Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Links to character pages
  3. Chatter

Introduction

MayLith: I've seen a number of requests for a Competition lately. I have no idea how to create a true Competition module, though, so this will have to do for the meantime. Have fun!!!

RANDOMCOMP 1 : 21 October 2004 - 31 October 2004 (Happy Halloween!)

The primary winner was decided at midnight EST on 31 October 2004:

Congratulations!

Secondary extension This comp has an extension into November, at which time a runner-up winner will be decided. Existing characters and new characters are eligeable for the extension. Extra bragging rights if you manage to win both, of course. :) (And no, this isn't a perfect solution, but, hey, it's an unofficial comp, right?)

The secondary winner was decided shortly after midnight EST on 30 November 2004:

Congrats!

Rules:

Post links below to your character sheets. Winner first (by date), then alive, then total experience.

Help in creating a character sheet and posting it on the wiki may be found here in the wiki doc.

Since this page is proving popular, please be careful to respect the edit lock.

Links to character pages

Alive

Dead

boilerplate for links:

FYI, to make the datetime macro work properly, simply remove the tickmarks to either side of it.

Chatter

NeilStevens: Your use of the word scumming makes no sense. Lost Soul Symbiants with bad symbiotes die quickly no matter what you do. Then again, the word "scum" never has had any consistent meaning. It's as worthless as "balance."

MayLith: Considering the *very* short amount of time I had in which to post, I think I did well enough. (And I did end up late for work :/) There, is that better? Anyway, it's for fun, and to help people to see the high and low points of character formats they might not otherwise try.

Anyway, the bit about Lost Souls is pretty much moot anyway, as it typically takes hundreds of tries to get out of the Halls, much less win with one.

MayLith: Rrrrrrrr... See "Mywyn". Happy now? *crooked smile*

NeilStevens: I'm sure I can top you in Lost Soul heartbreak stories, heh. I managed to lose a Lost Soul in the Halls yesterday after finding, among other things, Flare and a Fireproof Staff of Wish. Sure, the staff is way over-rated (for this character the only sure-fire wishes I could think of Polished PDSM of Immunity and a Fireproof Staff of Probability Travel, so I actually had an unused charge), but there's no way I should have let the guy get killed.

And today I had one that started with a Master Q in a good room to fight in. Set it off, gained the good old 10-20 levels, and when I went to pick it up I stepped in LOS of a Greater Demonic Q. Game over.

MayLith: Awwwww. (No, truly, sorry to hear.) Anyway... you wanted traffic. I got you traffic. :) Off to figure out petty-dwarves...

NeilStevens: I know, and it's great, so that's why I'm sharing, too, heh. Encouraging people to try random characters could produce all kinds of discussions.

MayLith: Sharing is good. :) I've been wanting to do a random char comp for ages. (Er, not like I can do a "real" comp, but anyway...) The discussion fodder, as you say, could be much fun. I assigned the settings in an effort to make it not all that easy (always small levels and 98 quests) but still give some small choices in leeway, too. My current symbiant char could be interesting. (I was thoroughly expecting a haftedmaster, after that lost soul!) Anyway, we'll see how she goes. She very nearly got pasted in the Bree house quest, doh.

ReenenLaurie: I tried a couple yesterday... The Barbarian Geomancer was an interesting one... and I had a Zombie Elf Ranger. (Can elves be zombies? Otherwise it was a Half-Elf then). Then I got a Dark-Priest... and I remembered that I still want to play a dark priest who turns good... So I decided to rather play that.

I had a funky Archer as well... but it died stepping in a paralyzation trap to a crow... A CROW! 'twas about char level 10 or so.

KejarDon: >_< Well, that was an unexpected end... but in hind sight it was kinda inevitable. But considering how many turns I was unconcious, I have to say the RNG played rather unfairly. Am I allowed to start a second character now? I have to strongly protest my character - he practically killed himself.

On a side note, how do you keep from deleting the up/down arrows on the headings? Every time I post, they go away. :(

KejarDon: Woo! Rerolled and... ... Quit laughing at me, RNG. >_< Well, I can always hope for the scroll of deincarnation, right?

ErisDiscordia:
I WILL NOT cross rivers early with no scroll of teleportation.
I WILL NOT cross rivers early with no scroll of teleportation.
I WILL NOT cross rivers early with no scroll of teleportation.
I WILL NOT cross rivers early with no scroll of teleportation.
I WILL NOT cross rivers early with no scroll of teleportation....

ErisDiscordia: Although KejarDon has already done it, I'd like confirmation to be sure. Are restarts from zero with a new character also generated under the competition rules allowed?

MayLith: Yes, yes, yes! Restarts from zero -- new characters generated under comp rules -- are fine. You may not quickstart a character from an old one, at least not for the comp. I just updated the rules. I'm glad you all are having fun. :) I wish I didn't fall asleep early last night, but at least I have tomorrow off! I just finished Maggot's quest (straight out of the Thieves' den). I absolutely hate not having tree-walking...

ErisDiscordia: Oh, boy. A Yavanna-worshipping Human hermit rogue. Oh well, at least I'll have no trouble remembering to play carefully this time. :-)

MayLith: Oooooh. Good luck!

ParaCoon: I think I figured this Wiki thing out. Maybe. It seems so... formless. Anyway, I just copied the formats everyone else was using. My character is sooooo boring, and winnable. Not that I've ever done that.

ParaCoon: I spoke too soon. Nar wiped the floor with me. Should we keep our dead attempts on the list, or delete them?

ErisDiscordia: This competition brought to you by Yavannah! (Maker, so far, of bizarre and painful deaths.)

PaulMoore: Typical. Eru-worshipping assassin. Swordmastery and critical hits?? Ah, well, it'll be interesting...

FuriousOne: I've just rolled up a character and I got a combination I often play anyway! *whines a little* Doesn't mean I'm not going to play her, though. Hee! (Some other discussion moved to Wiki Suggestions/Competition-related categories

PastorJeff: I am really getting miffed at the RNG with this latest character (Drugan). Although it might mean there's something on the awesome side lurking around the corner. :) I am loving this competition thing. I've never played as carefully, and never took time to document anything from my characters. I didn't even know how to make a character dump before this. I had to search the forums to figure it out!

KejarDon: O_O The RNG is taunting my character. Quaff or no quaff... hrm...

ElIott: Hmm. Zombie elven mindcrafter. This should be interesting.

PastorJeff: I should complain about the RNG more often. A few Princesses later, she drops me a defender boomerang, which covers my need for basic resists, plus disenchantment. Also gives me levitation and free action, something which almost did me in when I got paralyzed in a stupid scuffle. Now on to Mirkwood.

PastorJeff: Okay. If this character doesn't make it... I'm done! Rolled a petty-dwarf assassin, and scored Nimthanc on the second quest reward! Either this one is going a long way or Mr. RNG is going to destroy me.

MayLith: My Petty-dwarf Symbiant just hit the Barrow Downs. BDw1: Princess Quest for Smeagol. Oy... I can't decide whether this is good or bad. I just messed up an attempt to steal an Elven Cloak of Protection [4,+16] (+4) from the Black Market, so I *hope* (to make up for it) that the Smeagol thing is good. I'm using an un-ID'd dagger from the house quest, and of course no See Invis. If Smeagol gets out of the Princess room, this could be very, very irritating... :roll: Even more irritating, there are no ID scrolls in Bree (one lone *ID* scroll) and no Enchant to-dam for Maggot's sling.... rrrrr...

PastorJeff: Just wanted to shout out to MayLith a thanks for implementing this competition. I had looked at the ToME Wiki from time to time for spoiler-related info, but never took the time to get to know how to use it or to investigate how much info is contained here. This has motivated me to do that and, although there's still a lot of wiki-ness to learn, I'm a lot further than I was. By the way, per your discussion with Neil on your page, I am one of those "brought over" from the forums by the competition... ;)

PaulMoore: I agree - this is a great competition. One suggestion - the "competition" aspect isn't what I find the most fun, rather the challenge of trying something new. Maybe a nice idea would be a "challenges" page, where ideas like this could go, but without any particular time limit. I'm sure there are other good ideas for challenges - even just a particularly off-the-wall starting character savefile could be fun (it would be interesting seeing how different people develop the same character).

MayLith: Thanks, folks. :) That's a good idea, PaulMoore. I made this a competition rather than a "challenge" simply because I'd not thought about your idea. Now that I have, though, I don't know how much an eternally-standing challenge would go in terms of continuing interest...but I'm certainly open to discussion. I've been through the other few "official" comps, and it was fun to have others doing it the same time you were. Novelty factor, I suppose... Anyway, this too should probably move over to WikiSuggestions for further hashing-out. I don't particularly have a problem with extending the time limit if folks are having too much fun w/ it, at any rate. (Especially since I'm still trying to kill bleeping Smeagol!!!!!! Argh! :) (Ok, I was asleep for quite a while, but still...)

MayLith: Dead.... I tried sidestepping to the Orc Caves, and a poison breath by a Baby green dragon killed me. Next character.... *blinks* A Beorning Alchemist?!?! The RNG hates me... no, nevermind, dead again. Next.... now I've got a Spectre Kobold Assassin worshipping Melkor. Dead... (Repeat after me: Be extremely cautious when walking through things with a Spectre, it'll get you dead.)

KejarDon: Gah! What is with this character? First I get a God Quest at Lvl 2 that's all the way across the world, then I get fates left and right, then I find a !oNewLife at the bottom of the second temple, dlvl 10, then I run into Vort and kill her at dlvl 20 when I'm fated to meet her on dlvl 1, and now Smaug shows up! Click Here for the pic

PastorJeff: Now I know I'm in trouble. I should never have survived this... but I did! I was exploring Mirkwood for the first time, back on track after doing some leveling up/stat potion finding. For some reason, I had left Lothlorien with no food scrolls. As a zombie, the normal fare doesn't cut it. So while searching for the last quasit in my princess quest, I get hungry. I go to read my meal, and... uh-oh. The cupboard is bare. "No problem," I say to myself. I'll whack the last guy, pick up my reward, and recall home. The plan worked great until I realized that this was the first time I had been to Mirkwood and recall took me into the middle of a forest. No tree walking. I would have to tunnel my way out. Needless to say, that would leave me starving to death a long time before I found the edge. So I try my Staff of Teleport, knowing that it will take me to open squares, few as they may be. On the second one, I ended up two squares away from the edge. I tunneled my way to the next sector and found an open wilderness. I know I'm only moments away from the dreaded weak warning, so I go after everything I can see and no corpse drops. I go to the next wilderness sector and find... a pack of jackals! Two of them dropped corpses, which even as a zombie, was enough to take the edge off long enough for me to limp back to Lothlorien and load up on dinner scrolls. The RNG is going to HATE me. :)

SoulWynd: Sounds like a fun competition. I guess I will download 2.2.7 and try a single character. Only the first one and nothing else to see what I get. If he/she dies, I'm off :)

MayLith: Argh!!! Bleeping Baby red dragons burnt up all my WOR. *cry*

MayLith: I officially forgive the RNG for blowing up all my WOR scrolls. Princess reward for BDw5 is BOS +4, plus I found 4 junkarts while climbing out. (Only one *ID*'d so far, but it turned out to be Curing, yay.)

MassimilianoMarangio: This happened also with my character: Halfway through Mirkwood, a group of Fire Hounds burned all my WoR scrolls. I went deeper, trying to find a scroll to recall out. Found one on dungeon level 30...

MayLith: I thought of that, but I don't have WOR Id'd yet, didn't have any Identify scrolls, and my pack was rather full... Also, my Haftedmaster got a Fiery Lucerne Hammer as another reward. I'm still carting around a Frozen Trident of *Slay Undead* as a swap because it seems to give me Undead ESP. (Lifesaver for those green glutton ghosts!) Playing a pure fighter is so weird...

MassimilianoMarangio: I've used Maedhros since the Orc Caves, since I've only found one good axe (actually I buyed it from a dungeon store)... Silly princess, offered 10 swords, 11 hafted weapons, 9 polearms and even 2 mage staves but not a single axe...

ParaCoon: Fortune has smiled upon my mindcrafter. I've never played one this far before, and I'm really liking the mindcrafting powers. Mindwave especially :) I've been just pumping mindcraft and magic so far, saving my points for when I figure out what I want to do with them.

Anyway, I finished the orc cave and went to start the old forest, and the very first level was a market. What a market! The highlights: a potion store that was selling stat potions for less than 10K. A rare footware shop. An expensive black market which was selling a potion of experience (not marked down) for less than 100K (I bought it). A library *and* a forbidden library, both selling school tomes for around 30K. All of a sudden, I start thinking about the schools I get through Yavanna. She'll always hate me, I figure, so I don't even consider her god spells. But she gives 0.5 on Nature, Earth and Water. And I have access to spell power. Hmm....

ParaCoon: Great Frith, this game keeps amazing me. I have now encountered my third market in the Old Forest, at level 19, qualifying this forest as a *Mall*, in my opinion. The second market was pretty worthless, just a Sword Smith, a Polearm Smith, and a Hafted Smith. But this third one has another Expensive Black Market, a Jewelry shop (Amulet of Brilliance (+3) 50% off!), another Rare Footwear Shop, and a potion store which has 7 morphic oils of spider for sale. I understand these are quite sought after in the later stages of the game :)

ParaCoon: OMG. Level 20 is a market too. And one of the shops is a Speed Ring Market. I've never even seen that before! 5 RoS for sale. The (+10) one is 462000. I can't afford it yet :)

FuriousOne: Psh.. markets. My character just gained a very rare and useful power. More spoiler-ific stuff in Paetrem's character page.

ElIott: Follow up to Eowaleg: A lost soul thunderlord mimic. Well, at least it was brief. And how did the RNG follow it up? A lost soul rogue Maia. Bleh.

MayLith: Oh wow. Orc Caves 12 has a town, with an Expensive Black Market, a Speed Ring Market, and a Hafted Smith!!! A brief life of crime has fixed Kaerracred's resistance problems (most of them, anyway) very nicely indeed. I still can't get over it that she successfully lifted Elven Partial Plate Armour... I was soooo sure it wasn't going to work that I outright bought a less-good set that I could actually afford. *boggles*

ParaCoon: I've got Mindcraft skill up to 41, and I'm only level 29! Thank you, FumbleFingers. Time to ditch those scrolls of Identify. Ahhh... freedom.

ElIott: Has anyone noticed a lack of randomness among the randomly rolled characters? I've gotten more Lost soul Ent Alchemists (3) than all forms of non-alchemist mage-types, of any race and sub-race, added together (1).

ThomKal: First char, Vauv is dead, see character sheet for how. Rolling up second one now...Hmmm Eterracan, a Kobold Mindcrafter. I like Mindcraft, but a kobold one should be an interesting challenge.

ParaCoon: So I was someplace around level 20 of Mirkwood, when a trap of no return ate all my WoR scrolls. I begin to dive, and it's not until level 31 that I find a new one. So I'm carrying a whole lot of good stuff by then, having had to ditch a lot as I went. I return to Mirkwood, much lighter, and the next level quest is for 11 AMHD! And the level is tiny, and the dragons are right there, eyeing my hungrily. I quickly mumble "Sorry, wrong floor" and zip back up the stairs. Right now, trying to figure out what I will need before I try to tackle them. Also, I found a Mage Staff of Power (+11) someplace. That's pretty high, right? :)

ThomKal -Won't post the character sheet, but let it be known Eterracan is dead now as well. Got up to Level 7 on the first level of Barrow Downs thanks to a Lost Sword quest for Wood Spiders. Second level of BD was a Princess Quest for Lemures which was too much for my little guy, so I headed off to try my first god quest for Manwe. Got past the first level there, then died almost upon arriving on the second level by something invisible that paralyzed him. Ah well. :) Third character now is...a Gnome Hermit Unbeliever. Well that's a out of the ordinary character that's for sure. Let's see if he lasts long enough for a character sheet.

FeathinSilyar: Well, I've had a number of chars since Voremar, but they either died really quick or died just before I got around to making them a dump and posting them here. Pity, one was a mimic, and I'd never played a mimic before and it was going okay (even though I wasn't doing anything with my mimic abilities, just coasting on being a spectre, okay weaponsmastery, and general caution. Then I found Narthanc, then I died). Then an axemaster, and a demonologist, and a lostsoul that I don't even remember what its class was...died in his first steps off a stair to get an item. Nasty Dread popped out of the wall. Now I'm relaxing a bit with Raulkn in Theme, just knocked off Smaug. Noo, he's not the most powerful dragon left in the world now, I am. ;) Er, no dump update on him though. Agh, pardon, *It*. Dratted trap.

ParaCoon: Interesting observation: I was in my second lost temple, and I saw an altar to Melkor, sitting right there in Yavanna's lost temple. The sheer audacity! :)

PastorJeff: Well, I'm going to retire Telildric as of the end of the competition tonight. I thought about continuing him in the comp extension, but his beloved dagger picked up the earthquake flag. Ugh. I can't even deal with that. So he will go to his rest as the winner of the primary comp (assuming someone doesn't come in with a surprise ending...) and I'll roll up someone else for the entension. Any idea on the official extension date MayLith?

MayLith: After I get done resolving this edit conflict.... :-/ See below, which is I start to write before you broke in. Everyone, PLEASE check before you break an edit lock. I've had this page locked for about half an hour due the size of this edit. Sorry for the inconvenience. (And no, Jeff, I'm not at all upset. :D)

MayLith: 10/31 midnight EST has passed. I have marked all existing characters as being Halloween-deadline characters, and marked the apparent primary winner. I played up to the last minute, myself. If you have, too, please obey the honor system and adjust things accordingly.

New characters may be posted as per the extension comp posting (see top), but without the Halloween markup. I'll figure out the deadline for the runner-ups and post it ASAP.

Kalirion: Well, decided to toss my hat into the ring with Adweird. Too bad I waited too long, otherwise I might have been a primary winner, but oh well. With a combination of Spectre and Summoner, it's pretty hard to do badly. The RNG must really like me to give me this guy on my first try! I just apologize for not keeping track of the quests.

ElIott: Yea. Eowaleg "wins" the competition of being the dead character with the most experience. I've had real trouble getting traction on this competition for some reason. A couple of times I even got an exact combo that I was hoping to play and had all planned out, yet the died around level 20 anyway. Hopefully the reprieve will give the RNG a change of heart.

Kalirion: I'm removing my guy from the competition because I just noticed the "Maximize OFF" requirement. May I ask why this was included?

MayLith: Sure. Three reasons:

  1. I've never tried it before.
  2. AFAIK it makes the starting game harder, though I made that more or less a moot point (I think?) by spec'ing completely random starting stats.
  3. AFAIK, it makes the later game better.

You're welcome to start another character, Kalirion.

Kalirion: But I'm having so much fun with this one! By the way, if I understand it correctly, Maximize Off would actually make the post-stat gain easier for people who got Yeeks, or bad Race/Class combos, since they'd be guaranteed to get 28 in all stats without items. But this does take away some of the randomness, as 28 in each stat is hardly random.

MayLith: Hmm, true. But at least it's different. :)

ParaCoon: Well, I'm still playing my Mindcrafter when I have time. I realized something today. Everyone says Yavanna is a lousy god. She's too hard to make happy, etc etc. Well, I'm starting to see the light of the trees or something. Maybe it's just that the combination of Mindcraft and Yavanna is a good one, but get this:

ElIott: Now that's exactly the sort of thing that a random competition is good for. Before whoever it was that did the great DitL of his trapper rogue, no one ever used trapping because they thought it was useless. Turns out, its totally not useless and you can in fact win using just trapping for your offense. Forcing people to try different things is the best way to discover this stuff. Just because no one uses something doesn't mean that its useless or doesn't scale well. Well, it probably means that, but sometimes it turns out that everyone else is wrong.

MayLith: Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I started this comp for. :)

ElIott: Just as I was about to give up on the competition, what does the RNG give me but zombie half-ogre paladin. While I've never really played a paladin before, I'e done quitea a few barehand characters and he's going amazingly well. Not as much fun as the strange character/class combos we've seen, but he's been extremely effective so far.

ElIott: CRAP! Vowyth died finishing Mordor when a pair of great storm wyrms breathed on him simultaneously. I was a bit distracted as he had just found a cloak of air in the previous room. I was thinking about his chances of surviving the Void, then *ZAP*, he doesn't even survive Mordor. His progress was astoundingly rapid. Except for that little issue with dying, he nearly finished all of Mordor, quests and all, in 3 hours. He did all the levels but one and was coming back to finish a fumble fingers quest I had skipped. I can't believe he died. At least I've retaken the lead for most experienced dead character.

MayLith: Aw, bummer :( Well, at least with the long extension, you've got more time still. (And I have never, ever, found a cloak of air....)

ZombieYeek: Well, I managed to win with my first character (now I just need to figure out the wiki thing so I can post a link). I got three cloaks of air, pretty much all in a row from princess quests, so I may go on to void dive with the Afacan. After losing the next couple (kobold rogue and thunderlord hermit warrior) very early on, I'm surprisingly surviving with my zombie petty dwarf geomancer (8 int).

MayLith: Go on, I double-dog dare you to Void-dive... ;-)

--- MayLith: RANDOMCOMP1 is now over. I hope everyone enjoyed it. I encourage everyone to try a random character if you're stuck in a gaming rut. I certainly plan on continuing to play my Haftedmaster, who has turned out to be huge fun though I never would have started one on my own. And now for COMP2... which will come out... soon enough. Personally I think it's best to leave a while in between comps. If there's one going on all the time, that lessens it, somehow.... Peace to al and happy holidays, everyone!

GeneralDiscussion/Unofficial competition! (last edited 2004-12-01 05:25:23 by MayLith)