ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Heya, I only have two class left to unlock, marauder and corruptor, so I'm trying to do a shadow blade run to get both at the same time, but I keep getting owned by boss around daikara(level 16).

I went skeleton, which I'm pretty happy about but this has the slight problem that I don't have any way to break physical effect, I checked all the rune shop but I can't find any that help with that, so has soon has I get stunned I'm pretty defenseless since it put all my shields on CD (rune shield, temporal shield, bone shield, even re assemble) and I can't burst down the enemy, I did put most of my point into the racial that reduce effect duration, and I even have the sun paladin aura that give me physical and spell save, I just don't see what else I can do. I try to stun boss, but there all essentially immune to it, pretty sure stun chance doesn't increase with talent level in, right?

Are rune that break physical effect super rare or something? Is there any other way to break physical? Any general tips?

Stun chance does not depend on talent level, but to apply the stun effect a check of physical power versus physical save is done. So you must have a high physical power to apply a stun effect with weapons. Check the chances on the chararacter tooltips.

There some solutions to fight against stuns for a skeletton. One is fire beam runes. They are not rares, but they appear later in the game (maybe around level 25 or 30 IIRC). I am surpised that you did not max unfliching resolve. Marauders have Conditionning unlocked and it is very efficient. You can also try Providence from the light tree available from escorts, but is cannot also be put on cool down.
But maybe the best advice is to have some means to escape. A torque of psychoportation cannot be put on cooldown and is a life savior. Or a teleportation rune, another phase door rune....

I did a confusion with the classes. You are a shadowblade and do not have conditionning. But the tree can be gained form escorts (or just levels in Unflinching resolve).

Since you are scraping the bottom of the barrel for early game undead stun clearing, the Lucky Halfling Foot (might remember name wrong) now has a 25% chance per turn of clearing some effects, including stun if I remember correctly.

edit: sorry doesn't work on undeads

It has been a long time since I did not play a skeleton shadowblade.
(my last build is v1.1.3 Cornac shadowblade, with focus on stealth : 1000+ darkness damage with shadowstep is not uncommon)

I agree that the main vulnerability of shadowblade is stunning : but unless I'm mistaken, stunning do not put instant cast spells on cooldown (maybe I'm wrong...), which means : time shield and shielding runes. (not bone shield as it takes 1 turn to use). So save these two shields for very dangerous situations.

At lvl 16, you should also have enough magic to boost phase door at 5 and teleport at 1. The first is a good for escape, the second one is more a "panic" escape.

True in general, but the foot does not remove anything on undeads.

From the artifact code.


That should really be mentioned in the description

That line has nothing to do with undeads, it just makes sure the power doesn't fire if the wearer is killed.

I do use teleportation and phase door as mean of escape (although they did kill me once, stupid phase door teleported me in the same spot), but the problem is even when I have everything going into the battle, if I don't get a stun with my two initial attack I pretty much lost the fight already. The best technique I've found were kiting the boss back at the entrance, so I could go in, try to stun, if both ability failed I would retreat back to the previous area, rest and try again, usually after 4-5 attempt I'd land a stun and then I'd generally win the fight.

I'm kinda disappointed in shadow blade, they feel like the weaker part of both a mage and a rogue rather than a mix of both, maybe there really late bloomer. I put most of my class point into the cunning ability that raise critical chance, the one that raise attack speed and increase mana regen and the one that give all your crit a chance to stun (now that I think about it, is a chance to apply stun that will still have to check the physical save of enemy, so essentially a chance of a chance, meaning really low odds) I think I'm gonna drop those and put them elsewhere instead.

I have focused on cornac shadowblade (against skeleton shadowblade) mainly to get the stealth tree at the beginning of the game
Being stealth means
- almost 100% critical hit after lvl 10-15
- defense against many classes (casters can usually be reached before they land a spell on me, and sometimes they cast their spells randomly)
The most difficult part of my current shadowblade was the 10 first level, until I had enough items to get 20mag and learn the time shield. After that, all was cakewalk (so far : my SB is lvl 42, fighting hords of orcs. Died only once : YASD in Dreadfell as an Armored Skeleton Warrior crits on me for -550hp : I was not full hp to fight him))

As for the stunning habilities, the chance to stun the target is not level dependant, but accuracy dependant, so focus on Combat accuracy (in the Combat training category) instead of investing massively in Dirty Fighting and Dual Strike. (1 in both is enough)

The main problem of shadowblade is the tradeoff between all the categories and choosing magic or cunning.

(btw, if your phase door did not work, it was probably because you were in a vault, or in Zigur)