ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Gosh. Dead again.
I guess there's *no* way you can get to xp level 50+ without encountering unavoidable death....

What do you think ?!

I'm probably a little slow in my crawling, I just finished off The Sorceror and the 2 Nazgul guarding Thrain, but I haven't scummed a savefile in a long time. Starting out I had to use backup saves because of some bugs in 2.10 and 2.11 but I haven't come close to dying in many levels. Probably due to the fact I'm at +34 speed, +200% HP (2700HP total) and I carry a level 34 wand of fireflash, level 30+ wand of noxious cloud, staff of teleport, wand of essence of speed (rarely used), a Mass Genocide junkart, a Genocide junkart, the Stone of Lore (fast ID), I have all resists, all sustains, ESP ALL, a weapon with: all brands, all slays except undead, Kill dragon, vorpal, and wounding.

Ah the life of an alchemist, skill points aren't worth much now.. I guess I could up my symbiosis, corpse preservation or maybe combat, my 3 main skills are maxed. The only thing that really annoys me is hallucinations and monsters that drain charges... I hate losing 400+ charges (essences) I've collected because I couldn't move away from a Lesser balrog that had been summoned next to me...

I have done it a couple of times, I think once with a Possessor and once with a Priest...
I used to backup savefiles but now I don't, just autosave every 5000 turns or so.
ToME is not an easy variant and still suffers from a few imbalances difficulty-wise, but it's great fun. And I say that as someone who's been Angbanding since the beginning of time (remember when major demons were &'s?).

I remember that, but only from ADOM. Oh, those Greater Molochs.. One of my lvl 50 died 2 turns after killing one, because then he was so weak that the summoned crystal golems could be able to finish him. Sometimes I have the same feeling in TOME, although here are more possibilities to flee. Tome is better, in general.

Adom was a lot of fun, but I agree that ToME is more, love all the magic systems!

I dont cheat, and my list of dead high level characters is a mile long. To survive without cheating, I carry multiple items of teleport/teleport level, resist confusion, resist paralyze, and try my damndest to resist everything else.

I have a bunch of those genocide/mass genocide items in my house right now (been hunting emperor wights for stat potions) but I am still afraid to use them (I also play with graphics, so they are quite inconvient)

I think ToME has certainly established dominance as far as variants are concerned, far surpassing ZAng, which has sort of fallen into decrepitude. But there will always be a soft spot in my heart for vanilla.

There are certainly some things I don't miss... Back in the bad old days you would hunt forever on special levels for a (theoretical) artifact, then just about bash your brains out when you discovered the feeling was from (yet another) Slime Pit...

I guess I play the game much much faster than most, but that's because I just short-circuit a lot of things that are useful in favor of things that are convenient, like ditching Scrolls of Teleportation early and not paying much attention to stat potions until they start coming my way regularly. But still, it's rare that I lose a char above level 40...

Lord Dimwit wrote: But still, it's rare that I lose a char above level 40...

How do you do it ?
Eventually, and this eventuality always shows up, some monster I never meet or some feature I wasn't aware or some monster breathes and *squicky*, I'm dead. I've been playing since Moria back 15 years ago -sic- But always get squashed in a situation where **nothing could have been done and I don't feel I can blame myself**.

For example, my last death is simple. My fast level 30 Rohanknight went in a sea square south of Minas Tirith. Got killed by a level 60 Greater Kraken. Was ambushed. Teleport did nothing good. 1 breath was enough to drain my 300+HP. Hey: I never tried sea squares before, so I could not know about what was hiding there

And my personal conclusion, is that there will always (never say always be something I don't know that will kill my character (poor smeagol).

However, I'm *reallly* happy to see, with your comments, that maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's *really* possible to finish quests without cheating ! That's at least what the poll results suggests.

There is hope !

Well, in this case I would simply say that you shouldn't be wandering around on water squares; nobody should. You tend to get ambushed and die. If you need to travel over deep water, use the "lower" dungeon-style map. It's slower, but much safer.
My survival tactics at higher levels largely amount to becoming succesively more cowardly with every level. Not sure if I can handle a group of monsters? Genocide them. Big summoner? Teleport it away. At later levels, I try to fight an exclusive group of "familiar" monsters that I know give good exp and treasure with little risk (that is, mostly Great Wyrms, druj, things like that), although I also fight uniques with vigor (anti-summoning tactics are *crucial* here).
So strange as it may sound, the more powerful I get the less aggressive my tactics. When in really dangerous situations, I use the 600 hp rule... source says that nothing can hit you for over 600 hp in one turn (excepting basic elemental attacks and poison), so if you keep your hp around this level, you're much more apt to survive (there are lots of caveats with this system. but you get the picture).
Having a Necromancy skill above 30 is also very very helpful.
Nowadays the only high level chars I lose are on special levels where I can't teleport or genocide or anything. Excepting these situations, there's about nothing you can't prepare for in the later levels of ToME.
But stay out of the Nether Realm. It's for your own good.

I'll go with choice #6....'any characters that survive past 30 or so I get sick of and stop playing'.

On the contrary, I think that life begins at 30. This is when you start getting more flexibility and encountering more danger to test that flexibility. And there's less possibility of a stupid brainless death that causes me to stop playing forever (like when your char runs across a Bowel Cramps trap, gets immediately paralyzed, and is promptly killed by a nearby Snaga).

Boredom in the late game I think is usually caused by lack of useful abilities/items, or an addiction to level quests and rewards that make any non-quest level seem dull and pointless.

that's what i like less about good old moria. long before reaching level 99 you've seen the whole variety of monsters. boring...

Yeah. The only advantage that my old vanilla characters had when crawling around at 4900 feet as opposed to 3500 was the greater number of vaults.

Multiple dungeons help to solve this problem, as well as special levels within these dungeons.

And there weren't real uniques in Moria. Who cares about Evil Iggy when you could be fighting Omarax the Eye Tyrant?