I know the game is tough ... but c'mon.

[Saffron]

Aside from the tutorial, I was playing my first game in standard mode. I cleared out the first cave right next to the start location without any problems. I also found nothing overly useful, however. Just a plethora of noob weapons that were mostly designed for classes other than mine (High-Elven Ranger).

I go to Torinyo, grab the quests there and hoping to sell the various items I picked up and then replenish my supply of arrows (I only started with 10 of them!)

Of course no luck. The only thing they sell in Torinyo are rations. I was hoping in the real game the town would have more to offer.

So I go to the cave southeast of Torinyo where at least one of my quests' objectives are.

And when I descend into the dungeon and move perhaps a dozen squares, I'm beset upon by a boss.

Yeah ... a boss. I'm only 6th level and I'm still using the starter kit. Plus I have no ammo -- and I sunk a lot of points into archery. But ... I thought maybe it'll be a relatively weak boss. After all, why would the game throw a powerful boss at me so early on in the game before I've had a chance to even buy more arrows -- much less be dripping in epic loot.

Nope. Of course not. Even when I could hit the boss, his PV soaked up all the damage. So after losing around half my hit points while doing not a scratch to the boss, I went full coward mode and made a run for the stairs which, like I said, were perhaps 8 to 10 squares away.

And I couldn't leave. "Boss's vicious attacks prevent you from ascending the stairs" or something like that. I tried again and again and again and again thinking maybe it was just a die roll that I kept failing and eventually I'd break through him and get up the stairs.

Again, nope, of course not. And I knew if I ran deeper into the dungeon, he'd kill me anyway because I'd have to stop and take several turns fighting other monsters. I'd also have to lower my defenses to even hit those other monsters.

So, bottom line here is that I was Kobyashi Maru-ed before I even ventured past the tutorial stage of the game.

Seriously ... c'mon, guys. I doubt very many people enjoy deathtraps that simply kill you with no chance at all of surviving. To me, that's like having one of those dungeon masters in a pen and paper game that is out to kill the PCs rather than run a fun and exciting game.

It's cheesy, malicious, has no sense of fair play or sportsmanship, and doesn't make for a fun game. I know the manual says that some fights may not be meant to be won and I can accept that -- but if I can neither win or run, what's the point, really.

And this had nothing whatsoever to do with bad strategy and tactics or not picking the right skills or talents, either, because it was too early in the game for me to have decent kit or a plethora of magical items to use on this boss. Plus, all I did was enter the first room in a cave that was still within the boundaries of the tutorial.

And already there's a deathtrap?

Just thinking about having to go back and re-do the same dungeon (the cave at the starting location) doesn't inspire me to keep playing. Especially now that I know this kind of crap happens and could easily happen again, wiping out hours of playtime with a fight I couldn't avoid, win, or escape.

Even assuming it was just an unlucky spawn, that doesn't address the issue of why such a powerful boss even has a chance AT ALL of spawning in such an early dungeon.

I'm calling shenanigans on this incident -- if the devs (I'm speaking directly to you now) really want to attract more players than just the die-hard, hard-core old-school RPG fans, allowing for insta-kill and deathtrap events without any kind of warning is not the way to do it.

I really want to get into this game, and I'm not crying about how much the game sucks. Quite the opposite, in fact, and I wouldn't bother writing this if I thought the whole game was bad. I just find unwinnable deathtraps that have no warning or means to avoid them to be a huge petpeave of mine, especially in rogue-like games where one death and you start all over again.

Please, can you devs do something about that?

[Acute]

I personally enjoy the fact anything can happen in this game - both good and bad. However, you can always play on that mode which allows saving.

[SMRT]

it wasn't a deathtrap, the game would have given you a warning there was a boss on that level. Part of this game is learning the signals, you can't keep moving forward, sometimes you need to run away.

[Jarinex]

To me, it sounds like you were playing one of the weaker classes (ranger is more designed to play with dual wield, which in itself is not that great). If you want a real archer, play the archer class, which is a lot easier. High Elves are also a bit weak, so I might suggest Dark Elves instead, as Find Weakness is an excellent skill to have, ranger or archer (or any melee/ranger class really)

As for the the boss, sometimes it is best to run or come back and do things later. Don’t just keep trying to go through a brick wall, but come back after you’ve leveled a bit somewhere else. You would be surprised how much that can help.

There are many guides and people who are willing to help if you get stuck.

[Majora]

it was probly a preventable death.

[Joe]

@Saffron you are absolutly right, this game is not for you.

[Tactamaryl]

ADOM expects you to make mistakes. It will teach you not to make them by punishing you for making them, and sometimes you're not going to have an easy escape from that. It's hard, it's unforgiving, but it's also fair. Random "deathtrap" deaths don't happen as much as you might think, and are often simply the result of bad or uninformed decision-making. As you continue playing the game, these occurances happen with far less frequency as your cumulative experience allows you to more accurately pinpoint the levels of risk your character is currently experiencing. That being said, some tips...

1) You were not in the tutorial area.
The only tutorial area that exists is the initial dungeon right next to the spawn point. You are not required to enter this dungeon at all if you choose not to - you get some free loot from it initially, but after you've died about 15 or so times it turns into a fully randomly generated dungeon that there is little reason to enter.

2) Weapons aren't designed around classes.
That being said, you seem to desire an archer's playstyle with ranged weapons, so play an archer. They have the fletchery skill, and can use it to make more ammo. The ranger's main gimmick is being able to dual weild more effectively than other classes.

3) The game tells you when a boss (or something else similarly out-of-depth) spawns on your floor with the message "You sense an imminent and blood-chilling threat..." Further, you aren't under obligation to attempt to fight every thing you come across. If you meet something that looks dangerous, consider running away instead of fighting. Drop some items if you're burdened to raise your speed if you need to. The situation was a "deathtrap" only because you got yourself into a dangerous and avoidable situation, and the game punished you for the mistake. Don't think that the appearance of a boss means that you just can't progress anymore - there's an entire world map of dungeons for you to explore. You can flee and gain power in other places before returning.

[Mitrovarr]

I think the boss monster difficulty might need a little calibration. I just started a wizard, and I had a wilderness encounter where I gained about six levels. I then went into the puppy cave. I ran into a boss monster on level 2 and was nearly one-shot from full health with a magic bolt. I lived, but man, that isn't something that used to happen in the game before and if I wouldn't have gained all of those random levels in the wilderness encounter I would have been killed with absolutely no chance at all. I'm pretty sure a weaker starting class, like a mindcrafter or virtually any kind of fighter, would have also been killed.

Boss monsters should probably not spawn until the player gets to a reasonable DL.

Also, I ran into two of them in the puppy cave alone which is probably an excessively high spawn rate (and with the excessive difficulty they have, good luck making any kind of progress in the game)..

[mbrowne999]

Those " imminent and blood-chilling threat" mobs come with a warning, and will only be a brief problem in your Adom career. On the Adom.de boards they are considered weak, anticlimactic, and in need of beefing up to warrant their description.

[Jipsu]

There's a setting that allows you to save and load your game. Exploration mode maybe.

[Null]

Why would the proprieter of a place called Munxip's Magnificent Munchies Mall sell arrows? Also, learn to fletch, you can get wood by smashing doors until you get an axe to chop trees with.

[Paulo]

Lol... these arent even issues when you learn how to play. So basic.

[Alfadorfox]

Personally, I think the bosses themselves are about right... what frustrates me is "X's vicious attacks keep you from leaving". It doesn't matter if you've got invisibility and high DV, and can take a few scratches from them... no, you can't just provoke an attack of opportunity and leave, it prevents you outright. And if you have slower speed than the creature you're fleeing from, you have absolutely no recourse but to fight them, inflict a status on them, or teleport them away--and mind, all these options are unlikely to be viable in the early game.

But then, too, as long as you have level messages to know that something exists on the level that you may not be prepared for... I could see the argument being made that you should know to flee before you get into melee with them. And if you don't... hello new character. Or if you're playing with permadeath off, hello reloaded save.

Which is exactly the reason why I agree with permadeath off being an option. New players absolutely need that to avoid quitting in frustration before they even learn the controls.

[exottoyuhr]

I worry that any reply to this is going to sound unfair. Your objection is a clear narrative; our responses are necessarily just nitpicks...

But at least I can start with something narrative: the Drakalor Chain is a long way from everywhere, a really inconvenient place to be having an apocalypse. There are only two settlements with general stores in ADOM, Dwarftown and the (almost unreachable) High Mountain Village; Terinyo is the kind of anonymous farming village that doesn't even appear on the map in something like FF6.

As for the boss? At least the game gave you a warning. Stone-block traps and pit traps can kill you without even that, when you're below level 6.

As far as equipment: my preferred set is a spear, shield, and sling. Spears push your DV through the roof, shields help you along further that way, and slings rarely run out of ammunition. Every character needs hand-to-hand, ranged, and magic options, although every character will be better at one than at the others.

The opening game is always hard, but there are characters that do better in the early game or in the late game. High elves are a late-game race; in exchange for frequent early deaths, they're almost immune to unnatural aging (a serious issue fighting late-game ghosts), and any high-elven class can become a powerful spellcaster.

If you want to stick around with the game -- and, as you mention, it sounds like you do -- you should probably read Andy Williams' ADOM Guidebook, at adomgb.info. It'll spoil absolutely everything, but even reading the spoilers conveys a strong sense of the game's possibilities...

[jeremiahcp]

I have never had any problems with the lowbie boss spawn. A few kill me from time to time, but that is generally due to my own recklessness. I thought they were kind of mundane, and there are other possible early finds you should be much more worried about; like the classic rat turned into a chaos jelly.

To be honest, this game has already been watered down a lot for newbies, and if you keep knocking it down you'll end up with a care bear wonderland that is no fun to play. I have seen it happen to other games in the past, people QQ over the how hard things are so the devs. just keep watering it down until it sucks.

Just L2P, and don't expect to casually stroll through the game without a challenge. When I first started this game, there was no newbie cave, there were no tutorials; you had to read the manual, there was only one game mode, I didn't have internet, I didn't have fourms to seek advice, or guides to spill all secrets. I died a lot, I mean a lot, but with every death I learned something new. Heck, for awhile I thought the Crown of Science was great artifact and wore it everywhere; that means for a good period of time I was trying to win the game for my first time with that thing on my head. You think a boss is scary? Try a normal ghoul when you are cursed and doomed.

The point is you learn from your mistakes and try again; this game is about persistence and determination, and when you finally beat it, because it was hard, you get that ♥♥♥♥-yea-I-am-boss feeling.

[hatefulgravey]

If it is bugging you that bad I recommend spoiling the crap out of yourself. Read the wiki or guidebook until things start to add up for you. These days you have mouse support, graphics, and a ton more help than the game started out with. Hell, there were versions of this game that were completely unwinnable in the early days and they still got a ton of play. This game is just a throw back (more a survivor really) to a time when beating the game at all was a major accomplishment.

I was given this game on a floppy in late 97 early 98 and still haven't beaten it. A large part of that is because I can only play so much before I run into something I don't know enough about to live through it, then I do something stupid and get killed. This is normally followed by a few months of looking at the icon on my desktop and thinking about starting the game only to change my mind and going to something made to be beated everytime I start it.

There is something masochistic about this game for sure. Personally, everything about the cats in this game piss me off no end (don't want to spoil more than I have to spoil to make my point, those that know, know). In time you just learn to embrace the hurt, sooner of later you start liking it.