Secret Rooms

[freddiet82]

I have been having alot of trouble completing the first couple of quests because I just cant find the NPCs like the puppy in question. Sometimes if I am lucky I can find a secret door to find a stair downwards in these early dungeon but sometimes it just seems like the dungeon is incomplete or something. Is there some kind of trick to finding these secret doors or something that can help me complete these early quests before time runs out.
Also the quest to find the bandit in the wilderness - how do I find him because the random encounters are practically death sentences with no way to run away.

[jbridso]

To find the secret rooms you can search, I belive s key is the default. You can also do things like using a stethoscope, pick, wand of digging, and I think kicking works too, but you might hurt your foot.

It's pretty difficult to actually save the little dog in time... you have to rush to save it and also get lucky... sometimes you end up with bad luck like a river blocking the way.

The bandit quest is random, as long as you're a strong starting class it's quite doable... ie) a drakeling fighter born under the candle sign shouldn't have an issue with random encounters... while a mincrafter of any race will most likely be dead... unless you use a confusion blast and run away...

Typically to run away you need to have high speed or Seven League Boots... Long Stride talent helps too... but Seven League boots are by far the best option. The easiest way to obtain these boots are as a bard heir item, or a wish.

[eRogue]

The dungeon levels should be rather filled with rooms. Overtime you develop a feel for where secret doors are likely to be. As you said yourself, if they don't look complete, there probably is a secret door. A random passageway in ADOM *never* dead-ends, so that's a dead givaway.

The keystrokes 'ws' will search multiple times in a row... I think the default is 20, but I change it to fifty with Persistence = 50.

So, I pick a candiate wall and move to the corner. I hit 'ws' which searches those 5 adjacent wall tiles, then move 3 spaces futher along the wall, ws to search those 3 walls, move-move-move-ws, move-move-move-ws, and you find it if it's there. if not, it must be somewhere else.

There is magic that will map out dungeon levels.

The original Rogue was rather easy regarding secret doors, as every level was a simple 3x3 grid of 9 room connected orthoganally. Later roguelikes like ADOM with more complex dungeon generation and even handmade vaults have made it a bit more difficult, but searching for secret doors is a part of the game I enjoy. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has removed secret doors to make the game "more accessible".

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The puppy cave is indeed very hard to complete in time, but you can nevertheless always find proof that you were too slow. The puppy cave is also relatively difficult, many of my character get their butts kicked on the last two levels. Thus, I don't do that quest all the time, and I don't recommend that a new player do it.

The raider hunt can also be hard. I usually don't manage to complete it because their appearance is random; most games I simply don't find them. Also I usually level up too fast to fast, as there is a level restriction (time limit) for that quest. Still, many characters will indeed be killed trying to put down the raiders. If your character is too week to survive random orc patrols in the wilderness, you're not going to survive the band of raiders either.

[Ray Robertson]

Using the ws(or even just s before first testing) command to search for secret doors wastes too many turns, where if you kick or use a stetoscope the game will tell you with a special message that the secret door is there. So, you only need to check each wall tile you suspect once with this method and then use the search command there.

Take care however, because kicking a wall does damage some early game characters. Get some foot protection.

[Nurkka]

There has been multiple nice tips already.

Check mini map and think were should corridor and door to it be located. It's most likely near mostly unexplored area.
One tactic is quite simple and brute. Walk along the walls and on every step do 's'earch. Eventually you should find the secret door. Just make sure that you have food with you since it might take some time to find the door...

[freddiet82]

Thanks for all the help everyone.