ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello!

Im playing my Necromancer in the armoury and now I am confused.
In the main land, perhaps a chest somewhere, I found a tier 4 staff.
I used it, without realising how good it was first, for a long time now.
It has +34 spellpower which is probably why this game is so smooth.
(I never found any staff close to this value)
Now in the armoury I found a dragon bone staff.
Now the problem I have.

Which staff is best compared to another staff?
5% extra darkness damage?
15 extra spell power?
How good is 10% lower darkness resistance (if the target resists)?
etc etc etc

Is there a table on how good things are compared to others?
Or does it depends...? (If it does, on what?)
Assume damage. (If defence also comes in I guess the question is hard to impossible to answer easilly)

Is there a way in game to check my damage output after I wield an item?

How good are saves?
Sometimes I find good armours with +20-30 saves. Mental, spell and physical.
But how much do they help compared to a good damage blast I get from other armours with + to darkness damage?
Are they needed to survive one hit critical hits I might run into late in the game for example?

Spellpower is non-linear, if I understand this correctly. So +15 spellpower is good in the early game, but later on not so much, because of diminishing returns. Resistance penetration of the relevant damage type is really good. It works against mobs without resistance too, lowering their resistance below zero. So this dragon staff looks better.


The attack tab on your character info shows it.


Saves help you to resist negative statuses, not critical hits. Usually saves on items seem less good to me than other bonuses you can find, but +20 to +30 is quite a lot.

If you're playing a class without plate mails, like necromancer, one of the best armors you can get is the Untouchable. It generates shields whenever something hits you hard.

It does not.

Pretty sure you can't go to negative values with the ordinary resistance penetration. So against critters that don't have much resists getting like 5 % of fire damage modifier is much, much better than getting + 5 fire resistance penetration.

Things like vimsense can put resistance values to negative, however.

EDIT. Ninja'ed.

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1.4.X Paradox mage guide for high level play

Thank you all for input.

Diminishing return point is what, when it comes to spellpower?
Is it different from skill to skill, spell to spell?
Anyone has an easy way to know when to stop boosting it?

Diminishing returns operate as described here.



Specifically, 10% resistance penetration doesn't counteract 10% resistance. It penetrates 10% of the target's current resist, so if you have 10% respen and the target has 100% resist, it's as if they had 90%; if the target has 50%, it's as if they had 45%, etc.

There's also abilities that lower target resists, which behave linearly. Bonus fact: lowering a resist below -100% won't benefit you besides adding a buffer if they do something to raise their resists.

Talking according to the topic, I would choose +10% darkness resistance penetration assuming that it is better version of damage mod. Talking about saves, some time ago I found a robe with +74 mental save. If only you could see my face