Willpower is one of the main attributes in ADOM, the third value displayed to the right of your character's name. Its abbreviation is Wi.
Purposes
Willpower has several important effects on your character's abilities:
- Spell range and damage: Willpower positively affects both.
- Ball spell radius: Starting with 32, every 16 threshold will increase the radius of effect of your ball spells by one, making them much, much more destructive when dealing with crowds. The maximum possible ball spell range is reached at 96 Willpower. 32 is considered a minimum goal by many, even for non-spellcasters, as the radius increase also works for wands of fireballs. Higher values boost the overkill factor of spellcasting by quite a bit, but are not required for success.
- Mindcraft: Willpower increases the range and power of mindcraft.
- Confusion resistance: Willpower is the main stat involved in checks resisting the mindcraft attempts of various powerful spellcasting monsters.
- HP and PP: Like Strength, Willpower is one of the factors involved in determining the character's maximum hit points (1HP per each 2 points of willpower). Toughness has an even greater effect, however. Willpower also gives +1 PP per level above one (+9 PP at level 10, +19 PP at level 20, and so on) at thresholds 2/20/28/36/44/... (+8 per next check); again another stat, here Mana, is the main one used.
- A Willpower score of 20 or higher (or a Perception score of 5 or lower) is needed to enter the Rift.
How to train it
Herbs
Willpower is very easy to train by eating morgia roots. B/U/C status seems to not matter here; they always have a positive effect, though blessed ones may be somewhat more effective than cursed ones. The PC should eat several morgia roots, and then wait for the game to check the results of training and award an additional point of willpower, before eating any more. (These checks occur at every level up and periodically between level ups).
There is a hard cap on this method in that morgia roots will not work for Willpower if it is already at 25. For this reason, eat as many morgia roots as you can when you are at 24, as this will often lead to additional skill increases on top; it is not unrealistic to reach 27 Willpower in this manner. Eating morgia roots cannot train Willpower if it is already at its potential.
Garth
The second main method to increase Willpower is by spending money to train with Garth. Higher values require progressively higher amounts of gold, meaning there is a soft cap on this method. After morgia training is finished, it is very expensive in gold to train stats further with Garth, so usually Casino money is used.
Other
Successfully reaching the cast spell menu or casting a spell from the learned spells menu while stunned or confused trains Willpower by a minimal amount.
How to raise it
Stat potions
Potions of willpower and potions of gain attributes can be used to increase Willpower. There is no soft or hard cap for using these; blessed potions of gain attributes give +1 (to all other stats also), uncursed potions of willpower give +1, blessed potions +2. For this reason, these potions should be blessed, and drunk once all other methods have stopped working.
Eating Corpses
Corpses that increase willpower include those of ancient black dragons and great black wyrms. These are quite late-game monsters. Eating them is therefore not a very practical method to increase Willpower.
Class powers
- Mindcrafters receive +5 Willpower as part of their level 25 class power.
- Bards receive +6 Willpower as part of their level 50 class power.
Talents
The "Strong of Will" talent that is only available at the start of the game increases initial Willpower by 2.
Corruption
The bulging cranium corruption increases Willpower by 4, and the decaying body corruption increases it by 10.
Star sign
Characters born in the month of the Tree begin the game with a Willpower bonus of 5.
Aging
The PC's Willpower increases upon aging from young to grown-up, middle-aged to old, or old to very old.
How to Abuse It
Eating
Many corpses will decrease Willpower if eaten, and occasionally offer increases to other stats. These corpses include claw bug corpses as well as those of minotaurs. The greatest willpower losses are incurred by eating the corpses of greater claw bugs and especially killer bugs; the latter will drain 12 Willpower per corpse (while increasing speed and Dexterity).
Kranf Niest
Collecting the Kill Jharod reward will result in a 1d3 Willpower loss.
Corruption
The ChAoS whispers corruption reduces Willpower by 6.
The apish corruption reduces Willpower by one, and will periodically reduce it further. As Willpower can be fixed back up to 25-27 using morgia roots, this is not as worrisome as the Learning decrease that goes with it is for spellcasters. If Willpower has been raised higher in order to fulfill the 32 threshold, this loss is harder to stomach.
Casting spells from health
As of ADOM v. 1.2.0, casting spells from health results in abuse of Willpower and Toughness (on top of the Mana abuse that it has in v. 1.1.1).
Weapons
Attacking with a weapon with the suffix 'of surrending' is said to slowly abuse the Willpower stat, though this not been confirmed in testing (see the weapon suffixes page)
Items
Several items in the game will grant a Willpower bonus if worn (standard bonus in brackets). These include:
- the amulet of perseverance (+3), staff of power (+4)
- the artifacts Preserver (+7), True Strength (+15), Lust for Glory (+3)
- the artifact weapons Purifier (+4), sword of Nonnak (+5) and staff of Creation (+16)
- Chaos Orb of Elemental Water (+10 when equipped in the tool slot)
Requirements
| Willpower | Required for |
|---|---|
| 12 | Beast of Burden |
| 13 | |
| 14 | |
| 15 | Immune to Pain, Pious, Strong Healer |
| 16 | Durable Magic |
| 17 | |
| 18 | |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Very Pious |
| 21 | |
| 22 | |
| 23 | |
| 24 | |
| 25 | |
| 26 | |
| 27 | |
| 28 | |
| 29 | |
| 30 | Saint |