ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Since the Marauder unlock is rather hard to achieve I thought another guide/DitL/character report wouldn't hurt.

I've drooled over Marauders since I started playing, even though people tend to shun them. For me it just feels right to my playing style.

After a few unlucky starts (full death on Trollmire or Norgos) I finally got one going and while I died 4 times I felt I had something going there.
The first few levels were the hardest, having pumped up only STR and some CUN I didn't hit anything with my daggers. Luckily I found some nice two handers with decent damage procs to keep me going.

First I did Trollmire up to Prox, then Norgos, Derth Arena, Heart of Gloom, Scintillating Caves, Bill, Kor'Pul, Lost Merchant, first level of Alt Maze (from which I found a nice maul to replace Bill's Tree Trunk) and finally the alt Old Forest.

When I noticed I had another alt tier2 dungeon ahead I was ready to call it quits and was gonna go to Shardskin level and then flee but I got confused with the levels and right after a purple crystal shard fired at me I took a step back and had Shardskin behind me. With all the snake adds around me I had only one direction to flee to. Luckily the snakes came in between me so that Shardy couldn't fire at me that bad. The snakes itself didn't hurt me because of my 95%/45 armor rating. In the intersection I got Shard next to me and thought this is scary ride from now on. The bastard that I was I wasn't gonna fight fair with him so I did Dirty Fighting stun on him and when I saw it had hit him good I did Insidious Poison infusion on him on top of I think numbing poison. Juggled my poisons around (instantaneous so I was in no rush to do that) to use poisons I didn't have on him. I'm pretty sure I didn't have 3 poisons on him yet when I noticed the stun was wearing off. I thought it's now or never and hit the Venomous Strikes. BLAMM! Marauder class unlock popped up and Shardskin died that day. To top the whole thing off the damage was 777. That's what I call lucky. He even dropped Eden's Guile on me. Not long after I had looted him and was fighting the adds I got recalled out. Totally forgot I had activated my recall rod when I saw Shardy the first time.

The escorts I managed to save offered me DEX and STR so I always picked the +2 one.

Equipment wise I didn't have anything special going towards the unlock, I just equipped whatever I ran into.

Talent wise what I did was this:

Poisons I specced right away when they came available from lv10 to 14.
-Cunning / Poisons 1.30
-Vile Poisons 4/5
-Venomous Strike 1/5

As a Cornac I got a free cat point in the beginning so I chose Rush. While it may have saved me a few times I didn't quite feel like I actually needed it. Most of the time things I wanted to rush to were still too far from me.
-Technique / Combat techniques 1.30
-Rush 1/5

Was gonna do stealth to up my final hit but never actually used it so that was a talent point I should have put elsewhere. When I noticed that it was already too late to erase.
-Cunning / Stealth 1.30
Stealth 1/5

Didn't use these at all for the obvious reasons. I wasn't dual wielding. Could have put the Stealth point here for another stun so I could have at least used it throughout lv1 before I found something to replace my initial daggers.
-Cunning / Trapping 1.30
-Technique / Dual weapons 1.30
-Technique / Dual techniques 1.30

DF was my bread and butter skill. Popped it whenever it was available. A total life saver in many situations. Backstab was a passive bonus straight towards the unlock.
-Cunning / Dirty fighting 1.30
-Dirty Fighting 4/5
-Backstab 5/5

Passive bonus towards the unlock. Good.
-Cunning / Lethality 1.30
-Lethality 5/5

Since I didn't do DEX I needed accuracy to to hit things so I upgraded it as soon as I reached the required level. Low DEX also meant low Defense so the armor training was a no brainer for me. Weapons mastery also helped kill things and hit harder for the unlock so I chose it.
-Technique / Combat training 1.30
-Thick Skin 0/5
-Armour Training 5/5
-Combat Accuracy 4/5
-Weapons Mastery 5/5
-Dagger Mastery 0/5

All in all it was a rocky road but I gotta say this was the sweetest unlock so far, especially since for the last few days I've played fire mages for Wildfire unlock.
And the actual link to the char is here. Too bad I didn't realize I should have quitted right after killing Shardiy so that my combat log would show the actual magic happening.

With the deaths I have in my hands already I will keep this char here instead of playing any further.

EDIT: My OS wouldn't let me take a screenshot so I had to snap it with a phone camera but there you can see the magic actually happening.

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Stronk is a potent combatant with a terrifying appearance.

I was inspired by your marauder unlocking so had a few (only 6) attempts at nailing it.

I found that the boss i was using as a punching bag couldn't take the beating so I had to keep using healing touch(?) that i got from betraying a escort quest to keep them alive while I got the stun then the poisons on. I used a poison infusion to get the 3rd one on then wham for 1000+ damage.

I quit right after the event so the log remains:

Sweet! Congrats on Marauder. Let's start a new reign of Marauders wreaking havoc on adventurer parties around Maj'eyal.
Let's make them curse the Marauder class player characters. Let's make Marauders so feared the High Peak sorcerors will renew their sustains in absolute horror even when player char Marauders are still in Derth arena honing their skills and dining their helmets.

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Stronk is a potent combatant with a terrifying appearance.

This really works! It took me two rogues to do it. My Skellie was 16 when it happened, and I had to dabble in stealth for the extra crit damage, but I got it.

I would like to add that weapon selection is key. I had a hard time [u]not[u] killing bosses trying to get this. After accidentally killing Wrathroot and the Sandworm Queen, I felled a rare Slavemaster to get it. My weapon just output too much damage to apply all the poisons and then stun.

I got the unlock with a lucky hit on a nightshade trap

I just unlocked Marauder with a 2H-wielding Skeleton Rogue. The character sheet hasn't updated, but here it is: http://te4.org/characters/47331/tome/cc ... 7ca5485990

He made the unlocking attack at level 15 against a skeleton (archer?) in the halfling ruins. Curiously, I don't think that the skellie had more than 200 hp or so, yet the unlock still occurred, so... I may be crazy.

I wanted to unlock this for a while.

I remember trying the Venomous Strike trick when I discovered the game a few year ago. With no result.

I just get back to the game, and tried again. 2h weapon and a focus on critical damage. (I forgot about the venomous strike).
Still no result and all my rogue/SB died before lvl 12.


Yeah!

A total new build did the trick: Illuminate build.
With 30 Mag and Cun. A focus on light Damage, with Staff tree learned in the wizard town for when Illuminate is not enough.
As you can see lvl 20 and kicking thanks to an early reflection shield rune.
I really do like the versatility of staves : you can choose any damage type, you have an awesome range with Channel Staff and you can bypass Armor.

I wasnt even trying to get the unlock (didnt expect it to work with spell)

So someone who just want the unlock can get it earlier. Maxing Illuminate, shadowstrike. Stacking any light damage bonus (staves give +10% min)
Then going to lake Nur. That's the place where you can find -100 Light resistance mob.

Just got one at level 12 with a skelly two-hander rogue. Rather than poisons I maxed lethality, shadowstrike, weapons mastery, and skeleton to increase damage. Final blow was Deadly Strikes. Admittedly, had some lucky finds: A 50-70 + 10 nature greatmaul for sale in Last Hope as well as a +9% physical robe of power. Real trick, of course, was getting out of the starter dungeon. Have I mentioned how much I loathe trying to start skelly melee characters on nightmare?

I wanted to test the effectiveness of the Light SB to unlock Marauder.

I did it at level 11. With no special item (just +15% light damage from a staff)

The character is here

1 category point from cornac went to the Stealth tree at level 4
Then I raised shadowstrike to the max and Lethality to 3.
At level 10, I spent the category point in the Stealth Tree (1.50) to raise the ShadowStrike bonus. I suppose it work better by raising the Illuminate Tree, but Stealth seemed more useful in the long run.
Then Scintillating cave and voila.

I suppose it could even work before level 10

edit : here it is. To be sure I bough a +20% staff , it wasn't necessary
lvl 9

Thanks ooli, light SB worked very well. Unlocked at level 12 cornac with closer to 700 damage.

However, I'm pretty disappointed to see that thuggery is now a generic category . How do you spare the points?

Play a Cornac, put extra cat point on class category and go dual daggers instead of one hander and a dagger. Whatever you do don't go antimagic.

Seriously speaking, no idea. My Marauder chars tend to die fast, and my last Marauder was from the days thuggery was still a class category.

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Stronk is a potent combatant with a terrifying appearance.

Yeah, cornac was my first thought too. But I was so eager to try out a skelly.

I don't get the moving of Thuggery: It says right there in the class categories' description that they are supposed to be the defining talents of your character. AFAIK, no other class have thuggery (don't remember about escorts). So you have a class defining talent tree that isn't a class talent tree?

Please, correct me if I have misunderstood something.

It took me until level 12, as I'd underestimated the impact of shadow cunning on damage--the moment I invested a single point I got the achievement off of a shadow from a rare doomed. The whole process took less than an hour, though.