ADOM is my favorite roguelike of all time, but I almost didn't get into it because of how challenging the early game can be. You want a roguelike to be challenging but if you replay the first 30minutes over and over without making progress, it can be very discouraging. The wiki has tons of useful information, but I didn't feel there was anything that directed me to go to what locations in a logical or safe manner as well as what enemies could kill me in 2 hits. This guide is just to remedy that situation. This is not a full game guide, this is just about getting a character to lvl 16 or so and hopefully help you get past replaying the first 30 minutes over and over. At the end I put a list of particularly nasty enemies that can kill you easily in the early game so you can skip to there if you wish

There are tons of different ways to play ADOM, many different viable strategies, I’ve had 2 ultra-endings so this works for me, there isn’t a right or wrong way to do things, this is just one way that does work for me to get you started and keep things simple. So new game, for birth sign select salamander, gender doesn’t matter much, select human, wizard, and points for next choices. Make your toughness to 13, learning to 21, extra point or 2 can go into appearance. For talent choose alert. Salamander birth sign will guarantee you a book of fire bolt which will be your main nuke for now. Human start neutral alignment, for simplicity that makes all quests available and they get food preservation which will help avoid starvation (another big problem I had when starting).

Now enter Terinyo the tiny town and press R to read and L to learn your spells, this gives you a set number of times you can cast each spell, your spell ‘ammo’ so to speak. Chat (C button) to the girl with the red bonnet to get the puppy quest, then talk to druid by the pond to get his quest. Buy 3 food rations from the shop in town. Next go to the southwest to get to the outlaw town Lawenilothehl. Use the fire bolt to kill a beggar for your first kill. This allows the ultra-ending to be possible. Ultra-ending requires a lot of extra quests which you’re likely not going to get the first go around, but the first time I had a character make good progress I was dismayed to find out later I had messed this up in the first 3 minutes of the game. Anyway, your F1 though F7 keys are very important to discuss here. F7 put you in coward mode, basically big defense bonus but you can’t attack anything easier, use when running away or when surrounded. F1 puts you in berserk stance, use this when using ranged attacks, but your defenses will be lower. Now go to the center building in the outlaw town to the left is a room with the thief guild master chat with him to learn the pickpocketing skill.

Now you should find as you walk around the world map a well-hidden campsite. Enter it, normal goblins you are safe to melee, anything else use your fire spell on. Get the rock and use them in F1 berserk stance to throw them at enemies. You want to fight most things at a distance as a wizard, they are exceptional at it which makes the class very strong. The heavy rocks are worthless leave them pick up the rest of the loot but don’t equip new clothing or weapons yet (they may be cursed), rocks are always safe to use in the missile slot, now go enter the unremarkable cave in the northeast where you started. When you level up you want to prioritize getting concentration up (increases mana regen rate), then food preservation (helps you find corpses for food), and getting pickpocketing to around 30 is good too. After you get around 20 skill in pickpocketing, when you see a simple goblin enemy hit F7 for coward stance then the ‘a’ key to apply the skill to try and pickpocket. You need 20 successes to go back to the thieves’ guild for more training. The reason we do this is that the detect traps skill is very important and you want it as soon as possible. General combat is throw rocks in normal or berserk stance, if anything doesn’t go down easy or looks big use your flame spell.

Speaking of food, all goblins, lizards, and orcs are safe to eat, and never eat kobolds. Other corpses in the later game can increase your stats or give fire and other useful resistances, other webpages have all the details so I won’t cover that here. For talents I would get at least 1 in the speed tree. Most monsters have a speed of 100 so if yours is 102 you can outrun them, if you’re not burdened or too full. Carrying too much equipment or eating too much slows your speed so be very careful with this in the early game. You can always just drop your extra equipment on the stairs up or down, clear the level then pick it back up on the way back out. A monster may spawn behind you and pick some of it up but when you kill them they will drop it. Next talents to go for are miser and treasure hunter, which will make more spell books drop. Another thing to know is hitting the ‘_’ button will pray to your deity, giving you a full heal. This can be done twice after which your deity is annoyed with you asking for favors, but later you can recharge this heal availability by sacrificing on an altar, more on that later.

So,to find out if items are cursed properly you need an altar of your same alignment. Altars are generated randomly as well as in a couple of guaranteed locations. For the early game there’s another method we can use. Take all your loot to Lawenilothehl, enter the store and hit ‘control d’ then mark all you unidentified loot. Keep items worth over 30 gold, sell the rest, likely these items aren’t cursed. At this point even, a cursed shield may be better than no shield at all. Repeat this process for the early game whenever you get a sizeable amount of loot, keep all the rocks and arrows you find as ammunition though.

Next go to the southeast of Lawenilothehl for the druid dungeon, same tactics, throw rocks and use fire spells on bigger enemies, melee simple goblins, and keep pickpocketing until you get enough success for the quest (no automatic popup for this just return to thieves’ guild and chat for the completion). As you fight always protect the route to the previous level, this is your escape plan and if you get cut off or surrounded it can be game over. A few enemies such as fire beetles are immune to fire, so use ranged attack while retreating until you find a second damage spell to use on them. Only explore the first 6 levels of the druid dungeon. The dark druid himself casts darkness, can shrug off spells, and uses strong ranged attacks. Additionally, some more nasty creatures can spawn on that level so better to come back when you have more spells and levels.

Your character should be around lvl 9 at this point, go back to terinyo and buy some extra rations, drop extra equipment in the entrance of the druid dungeon as a temporary base, we’re going on a trip. Go south around the river the west following the mountain range, we’re looking for the moldy dungeon, evade any encounters you can, if you can’t just run away. The reason we’re here next is on the 5th level is a guaranteed artifact, the tome of donors. This book when read gives a random benefit ranging from so so, to extremely strong. Some of them may be elemental resistance or immunity, to stats, or seeing invisble ect. There is a cooldown on how often it can be used which goes up each time it is read, but it is definetly worth getting in my opinion.

The catch is you need to generate the 5th level before you get 90,000 experience or if will be generated as ruined. The 4th level is a shifting level here, if you go off the screen you just reappear on the other side you won’t die (scarred me very much my first time). On the 5th level the tome as well as 9000 gold is guarded by a stone golem, think of him as an early game boss, you don’t want him to melee you at all. If you happen to have found the magic missile spell you can try and fight him, otherwise don’t attempt it at this point, you just want to generate the level before the experience cap then come back later. If you do fight him, he is immune to elemental magic so magic missile is pretty much your only hope until you get your missile attack skill up higher. Alternatively, if you get a good random map layout with multiple paths to exit, you can kite him in away from the loot (he’s standing on it initially doesn’t drop it on death), take it and run for the exit, you don’t have to kill him to get it.

By now you might enough money to get the detect trap skill from the thief master in Lawenilothehl. The reason this is so important is there is a pyramid area that has 2 very good artifacts in it you want to get. The catch is it becomes closed forever once your character reaches level 17. There are lots of traps in there so you want to get detect traps and level it up ASAP, disarming the traps isn’t useful as once you see them you will automatically avoid them. You’re also looking to try and find a blink dog if possible. If you do find one hit the ‘n’ key to name the first one you see. Try not to kill the original one, it will replicate, which is good. Eating a blink dog corpse gives you teleport control, which means you can instantly teleport out if your health gets low or if you get surrounded. If you get this plus a book of teleportation, jump for joy! Only a couple areas In the game prevent teleportation, but this is likely the strongest skill in the game.

Next stop is the Caverns of Chaos, in the center left of the world map, just west of the pyramid. Nasty things can spawn here check my list of kill you quick monster and be very careful. Somewhere between levels 3-5 will be the arena. There are non-hostile ratlings here that sell food which is way less heavy and more efficient the iron rations. Buy all the cooked lizard they have, they will restock later, this and the corpses you find will be enough food source for the rest of the game.

On Level 6 or 7 you will enter a level known as the big room. This area is extremely dangerous, I have lost lots of characters here, make sure you are not burdened at all, for this area you need all the speed you can get. This level will constantly spawn enemies at a high rate so don’t think you’ll clear them all. You’re looking for the stair down ASAP, where it is on the level is random, it could be right next to you, could be in the far corner. Explore cautiously, protect your escape route to the previous level, if your mana starts to run low, retreat to the previous level recharge then go back down.

The next major event is the si artifact on level 8, it doesn’t do anything except replicate itself in your inventory, but it does sell for a good amount of gold and will be your primary income source for most of the game. The next major area is dwarftown, talk to Thundar about ‘quest’ and ‘portal’ to get the next quests. There is also a guaranteed altar here which is wonderful. With all you unidentified loot hit ‘:d’ to drop followed by the ‘w’ key to drop all unidentified items to get their cursed or uncursed status. Once you get enough money from selling si’s you want to stand on the altar and use ‘O’ to sacrifice money to increase your standing with your deity. See the wiki page for piety info, what you want to be able to convert normal water to holy water. Once you have hold water hit ‘!’ to dip scrolls of identify into the holy water, now read your blessed identify scroll, now all of your items in your inventory are identified.

By now your character should be around lvl 13 or so. If you didn’t have enough money for detect traps skill from the thief master before, the money from selling some si’s should be plenty, get it now. Next stop is the pyramid. If you just barely got the detect traps skill, head to the shadowy dungeon until you hit lvl 15 and get some points in the skill, then it’s pyramid time. Check the official wiki for layout and trap locations.

The top level of the pyramid is very dangerous, I strongly recommend drinking a blessed potion of invisibility before going to the top level some enemies can see invis, others can’t which will help prevent you getting swarmed. What enemies spawn with the boss is random you can get some nasty things here, also the stairs down will move when you go up so your escape route will be more difficult. Once you’re invisible go up and fight toward the stair down, remember F7 for increase defensive stance and ‘_’ for a full heal from praying. The mummy lord is very vulnerable to fire, once he’s dead he drops the 2 artifacts. The mummy wrapping letting you see invisible enemies is particularly useful at this point. From here the options open extensively. Congratulations you made it to the mid game!

List of Kill You Quick Monsters.
Monsters have variants, for example a there’s a normal doppelganger, then next stronger is female, the greater, and then ultimate. Just because something looks like something you’ve killed before, doesn’t mean it’s the same enemy, check it with the look command or it could mean your death.


Doppelgangers-They look just like you, have a confusion attack which they can re-apply every round successful hits, they deflect all missile attacks, use spells or have confusion resist. Higher leveled female and the dreaded ultimate doppelgangers can kill even high-level characters.

Mimics-These look like normal loot initially, meaning they’re likely to get the drop on you, they have a paralyzation attack which can chain stun you into your death. These also have a chance to spawn in shops so whenever entering a new shop enter F7 coward mode or shoot and arrow down each line of items, it will reveal the mimic.

Gibbering Mouther-Looks like a brown blob with mouths, has a confusion attack, kill them from range or have resistance.

Dark Elven Priestess- Purple armored with a staff. Summons lots of spiders which have poison attacks which can be dangerous. In melee they have a paralyzation attack which can kill you easily.

Floating eye- Have a paralyzation attack, kill from range.

Ogre Magi and Invisible Stalkers- Theses enemies are invisible. If you run into one on the way down to dwarf town it can be very much game over for you. The message ‘you hear some arcane mumbling’ is a clue a Magi might me on the level somewhere, they hit very hard and you’ won’t know they’re there until they are next to you. Try and avoid the and use coward stance until you get detection artifacts from the pyramid.

Elemental Vortex- These look like a column of flame, water or acid. If they get next to you and get a turn they will explode for massive damage. They are also very fast, the message ‘you hear a distant wind’ is generated on level they are on. The acid one is extremely dangerous and can 1 shot kill you if one spawns on the way to dwarftown. They are immune to their own element so use ranged or magic.

Ghul- Fairly common undead, they have a low chance to hit but do have a paralyzation attack, once you get enough armor not dangerous but in large numbers or early game they are.

Soldier Ants- Early game their damage output is relatively very high, the reason I advise leving the puppy cave until later

Claw bugs- Green bugs can punch through your armor and hit very hard, an early game threat to death.
Giant Slug- Breaths acid, early game very dangerous with low HP characters such as wizards.

Ghosts and Ghost bats- If you’re playing a shorter lifespan race like trolls or orcs, a couple of hits can age you to death easily, use ranged attacks.

Writhing mass of primal chaos-These look like large pink twisted masses. They are actually late game enemies, but if an early game level spawns a corruption trap, and if a monster runs over it enough times, the will transform into the mass or primal chaos. They get multiple attacks per round, hit extremely hard, and have a corrupting attack. Try and stay at range, just hope you don’t see one.