ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I started this character on a boring afternoon before christmas babysitting my younger siblings. I decided to play something not found in the forums yet by playing an adventurer and dicing a talent tree which should be 5555 if possible. I rolled Fate Weaving. I never did a character with fate weaving before and so i wondered how to play one.
Seal Fate seems to shine if an enemy has many negative status effects, but lasts only 5 turns.
Webs of fate has the same 5 turns and seems mainly to be used to add 48 in all saves and powers.
I thought if it will be useful at all it should be nearly permanent, so i added Meta with its quicken spells buff to lower cooldowns and spellbinding for quite the same reason. Then i did Guardian for more cooldown reduction and some attack and defense.
Punishments was chosen mainly for Madness and Mental Tyranny combination for all the negative status effects brought to enemies. Radiance and Dream Forge together with Madness/Mental Tyranny was thought for crowd control in a larger area.
Absorption was done for wielding another weapon and Solipsism should synergy with the saves from Fate Weaving and dwarf.
Statis was thought for controlling paradox but i find myself to remove and add 4 points to time shield each level-up and use spellbinding on time shield and not Fateweaving yet.

The character played terrible till Mental Tyranny. Swapping tools for clairvoyance and teleportation, digging nearly every level, hating enemies with striking stance which made nearly all my damage vanish... I played way more slowly than with more powerful characters. Sometimes even teleporting to my castle to optimize the equipment for a certain enemy, killing it, sorting all again, ...
And i was really puzzled when i reached 37 on insane with it without a death.

At Level 37:
- Race / Dwarf 115
- Technique / Combat training 523
- Spell / Meta 315
- Celestial / Guardian 1113
- Celestial / Radiance 411
- Cursed / Punishments 1115
- Chronomancy / Stasis 15
- Chronomancy / Spellbinding 0020
- Chronomancy / Fate Weaving 3333
- Psionic / Absorption 111
- Psionic / Dream Forge 1114
- Psionic / Solipsism 4113
Talents added in this order: Guardian, Dream Forge, Spell Binding.
The talents look very split, but fateweaving should add up to 48 power to combat, mind attacks and spells.
For the stats, i brought magic, then willpower to 60, now working on cunning.
My pickaxe has not much more than -10% cooldown and i hate it that my orange ones don't have cooldown reduction.

Wonder how the journey will continue...

One thing that gets used a lot in the base class is Flux/Attenuate. It's probably the highest damage/lowest cooldown damage over time spell so it can be extended by Seal Fate for ridiculous amounts. Prob worth trying that if you play the build again.

T I M E L E S S

Wtf are you even trying to do with this character? Seal and Webs of Fate are the best parts of that tree and yet you have nothing worth extending and a bunch of useless trees like Radiance. Also you're not a shalore yet you're complaining about the low duration on the actives which is really funny since the solution is right there

Saves are completely useless on any difficulty i'm afraid.

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<Shibari> You're full of shit
<darkgod #tome> ster is a troll
<Sheila> and ster, i do agree with you on most things game-related, but do try to not be such an ass!
<mex> your posts lead to people like me being abused and murdered

I fail to see how those points in radiance help you deal with crowds, unless maybe they are crowds of invisible enemies or they have like 20 health each.

i fail to see how any of this characters points are helping it, it's like exactly what you shouldn't do with an adventurer (turn it into an unfocused mess)

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<Shibari> You're full of shit
<darkgod #tome> ster is a troll
<Sheila> and ster, i do agree with you on most things game-related, but do try to not be such an ass!
<mex> your posts lead to people like me being abused and murdered

I like it. Though I think Radiance is an odd choice. An alternative might be Gloom or something if you have the mindpower to make it stick. That'd give you a bunch more debuffs to stack up with seal fate.

Even the low damage of a third of Radiance is often enough to stun/slow/confuse enemies 7 squares away if its is converted to mind and Madness/Mental-Tyranny kicks in.
If all three madness effects are on, the mind resistance is reduced by more than 100%, some are even spell-shocked in addition. Dream Forge reduces mind save in a radius 3, Webs of fate gives 48 mind power,...
Often i can 'rest' in a fight to reduce paradox while the negative effects are still being placed.
The worst weakness of the build are enemies with striking stance. I have to use the more damage doing melee attacks to fight them.

The first post was not meant as a guide, it was more that i was puzzled that i got higher than with my other characters in insane so far.

My second prodigy was Irrestible Sun, after noticing that sludgenest was created. I used judgement,IS and stairway running while the slimes were weak. Luckily i had some room around me when the slimes became harder. So i could use Irresistable Sun to lure only 1-3 enemies at once to me.
I used a mindstar with life leech in the main hand to keep my hitpoints and psi full most of the time. Many stings with a needle have a better chance to heal than one big hit: telekinetic weapon, agony, radiance, dream forge, ...
Radiance wasn't a total waste. With range7 it was a big help to keep madness effects on enemies outside of melee range.
I left the sludgenest when my saves were well above 120 effective.
The rest of the game proved to be way easier than the sludgenest.

I played very very carefully with a playtime of 2days, 8 hours... clairvoyance, stone walking, movement potion, scanning each bigger enemy for its talents, ...
Do i think that i would have made it without having sludgenest in the game? Don't know.

http://te4.org/characters/3263/tome/32dce5d6-bb61-4d1c-830f-bb130d292c38

Forgive my ignorance, but how does sludgenest impact saves?

Probably just farming for randarts with tons of saves

_________________
<Shibari> You're full of shit
<darkgod #tome> ster is a troll
<Sheila> and ster, i do agree with you on most things game-related, but do try to not be such an ass!
<mex> your posts lead to people like me being abused and murdered

Yes, i mainly looked for equipment with high mental saves because they have synergies with the solipsism tree.
I put less weight on boosting my damage. My damage doing was like: using Irresistable Sun and Judgement to remove the smaller spawns. Once only a boss was left i tried to have a permanent running Seal to keep all 3 madness effects on it to reduce its mental resistance by more than 100%. In longer melee fights the dream forge effects worked too.

Currently i plan to play as a Thaloren to have the sludgenest. I don't think that i need the cooldown reduction from Meta and without Quicken the mana refill from Arcane tree is obsolete too. With a higher paradox the durations of Seal and Web raise, which i didn't know. Hopefully it is enough to keep them permament up in longer battles.

And my list of effects which seem to ignore saves has less holes now

I did a fun character with gestures and unarmed combat and madness. I fought the Boss from opening the far portals with a single agony and seal fate !?
I was keeping out of its range and lucky that madness wasn't triggering too much effects on it. 21 ticks of agony constant kept up. The damage was getting higher and higher. I had quicken, and boots to lower seal of fate cooldown, and this chronomancy thing which boosts the duration.

I tested at a dummy and the total damage from a single 1 point agony was between 385 and 4270, dependant how long agony could be kept running.
I wonder if a high defense character is possible who just walks around a boss and let agony do its job?

did you mean: paradox mage

_________________
<Shibari> You're full of shit
<darkgod #tome> ster is a troll
<Sheila> and ster, i do agree with you on most things game-related, but do try to not be such an ass!
<mex> your posts lead to people like me being abused and murdered

I thought this was the adventurers subgroup.