Drakeling
A: Mist Elf, Gnome, Ratling, Dark Elf
B: Human, Orc, Dwarf,
C: other elves, Troll, Hurthling

This is just crazy talk. I can't make sense of what you're valuing here.

Drakelings are great, no question. But Ratlings and Gnomes are both strictly inferior to Hurthlings (Gnomes are better casters, but you may as well play a Grey Elf). Mist elves are in the same tier as trolls: Good if you want a very specific playstyle, but difficult to compare to the other races directly... if I had to compare ME/troll to other races, they'd probably be bottom tier, but I prefer to separate them out since they really just don't play the same at all. Humans are the worst race without a doubt, except for maybe Ratlings.

A more sensible order is something like:
S: Drakeling
A: Hurthling, Dwarf, DE
B: GE/HE, Orc
C: Human, Ratling, Gnome
X: Mist Elf, Troll

For casters, GE/HE/Gnome moves up, Hurthling/Orc/Drakeling moves down.

Class:
S: startscummed Chaos Knight, Wizard, Necromancer, Archer
A: Monk, Duelist, Mindcrafter, Priest, Healer
B: Druid, Elementalist, Assassin, Paladin, Weaponsmith
C: Fighter, Bard, CK played the way it's intended (C- no startscum), Barbarian, Ranger
D: Thief, Farmer, Merchant
Beastfighter tier: Beastfighter

Not sure why Necros are ranked so high. I'd put Priest above them for sure. Maybe even Druid.

Healer above Paladin? Mindcrafter above Barbarian? Madness.

This is how I would rank characters overall:

S: Wizard, Priest, Archer
A: Druid, Necro, Paladin, Barbarian
B: Beastfighter, Duelist, Elemental, Monk
C: Farmer, Ranger, Healer
D: Assassin, Weaponsmith, Fighter,
E: Mindcrafter, Thief, Merchant, Bard
X: Chaos Knight

CK and to a lesser extent, Bard, can have wildly different games depending on what kind of start you get. A random CK is, on average, IMHO, E tier, but they can get up to A tier if you do a lot rerolls. Bards can get up to maybe D tier on a good roll with a 3+ talent start.

[errantstar]

Originally posted by JellySlayer:

snip

stopped reading when i saw barb and beastfighter above monk, let alone duelist
actually had to do a double take when i saw mindcrafter bottom tier, and posted it to the discord and a couple more guys pointed and laughed

i'll post an actual response later