Improved ADOM Guidebook

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Old Barbarian's Clearing

Color map

The Barbarian's Clearing is an area located just south of the Caverns of Chaos on an open square within the forest. This peaceful area is home to the Old Barbarian. It features a small building surrounded by a river, and the Old Barbarian himself.

A geographical exploit makes the Barbarian's Clearing the ideal place to wish for an Emperor Moloch (which instead results in 25 or so greater molochs) for those PCs that are desperate for experience. The greater molochs should be summoned on the far right side of the map, so they will appear bunched together there. A quick teleport, and strategic use of frost bolt, frost bolt, fire bolt, will yield a perfectly safe ice island from which the PC can snipe her way to experience level 50 with ease.

Note that the Barbarian's Clearing is a decent place to store items. He is the only monster ever generated in this location, so nothing randomly generated is going to run away with the PC's stuff. If the PC leaves items far away from the Old Barbarian (or if he is dead), he will not have time to find them prior to the PC's next visit.

2.6.1 Old Barbarian @

Old Barbarian
Level: 1, DV: 12, PV: 12, Hits: 500, Attacks: 2, Damage: 1d10+10, Speed: 130.
The Old Barbarian assigns a quest to kill a score (20) of the monsters the PC first killed. As a reward for successfully completing the quest he teaches the Courage skill. The quest is only available to non-chaotics and is not available until the PC has killed 500 monsters. He monitors the progress towards completing it – his feedback can be used by the player to help them remember the PC's first kill – when chatted to during his quest he will either remark that the PC is showing promise if they have killed at least one more of their first kill, or remark that the PC is lazy if they haven't. Note that if the PC somehow acquires the Courage skill after the quest is assigned but before it is completed (Bard's class power, scroll or potion of education, wish), returns to the Old Barbarian and Chats with him, he is surprised and gives the PC an ordinary two-handed sword.

For more about strategy for the first kill, see section 0.9.1.

If the player does not care about the Courage skill, the Old Barbarian can be a source of early game experience since he can be attacked from behind water tiles. There is a demo of this. This led to more problems than it solved for the demo player, because experience level 14 was reached very quickly without the time to find equipment that was appropriate for the level.

Updated March 9th, 2013