ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've got a level 25 one, and it's pretty fun so far. Blasting things with both light and darkness (and the not-so-occasional fire spell, Firebeam) is lots of fun. No super major issues so far, but I'd just like to put forth a few things I think that could improve.

1. Dark spells are FAR more powerful.

-I don't know if this is intended, but so far this definitely seems to be the case. Moonlight Ray is just crazy awesome, as is Shadow Blast and Starfall. Searing Light is very good against single targets, if you can keep them still (i.e. Starfall). Firebeam is pretty good, but I'm guessing at endgame with maxed out Hymn of Shadows, it *really* gets eclipsed by Moonlight Ray. Sun Flare is nothing to write home about (I think stun is much better than blind in most circumstances) and neither is the last light AoE (not bad, but nothing compared to Starfall or Shadow Blast). Perhaps a light beam could be implemented in place of the last AoE spell? Or is that too many beams? Beams are certainly powerful as they beam instead of bolt, and beaming graphics are beamingly delicious. More beams to beam is very beamy, and a light beam would beamishly compliment Fire Beam and Moonlight [Beam]. (sorry)

-This discrepancy in offensive power between light and dark is certainly offset by the somewhat nice defensive light spells, such as Barrier and Providence.

2. Too many generic skills, not enough class skills.

-At level 25, I pretty much have my entire battery of attack spells maxed out (except for shadow simulacrum at 2/5, which enemies seem to resist 100% of the time). Generic skill wise, I think by level 50 I'll be fine, but in the meantime I'll have a bajillion class points that I just can't find a use for. I haven't invested in the Glyph tree, as the cooldowns vs. effects just don't seem worth an extra rune/infusion slot. Maybe the defensive light spells could be turned into class spells...?

3. Starting equipment could maybe have more clerical overtones.

-I guess what I really mean is starting them with 1-hander/shield instead of a staff, as the tailor-made class item is the Lunar Shield, and Moon seems to be a popular mainhand item. This topic is a bit more difficult as it would entail spending points in strength and possibly even dex/cunning for the daggers, but I can see myself in later levels having spare points to spend in those areas.

That's it for now, thanks for reading.

I'll lead off with a disclaimer that edge2054 has been hard at work improving both the Anorithil and Sun Paladins, and the changes are more or less complete and in the SVN. If you like Anorithil now keep an eye out for the next release.

kingvictory2003 wrote: 1. Dark spells are FAR more powerful.

I think there was a thematic decision to have dark more offensively oriented, so I don't think light spells will be growing in effectiveness. Don't sell Sun Flare short, though. I also prefer Star Fall but others have claimed Sun Flare is a better crowd controller. Blindness is a very interesting effect since NPCs think they know where you are and will continue moving and using talents, and in a crowd can cause quite a bit of damage to other NPCs for you. I am not positive what happens if two NPCs bump into each other, but I have seen blinded mages throw spells willy nilly and really help cut a crowd down to size.

2. Too many generic skills, not enough class skills.

There are two new class categories coming, Circle and Eclipse. They are both higher level categories, and are quite fun to play.

3. Starting equipment could maybe have more clerical overtones.

I don't know, the staff and robe smack of clerical mage to me.

In 16 there will be several new trees that are very unique. Also, the negative energy talents I assume are more powerful as you have to jump through hoops to use them. Along with that, I'd prefer if they started with a forced light or darkness staff, that way it's more thematic and makes more sense.

Also, I'm coming up for an edited [aka fixed and completed version] of moon and star soon, so their use will be changed quite a bit rather soon. Hopefully I'll complete them fast enough to be included in 16.

Here's my disclaimer. It's Darkgod's game and while these changes are on the SVN I'm not sure if he's had a chance to playtest them. So everything may get modified or removed before beta 16.

That aside these are some of the changes on the SVN.

Yufra helped me fix Shadow Simulacrum so it won't get resisted every time you cast it now (it was bugged and really was getting resisted 100% of the time.) Also tweaked it a bit so there's some scaling off cunning, creature scaling off cunning and talent level, and you can't use it on everything off the bat (only medium creatures at first, big at tl 3 or so, and huge at tl 5).

Glyphs now get a range equal to their talent level and the tree got rebalanced a bit (the slow is last and the daze is first now). Also glyph of explosion now does a small aoe damage and can be triggered more then once (but I nerfed the damage on it to keep it balanced).

Twilight now scales off Cunning so if you're not investing in Cunning you'll see less negative energy when you use Twilight but if you are investing in Cunning you'll see more negative energy out of fewer talent points eventually.

Mind Blast duration now scales off cunning.

Jumpgate now gives you a second jumpgate at tl 4 and loses 4 cooldown every time you put a talent point in it. Also fixed the typo that was preventing the sustained cost from working

Then, as Yufra said, added two new trees. One of these is an advanced tree (circles) and the other one is available at birth (eclipse). Grey helped me brainstorm a lot of this stuff and greycat and yufra helped me by playtesting it. So hopefully it'll add something to the class.

The Circles tree are melee range map effects (think corrosive vapor but you can only cast it at your feet) that do one thing to the caster and something else to to everyone else in the radius. For instance circle of shifting shadows adds defense to caster while he or she remains in the circle and deals darkness damage to everyone else.

Eclipse is an interesting talent tree that's a lot less thematic then Circles. It consists of a talent that improves spell crit, a talent that lowers spell cooldowns and increases spell penetration (for a period of time), a sustain that fires off light or darkness bolts everytime you crit, and a neat invisibility spell that turns negative energy into positive energy and ends in an explosion when your positive energy is greater then your negative energy. The whole tree pretty much scales off cunning and aside from the spell crit passive all the talents deal with both positive and negative energy.

As to Light vs. Shadow Fury, I didn't mess with it. Light spells are a means of generating positive energy, they not only cost you nothing they actually give you a resource. So yes, they should be weaker then shadow spells.

As to equipment spell crit is a lot more valuable to an Anorithil on the SVN so I can't see giving up a staff for a bit of darkness damage (though some light/dark staves would be nice to see in game, especially now that we have Doomed using spellpower and darkness spells).

*edit* Stun is great for the first half of the game, in the later half of the game you find a lot of bosses and even normal creatures are immune to it but not Blind. 5/5 in the blind talent is a huge radius, 8 or 9 turn blind. It's probably the best Sun talent in that tree.

The choice between staff and weapon/shield is a very interesting one at the moment, possibly less interesting in SVN given how much more focused you'll be on spell criticals. In the early game, in either version, you'll definitely want the staff, as you won't have any combat stats pumped. In the late game, currently, it can be worthwhile to switch to weapon/shield if you find Lunar Shield, or if you just want more armor/defense/resists, or if you start pumping Str/Dex, or if you find a good artifact weapon with +dark% or +light% (since there is currently no +dark% or +light% staff in the game).

Essentially, it's possible to play it as a "Mage" or as a "Cleric". You're much hardier than an Archmage, so you can actually stand in place and absorb some monster hits -- and going "Cleric" would enhance that aspect. On the other hand, you can also obliterate things at range, and going "Mage" would focus on that strategy.