ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The Maggot, the optional horror starting dungeon, is one of the hardest in the game, largely thanks to the low sight range and the deadly boss. Here's what I've found makes it more survivable (setting aside whatever talents your specific class may give you).

- Get some inscriptions from the shops. The boss has plenty of HP, and between Bone Grab and the range on Dark Whispers, hit-and-run is unlikely to be an option, meaning this will be a battle of attrition. Make sure you have at least two, preferably three, of Healing, Regeneration and Shield, in any combination. A lantern of health would also be helpful, but the inscriptions are higher priority.

- Wands of conjuration and similar are dirt cheap, but will greatly increase your damage output at this stage.

- Expect to be blinded a lot. Unless you have a physical Wild ready, always retreat left until it wears off. Only one enemy can do meaningful ranged damage, and none of the others are fast enough to move and attack you on the same turn. If you have a Shield rune set to "use whenever enemies are visible", don't forget to turn it on manually.

- Speaking of which, plasmic disruptors (the round green blobs) are your priority target. Their slime spit can do massive damage relative to your starting hit points.

- Check the little rooms off to the top and bottom as you go. Auto-explore sometimes misses them, and you'll want to kill their inhabitants to make sure you get to level 3 before you reach the boss. (It can be killed at level 2, but you want every advantage.)

- Ignore the bloated oozes. They do trivial damage, they give no XP, and they disappear a few turns after their master dies.

- DO NOT OPEN THE DIGESTIVE SACK. I cannot overstate this. The sack will usually contain a unique+ monster which will obliterate you. The reward is not worth it. If you must open the sack anyway, do it after beating the boss and fully exploring the area, and make sure you have your Rod of Recall counted down to a very low number so if you find the Maggot's bitten off more than you can chew, you just have to survive for a few rounds and then you'll be out of there. Note: do not use Teleport: Kroshkkur for this, as it won't trigger if there are enemies in LoS.

Here’s my advice:
Bright Brass Lantern of Health.

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A little bit of a starters guide written by yours truly here.

My advice: do Trollmire first so you can step into the maggot at level 4-5. You get a 999 turn timer before Maggot destroys the sanctuary, just make sure you leave at least 41 turns to port back.

I've had good luck with a simple dive-right-in approach by putting 2 points into Carrion Feet and 1 into Shed Skin after cleaning out enough of the other monsters in the Maggot to level up. The Skin lets me close with the Spinal Cord without getting too chewed up and I save the Carrion Feet's leap to get away once I start slipping low in HP. It usually takes only a single recover-and-return to finish it off.

Oh, and yeah, that Digestive Sack is not worth the pain. Just move on past. Nothing worth seeing there.

Interesting. I have two questions about that. Firstly, aside from access to the vendors inside (who typically just have crappy white quality items), is there any reason to bother saving the sanctuary?

Secondly, how do you know how many turns have passsed?

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"You could skip it, i think it drops 0 xp and 1 copper [at most], you are better off selling oxygen to beggars to become rich."

I haven't won yet with a character starting in the city, so I'm not sure if there are any benefits. Definitely go into the north room and copy out the glyph pattern on the floor if you're not planning on saving the city, you can use that later.

(Also, if you're a stinky cheater like me, you can go to Last Hope and drown all the rares there and get better inscriptions before porting back.)

I've done it twice on Insane so far on with Shalore Writhing One without leaving town. I recommend buying life items (especially bright lantern of health if you can) and buy a Heal or Regeneration infusion (to replace Phase Door rune). Put 1 point in Mutated Hand, 1 point in Shed Skin, 2 points in Decayed Devourers, 1 in Carrion Feet. Cycle between your Shielding rune and Shed Skin, and use Heal/Regen to heal between fights (to prevent Insanity degen from resting) and during the boss fight. Summon the devourers on cooldown whenever fighting multiple enemies and during the boss fight. With any luck you won't even need to retreat, but you can use Carrion Feet to pull back and heal up if necessary. Overall it's not too difficult.

If you find any chests in this zone, skip them for now and come back later. If you open it right away, it's likely you'll die.