ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Character vault

This was sort of a challenge run because I was planning to turn it into a mindstar Fallen, which requires saving 1250 gold while being able to respec all spells and buy Mindstar Mastery from Zigur. I managed to do that at about level 18 by just floating points in 1/5 Weapon of Light, 3/5 Sun Ray, 1/5 Healing Light, 1/5 Bathe in Light, and 1/5 Weapons Mastery. I had hard points in Two-Handed Assault, Combat Training, and Halfling racials. This would have been easier if I were raising strength, but I was keeping it low for the switch to mindstars and relying heavily on elemental weapons and flat damage from items to kill things. I got lucky and saved a tinker escort early, so I got some useful upgrades from that too.

I thought the hard part was over. Just a few more levels and I can unlock Fallen and be a psiblade-wielding edgelord! Unfortunately, T2 dungeons on Insane are currently a hellscape of damage spikes. I nearly died many times in Maze and Old Forest, but managed to get to the Fortress. The smart play here would probably be to go in, then dip out since I didn't have Rune of Dissipation yet. I decided instead to try fighting the Weirdling Beast, thinking I would back out if it was too hard. Fast forward a few turns and I'm dead after taking 700 damage in one turn.

I don't expect Insane to be easy, but mobs are just doing too much damage right now. I was playing an 14 life rating race/class and had life rolls on nearly every piece of equipment, yet I still get hit for 80% of my life in one turn. The struggle is real.

1.7 is harder than late 1.6 with the tree based talent generation, since monsters now get a bunch of really dangerous talents early and overall have better synergy. Heart of Gloom is now known as Heart of Inner Demons. darkgod said this will be toned down in the next patch so hopefully that will help, but it's very possible to meet an enemy in T2 where's it's just instantly game over. Recently I was lvl 19 and got Fearscaped by a Bulwark/Doombringer randboss. I could survive for a while, but as a weapon user couldn't outdamage all his healing from the Fearscape and Vitality through his armor, and since resource limitations don't exist for NPCs, Fearscape lasts forever and there's no way to run unless you have sustain strip, which most classes don't that early. On another run I encountered a Sun Paladin/Necro randboss who had almost 70 in all saves from Golden Age of Necromancy while I was lvl 18 in the asslord tunnels. I guess in that case you can at least try to run for the stairs, but not many options to fight a boss who has a huge hp pool, hits hards, summons, and shrugs off all your debuffs that early in the game.

Yeah, I've been losing a lot of runs in this version. A lot of the time it's my own fault, but sometimes there isn't much you can do to avoid it.

I'm not a big fan of running away, and I would probably survive longer if I did it more, but IMO monsters where your only option is to straight up run should be rare. Tough monsters where you have to engage strategically and use your abilities with care are the most interesting to fight; monsters where your only viable option is to run away are the least. Unfortunately, it's a fine line, so I'm sympathetic to the difficulties balancing that the devs have to deal with.