ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Wow! Winning felt really good, want to brag a little. I had failed on Insane many times and finally decided to ignore the guides and just take class that seems badass and make maximum out of it; had success on the third try!

https://te4.org/characters/218651/tome/ ... fa9bcc7429

What do you think about my itenization? I prioritized stun/confusion/pin/blind immunities, healmod and resistances from gear, so I was only affected by mental effects really.

Did I not have enough damage? I read advices on Legacy of the Naloren prodigy for high damage, but that seemed like a cheese and I wanted to fight with a sword not a - trident, so I took Arcane Might instead (I took it right before final battle actually, I swept High Peak easy without it, but in the final fight I wished I had more damage). I wanted Windtouched speed, but could not get 20 eq talents (is that even possible?)

Is demo considered a strong class? Overall, I liked it - especially in the midgame, where I was nearly invincible due to Osmosis and had great damage (early game played like bulwark to me). I used mainly corrosive strikes (to convert attack into acid, and used many damage amplifiers/respen.) +5x project weapon, so I had a whole lot of damage. I used other seeds situationally, too - this flexibility is great. However, in the final fight I felt like my talents were not doing enough. Defensively, I liked Osmosis (it did poor job against 1000 damage Elandar spikes, but at least healed me back over time). And I did not do much damage to him and Argoniel. It seems like class talents just don't do much damage. I had to use both sprydic poison and dispersion gloves vs Elandar, still he managed to kite me so much. I died to him 1 time due to 3k cold damage spike (tbh I didn't expect that much damage, it was 1st insane runI got past Dreadfell), then managed to root and kill him and kited Argoniel, using farstrike and spider minions + link of pain combo (summon spider, link him with Argoniel). Fortunately, she had no Vitality.

I think one main issue is that I didn't rescue any good escorts and decided just to take another inscription.

Any advice?

I learnt a lot this playthrough (and spent hours just theoritizing how to itemize/build best) and it showed - it was harder playing Nightmare than this Insane run.
I would like to plan my run and biuld in advance next game. Whom do you think I should play next? I think I will play some ranged hero or "weak" meelee (I have much more experience with melee).
Probably will still playt adventure - two of my death were really stupid (I felt asleep right clicking when monsters could not damage me and clicked 1 time to much when rare appeared); but 2 happened when I was really careful (Elandar one and one on the Dreadfell 1st level where like 4 or 5 really tough bosses spawned with lots of mental debuffs).

p.s. thank you Cathbald for your guides (zone order mainly, I opened demo guide when I was like 45 level already as I wanted do do things myself).

You didn't want to take Legacy of Naloren on that character. First off you didn't unlock exotic weapon mastery beforehand, so you would have been limited to five talents points in that talent given to you by the prodigy. Whereas with an escort you can get that talent up to level 10, which is partly why you can get your damage so high. You also wouldn't have really benefited from the spit poison, being as it's a EQ skill and vim skills mess with EQ as a resource. The mental power bonus and crit chance would likewise be wasted. There is nothing cheesy about Legacy of Naloren, and I've won a couple of nightmare games with it, but the idea candidates for the prodigy would be classes like berserker, cursed or wyrmic. On a similar note, getting windtouched speed should be possible by unlocking the harmony tree, and in fact legacy of Naloren would help in this case. But again, vim and eq talents don't mix.

I don't know how much damage is "enough damage", but when looking at damage don't forget to consider damage penetration, damage bonuses, and even crit bonuses if you have a meaningful crit. chance.

I personally haven't really played around with demonologist so I don't know how strong it is. But I did recently go through high peak with a temporal warden, and the only enemy I had to run from was a demon with a bunch of demonologist talents. It was surreal, as I would teleport away, and because I had esp/demon, I could see the demon walk through walls trying to get to me before I could really lower my paradox any. Eventually I finally teleported near the stairs and got away.

That's really helpful explanation about Legacy, thank you!

Yeah, I read that you can get Windtouched Speed if you get 20 talents from items; but I only found misc items giving talents.

You can get 10/5 exotic weapon mastery without finding a single warrior escort. Legacy unlocks it for you and the bonus talent levels don't count against you learning more. The stat requirements get crazy high though, so you'd have to hoard a bunch of +dex gear to get the full 10/5 experience.

Demonologist just doesn't do that much damage, although it's still a very strong class. I personally found Doombringer a lot more fun, even though it's much less durable.

It didn't for me. I mean you've got me questioning my memory a little since it was a Yeek Berserker and I can't go and double check, but I'm still pretty sure it diidn't unlock the talent, and I won that game with only the five points from exotic mastery. In fact the next the game I played a Krog cursed and did unlock exotic mastery from an escort before getting Legacy of Naloran, which is only reason I knew you could even get more than five points in the exotic mastery talent.

So did I encounter a bug? Did they change how it worked between versions? Did I somehow miss the exotic mastery talent being added for the next 8 level ups after I got the prodigy?

I just tested in dev mode and legacy definitely unlocks the exotic weapon mastery thing and raises the max level for it to 10. I'm not sure if it always worked that way or not.