Cursed Paladin?

[Daven_26d1]

I just killed a dunadan paladin in ToME a couple hours ago, and I swear to tulkas I never had it so hard playing a fighter! Ended up circa lvl 10 and I never saw a single potion of speed(!) despite some scumming on the first few floors. I accidentally read a scroll of recall instead of holy chant while I was fighting smeagol - I had him pinned against the lava of a cleared princess room, I still hadn't grabbed my prize! He managed to get a steal hit in with one star left, so I dashed for the armour in the middle of the pool... stood on it and was yanked upwards one turn shy of hitting 'g'.
I did kill smeagol deeper in the downs, but not before I had to deal with a baby green dragon quest at 250' (this seemed slightly out of depth). 3xphase door, 4xcsw, 2xccw, 1xmanathrust wand, 2xheroism and a berserk strength later, not to mention quite a fright when I realised that dragons could cross trees( doh! ) I'm the proud new owner of a nifty new blade. The only decent find prior to this was a ring of invisibility - these seem much more common in ToME, possibly to help with the Farmer Maggot quest?
I'm new to ToME (this is about character #5) so I was unsure of what to do about this God Quest thing. I bit the bullet and found the temple, and I get a fate message. I was in two minds - go back to bree and see what my fate was, or dive into the temple?
So I bit the bullet and dropped in, depth said 300', so I thought, lets do it.
Quite a tough battle with a pair of snaga later and I'm not so sure, so I decide that I'll just grab the sword I can see and head back, discretion being the better part of valor.
"The deathblade hits you" etc. DOH! Okay, yeah amateur mistake, but I really wasn't expecting deathblades at that depth... is it likely that I had an unfortunate fate, or are the lost temples just stupidhard?

[petebull]

The God quests are meant to be hard.

If you first encounter the death swords they are to dangerous to melee. In Lost Temples they are even more dangerous due to monster levelling.

If you didn't try it: The Mindcraft skill from priests collects much things to keep you alive.

Texts with paragraphs are easier to read.

[Daven_26d1]

Cool, I like hard, hard keeps me on my toes and therefore alive. So the monsters are levelled; I'll plan better with my next priest. I *never* would have opted to take the death sword on in melee - if only i had 'l'ooked!

Having a better time of it today, managed the thief quest as my first dive with a half-elf ranger, thanks to the tactics/explore system.
He's presently chewing through the orc caves, - I love the variations in dungeon generator in ToME! Also, have *another* ring of invis... does Smeagol always/often drop these? That would make sense.

Sorry 'bout paragraphing, I was tired and suffering from post character fatigue. =]

[petebull]

About Smeagol, yes, he has a fixed drop. I chose to not to spoil you on this issue in my first post.

For most of my characters killing Smeagol is only a possibility after Farmer Maggots quest. My normal start is to tackle the thieves first, then the BD.

ToME has also a very helpful community webforum under http://forum.t-o-m-e.net/ (which just right now isn't working). The moderators keep those forums clean from foul language so you have to behave yourself over there.

BTW, you know already what inscriptions are? I use "!*" on my Recall scrolls.

[pav]

Forum unstucked. (phpBB is sooo crappily written. oh my)

[Fuma]

I'm not sure about this, as I haven't really tested it throughly, but you could use the - (dash) key to move with pickup. That way you'd manage to get the armour just before recalling.
It may be another key, as I use the the roguelike keyset, so just search for "flip pickup" in the help files.

[Daven_26d1]

Yeah, I know about inscriptions, but I get lazy sometimes - "I'll inscribe all my kit when I get back to town, it won't matter..."

I like to fight unusual uniques when I'm underpowered, its epic and frustrating battles like that that I really crave - Draebor anyone?
Speaking of Smeagol and spoilers, I've been musing today about the 'y' key and a certain other ring. Not an easy thing to test without cheating though!

Flip pickup would have gotten me the armour, yes - I was smart enough to run, but not quite smart enough to give myself a whole extra turn... I guess I was rushing in and out of character! I need to start sleeping at 4am instead of slaying my characters!

Thanks for the responses guys, I think I'm gonna like this place. =]

[Kav]

For some reason I always liked the 'pick things up by default' option. Just a preference thing I guess.

I play Vanilla 90% of the time, but every once in a while I have to play a little of my favorite variant ToME. It's just so different. Sometimes I don't know if it's easier or harder! My favorite class would have to be a RohanKnight Swordsman. They are walking death and can dive so fast it's almost cheating

Other times it seems really hard when they start throwing things at me that I don't recognize from V. I never know which dungeon to go in and I just love doing quests that are so far out of my lvl range that it means certain instant death. I need to go grab an online guide somewhere on how not to die in ToME. Hopefully I can find something on how to distribute skill points appropriately too. I never know what to do with them.

And what's up with my obsession with getting lost souls killed over and over again? I think it's my temptation for deep loot. Never mind the fact that they rarely live through 1k turns