ADOM Guidebook


The Wilderness

Click here for a color map of the wilderness.

The wilderness is the overland map of the Drakalor Chain. It is often regarded as a curse by new players, whose PC's are killed in wilderness encounters and have difficulty keeping their PCs fed during treks across the wilderness. Advanced players with PCs who are well equipped to deal with the wilderness regard it as a wonderful resource.

The Survival skill can be useful for lengthy stays in the wilderness, but note that applying it wastes a lot of game time.

1.2.5.1 Why start the game in the Wilderness?

Many players will start the game in the wilderness, at least for the first kill, because the first monster killed can be controlled according to what type of wilderness square generates an encounter.

1.2.5.2 Strategy and problems in the wilderness

In order to avoid wasting too much time in the wilderness (e.g. because of the dreaded 90 day limit), it is good to know how long it actually takes to do things in the wilderness.

All times are approximate since there are slight variations of some minutes. It is also the case that without apparent reason walking times are sometimes doubled. This can happen for any terrain type and might be a bug. Being burdened or strained does not cause this and has marginal, if any, effect on movement time in the wilderness.

ActionTime required
changing body armor0 min
changing other parts of equipment60 min
resting60 min
moving onto a plains, road, water, or special (dungeon entrance and the like) square60 min
moving onto a hills square90 min
moving onto a forest square120 min
moving onto a swamp square180 min
moving onto a mountain square (provided you own a climbing set)300 min
applying Survival (Rangers of level 1-5 and non-Rangers)240 min
applying Survival (Rangers of level 6-50)120 min

Note that the swimming skill and water breathing intrinsic have no effect on the time needed to move onto a water square. Likewise, the climbing skill and the blessed/uncursed/cursed status of a climbing set have no effect on the time needed to move onto a mountain square.

Note that a climbing set is required to move onto mountains. It is important to know the status of a climbing set, in particular making sure it is not cursed. A cursed climbing set will fail at the most inopportune moment. At a minimum, the resulting slip while mountaineering will cause extensive equipment destruction. It is often fatal. The blessed vs uncursed status seems to have little or no effect.

1.2.5.3 The Survival skill

Successfully applying the Survival skill when not bloated increases the satiation value of the PC by about 100 (equivalent to 1/5 large ration, see Appendix G). This is roughly tripled for Rangers of level 6 or above. These values hold for both water and land squares.

If the PC is already bloated, his satiation value isn't increased. Instead, he gathers plant seeds (on land squares) or goes fishing (on water squares). The amount of seeds gathered does not depend on terrain type or skill value and averages at about 5.2. For Rangers of level 6 or above, the average number of seeds gathered is about 16.7.

When fishing is successful, the PC obtains exactly one piece of fish meat.

The chances of success when applying the Survival skill depend on skill value, terrain type and the Ranger level 6 class power. The following success rates were measured by applying the Survival skill 100 times, with a skill value of 100. The "normal" column applies to non-Rangers and Rangers of level 1-5, the "high" column to Rangers of level 6-50.

Locationnormalhigh
Special (dungeon, village)100%100%
Forest100%100%
Hills98%100%
Plains96%100%
Road93%100%
Swamp80%99%
Mountains79%99%
Water43%72%


Updated June 19th, 2009