There are three main ways to get a wish in
ADOM. You can drink from a
pool, but there is only a small chance of getting a wish this way,
and drinking from pools has possible bad effects, such as
unnatural
aging. Rubbing a blessed
ring of djinni summoning will release a
djinni who will grant you a wish. Zapping a
wand of wishing also
grants a wish; wands of wishing cannot be recharged, but they can have
the last charge wrested from them. Rings of djinni summoning often
look like ordinary rings, and wands of wishing often (maybe always)
look like glowing wands. There is also the
spell of Wish (Divine Intervention for clerics), but it is so difficult to cast that practically no-one manages it.
You cannot wish for artifacts, but you can wish for any non-artifact
item you like. You have to be reasonably generic when wishing for
items. For example, you cannot wish for "20 blessed long swords (+8,
1d8+15)". You would have to wish for "long swords", or better yet,
"eternium long swords" or "swords of sharpness". Similarly, you can
wish for ordinary monsters, but attempting to wish for a unique
monster will either fail or give an amusing result. All attempts to wish for more wishes will also fail.
It's always a good idea to wish for items in the plural. However,
there are a few items (including the popular wishes amulet of life
saving, girdle of giant strength and potion of gain attributes)
where you will only get one even if you wish for more. Also, you can
only get two stat-increasing potions from one wish.
All skills can be wished for except for Alertness, which increases
Perception, and Healing, which fully heals you. You can also
acquire random skills by wishing for scrolls or potions of education.
You can wish for any stat to increase it, although Appearance must
be wished for as "beauty" and Perception as "alertness".
Wishing for "learning" gives two potions of learning, while wishing
for "knowledge" increases learning directly. If you want to
increase your Learning, it's usually best to wish for crystals of
knowledge. You get three from one wish, and each blessed crystal
gives you 1-2 points of Learning (up to a maximum of about 27). So
the crystals will give you an average of 5 points, and the potions
only 4.
Here are some good things to wish for:
- Amulet of life saving - Don't wear this yourself! It is for
Khelavaster, the dying sage. He'll give you an excellent reward for
it, including six blessed scrolls of chaos resistance.
- Scrolls of chaos resistance - You'll get more by saving
Khelavaster's life than by wishing for them, but if you didn't get the
wish until after you'd allowed him to die, you may need them.
- Pairs of seven league boots - Blessed ones speed up movement
tremendously, especially in the wilderness.
- Girdle of giant strength - Increases your strength by 12 while
wearing it, which helps with both combat and carrying capacity.
If your weapons and armour aren't good enough, you can improve them
through wishing. Good weapons to wish for are swords of sharpness,
maces of destruction, phase daggers, and pretty much any eternium
weapon. Good pieces of armour are eternium tower shields, eternium
plate mails, and dragon scale mails (which render you immune to one
elemental attack). Rings of elemental mastery will protect you from
fire and cold, and rings of ice protect your equipment in the Tower
of Eternal Flames. Rings or cloaks of invisibility can also come in
handy. A potion of gain attributes will increase all your stats by
one if blessed. Wishing for gold gives you about 43000 gold pieces
(depending on your level). You can wish for any spellbook you like -
wishing for "spellbooks" gives several random spellbooks.
When facing Andor Drakon or anyone else that you don't want to get
hit by, speed is an excellent wish. It gives you a boost of about
200 which wears off at one point per turn.
If you need to gain experience levels in a hurry, one dangerous way
to do it is to wish for the Emperor Moloch. This will summon about
20 hostile greater molochs.
Some unusual wishes give amusing but totally useless results. For
example, wishing for immortality gives the message "Funny, very
funny" and wishing for Thomas Biskup gives "Thou shalt not mock the
Creator!".
Some of the information in this writeup was derived from the Wishing
section of Andy Williams' ADOM Guidebook, at
http://www.andywlms.com/adom/adomgb-app-M.html .