ToxicSlurpee posted:

Speaking of ADOM, there's this loving thing:

http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Black_tome_of_Alsophocus

So, for those that haven't played the game, you learn spells by reading books. You have a certain number of points relating to each spell that represents your knowledge. The more you know about a spell the cheaper it is to cast it. The returns are diminishing and this only really matters much when your knowledge is low. Now, every time you cast a spell your knowledge goes down. Most books you'll find drop randomly; casty classes (wizards especially) get way more out of reading than other classes.

Now, if you didn't encounter a book you probably can't cast the spell. This book gives you knowledge in a random spell every time you read it. However, it's very little. Still...it's an artifact! That means it's indestructible! It just hangs around and you can read it at your leisure and learn all the spells slowly, right? Sounds really great if you're not a wizard, right?

loving wrong. This book corrupts you if you're carrying it. It corrupts you even more if you sit down to read it. That's it. This is all it does.

Now, here's another thing...if you make your god happy you can pray for free artifacts and get them. There are certain dungeon features that guarantee you at least one artifact. Sounds pretty good, right? Well there are no easy ways to get random artifacts (some of the guaranteed ones aren't that difficult but are generally mediocre at best) and sometimes you'll get this drat thing instead of something useful. So you put forth all that effort only to find out that you get this pile of garbage.