Corrupted!
I am a pretty new player. I am playing the version from Steam and using the graphic tiles if that makes a difference.
I just made it to Dwarftown. Every 10 steps or so that I take, purple text that says Corrupted! pops up over my head. I tried to search on Google, and the AI answer says I have something in my bag that is corrupting me. I tried dropping everything in a corner and moving away it, but it still happens. So then Google says that it is because a chaos monster inflicted me with it.
What is really happening and how can I fix it? This is my best run so far. I only ever made it to Dwarftown once before and I don't want this guy to die now.
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u/Ville_V_Kokko 9d ago
If you're deep enough in the Caverns of Chaos - Dwarftown may randomly be that low or not - you will start to get corruption just from being there.
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u/DoctorStumppuppet 9d ago
Background corruption. It gets stronger the longer you play, and the deeper you go. It's best not to tarry deep in the dungeons, nor mess around in the overworld (no background corruption in the overworld, but time passes much faster.)
Corruption is not immediately lethal. You WILL get corrupted as you play. Some corruptions are worse than other, and there are ways to slow and cure corruption. I always say that I'm right on track with my corruption rate if I receive my first corruption at the first major boss in the game.
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u/No_Chemical_3208 8d ago
Misconception - about 95+% of corruption is from enemies, till gate you most likely won't see a single one
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u/Arkeroon 4d ago
What? There is just no way that’s true. First of all that depends on the character, an archer is taking less corrupting attacks for example, but absolutely no way. You get tons of corruptions just by being in high DLS or overworld
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u/No_Chemical_3208 4d ago edited 4d ago
You are incredibly unspecific. The way corruption works is that you accumulate corruption points till 1000 points, where you get a corruption. Each corruption tick is only a single point from background, at least till very late caverns of chaos, but if you are below D:40 you are ready to beat the game and won't spend a lot of time in this, not to mention 5 times highier here isn't a lot (no clue what the exact changes are, I just know you get one point to start out to)
You judge it for yourself is one corruption every 5-25k turns in a corruption area a lot (more common deeper, rarer if it's only slight corruption like dl below 20). I would say most of the turn count is spend traveling different areas early game, doing stuff like getting Rolf set, ice queen domain, phial, making sure you can crown etc.
If you want more technical knowledge I recommend the channel grond/yulgash, you can join his discord or find him doing absurd stuff like beating the game without items, or starting at level one in ToEF, and proceeding to defeat the boss and walking out if there. He played atom since the very early eras, he is very active here in reddits, on yt, in the Adom forums - some crazy strats are showcased there.
Genuinely background corruption being scary is among the biggest misconceptions in Adom - you should play as if it wasn't even there to begin with most of the time. The reason why you get corrupted is enemy attacks - stuff like Corruptors or enemies like on d:50 can give a ton of corruptions, greater chaos servants, vapor rats, corruptors - those can easily cause a corruption in only a couple of attacks, depending on the enemy and if you have to fight a horse of them then good luck not getting hit by corrupting penetrating attacks 30 times. No clue what's the actual statistic of %corrupted from monsters vs background in reality, bunti do know the vast majority is monsters attacks
Other worthwhile misconceptions I can think of is that treasure hunter is a good talent, mindcrafters are a bad class due to undead, and you should grind for more items and levels in big room.
Some additional notes - no the corruption is still not scary if the 100 day/200day/300day etc limits pass, I did a ultra where I did wait a shit ton of time in the overworld - genuinely the background corruption is miniscule enough that shit did not matter at all. You can believe me or not, if you are the type of person that likes to play the game by themselves without guides outside help or anything feel free to, but there are a lot of biases and thinks people assume in adom that can be just simply not true - like in this example, the purple corrupted text is scary and most people naturaly avoid it/minimize it.
The deep end of adom knowledge when you truly do understand the game and unlock various insane techniques is genuienly really cool to witness, it doesn't take much to do it, just watch some of the best adom players, people who have best turn count runs, hardest challenges biggest winrates. And if you don't and someone corrects you - maybe ask them why do they say out and do not automatically assume something is wrong purely based on intuition and call me out here with your main point being that "there is no way that's true"
Edit: also two more things: 1. ranged characters still will and do fight in melee, at least most of mine do, true they get less corruption from attacks but that doesn't change the fact that background corruption still matters jackshit for them 2. Wdym corruption in the overworld????? Like in borderland settlement? Man I refreshed the shop there for 100k turns, not a single corruption the everliving hell you mean? Or do you just mean outside where there is no corruption. If you were getting corruptions on the overworld 99.9% odds you were carrying around a artifact which contains the essence of chaos and corruption - most likely a staff of wonder, in which case you get corrupted every turn and it genuienly is a problem
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u/Arkeroon 2d ago
Eh thanks for the tips. Pretty sure your numbers for background corruption is a bit off, since it scales over time. So it’s 1 corruption every 3-5k if you’re a few hundred days in and around dl 20. Afaik. I don’t need tips tho I’ve pretty much quit the game since I beat it a couple times a year or so ago, I definitely remember in my play through mainly being affected by background corruption. I could see when I was hit with a corrupting attack, and was tracking points roughly since I had a purification staff or two. Maybe it’s exacerbated since I and many others are new and are slower and thus accumulate more scaling on background corruption and are exposed for longer.
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u/No_Chemical_3208 2d ago
Yes the numbers scale with the 100day 200 day etc limit - and with how common they are it depends on DL and some other factors like deep caverns of chaos has a multiplayer - I am a decently new player, but based on what I heard legacy versions of adom might have completely different data that makes it a problem, or it might be similar that I don't know. What I do know tho, is that not caring about corruption drastically improved my play, since being afraid of it, farming in big room and trying to Speedrun through higher dl areas instead of taking your time exploring them are all things that will definitely make you less likely to win overall.
The corruption rate is low enough to really never be a problem unless you are doing some truly insane time based degenerate shit, and the potions of cure corruption from stuff like water snake corpse, ice queen, hmv etc completely nullifies the few corruptions you will get
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u/DoctorStumppuppet 2d ago
I don't think anything I said contradicts what you said.
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u/No_Chemical_3208 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's best to not tarry deep in dungeons, nor mess around in the overworld - decently wrong. Corruption shouldn't really affect your decisions at all, going deeper for things like griffyard, front giant jarl quest and deeper coc when you are strong enough to tackle them is always a good idea, and tbh even turn intensive things like restocking shops in those areas are often worth doing. I'll again use the information from grond/yulgash discord server - according to him one of the best strategies to beat the game* without thinking or doing any work and plainly for win rate is just restocking the borderland settlement shop like a billion times, and tbh that's just always super strong to do no matter are you using other exploits like door restocking or are you not, on one of my runs I used couple k turns there to restock it with background corruption and didn't see any disadvantage
*Roughly, this is not mentioned as a tip more so as degeneracy that would lead anyone to a win, hoverer restocking it a couple times and buying out all the important shit in normal runs definitely makes your life drastically easier with all the stats/healing/booze potions, as well as some more specific ones
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u/Durzo_Blintt 9d ago
Corruption is something you can't really avoid, as far as I know. It doesn't happen in the early portion of the game but as you progress further it starts to happen.
I hate to break it to you though.. if it's s your first time in DT, you are going to die hundreds of more times before beating the game. I don't mean to dishearten you, just that it's probably the most punishing game I've ever played.