Ultimate ADOM vs ADOM Classic - The Overworld (and lack thereof)

One of the main points of criticism is that Ultimate ADOM: Caverns of Chaos seems to be much smaller in scope that ADOM is. After all, there's a huge surface world with multiple dungeons, quests ranging from saving puppies from deadly caves to befriending water dragons with multiple choices along the way.

Caverns of Chaos starts right at the entrance to the titular caverns, with the characters sent into the infested depths for a reason between them and their faction choices.

Few people remember ADOM actually started the same way - initially, it was all just one big dungeon with monsters becoming more and more powerful the longer you spent in a level to force you moving onwards. It featured no beings to talk with, no story lines and just an ever-growing amount of complex things you could do. Skills like Herbalism made it into the game long before any thoughts of a surface world existed!

We're not going the same way with Ultimate ADOM. There are plots, and stories, and factions to work with and appease or slaughter and loot. Quest chains will require player decisions and change the flow of the game accordingly. ADOM has a lot of different endings: Slay the evil God of ChAoS, usurp his throne or even destroy the universe. 

While we feel it's okay to spoiler a game that's been out for nearly thirty years now, we're going to keep quiet about the different endings you will be able to achieve in Ultimate ADOM - but there also will be different ones, including some which require a bit of outside-the-box thinking and experimentation. It will be possible to end the game by simply slaughtering everything if your character is sufficiently powerful and warded, though this may not be the most satisfying and valuable ending.

While Classic ADOM is a game focused deeply on exploring a large variety of dungeons and exploring, we want to put Ultimate ADOM's emphasis on cool gameplay mechanics. I wrote about the complexity already in detail last week, but there are also a lot of different environments to explore in the Caverns of Chaos! Players of our Alpha might have already discovered the Minor Chaos Temple located somewhere near the kobold caves, or the strange and deadly waters of Lake Gloom.

During Early Access, more locations will be revealed and implemented! Rumors of a strange temple populated by frog-like creatures featuring weird mind powers float around, and Rolf is sending out warriors to locate the remaining dwarfkin of Dwarftown somewhere deep below. A powerful slithering creature with snakes for hair has made her lair somewhere in the furthest depth, a mad alchemist is using the nearby source of ChAoS to empower their mad experiments and a very dangerous necromancer is using the many corpses these caves produce for his own nefarious purpose.

All of these areas - and many more - will feature questlines that are local or affect the whole dungeon and your faction's main story. So there is plenty to explore, and not everything will be available to visit every time you venture into the dungeon.

That's not to say there will never be a surface world. We roughly know where we want to go during Early Access, but the road definitely won't end there. While the area around the Drakkalor Chain has been corrupted, shattered and made thoroughly inhospitable due to the events happening in ADOM, there may still be plenty of things to do for an aspiring hero. But that's something for much later!

Ultimate ADOM vs ADOM Classic - The new skill system explained

As we're nearing Early Access for Ultimate ADOM: Caverns of Chaos, we want to shine a light on the different approaches to game design for old ADOM players. What can you expect to see in the sequel? What are the changes to the game concept you all love and play?

In this mini-series, we want to highlight the differences between the original ADOM and its sequel, and what the thought processes was behind the decisions.

If you want to see a specific question addressed, drop a note! Yes, diagonal movement is going to be answered.

Why are there only five classes? Considering that ADOM has 22 classes, that's a net loss of 17 classes. Quite significant, if taken at face value.

First of all, we're heading to Early Access for Ultimate ADOM for a very simple reason: It's not done yet. There'll be more classes incoming, though the final number is still up for debate.

Second, and more importantly, classes in Ultimate ADOM are not like classes in ADOM. Let's have a look at Alynna the elven archer up there. They can Sneak, Butcher things and Cast spells among other standard actions from the very beginning - because they decided to spend their skill points in these trees:

Grafting

As an Elf, Alynna receives additional skill points in arcane skills. The elf decided to put their arcane talent into Grafting, to make the best use of the many, many corpses they will leave behind. A different elf archer might have invested into Hydromancy to improve their defense or hurl icy bolts at their enemies. An investment into Animancy might have been worthwhile too - turning the very dungeon around you into allies, allowing your archer to keep their distance as they rain down missile attacks at the monsters.

There will be new arcane categories in the coming weeks, so it's not just a choice between these four schools, but many more.

Archery

The Archer class will receive extra skill points to be distributed to missile weapons. Right now we have a selection of Bows (Alynna's choice), Crossbows and Slings in the game, but there are plans for including throwing weapons, too. There are advantages of specializing in a single category of missile weapons, as this makes unlocking powerful skills and boosts more easy. A different archer might decide to spread evenly between crossbows and slings, though, remaining versatile and ready to deal with monsters that are more resistant to being peppered with pointy sticks.


Stealth

Alynna has also opted to invest a point into the Stealth skill. They could have become stronger and faster, improve their chances for loot from monsters and chests or invest points into literacy to cast spells from scrolls, but a sneaking archer knowing where the nearby traps are and dealing extra damage while being hidden is a very powerful combination.

And that's just the archer class. Let's look at Fira, a female human wizard. She specialized in Animancy (turning objects into companions) and Hydromancy for attack and protection. As a Human, she occasionally gets extra skill points to distribute wherever she wants, and she decided to put some into Literacy and Crossbows - remaining dangerous at range even when out of power points.

Instead of having Necromancer, Elementalist and Wizard classes, there's only Wizards now - but they offer so much more customization than ever before.
 

So, yes. Right now, there's only five classes - but no Wizard, no Fighter, no Adventurer, no Priest and no Archer needs ever be the same.

We can't wait to read about your favorite combinations and the adventures they will encounter!

Ultimate ADOM @ Roguelike Celebration

Hi everyone!

We are proud to announce that we are sponsoring the Roguelike Celebration 2018 (October 6-7 2018 in San Francisco). Without Roguelike Celebration there would be no Ultimate ADOM so we thought this would be a good way of saying thanks to the awesome organizers of Roguelike Celebration as well as the roguelike community. Thus we decided to sponsor the arcade party on Saturday night where there will be tons of roguelike to play, talk to the developers and generally have an amazing time.

Tickets are still available and the list of speakers already is totally mind-blowing! IMHO Roguelike Celebration is the one event to be if you enjoy roguelike games. Come and let's talk!

I've been there since its inception and met nothing but wonderful funny & brilliant people. And San Francisco also always is worth a trip ;-)

We are going to do two things at Roguelike Celebration:

Presentation about Entity Component Systems

Entity component system architectures are very interesting if you are going to create highly flexible game designs. I will give a 30 minute presentation about how ECS is being used in games and how we use it to make Ultimate ADOM ultra-flexible.

Live demo of Ultimate ADOM: Caverns of Chaos

At the arcade party we will do the very first live demo of the then-current state of Ultimate ADOM: Caverns of Chaos. While it will not yet be a functioning game at that point we will be able to showcase lots of exciting features already implemented during our mission to create the most flexible and mind-blowing roguelike dungeoncrawler ever. Stay tuned and enjoy our new logo: