Please help a newbie

[torakfade]

Hello guys,

I started playing this wonderful game recently; I always had a love-hate relationship with roguelikes, I love them because of loot, many classes, varied combinations of game-mechanics ... I usually hate them because of ASCII and overcomplicating things.

ToME 4 strikes a very nice balance with the tileset and the Adventure mode, and is overall very fair and "simple", as far as roguelikes go... but I'm still having trouble; not in the very early game, I manage to reach level 10 most of the time, but after that I tend to get a lot of deaths, some stupid, some are my fault, some I really don't know how or why. (Yeah 25th level unique giant spawn I'm looking at you)

Maybe I should blame my tendency to keep old, outdated equipment just because I don't understand why something else would be better; maybe it's just that I don't know how to use my talents well or frequent 2nd tier zones like Daikara and Sandworm lair at level 11-12... my best characters were Human Bulwarks, both Cornac and Higher ; I tried Archmage and Archer but I died pretty much in the first dungeons.

I was looking for a wiki or guide of sorts to start out, but outside a "walkthrough" for a Cornac Bulwark, I didn't find much ... do you have some tips for a newbie ? Like what class / race combo to try with basic easy strategies, what should I look for in equipment around level 10 to 15 to avoid dying, what level should I be before getting to certain zones, etc. etc. ??

Thanks in advance for helping me enjoy this great game even more

[Grey]

Hello and welcome!

There's not really a good guide like that around. Things change so frequently that it's not been worth doing. We're a chatty bunch though, so post some links to your character profiles and we can do our best to disseminate your deaths.

In general make sure you have escape options. Powerful monsters can show up and beat you senseless, and a key skill is knowing when to run instead of fight.

[lukep]

That Cornac Bulwark guide has some good information in it, and it's worth looking at if you haven't already.

Entering Daikara at level 11-12 is very tough, ideally you should be ~20 before going there, so that could be one issue.

For a new player, I'd recommend a Higher Bulwark, you get a good regeneration ability off the start, and Bulwarks can be played moderately well without too much skill.

It looks like you are running into strong enemies, so I would strongly suggest changing the order you do the dungeons in, I usually go:
Trollmire,
Norgos Lair (east of Trollmire, through a passage into the forest)
Heart of the Gloom (East of Norgos)
Rhaloren Camp (far South of Derth)
Scintillating Caves
Kor'Pul
Old Forest

The first six of those dungeons stop scaling at character level 5, so you will outlevel the enemies by the end, making it much easier. Going through them will give you good equipment, and really help to flesh out your character.

For a build, in general I like to get 1 point into each talent as it becomes available, and get 5/5 in a few of them that scale well. For Bulwarks, those skills are Shield Wall and Shield Pummel, the first to help against melee damage, and the second to disable stronger enemies for long periods of time.

Since you have experience with roguelikes, I assume that you know basic strategies like chokepoints to fight enemies 1v1, and other ones. One difference that ToME has from other Roguelikes is that running away can be a much more effective strategy, as (most) enemies do not heal, and your inscriptions never run out, so you can recover much faster than your enemies.

[torakfade]

It looks like you are running into strong enemies, so I would strongly suggest changing the order you do the dungeons in, I usually go:
Trollmire,
Norgos Lair (east of Trollmire, through a passage into the forest)
Heart of the Gloom (East of Norgos)
Rhaloren Camp (far South of Derth)
Scintillating Caves
Kor'Pul
Old Forest

The first six of those dungeons stop scaling at character level 5, so you will outlevel the enemies by the end, making it much easier. Going through them will give you good equipment, and really help to flesh out your character.

I didn't even find most of those dungeons! I assumed, by reading the in-game quest log, that after Trollmire -> Kor'pul -> Maze I should go to Old Forest, Daikara or Sandworm Lair ... that may be why I'm getting destroyed anyways I think I get the basic "strategy", I always have an escape infusion (sun or teleport), but when you're in an area filled with monsters beyond your ability they're not terribly effective: even if I was saved many times, death is still frequent, especially when Confused or other status effects (what's the best way to remove those mental effects? Wild only works for physical I think)

I have done three fighter characters, also read the Cornac Bulwark guide, my last game was a Higher Bulwark and I think I've got the right strategy down but it's starting to feel boring, mostly Rush -> Assault -> Shield Pummel ... I would like to try something else. What's the next "easy" class to try out? Alchemist or Archmage is user-friendly enough?

Also, what powers should I be looking for in armor and weapons?


Edit: here's the link to my characters: http://te4.org/user/24870/characters
my first one ever, which lived to 14th level, wasn't saved since I hadn't yet created the account.
the 1st level ones are "tries" just to see what skills the class has, I only played the Archmage but it died as soon as it encountered monsters because I tried the "bash monster up the head with a stick" approach that worked for my Berserker and Bulwarks

VVVV thanks, got it I'll try Alchemist and report how I do later, please keep the hints coming for me in the meanwhile, thanks !!!

[Frumple]

Try here. Seems to be you, yeah.

And alch's pretty forgiving, yeah. Just max out your bomb tree (5/5/5/0, shockwave's mostly useless), get a point in a non-fire infusion (so you can deal with fire immune enemies) and invest in the golem a little and you'll do pretty well.

Edit: Not seeing anything you're doing terribly "wrong" with th'wark you got to level 15, though. Most I would have done differently was pick up the tree with step-up instead of warcries, and work on getting step-up maxed ASAP. Does incredible things for your mobility, which lets you hit/run in a lot of nasty situations.

As for the wild infusion thing, they come in three flavors, curing physical effects (stuff that checks your physical save), mental effects, and magical effects (checking their respective saves); sometimes they'll have two categories instead of one. Confusion's a mental effect (usually), so if you're having problems with that picking up a mental wild (or if you're lucking and find it, using the wintertide phial, which can activate to cure mental debuffs) might help. You can also pick up equipment with confusion immunity or pump up your mental saves a bit, to resist the effect better.

Edit2: Nothing terribly wrong except wearing the skin of many, now that I look at it a bit closer. Armor training, which you invested in pretty decently, gives no benefits if you're not wearing at least heavy (mail) armor. So leather and cloth (robes, etc.) get no benefit from the talent. You likely would have been taking considerably less damage from, say, that armored skeleton if you'd been wearing that spiked plate instead (though some nicer armor than that would have been good, too. Shopping trip wouldn't hurt, yeah.).

[skein]

Alchemists are the easiest class to play but lack STRONGLY in manueverability so prioritize getting a teleport rune and a movement infusion as well as learning to use stone door. Cornacs are the best race to play for beginners, To play any other race have a very good reason.

Do all 6 starter dungeons before doing the tier 2 dungeons.

Melee characters are much harder then other characters to play, your response in many situations is not to just stand and deliver and that is VERY hard for new players to understand.

[torakfade]

Edit2: Nothing terribly wrong except wearing the skin of many, now that I look at it a bit closer. Armor training, which you invested in pretty decently, gives no benefits if you're not wearing at least heavy (mail) armor. So leather and cloth (robes, etc.) get no benefit from the talent. You likely would have been taking considerably less damage from, say, that armored skeleton if you'd been wearing that spiked plate instead (though some nicer armor than that would have been good, too. Shopping trip wouldn't hurt, yeah.).

Oh. Well guess it serves me right for not reading what the talent description says... I thought it worked with all kinds of armour and that +6 armor, +12 defense , +4 con, +40 max life looked too good to give up, that was better than most plate armors I had found (most had only +6/+7 armor, +2/+3 defense).

Today I shall start my career as an Alchemist and not care about heavy armor, but what are movement infusions? I never saw any infusions/runes other than Poison, Sun, Teleport, Phase Door, Manasurge, Wild, Regen and Heal...

[supermini]

Movement infusions are a bit more rare on lower levels; they give you a large speed boost and are instant to use. You typically get 5-10 squares of free movement.

[torakfade]

Alright, this time my Alch died at lvl8 in the Heart of the Gloom against the boss I had a good time, bombs are fun but they don't look very damaging. The golem was very helpful, all in all a fun playthrough.

I don't know if I should try again or change to a Summoner, I like pets!

[Frumple]

Bombs hit for a good 2-400 damage by level 18-20 to give a base line, (around there, possibly earlier) to a massive, massive area of effect with a very low cooldown. The big thing that was probably making them seem anemic is that they scale (strongly) with gem tier (iron items generate the first tier, steel the second, etc.)-- you generally want to start using the next level of gems as soon as you have comfortable access to them. Maxed out and rolling, they're honestly one of the best damage talents in the entire game, and massively out damage the heat tree or the golem.

You can pick up the staff combat stuff to help out until bombs get rolling, though. 2/-/0/0, where - is however much you can spare, is enough for the early-mid game, and maxing can come later (though the last two talents are mostly junk ). You can fairly comfortably channel most chaff enemies to death for most of the early game, and the damage from it while bombs are on cooldown adds up pretty fast. Good staff and 5/5/0/0 in that tree and you can comfortably hit pretty darn hard (150-200+ in your teens, easy).

Summoner's pretty decent, though. M'not terribly fond of playing them, myself, but they're a good beginner class all around, and very easy to cheese your way to victory with

[greycat]

Definitely try all the classes at least once. For two reasons: first, you may really enjoy them! Second, you'll learn what all those other classes' talents do, so that when you face a monster with those talents, you'll have a clue what you're up against.

Different players have different opinions about which classes are easiest. I do best with Bulwarks and Wyrmics. Others swear by Alchemist or Berserker or Archmage. It seems to depend on playing style.

[torakfade]

The summoner didn't strike my fancy, so I created a new Alchemist, and oh boy! This time I got to level 15 and bombs are literally clearing out whole areas! I did discover that I could level up my golem only around level 12, and now everything that made me afraid before is getting smashed into the ground in 6-9 turns max, firebombing at your feet and destroying everything is awesome

I also got a fairly powerful staff, I believe, and good general equipment, but I still can't find decent Infusions / Runes for the life of me.

Could anyone look at my equip (Alchy the Alchemist ... I know, I know ... ) and tell me if I should be getting something different, and where should I be heading next? I don't want to die now, I've only got Daikara and Sandworm lair of the Tier 2 zones and one tier 1 zone that I didn't manage to find (I think Rhaloren's Camp) left and I already cleared the Hidden Compound, I fear I will encounter bad things very soon

Thanks again!

[greycat]

Level 15 is shopping time. Hit all the stores in all the towns except Last Hope, because at this point you've hit the magic point where they won't generate any better loot if you wait any longer. (Yeah, the stores scale to your level, with a cap, which is level 15 for the stores in Maj'Eyal except for Last Hope, which is 35. Yeah, that sucks. The good news is, they don't scale to your level until the first time you enter them and force them to create inventory -- and this is on a store by store basis, not a whole town, so even if you staggered into the dagger store at level 5 and generated a bunch of iron crap, the leather armory next door will still be empty until you enter it. So, if you postponed shopping this long, now you can go on a whirlwind tour and gather all the non-useless stuff. Postpone shopping in Last Hope until right before you intend to dive to the bottom of Dreadfell to take on The Master, no matter what level you are at that point, because the stores will all reset once you beat The Master.)

If you didn't find the Rhaloren Camp, then perhaps you haven't found Elvala and the Scintillating Caves in the southwest part of the map. Definitely check those out if you haven't yet. There's a rune store in Elvala, and also an alchemist with an ingredient quest.

There's an infusion store in Derth, and another in Shatur. There are an infusion store and a rune store in Angolwen, which hopefully you've unlocked by now (depending on your luck in finding artifacts). (There's an infusion store in Zigur, but an alchemist can't go there.)

Once you're done shopping, the Sandworm Lair is a great place to go next. You'll need some patience, waiting for the invulnerable digger worms to show up and open tunnels for you. Some people hate that zone because of that.

There are some other randomly placed "tier 2 ish" zones that you may have missed, like the Ruined Dungeon. There's also the Ruined Halfling Complex, which is closer to Daikara's level of difficulty (nearly tier 3 IMHO).

Check out zones on the wiki.

[darkgod]

Fixed the stores silliness

[torakfade]

I opened just a few shops around lvl 10 , but even now at lvl 20 there's not really any better stuff in shops than what I find destroying enemies I have hundreds of gold and don't really know what to do with it for now.

I think I'm on the right way, just wrapped up all the tier 2 zones, next up: Tempest Peak, then Lake Nur and Sher'Tul!

Thanks again for all the tips, I'm improving a lot and it's also because of you guys