ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

PLAY THIS BEFORE MINDROT GETS NERFED IN 1.7
Note: this guide assumes no DLCs are used but does include some info that is only found in DLCs

Ok let's start with the premise. Why should this build be played over every single other cursed build?
- you dislike meta builds
- you want people to stop telling you the only thing cursed can do is bump
- you want to explore the class a bit more
- you want to sleep walk through the entire game
- you want to show doomed that cursed is the better mind based class

Now thats set and done and you realize why this is the best cursed build, we now have to identify the choices made in creating it.

Races:
Best - Yeek
Optimal - Thalore
decent - krog
bad - everything else

I dont have to explain why yeek is the best race. Thalore's racials are good and the first has synergy with fungus, while trees and 3rd racial provide more tankiness. Krog is krog, decent because this build wants antimagic anyways, but there's no reason to pick it over the first two races. Every other race is bad.

Now the big choices every build has to think about:
Robe/light armor for this build because Crimson Robe is BiS
Mindstars/psiblades for more mindpower, and eye of winter, summer, or sanctuary
Antimagic because all BiS items for this build are not magical and for fungus
Cursed aura to take curse of nightmares for early game and shrouds for late game

Prodigy choices:
swift hands and revisionist history
and for actual fun gameplay
superpower > PES
armor of shadows
windtouched speed
dont take adept

The reason for superpower over PES is that superpower provides more raw mindpower and has 100% uptime over PES. They can be taken together for even more dmg.
AoS adds some increased survivability and stealth bonus which is actually utilized heavily by this build so it is your main defensive prodigy
Windtouched speed is if you absolutely don't want the other prodigies. This build really doesn't use the -cd except for infusions and the global speed doesn't really increase dmg as much as superpower.

Items:
Weapons - eye of winter x2 (best), eye of winter + sanctuary/summer (decent), eye of summer + sanctuary (better than every other non op randart)
Armor - Crimson Robe
Hat - Malslek the Accursed's Hat
Neck - Shard of Insanity
Cloak - Guise of the Hated
Hands - Anything with good mindpower/crit mult/damage +%/other stats or just Spellhunt Remnants
Waist - Rope Belt of the Thaloren/Girdle of Preservation/anything good mentioned above
Feet - Boots of the Hunter/anything good mentioned above
Misc - The Guardians Totem/anything good mentioned above
Lite - Guidance/anything good mentioned above
Rings - Mnemonic/anything good mentioned above
Quiver - if you manage to equip an item here that has a use you obviously didn't follow this guide

Talents:
Cursed/Slaughter - 0/0/0/0, the reason for this is that we dont use weap attacks much and therefore won't do really anything with these talents. If you have extra points, I'd invest them to get the third talent as an escape tool
Cursed/Endless Hunt - 1/1/x/5, this build primarily uses surge over repel for meta cursed builds because more movement speed = more repositioning, more mindrot attacks, more mindrot procs. I like the idea of beckon but haven't really made it work at all yet but think of it as confusion that gets reduced by dmg.
Cursed/Strife - 0/0/0/0, we aren't going to use any of these. Dominate is great for getting respen, but otherwise this tree isn't worth investing in if we aren't using repel. Arguments can be made for prenatural senses but I'd only take it for the invis/stealth detection.
Cursed/Gloom - 5/5/5/5, this tree defines the build. Gloom and weakness provide cc and defense, a high lvl of mindrot is needed to get through flat res, and sanctuary is one of the best defenses cursed has, along with every talent giving mindpower.
Cursed/Predator - 1/5/x/5, normally I'd tell everyone to 5/5 predator but this build doesn't need acc or apr. Cursed miasma is great for creating a zone around your character that grants stealth and gives a chance for enemies to lose track of you completely, or even target their friends. Shrouded hunter is a flex spot, more points can be put in for more stealth, and the amount of stealth given is good, but thats about it from the talent.. Mark prey 5/5 is a core of all cursed builds.
Cursed/Rampage - 5/1/5/0 - (Unlock at lvl 10) rampage 5/5 is core, this build doesn't do phys dmg so brutality is ignored, and tenacity provides some mitigation.
Cursed/Fears - dont unlock this

Race - whatever your race does
Combat Training - 1 in HAT, 1 in LAT, 5 in thick skin
Cursed/Cursed Body - 1/x/0/0, the only good talent here is the 2nd one, the first provides a noticeable amount of healing per kill, but scales poorly with points so don't put any here
Cursed/Cursed Aura - 5/4/0-1/0-5, this is one of the more controversial trees on cursed. I advise doing 5/4/0/0 to get enough for curse of shrouds/nightmares 5 and saving generics for AM and fungus, but some players can't live without wasting 6 points into a talent that takes an entire turn to use and dies in 2 turns.
Wild-gift/Anti-magic - 1-3/1/x/1, resolve is left at 1 point if you hit 70% res, otherwise float 2 points there for the extra effect. Antimagic shield can be safely taken to 5/5 and left on permanently but less is fine.
Wild-gift/Fungus - x/x/x/x, everyone puts points in fungus differently. I personally do 5/4-5/1/x.

Gameplay tips coming soon

Saw this article. Looked interesting. Tried it. Its really cool, lots of fun.
Had to try it. The nerfing thing is real and its a bit of a drag.

One of the aspects of ToME's design that I admire is that it appears that no
matter what you do there will eventually in the course of the 60 hour grind
through all 5 Tiers, something that will cause you problems. In that sense, I
experience builds as much through what I don't have trouble with AND can do as
I do through the things that must be attended and compensated.

For example, a zerk can cruise through the game and almost never be hit w/ a
number of statuses that constantly hobble others. All the classes that I've
come to understand well have a similar situation.

(its pronounced EECK) the Yeek had a rough start. This stemmed as much
from my inexperience w/ Yeeks as anything else. I'd only run 2 or 3 before
Icke. Since you start w/ a battle axe, but want to end up w/ mindstars, I had
to find my first two. And in the process Murgol gave Icke his first death. But
then things turned around rapidly. In fact the fight with the Hive Mother was
such an enormous reversal, I was shocked. This build just melts bosses.

Death number two to Bill the Troll and Deaths number four and five to Golbug
were all big melee hits. Golbug - whom I've seldom found to be a threat -
introduced Icke to the magic of Assault plus Greater Weapon Focus. >1000 hp is
a quick trip to Eidolon. I was a bit stubborn and did not believe he could do
it twice. He could. I have to cool down and retool. Apparently all my other
characters either kept him at bay, could take these hits, or couldn't be hit
in the first place. Icke has to get in close and does not have the other
abilities so this is going to take some thought.

Icke's clvl-37 but I still has his prod pt. Did not plan stat progression or
hording eq for the prods you reccommend. But I do have >100 WP and previous
experience tells me that this is a good thing to have. Just haven't
supplemented it sufficiently.

Icke had close calls along the way. Bursty stuff. Demonologist and
Doombringers and Rogues all gave me scares. One Demonologist w/ those damn
Osmosis Shields could not be killed. 1000hp regen each turn, forever. Seriously.

Thanks for the writeup. It was about 10hrs of interesting exploration and it taught me some new tricks.

Great story! The first time I was playing this build and tweaking it, I made a lot more mistakes I would say than you did. Totally forgot to post the character that started this all
https://te4.org/characters/251655/tome/ ... 9ac4bdc0aa
There's a lot of things I did wrong in the build, like overinvesting in cursed aura, taking adept, and putting other points in the wrong place, but losing teaches a lot.

The beginning is the hardest part for this build, and I would recommend relying a lot more on activatable items like torques, or getting lucky and finding flamewrought/cloudcaller/eel skin armor to fight everything at range. Later on after hitting lvl 16 and having 5/5 sanctuary and mark prey, this build can basically walk through t1s and blow everything up with bumps or just running circles around them. The build doesn't really pick up at all until the first mindpower proc item is found, usually shard of insanity, eye of winter/summer or serpentine cloak, which will allow you to run circles around enemies and deal a ton of dmg without ever bumping them.

I would also recommend taking armor of shadows as a first prodigy to give more armor to protect from melee. 2nd prodigy is superpower to give more dmg, and the mindpower gets much stronger the more mindpower proc items are found.

Fighting in the late game is weird, usually you want to bump once to activate cursed miasma then run around in it without bumping to get mindrot on a ton of enemies which gets mind procs. The reason for not bumping is the high amount of movement speed from surge, cold iron acorn, etc allows mindrot + procs to do more dmg than bumps in the same amount of time. Running around in the miasma increases stealth, which is very powerful for defense, and enemies inside it can lose track of you and attack their friends or themselves for even more protection. The mindprocs, while doing a ton of dmg, also inflict some crazy effects like creeping darkness which basically makes you invincible to ranged enemies, sunder mind to destroy mental saves and land more effects.