ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)

ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)

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Wayreth Nov 18, 2015 @ 4:51am
ADOM vs Stone Soup Crawl
I'm a veteran of Crawl (as in, I've played it a LOT and never managed to even glimpse the orb) and would like to hear thoughts from people who have played both of them. I have had a go at ToME but can't quite get into it, and always find myself going back to Crawl instead of other roguelikes.

While I'm here - any thoughts on Dungeonmans as well?

Thanks everybody.
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Showing 1-15 of 18 comments
Ryan Dorkoski Nov 18, 2015 @ 5:36am 
All I can speak for is Dungeonmans - its well done, but doesn't have near the complexity or depth as the others you speak of. Makes sense, I suppose, considering developement time and all that.
Gordon Overkill Nov 18, 2015 @ 6:06am 
Crawl is a great game for sure, too. I especially like the atmospheric dungeon layouts of the game. Also I really like the randomly generated artefacts. What I don't like very much are some recent changes towards a more casual gaming experience like unlimited weight carrying capacity, automatical identification of wands etc. Also I am not a fan of the auto-explore feature, which takes alot from the great athmosphere of the locations I mentioned before. For some reason I still use the feature... somehow it belongs to Crawl in my eyes and kinda makes it different from my experiences with other games like ADOM. Also I don't like the shop system alot. I just enjoy selling my loot. It's not as bad as ToME though, where every merchant buys everything for pretty much the same price.
Didn't beat the game yet, too, by the way. My best char was a Mino Berserker who was killed on the way back to the surface with the Orb in his backpack.

About ADOM I just cannot be objective. I love this game more than any other game I played in my life and didn't get a single bit tired of it during more than a decade of playing.
Waervyn Nov 18, 2015 @ 6:32am 
I personally don't really like Crawl. I appreciate and respect the game a lot, but I don't find it fun to play. I enjoy roguelikes with a story such as ToME and ADOM.

Haven't played Dungeonmans myself. Was on the fence for a long time, but I think it wouldn't hold as much replayability as the other roguelikes I enjoy (plus I don't like the way you level up like in Rogue Legacy).
Epic Fail Guy Nov 18, 2015 @ 8:24am 
I like Crawl, although not quite as much as ADOM.

The good: plenty of races, classes and customization, some very original races and classes, and especially some original gods (the religion system is quite superior to ADOM). I remember having lots of fun with characters devoted to the whims of Xom, the god of chaos or randomness or something, and also lots of fun recruiting every orc under the sun with an orc priest. Also the melee was richer than ADOM, with some cool abilities (berserking, etc.)

The not so good: last time I played, character advancement seemed a bit like a math optimization problem - you had to know lots of numeric mechanics and restrictions in order to advance your character well, and if you didn't know, you could take suboptimal decisions that would punish you quite a bit. Note that this may have changed (I played for the last time maybe, I don't know, 3-4 years ago?). Also, I don't like the overreliance of autotravel and automatic pathfinding. I don't like that kind of features and the levels feel dull if you don't use them (as they were designed around them).

Also, an advantage of ADOM for me is the presence of an overworld apart from the dungeons.
Last edited by Epic Fail Guy; Nov 18, 2015 @ 8:25am
Wayreth Nov 18, 2015 @ 2:20pm 
Thank you for your replies. ADOM wishlisted for now :)
skooma Nov 18, 2015 @ 8:27pm 
My vote is for Crawl. The tileset is more atmospheric, UI looks clearer to me and hotkeys are simple - I don't feel like I'm a piano player while autoexploring and doing other stuff (geez, I hate ADOM's hotkeys so much). Though, I'm not talking about gameplay, because both games have some cool mechanics. It's just the matter of comfort.
Last edited by skooma; Nov 18, 2015 @ 8:36pm
midori Nov 19, 2015 @ 1:38am 
something about DCSS is really boring to me, my favorite RL is elona though, ADOM is pretty similar
sirtheta Nov 19, 2015 @ 11:37am 
As someone with both a lot of ADOM wins under my belt[www.adom.de] and a 15-runer in DCSS 0.16[crawl.akrasiac.org]:

It's really hard to compare the two. But here's an attempt:

DCSS is very easily my second-favorite game of all time. It's extraordinarily well balanced, extremely deep in every respect (combat types are relatively well balanced, the religion system is amazing, etc.), and equally hard at every stage of the game. Naturally the early game is harder because you don't have consumables to give you the same escape options as later in the game, but you're still in very real danger the whole way through; this guy had 6 runes and bought it hard[crawl.akrasiac.org]. By 0.16, so many things are fixed from earlier versions that it really just slays as a game now and is a real joy to play.

ADOM, OTOH, is far more forgiving of mistakes. There are potions that heal your entire health! You can escape anywhere very easily! You have immunity to elemental attacks! Invisibility is super powerful! Etc. But ADOM is no slouch in the difficulty department, even after you've mastered it. And ultimately, it remains my favorite game of all time because of its insane depth and its RPG elements: how could any game match the mysterious lure of ADOM's locations? DCSS's branches are all appropriately thematic, but they lack the visceral gut punch that the Tower of Eternal Flames, I:66, the Emperor Moloch cave, etc. can deliver.

Ultimately one of DCSS greatest strengths (it's balance) sinks the game a little for me: I often feel like I'm being railroaded into finishing the game in one of a couple ways due to the way experience and monster leveling works. In ADOM you have a lot more freedom even when you aren't experienced to do whatever you want. Someone has even completed the challenge game of going straight to the TOEF at level 1 and defeating the boss. Though it's since been scrubbed from the forums, another person did nearly the entire game as a blind Monk [only being stopped by the fact that you can't progress further while blind].

A postscript: in DCSS, your race is the biggest determining factor (and it's a really big one) for your character since it determines both your skill modifiers and how your stats are assigned. I'd say it's around a 75/25 split for importance of race v class. In ADOM, you get skills from both race and class and your class modifies base stats from your race. Class is more important because it determines your abilities and how good you are at combat/spellcasting/etc, but race still plays a major role. I'd say it's about a 40/60 split for importance of race v class in ADOM.
Last edited by sirtheta; Nov 19, 2015 @ 12:46pm
Wayreth Nov 19, 2015 @ 2:49pm 
Originally posted by sirtheta:
As someone with both a lot of ADOM wins under my belt[www.adom.de] and a 15-runer in DCSS 0.16[crawl.akrasiac.org]:

And this, folks, is what an impressive roguelike CV looks like. :)
Have you tried Caves of Qud, sirtheta?
Last edited by Wayreth; Nov 19, 2015 @ 2:52pm
boltar Nov 19, 2015 @ 3:57pm 
Adom: It feels like a classic upgrade to original nethack. I use to play this a lot many years ago. I bought adom but i dont think ill play it, however i feel I owe the dev some $$ for the countless hours of entertainment back in the day. I hope he updates the game. Sometimes he can go years without an update.

Tome: Great chat system where you can talk to other players while playing tome. I love this feature. you can get part of the game free from their website. It also has an achivement unlock class/race system which i love. Similar to binding of isaac. steady updates

Dungeonmans: Does everything well for a roguelike but not original in anything. Updates seem slow

Crawl (dcss) : no shops, currency, or sound. However, its free. It has a lot of great tactics. I played this a lot around the same time as adom. Steady updates.

to answer the OP question, i think you will like these games in the follower order base on your crawl experience.

1. tome
2. adom
3. dungeonmans
Last edited by boltar; Nov 19, 2015 @ 4:08pm
DirectOrder Nov 19, 2015 @ 7:04pm 
@sirtheta

Very interesting analysis. Thanks for taking the time to type that up.
sirtheta Nov 20, 2015 @ 7:57am 
Since they've been mentioned, another postscript, on shops and gold:

Shops in ADOM and DCSS are so wildly different in terms of their utility and how they work that it's (again) hard to compare them, but I think DCSS's implementation of shops and gold is very cool and better than ADOM's. I can see why it doesn't appeal to fans of a more traditional approach, but not having any sort of sell capacity in DCSS is a huge plus; you never have to worry about lugging around items to sell and having gold handled separately from inventory is pretty nice. Shops in DCSS might offer treasures beyond your wildest imagination, or even just a pretty damn useful item (like the +9 armour of the Dragon King (worn) {rPois rF+ rC+ MR+} on that 15-runer). Or they might just be really useful for identifying some items, since identify scrolls are pretty limited. And given the rarity of gold, even from the orcish mines, and the expense of really good items, there are some interesting trade-offs to be made. The only comparable shop in ADOM is the Casino and, rarely, the Black Market.

OTOH, once you're a bit experienced in ADOM, you find that gold is a bit worthless except for crowning. The Casino contains many useful utility items, and potentially some artifacts, but what's the point of gold when you can just rob it [which I do, every time].

A lot of this is also tied to the item and resistance systems that ADOM and DCSS employ; DCSS's random artifacts offer an additional dimension to the item system that's really cool.

Originally posted by Wayreth:
And this, folks, is what an impressive roguelike CV looks like. :)
Have you tried Caves of Qud, sirtheta?
aw shucks, I'm really not even that good at DCSS and I'm several tiers below the really great ADOM players; but thanks :) DCSS and ADOM are actually the only roguelikes I've ever played extensively (I've dabbled in others, but never come close to learning them). I've heard a lot of good things about COQ though; I'll probably check it out soon.

I'll also note that anyone who last played DCSS in ~0.14 or before is really missing out: so many game mechanics have been made better as of 0.16 that it feels like an entirely different (and extremely streamlined) game now.
Last edited by sirtheta; Nov 20, 2015 @ 7:59am
sothis86 Nov 20, 2015 @ 9:12am 
I'm DCSS veteran too - ( 4thArraOfDagon nick ingame). I've been playing both DCSS and ADOM for 10ish years and i find DCSS kinda superior. I like both games tho - its just i'm more into dcss.
Unholy Nov 22, 2015 @ 10:35pm 
I'm a Nethack veretan (as in I stopped playing after many many ascensions with really stupid unofficial conducts such as nudist...) and got into adom 2 years ago or so. What I liked with nethack is that it's sort of more random sometimes and there is more content, but once you are 100% spoiled and have a decent start well everything else is easy, as least in the base game. For some reason, I have the same sort of joy I had when I play adom (but would still love more content/weird deaths). I liked Crawl but never really could get into it, not sure why. Maybe because I felt a little less free to do stuff my way. As for ToME...yuck.
Last edited by Unholy; Nov 22, 2015 @ 10:37pm
If you like roguelikes, buy every roguelike and download every free roguelike. Why limit yourself?
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Date Posted: Nov 18, 2015 @ 4:51am
Posts: 18