ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Doomed has a lot of weird or quirky talents that have odd interactions with other talents and prodigies, so I figured that I'd start a list documenting the various quirks as reference for those who want to explore different builds and synergies.

Punishments:
-None of the spells in the tree can proc on-mindpower hit effects as far as I can tell. Using the Crimson Robe over a few hundred turns, I was unable to get either Reproach, Agony, or Hateful Whisper to trigger the robe's innate Agony and Hateful Whisper procs. I am unsure of why this is.
-Madness is pretty straightforward in how it works, but keep in mind that in order for the effects to trigger the damage has to come from you - i.e. Force of Will, Darkness, Punishments, and Fears (Haunted effect) will all cause it to proc. Cursed Bolt will NOT trigger any of its effects, as the bolts are considered to come from the shadows themselves.

One with Shadows:
-Shadow Empathy is considered a magical effect, so it can be extended by Timeless. Furthermore, the damage it causes to shadows is blocked by Fade, so if even a single shadow has the effect you can be confident that the damage deflection will work. I have yet to find out whether shadows can use Reform to resurrect after dying to this deflected damage but I'm inclined to say they will.
-Shadow Transposition seems to have a chance to clear the status entirely from both you and your shadow when used. Multiple times I have used to to clear a nasty disease or poison only to notice that the transposed shadow does not have the effect. If anyone can figure why this happens let me know.
-According to http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=40264, Shadow Decoy will trigger before cauterize. Make of that as you may.

Advanced Shadowmancy:
-Because all of the talents use the shadows themselves as the sources of damage, none of the spells will a) trigger on-mindpower hit procs, b) be affected by damage conversion sources (Mental Tyranny, Elemental Fury, Temporal Form, etc.), and c) proc Madness (in the case of Cursed Bolt). However, they do seem to benefit from +damage%, respen%, crit chance%, and crit mult%, and will cause hate or psi on mind crit effects to trigger.
-Zemekky's Hourglass can be used to great effect with this tree as shadows ignore the damage penalty you have; this can be used either for free damage or with Shadow's Path and Shadow Transposition for a perfectly accurate long-range teleport.
-Merge, Stone, and Cursed Bolt use an enemy's range from the shadow to determine if they can hit or not. The first two talents require direct LoS from you to your shadow for targetting, so even with Shadow Senses you cannot choose a shadow behind a wall. Shadow's Path and Cursed Bolt do not require LoS.

Fears:
-Fears are pretty straightforward, though of note is the fact that the Haunted effect's mind damage can trigger Madness.

Gestures:
-This post http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=38628&start=15#p172243, though meant for Adventurer talent interactions, describes a lot of how the Gestures attack works, though there are a few other quirks. Gestures cannot trigger on-mindpower hit effects, and because it does NOT use a weapon attack most on-hit effects will not trigger. Flexible Combat will cause an additional Gesture attack, but even when unarmed the glove/gauntlet effects will not occur.

Cursed Aura:
-Weapons used as Cursed Sentries will attempt to use activated effects on weapons, meaning projection weapons, blasting staffs, and hungering mindstars, for example, will use their ranged attacks (To be tested: whether fungal bows or slings use the regen effect). Furthermore, ranged weapons chosen by Cursed Sentry will spawn with ammunition equivalent to the tier level of the weapon used, and can generate egos for this ammunition - whether greater egos can spawn is yet to be tested. On-hit effects will trigger and will likely do so given the high global speed of the sentry.


Let me know if there's any important talent interaction that's missing or that should be included in this list.

Advanced Shadowmancy: You need to have line of sight to acting shadows for every talent. Shadow Senses makes Shadow's Path and Cursed Bolt ignore the above. The damage increased with mindpower, crit chance%, mult% and from Shadow Warriors. Shadows have their own damage pen.

Zemekkys' Broken Hourglass (Time Stop) doesn't stop advanced shadowmancy talents from doing damage.
Shadow Transposition allows targeting shadows behind a wall. Assemble your own wormhole. Set it up with Time Stop, Shadow's Path.

The ultimate combo: Ruined Earth, Feed Power, Merge, Spine of the World. It stops all damage if they don't have Spine of the World. It's not good enough to beat madness difficulty.

Did not know about the interactions with time stop. Sounds like there's lots of synergy to be explored there.

Merge + Feed Power + Ruined Earth shuts down damage output against a single enemy, but I'm guessing that for large groups the best option is Ruined Earth + Shadow Empathy, since with both at max rank any nearby enemy is now only doing 16% of their normal damage. It does require having active shadows, but between Fade, Reform, and Focus Shadows that won't be a pressing issue.

I recall a fungal bow using the regen active.

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complaints about balancing for higher difficulties seem to come exclusively from people without a good understanding of ToME's balance in the first place. bpat

I've only ever won with archmage on normal/adventure. - DG

These may be obvious, but this seems like a good thread for them.

Kill bonuses (including Unnatural Body, and Curses Shrouds level 4 and Corpses levels 3&4) don't seem to proc from shadow kills, perhaps expectedly so. I'd assume this is the same for kills using Shadowmancy talents.

From what I understand, the Heal Mod scaling of unnatural body is based on actual values of Hate from 0 – 100+, not a percentage of maximum Hate. Sustaining Shadow Decoy will result in a big hit to your Heal Mod.

edit: While your shadows ignore 100% of the damage you deal to them, causing them damage will still proc their fade and apply certain secondary effects, such as propagating Hateful Whisper (you can use this to hop Hateful Whisper from a shadow to a foe out of your range) and knock back from Willful Strike and Throw Boulder. I'm not sure whether Madness procs and other on-hit also effect them.

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complaints about balancing for higher difficulties seem to come exclusively from people without a good understanding of ToME's balance in the first place. bpat

I've only ever won with archmage on normal/adventure. - DG