ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello everyone.
This addon introduce the sapper, a brand of tinker fond of siege engines.

You can download it here : https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/sapper

Description
This addon adds the Sapper as a playable class. .

Sappers use their knowledge of steam weaponry to build construct that will fight your foes and destroy the walls of their lair.
They have an automated onarger, serving as a permanent ally. They can manipulate the terrain by digging tunnels and creating impassable pits.
But they are also trained for short range combat and will not hesitate to stick their pickaxe in their enemies' skulls.

They have 8 class trees, including 3 locked ones :
- Battle Machinery
- Siege Engine (new tree) : build 3 different temporary construct that will attack your foes and protect you
- Onager (new tree) : build a permanent construct that will follow you, hurt and disable your foes, and help you reposition
- Tool Combat (new tree) : join the fray, using your knowledge of tools to deconstruct your foes' equipment as you fight, or hit your construct to temporarily improve them instead.
- Death Tools (new tree) : use the carnage of the battlefield to your own advantage

- Trapping (locked)
- Automation (locked)
- Sapper (locked, new tree) : control the field to improve your odds of survival

They have 6 generic trees :
- Combat Training and Survival
- Physics and Chemistry
- Blacksmith
- Engineering

Disclaimer
Please report any bugs you find and I will endeavor to fix them
Any input is helpful and appreciated.

Credits
http://game-icons.net/ for all the talent and effect icons.

In advance, whoever tries this out and gives me feedback so I can continue to improve it !

Changelog

1.0.1 :
- Because Rexorcorum is a wonderful person, wielded pickaxe are now visible on player doll <3
- Spelling fixes, clarity added to some descriptions
- Cannonball now properly checks for unarmed
- Salvage properly deals damage around the siege engine and not yourself
- Learning Onager now automatically fulfills the requirement of 100 summons for Blighted Summoning

1.0.0 : release !

_________________
I write guides and make addons too now,

You can go for a compilation of everything I wrote, plus some other important stuff!

Includes general guides (inscriptions, zone, prodigies), and class guides (Demo, Anorithil, Bulwark, Zerker, Sblade)

Blacksmith and Engineering, wow.
Really appreciate that my Onager can shoot over me, and I don't have to 'take a step back' as the first action in each combat.

Polybolos's Bolt description ...isn't, and it does literally 2 damage when starting out.
Polybolos follows you between levels if it's still active.
Salvage prefers to target enemies, not allies
Salvage's active deals damage around you, not around the detonated siege engine - is that intended?
Can't drag a pickaxe between hand slot and tool slot, in either direction

Description nitpicking
Scorpio, how long is the resistance debuff?
Battering Ram , "meet a vault" => "meets a vault", "try to push" => "tries to push"
Onager, "chance of daze" => "chance to daze"
Tough Love "4 turns cooldown" => "4 turn cooldown"
'Gruesome decoration' not capitalized
It would usually be "Eye for an Eye"
Dig In, "stationnary" => "stationary"
You Shall Not Pass sounds like it should have a '!' at the end.

Polybolos and Scorpio now have a description on their talent. Polybolos indeed deals 2 at level 1 but this will quickly pick up
Salvage damage projection fixed, don't think you can make a skill target allies over enemies automatically ? If you know of a talent that does it i'll look into it.
Sadly not being able to move items from one inventory slot to another is a problem with the vanilla ToME interface.

Descriptions fixed accordingly, thanks ! Also added duration on Onager daze/stun, Salvage shield, and a couple other things.

Pickaxe now appear on player doll, REJOICE !

_________________
I write guides and make addons too now,

You can go for a compilation of everything I wrote, plus some other important stuff!

Includes general guides (inscriptions, zone, prodigies), and class guides (Demo, Anorithil, Bulwark, Zerker, Sblade)

I played a Drem sapper through beating the master, so I thought I'd chime in here about my experience. If I make good progress in the east, I'll probably post again about that, but here are some thoughts so far. I'm playing on insane so I can't speak to other difficulties.

-Overall, I am really enjoying the class. I like the siege engines more than the Annihilator turrets because I like that they have synergy with each other and that you get benefits from using multiple at one time. The ram in particular is very satisfying when you get it to hit. I invested heavily in the Siege Engine tree and have been using Frenzy to double up on them, either for more burst or to get more uptime for longer fights.
-So far, siege engines are doing solid damage. I'm curious how it's going to scale to the east, since the APR they get doesn't scale. 50/100 APR is enough that early game enemies may as well not have any armor, but things might be different when I meet some randboss Bulwark with 200 armor. Haven't gotten there yet so this is just speculation.
-Onager is incredibly durable even with just 1 point invested. During the master fight, he teleported somewhere and my onager went off to follow him. Onager was still alive when I found them ~10 turns later.
-Onager sometimes gets stuck when there is a Doomed type enemy on the other side of a wall and so shadows keep spawning. The shadows can't take down the onager, nor can the onager kill them faster than they spawn. One time I lost my onager somewhere and actually had to change floors because I couldn't find it and it wasn't dying. It would be nice if there were some way to unsummon your onager from anywhere (rather than only Salvage) in case it wanders off or decides to do something stupid.
-My Sapper build feels quite durable as well. I went AM, so with armor, flat DR from cover, defensive bonuses from Dig In, shields from Salvage, Resolve, and AM shield, the only times I am taking significant damage are when I get hit by a nuke spell. I don't get hit a lot in melee because I use the siege engines to block, or if someone dangerous gets too close, put a ram in their face.
-I also haven't been attacking enemies much either. I'll use Lay Siege for the global slow or Headlock if someone gets in my face persistently, but for the most part I'd rather use Tough Love to extend the duration of a siege engine than attack. The steam cost is no issue.
-Not a lot of crowd clearing (though maybe if you invest in Automation or Battle Machinery that helps. I didn't). The only time it was really an issue so far was against the master, since he can summon minions with no limit. Even so, my defenses felt solid, it just ended up being kind of a crowded fight where I had to wear him down because he could summon minions about as fast as I could kill them.
-Wasn't too sure what prodigies to aim for. I ended up taking Adept at 25 to improve my siege engines (Polybolos 298% attack speed <3), and looking at Windtouched Speed next. The global speed will be nice for getting siege engines out fast and using Tough Love faster, and the cd reduction should help a little in longer fights. What prodigies did you have in mind as being relevant to Sapper? There's also Blighted Summoning, but my siege engines feel plenty durable so far, and I felt like Bone Shield would be overkill.

I haven't encounter anything that I would describe as a notable bug. My only suggestions on that front are that a few of the talent descriptions are unclear/ambiguous.
-When you read Tough Love, parts of it sound unclear about whether it targets one siege engine or all of them. Would help to use "it" instead of "they" when referring to a single siege engine. This applies to some other talent descriptions as well, such as Salvage.
-You Shall Not Pass sometimes creates an L-shaped barrier, rather than a line.
-Siege engines inherit your "penetration," which by trial and error I found means damage penetration but not armor penetration. I think it would be more clear to say "damage penetration."

Hope you find something useful in my rambling, and thanks for making an enjoyable class.

_________________
I write guides and make addons too now,

You can go for a compilation of everything I wrote, plus some other important stuff!

Includes general guides (inscriptions, zone, prodigies), and class guides (Demo, Anorithil, Bulwark, Zerker, Sblade)

_________________
I write guides and make addons too now,

You can go for a compilation of everything I wrote, plus some other important stuff!

Includes general guides (inscriptions, zone, prodigies), and class guides (Demo, Anorithil, Bulwark, Zerker, Sblade)

I've tried a few runs with Sapper, a couple AoA and couple of EoR. Level 30 in EoR on Insane is the furthest I've gone so far. Summon-heavy classes aren't my favorite in general, but this class is pretty fun for what it is. Once you've got all of your tools on line and you can hunker down surrounded by siege engines, it starts to feel pretty nice, but still very passive after a couple turns of set up for each fight.

As far as play style, I found it best to hang back behind my engines. I very rarely used any of the melee talents, except for Tough Love, but I only used that on my buddies. Once I had all of the tools online, most fights went something like: lure enemy into range of Onager or swap around until Onager is in the right place, then summon both temporary engines and start smacking them with Tough Love. If you wear light gloves and forgo the offhand pick, you can keep the two temporary engines up indefinitely, provided you have the Steam, triggering nice big explosions every few turns as icing. If something got close enough that I could conveniently throw a ram at it, I would, but more often than not it wasn't needed (though it carries itself quite well earlier on). Between Dig In and Engine Cover, you're extremely resilient as long as your engines are around and you don't move. Hidden Tunnel is a nice escape tool when you need it and You Shall Not Pass is nice for the damage and status effects and keeping melee at bay, but I didn't really use either one very much. I can see them being more useful as escape tools later on, if I run into something I feel the need to flee from. Dig In in particular is just so good that I don't want to move and lose the buff for even one turn, and my personal ranged options are pretty small, resulting in the Dig In and Love Engines play style.

For some more specific feedback:

The class has a lot of enemy damage reduction. Dead Ammo, Headlock, and Onager of All Trades. Seems a little excessive or feels like the numbers could be tweaked on one or two while the other could be changed to a different mechanic.

Speaking of Onager of All Trades, I can't see myself ever using any munition besides Saw Boulders. The burning one is very eh, and the extra damage with stun chance is okay, but I don't feel it's on par with a 100% chance for 30% damage reduction. I could see swapping to Heavy against a bleed immune boss, I suppose. As the damage reduction doesn't scale, I don't see any reason to add more than the first talent point.

Line of Fire targeting feels weird, but maybe it's just me. It feels like if I am picking the guy up and throwing them, I should be targeting from my own tile, and therefore also be able to throw foes 'behind' me without blocking my own line of targeting.

Turning siege engine scrap into a magical shield feels weird. It's a nice talent and I understand using a custom effect wouldn't work with game mechanics as well, but it still stuck out to me.

It would be nice if Tough Love auto-targeted an enemy if you use it while you only have a single foe and no engines adjacent to yourself.

Dig In is really, really good. I said it already, but I think it's worth repeating. Any time I'm deciding if trying to move into melee to use any of my close range utility is worthwhile, I have to weigh it against 35% crit shrug, 25% all res, 25 life regen and a 40% chance to shed a detrimental effect.

I feel like the class would need a little more mobility, both for yourself and your engines, to really feel comfortable getting into melee and using the engines as support, instead of hiding behind them constantly. I'll be interested to see what's in your new unarmed tree. Shame it will be locked, it's going to be hard to compete with Dig In and an extra steam generator.

One minor thing I noticed, and I'm not sure if it was a bug or just the zone. I learned Hidden Tunnel and YSNP in the Ritch Hive and had trouble with both. Hidden Tunnel seemed to do nothing when I used it while fighting, no energy used or anything. YSNP used a turn but did not set off any explosions. I'm wondering if both may have actually been caused by the Ritches traps on the tiles I was trying to target, because both talents worked as expected when I tried them with no mobs around, and I haven't had any trouble with them at all since leaving the Hive.

Well, next update will make siege engine a little less durable and melee a lot more interesting, we'll see if we can make the gameplay less passive
Indeed, i hadn't really realised i had 3 numbing effects, this stacks way too well.
Munitions will see a little readjustment, notably fire deserves to do more damage considering it's an offtype.
Line of Fire got this targeting because throwing from your tile lead to the target sometimes stopping short as it blocked on an enemy/wall. This way what you see is what you get.
Hum... Maybe a flat DR shield with strong values will fit better for Salvage ? Reminiscent of Engine Cover. Or even, flat DR but block only up to X damage total to cap its maximum effectiveness.
Tough Love targeting changed, thanks to Frost Invoker code
Dig In defense attribute and cleanse are due for nerfs, but regen will be buffed. Numbers were indeed too high.
New unarmed tree will see a dash and some debuff, and will be competitive with Sapper
Could not reproduce the problem in Ritch Hive, but i did make a change to handle traps better at some point, so i might have fixed whatever bug you had. We'll see if it pops up again !


Using only summons should become a tad worse, using melee will be a lot better, we'll find the right balance !
Biggest decision left to make is wether to make Tough Love actually destroy siege engine on explosion rather than just damage them...

_________________
I write guides and make addons too now,

You can go for a compilation of everything I wrote, plus some other important stuff!

Includes general guides (inscriptions, zone, prodigies), and class guides (Demo, Anorithil, Bulwark, Zerker, Sblade)

_________________
Let slip the toast of war.

yeah Onager is the reason i didn't actually destroy siege engines with Tough Love but only dealt damage. And i don't really want to special case, so it's gonna stay as is.

i'm just gonna embrace that there is no reason not to go full summon until level 20+, at which point you have the choice of either transition to melee (unlocking steampunching, getting flex at 25) or continue putting point into summons and gearing defensively, with Battle Machinery and You Shall not Pass support, as well as possibly Trapping.

It's not like i didn't want this class to have several ways of working, i'm just annoyed it seems to be pretty passive and just spamming Tough Love all day :p making summons a bit more prone to dying, a bit less effective, and having a strong tree that requires melee should do the trick.

_________________
I write guides and make addons too now,

You can go for a compilation of everything I wrote, plus some other important stuff!

Includes general guides (inscriptions, zone, prodigies), and class guides (Demo, Anorithil, Bulwark, Zerker, Sblade)

Update is here

1.1.0 :
- Possibly fixed a rare bug with You Shall not Pass and Battle Machinery traps (and other traps ? i couldn't reproduce the bug so...)
- Buffed Onager damage in the early game and nerfed it late game (by ~15%)
- Nerfed Salvage and Tough Love explosion damage by ~20% and ~40%
- Tough Love max charges is now 4 instead of 5
- Fixed Tough Love to properly grant all res rather than physical res to Onager
- Tough Love now automatically targets an enemy if there is only one in melee and no allies in melee
- Tough Love explosion now also reduce the summon lifespan by 1
- Nerfed Ram base damage by ~15%, and bonus damage by 25%
- Fixed Ram to properly check for stun resistance
- Ram ramming a Ram now has a special interaction
- Nerfed Polybolos and Scorpio durability, they have increased life rating but no longer gain CON
- Scaled Polybolos and Scorpio stat gain with level (worse early, slightly stronger late)
- Buffed Lay Siege cd 25 --> 15
- Buffed Line of Fire cd 18 --> 12
- Nerfed Dig In : all res, crit shrug, and cleanse reduced by ~25%, but regen boosted
- Revised Onager munitions : Fire now deal ~25% more damage, and Bleed damage reduction scale with TL (roughly the same at 5/5)
- Revised Dead Ammunitions : no longer reduce damage, but talent fail chance is increased
- Buffed Cannonball : cd fixed at 8, range increased
- A whole new unarmed tree !

_________________
I write guides and make addons too now,

You can go for a compilation of everything I wrote, plus some other important stuff!

Includes general guides (inscriptions, zone, prodigies), and class guides (Demo, Anorithil, Bulwark, Zerker, Sblade)

I gave it a try, making an effort to actually punch people, and I'm not totally sold on Steampunch Arts as a lvl 10+ locked tree. I took it at 10, and played until 20, where I died to an Anorithil randboss. The Rocket Punch stun is definitely useful, and cool that it gets fast as you level. On the other hand "hit someone and daze/stun them" feels more like it belongs in a starter tree. Unravelling Punch is probably useful for the phys damage reduction against dangerous melee enemies later in the game, but early I had enough armor and other sources of damage reduction that I didn't feel I needed it very often. Caster enemies were much more dangerous anyway. Searing Punch seems kind of niche, although I guess it hits harder than most attacks with the added fire damage. The onager fire munitions seem best for crowd clearing, and reducing one guy's fire resistance isn't going to help a whole lot with that. I didn't make it to Steam Dash, which like Rocket Punch, seems useful (especially since mobility is in short supply) but again doesn't feel like the capstone of an advanced tree to me.

On the other hand, I liked the other melee skills a lot. Cannonball and Line of Fire were the stars for me. Set up your machines, cannonball in, and throw someone into your pit of death. However, not being able to throw enemies behind you is a noticeable issue. As nsrr says, it feels unrealistic for one, and in addition it removes a lot of the usefulness of Line of Fire when you are fighting in corridors or against long range enemies. Against a long range enemy, what I want to do is cannonball myself in and then throw them behind me so they get in range of the onager. But I can't so what I end up doing is summoning Scorpio and hitting it with Tough Love repeatedly while it has a shootdown with them. I think the reason I liked these melee skills better is that they synergize in a more interesting way with the other aspects of the class. Steampuch Arts comes across as effective, but not that interesting, and so it stands out a bit in a class where so many other things are cool and interesting.

Even without taking Sapper at 10, I felt reasonably durable, and to be honest I probably shouldn't have died if I had been playing more carefully. I would blame my death on poor play rather than the class being weak if you go melee, and it's not like I'm a super elite player anyway. Anorithils were one of the toughest matchups though, because with mobility for myself and my engines at a premium, it was hard to stay out of their ground DoT effects.

hum, i'm not sure i'd want to give sustain removal in an unlocked tree (which is def capstone worthy in my book, not a lot of class have access to that). Also that would be a lot of unlocked trees, i'd probably have to lock another one, but i don't see locking one that isn't Death Tools, which would lose you quite some defensive power.
Or i guess i could lock Onager ? I didn't ever consider that until just now (could even still keep it level 0 for cornac)

I'll need to see if i can make Line of Fire be blocked by actors but not yourself. It annoys me to bypass actors in general. And i'd rather have it be blocked by everyone than noone, but i get the point you're making. Also i was debating being able to use Line of Fire on allies, would that be fun
Searing Punch is the less good talent of the tree, but you have a couple ways to deal fire, and Onager deals 25% more with fire than phys, in a bigger AoE, so it's not totally random/useless.

And oh jeez, not synergistic enough, that's what i get for adding something later in the development process. I was literally going "need more weapon strikes, sapper lacks weapon strikes" and not much more though, so that's not surprising. Adding synergy when there is already the pickaxe mechanic, hum. i could... make siege engines deal bonus damage to burning targets on searing punch. and change all current talent dealing fire damage to fireburn (except onager fire boulder, i like the ground AoE and it would feel to mechanically similar to saw boulder otherwise).
Unravelling destroys melee but you are already strong vs melee by just bunkering behind engines so that doesn't add much in a way... not sure how i could go here. Rocket Punch and Steam Dash are in a very good spot though imo.


I feel like i'm doing OP until i get destroyed out of the blue tbh so i'm having a hard time seeing what else (if anything) i should rebalance.

_________________
I write guides and make addons too now,

You can go for a compilation of everything I wrote, plus some other important stuff!

Includes general guides (inscriptions, zone, prodigies), and class guides (Demo, Anorithil, Bulwark, Zerker, Sblade)