Worst enemy

[supermini]

Well, you are doing it too early. I'd suggest at least level 15 before doing the Zigur quest. There is less of a rush now since you can betray escorts without being full AM as long as you visited the sign in Zigur with one of your characters and don't have any runes or spells.

As for dreads, I'd suggest learning how to deal with them rather than trying to edit them out. You're going to be meeting lots of them in a certain dungeon.

First of all, dreads have invisibility which causes you to miss unless you have blind fighting. For archers there are several options: perfect strike talent (which gives blind-fighting, even if it doesn't specifically say so) or withering orbs (t1 artifact) or stacking see invisibility - thief escorts give you piercing sight and it's a somewhat common effect on rings.

Second, dreads have high defense(40-45 iirc). You need high accuracy to hit them. If something has as much defense as you have accuracy, you'll only hit it about 50% of the time. Perfect strikes would help with that for a few turns, but boosting dex to higher levels and combat accuracy will allow you to hit high defense targets consistently. Doing the Zigur quest on higher levels is a good idea for that reason.

[Frumple]

There's a couple of artifacts (one sword, one amulet -- the latter's pretty common) nowadays that makes dread killing much easier. They're not actually invisible, they just have natural, always-on stealth. So high cunning and anything that boosts stealth detection would be the way to go if you don't have access to those items. Invisibility detection wouldn't help in the least, so far as I'm aware.

Truckloads of accuracy (perfect strike, etc.) also helps a bit -- you get a hefty accuracy penalty when you're attacking something you can't see as well as a flat chance to just miss, so far as I'm aware. Talents that can't miss (spells, certain AoE attacks, etc.) are also very useful there, though I don't recall if archers have any of those naturally. Super covered that pretty well.

As for modding them to be less obnoxious, it'd be a simple thing of going into the npc stuff (../data/general/npc), opening up the ghost file (ghost.lua) and deleting all the "steath = (blahblahblah)" lines. That'd get rid of their innate stealth thing entirely.

[supermini]

Huh, and I thought they were invisible. Well, you live and learn.

[TomSawyer]

Thank you kindly for your quick and helpful answer. I guess I will postpone the quest then, and work on my accuracy in the future.

I wouldn't have minded meeting those buggers in an open area/dungeon. I would have interpreted not being able to hit them at all as the fact that I need to backtrack, and look elsewhere to grow more experienced first. But there was this guy, offering me the quest upfront, that once accepted I cannot leave, without forfeiting it (or dieing). Some kind of in-game hint ("you are probably not ready yet, come back later" ?) would have been welcome to avoid this mishap (spending hundreds of turns without reaching any clear conclusion to the fight that is).

Sorry for my rant, please bear with me while I obviously am still learning the game

Well, you are doing it too early. I'd suggest at least level 15 before doing the Zigur quest. There is less of a rush now since you can betray escorts without being full AM as long as you visited the sign in Zigur with one of your characters and don't have any runes or spells.

As for dreads, I'd suggest learning how to deal with them rather than trying to edit them out. You're going to be meeting lots of them in a certain dungeon.

First of all, dreads have invisibility which causes you to miss unless you have blind fighting. For archers there are several options: perfect strike talent (which gives blind-fighting, even if it doesn't specifically say so) or withering orbs (t1 artifact) or stacking see invisibility - thief escorts give you piercing sight and it's a somewhat common effect on rings.

Second, dreads have high defense(40-45 iirc). You need high accuracy to hit them. If something has as much defense as you have accuracy, you'll only hit it about 50% of the time. Perfect strikes would help with that for a few turns, but boosting dex to higher levels and combat accuracy will allow you to hit high defense targets consistently. Doing the Zigur quest on higher levels is a good idea for that reason.

[TomSawyer]

I reserve myself the option to do just that. That's the beauty of this game, in my opinion, being able to mod it if desired, and all to the credit of the author/developper.

I am still eager to try to play it as intended first, with the advice I have just been given here in the last posts.

Thank you again all for your helpful replies.

There's a couple of artifacts (one sword, one amulet -- the latter's pretty common) nowadays that makes dread killing much easier. They're not actually invisible, they just have natural, always-on stealth. So high cunning and anything that boosts stealth detection would be the way to go if you don't have access to those items. Invisibility detection wouldn't help in the least, so far as I'm aware.

Truckloads of accuracy (perfect strike, etc.) also helps a bit -- you get a hefty accuracy penalty when you're attacking something you can't see as well as a flat chance to just miss, so far as I'm aware. Talents that can't miss (spells, certain AoE attacks, etc.) are also very useful there, though I don't recall if archers have any of those naturally. Super covered that pretty well.

As for modding them to be less obnoxious, it'd be a simple thing of going into the npc stuff (../data/general/npc), opening up the ghost file (ghost.lua) and deleting all the "steath = (blahblahblah)" lines. That'd get rid of their innate stealth thing entirely.

[supermini]

Thank you kindly for your quick and helpful answer. I guess I will postpone the quest then, and work on my accuracy in the future.

I wouldn't have minded meeting those buggers in an open area/dungeon. I would have interpreted not being able to hit them at all as the fact that I need to backtrack, and look elsewhere to grow more experienced first. But there was this guy, offering me the quest upfront, that once accepted I cannot leave, without forfeiting it (or dieing). Some kind of in-game hint ("you are probably not ready yet, come back later" ?) would have been welcome to avoid this mishap (spending hundreds of turns without reaching any clear conclusion to the fight that is).

Sorry for my rant, please bear with me while I obviously am still learning the game

You simply cannot cater for all classes and all skill levels - summoners can do it at level 10 without a lot of problems. Dreads might not show up at all. Orc corruptor at the end might obliterate even a level 20 character. The way to learn in roguelikes is usually dying, although ToME is more forgiving than most.

Now you know for next time.

[greycat]

The worst enemy in the game is the Locked Door. I can usually defeat the Door itself, but then I die shortly afterward....

For the antimagic trial in Zigur, you probably want to wait until you're higher level than 10. It's pretty rough at such a low level.

For the Dread specifically, I would recommend either having the Perfect Strike talent, or having retaliation damage gear and letting it hit you, or having some sort of attack that doesn't rely on accuracy (like a Wyrmic's breath attacks, or the Flamewrought gloves).

Edit: where did... all the... oh, there was another page.

[Mewtarthio]

Also, dreads are undead, which means they never spawn with regen or healing infusions. If it comes down to a battle of attrition, you'll win eventually. They're mainly dangerous when they back up other enemies.

Now, dreadmasters, on the other hand, won't lose battles of attrition. But you can learn all about them when you see them in the flesh, so to speak.

[Robsoie]

several versions earlier, in a Farportal exploration i met an unique while i was at level 43 (and already beat several Farportal in a row)


Does not seem that much according to the stats, but what the stats does not show was the enormous damage output that was superior to what wild+regen+shield could block.

Meaning that i had to teleport every 3 or 4 turns to avoid a yasd.

And then meeting the unique again showed me another problem that made this battle simply hopeless : everytime the unique was back at +/- full health even when by some pure luck i have been able to deal a lot of damage to it before being forced to escape.

And it has Blurry Immortality meant that it was simply unbeatable at that point.
Can't even imagine if the same as the Master that thing could resurrect itself back at full health ...

Oh and it could cast impending doom, so you can imagine that you were forced to escape before your health was too low, or impending doom would destroy you.

[noxnoctum]

Those mana draining oozes are a massive pain (I think they're oozes at least... anyways the ones that leak out AOE poison damage green stuff).

Dreadmasters are really really bad to face too.

[lukep]

Oozing Horrors. They have Tentacle Grab, a range 6 grab/pin/silence/DOT/slow talent that lasts for 4-8 turns on a cooldown of 15.

I just died to one as a PM after getting grabbed at full health, from outside of my light radius. It disabled almost everything I could do, instantly. I couldn't:
- retreat (running, dimensional step)
- push it away (repulsion blast, gravity spike, repulsion field, banish)
- cure (Body reversion, Providence), as my Wild infusion was Mental only so that I could deal with Silence and Confusion
- healing was mostly cut off (Body Reversion, Healing Light), but I still had a regen infusion.
- damage it much (all spells)

I had 550 HP (12% resist all, 46% resist physical) and 40 physical save (0% resist pin, 0% resist silence) at level 22, and after I got hit, I activated Luck of the Little Fold, regen, and stone wall (from cloak) then slowly died to it and a nearby Cold Drake, as my only remaining option was to bump attack.

[stinkstink]

Yeah, oozers really need another look-at. Had one character in Lake Nur get pulled from around a corner into an open room with three Luminous and an Umbral with no way to escape (physical wild, of course, helpfully cured the slow.) Another went to open the farportal, put up a shield, then entered the hallway to get most of their mana pool clashed out in one shot.

[donkatsu]

A summon can save your life in those situations, whether it's from an artifact or racial talent, since switching places with one will end the grapple. Otherwise, yeah you're pretty screwed. :/

[supermini]

Ooze horrors are overdone, especially for when you meet them. You can find it as early as Old Forest or Lake Nur.

[Robsoie]

Now that i noticed that everytime i lost a life it was because of this : everything that can disable your teleport/phase/movement escape skills is my worst enemy.

Wouldn't be a problem if whatever cause this was involved with me in some 1 on 1 battle, but it is -always- happening when there's a high damaging group of monsters around shooting through each other to focus fire on me.

And usually, your teleport/phase/movement is -always- frozen for enough time for your character to die, it never come back online when you still have a few health left