ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Alf is dead. He made it to the Final Battle and lost the rest of his lives to an overload of curses and diseases and hexes and just plain blindness and confusion.

Lessons learned after some contemplation:

1. Player stamina is as important as character stats. I (Freddybear, not Alf) was tired and wired by the (very frustrating) slog through eleven levels of High Peak, and should have rested up for the big battle. That led to many tactical errors.

2. Blindness and confusion (lack of) resistance were Alf's biggest problems. Disarm resistance was probably next on the list. You can't fight if you can't see or if your weapons are disabled.

3. Resistance to hexes and curses and diseases. Wild infusions only cure one thing at a time, and only once per cooldown period. With multiple casters throwing disabling effects around right and left the Wild infusions aren't worth the slot.

4. Dropping of the Shield Wall sustain caused another death. I'm not sure exactly how it got dropped, but it was probably my own fumble fingers. I would probably unmap that hotkey in the future and just invoke the sustain from the "m" menu instead. I did that with the "imbue armor" command so I wouldn't waste the mana on it, why not with Shield Wall which was absolutely essential to Alf's survival?

Congratulations on making it to the final fight. You ended up in the same fate vein as I did with my dwarf fighter several betas ago. Though, when I went through High Peek, it was 15 levels...

Also - care to share any of your special occasion tactics? I'm trying to rewrite the fighter guide and opinions and play styles other than my own will aide in that.

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Gah, fifteen levels? Sheesh, even 12 levels is too much.

Sandworm skills were well worth the points. Burrow was very useful for creating a dogleg corridor in a wall to get out of LOS of summoner drakes and wyrms. I wouldn't put more than one point in it though. Sand Breath was good for blinding and even killing wyrmics and other casters. It also caused some enemies to hurt others, resulting in them fighting instead of coming at me. That was quite effective in Gorbat Pride with all the summoner drakes in the large open areas where they could literally carpet the floor with hatchlings. I never even tried Quake so I don't know what it does. The description makes it sound kind of weak. If it's anything like the old ToME2 earthquake it could come in handy in those same open-floor situations to break up LOS and create cover. That's one of the things I forgot all about in the Final Battle.

And a metagame strategic idea, if you will. Each of the dungeons has several levels leading up to the final level with the boss, and the all have lower level monsters who use the same general sorts of attacks that you'll face from the Boss at the end fight. If you're having a hard time with the little guys, you need to fix it before you go on to meet the Big Bad or you'll be in serious trouble. This is especially true of the Pride dungeons. I should have realized from the trouble that I had with the Dreadmasters and the Uruivellas that I was in for serious bad mojo at the end.

On the other hand, if you're just breezing through the little guys it's possible that you'll get overconfident. The Big Bad is going to be trouble no matter what, but at least you have an idea if you're prepared for what's coming.

While that's certainly possible (especially if you left Shield Wall on the first set of hotkeys), there are also monsters that can cast a "Dispel Magic" sort of thing, that undoes some of your effects. Dreadlords are one such monster. Not sure which others have it. Yet another thing you need to look out for.

Oh wonderful. That means you have to look for 100% stun resist from gear because you can't depend on sustained talents staying up in the most critical battle of them all.

Last I checked, 100% stun resist wasn't absolutely necessary. 70% or so is often enough to keep you from dying horribly if you pay attention, and even 50% will probably give you enough to teleport out if you get hit. Was that changed again?

Also worth noting that it's possible to make yourself effectively immune by cranking your saves high enough, at least for the moment.

I haven't figured out how resists and saves work.

I have had Fighters die in Kor'Pul with level 4 shield wall because they got stunned by some skeleton. And anything less than 100% stun resist makes you vulnerable to Urkis' Hurricane, which is almost certain death. That's just in the early game, before going East.