ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm currently streaming the madness progress of a shadowblade, and I'm concerned with the potential abuse of ambuscade.

Here's a video of how to do a vault without ever opening it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YVDMSZ ... e=youtu.be

Shadowstep can be used to enter the treasure room of the ruined dungeon without completing the puzzle as well, this was better when it was farmable.

Here's a video of the first level of dreadfell, which is usually the most dangerous level since it's more difficult to escape and rest. This would have been a very difficult level for just about any character, but ambuscade trivializes the majority of it.

http://youtu.be/YwA1UxaudCw

Comments:
The video is long (41 mins), so I don't expect the full thing to be watched.
It starts with teleporting to the bottom right of the map, which I know is the safest place thanks to track. Ambuscade takes down the 2 enemies allowing me to dig and safely clear everything else.
At 15:30 I start to clear everything with ambuscade, shadowstep, and probability travel. Everything is pretty much done by 30 mins.
I'm terrible with video editing, so unless someone volunteers to make clips of the abusive things I'll just point them out if asked.
Hopefully there's evidence enough here to convince some people that ambuscade is a problem. Shadowblades are good as it is imo.

Solipsist projection would be just as bad, but you die if the projection dies. When I played a solipsist on insane I made extensive use of it, but it wasn't the solution to every obstacle in tome like ambuscade is.

While I realize this isn't an issue for 99% of players, I enjoy the difficulty and danger of tome.
Madness will fall soon if this isn't fixed. Insane probably took years, and I'm hoping madness will last at least as long!

There are some other possible abusive features that I haven't fully investigated yet, but am working on:
Wraithform had a nice fix in the patch, but the super quick diggers now in the game let you have a 1 square safe zone to retreat to. Now it just requires a good digger instead of a belt of unlife to do the same thing the fix was supposed to prevent.

Cursed used to be one of the best classes, but the change to movement speed (making it additive instead of multiplicative) fixed the potential abuse. 1.3k movespeed is far less abusable than 30k. I didn't see this in the patch notes, but this change puts cursed with the other good madness viable classes.

Edit: I need to finish my projects and homework for the rest of the quarter, but will try to beat madness soon. Watch my stream! It has a thread in the spoiler forum, let me know how much you want see me die or to give me ideas on things to improve in the stream quality or my play (always open to new ideas, my play has been pretty stagnant for a while).

Stition wrote:Now it just requires a good digger instead of a belt of unlife to do the same thing the fix was supposed to prevent.

Maaaaaaaaybe make it so you can't dig if you're standing inside a wall? This would have to extend to the dig spell, though, where it can be slightly less easily explained away as making perfect sense.

Whatever you do with respect to digging, please make sure the Sandworm Lair doesn't become even less forgiving than it is currently.

I hope nothing changes with digging. Being able to dig areas that are more strategically advantageous for the player is a good thing imo. The hardest areas aren't diggable anyways and changing digging wouldn't do anything to really affect ambuscade abuse. It would just be more tedious with movement infusions and more probability travel.

I love the game right now, but am just concerned with an abuseable game mechanic and want madness to remain unbeaten for a while at least.

On beta I completed everything except the warrior bastion with a shadowblade on madness. I wanted to wait for release to figure out how to do it since my old method doesn't work with hunted. My only real gripe is that it trivializes 95% of the game regardless of difficulty. I'll keep playing the shadowblade and try to get some more convincing evidence during later content, but it will be a couple weeks or so before I can sit down and really focus on beating madness.

I know my playstyle is boring to watch, but being careful was beaten into me with countless deaths and hope no changes are made to reduce strategic decisions available to the player.

Well I could make digging never so quick, wouldnt change the "prepare in advance" tactical case.
But yeah something must be done with ambuscade.

Oh and thanks for your dedication at finding exploits

What if the ambuscade shadow worked like alchemist golem: when out of sight for more than X turns you loose it

Oh and I fixed shadowstep to make it respect LOS, no more entering vaults without opening

The digger change would be great, tooth of the mouth used to be awesome since trying to dig for 38 turns would rarely work before hunted! occured, but 12 turns still contained an element of danger.
The quick diggers also nerfed some of the awesomeness of the dig spell and nithan's force.

The shadowstep LOS thing will go a long way to fixing the problem with ambuscade abuse. The original teleport change was huge. I'm going to retire the shadowblade until these fixes go in, so I'll be streaming an arcane blade once he reaches dreadfell.

On beta, when I was in reknor and other large areas I would use a movement infusion to get to a wall, then ambuscade and probabilty travel the shadow super far then movement infusion away after the ambuscade expired. Trying to think of ways to balance ambuscade destroys my mind.

I think it will most likely still be an issue if probability travel is still allowed on it, but it's difficult to tell without testing. I was really happy with solipsists' projection, it didn't feel gamebreaking but was still a great spell.
I'm not the best person to propose solutions to exploits, but will find them trying different methods to overcome the challenges in game.
I've never gotten to high peak on madness, which I imagine is a terrible experience, so all my concerns may be moot.

I'm also curious if the psiblades sustain was fixed? If psiblades was active when ambuscade or projection was used, stats gained would be permanently gained on the main character, so infinite global speed boost and stats/resistances would occur.

Hum can you make me a separate bug report for psiblades please?

fixed

DarkGod, could we not have Shadowstep, the defining skill of the Shadowblade be nerfed for 99% of us because of some guy that exploits Ambuscade and insists on playing Madness? That'd be really awesome. The strategy isn't even that useful unless you can abuse bosses just as hard, or bosses that have crazy sustain, or don't wish to waste 40 minutes per floor and you still need to get to level 20 to start making use of Ambuscade.

Really, balancing around the 0.1% kinda ruins it for the rest of us.

I understand your concern, but the change shouldn't even be noticeable for most people. It's like the infinite range mindlash conduit damage or tentacles. If you didn't already abuse it, you won't even notice it was fixed.

You being able to teleport into vaults isn't technically a nerf: it's a bug fix. You're not supposed to be able to do that, ever.

Yes I dont see how it ruins it for normal players; *nothing* should ever let you enter a vault without opening it; that's the point of a vault

PureQuestion wrote:You being able to teleport into vaults isn't technically a nerf: it's a bug fix. You're not supposed to be able to do that, ever.

Not going into a vault is a bug fix. Not being able to shadowstep to other side of a normal wall is nerf.

Also, the change has a bug. Shadowstep targeting is accepting invalid targeting coordinates, causing the player to blink to an incorrect spot and wasting the talent use. Fix: