Lessons From First Nightmare Win

[lionhearted]

I got into TOME about three months ago -- I had my appendix out, and some free time. I've played hard games and roguelikes reasonably enough and ascended in Nethack, and I was looking for zangband which had been recommended by a friend of mine a few years ago. I found TOME instead, the graphics and music and interface are amazing but it's still very roguelike-ish, so I went with it. I just won for the first time, and it was a great experience.

Here's some lessons from my first win, which was on Nightmare/Adventure with a Thalore Wyrmic. Yes, I switched to Nightmare quickly after getting the basic hang of the game on normal with a bulwark... I figured I wanted more challenge, and didn't want to learn bad habits on Normal that don't apply on Nightmare.

The last fight on High Peak, I barely won -- 0 lives left at the end, including using the ring that gives an extra life. It was intense. Okay, here's some thoughts/lessons --

1. You should build your character with winning the "choke point" fights in mind. Every character is going to have fights they fare badly in; which fights will depend on your mix of race, class, abilities, and the equipment you find and get from the artifact merchant. A few fights are going to be problematic no matter what -- High Peak is obviously the biggest of them; The Master and the harder required battles in the Far East to a lesser extent; Urkis might be a difficult chokepoint for an anti-magic character that really wants fungus.

Basically, I suspect at the highest difficulties that this is true -- any ability that doesn't help you get through these "chokepoint"/"bottleneck" fights is definitely a luxury and probably a waste. That's because you need some serious firepower to handle High Peak; I had a reasonably well-made character that had reasonably good luck on items (without Spellhunt Remnants, I don't think I would have won), and I barely made it.

2. Learn the mechanics and what's important; this takes time to do. I learned around the slime tunnels that +15% darkness damage didn't add 15% darkness damage to all attacks, but instead increased only darkness damage. Yuck. Dumb, I could have tested it in five minutes, but it is what it is. Likewise, the difference between defense and armor. What armor hardiness does. If you want to actually win on harder difficulties, I'd recommend something like 20 minutes of studying particular mechanics for every hour you play.

3. Learn the value of excellent tactical sequencing. For most of the game, even on Nightmare, you're really tough enough to not pay attention. But then you get to the harder fights and you're entirely lost. For instance, you're a wyrmic there's a tough melee enemy three squares away. Bellowing Roar is on cooldown. Do you use Quake, Sand Breath, Acidic Spray, Corrosive Mist, Corrosive Breath, Venomous Breath, or something else? Any one of those could be the correct call, but it's worth thinking about in not-that-hard fights, so you can test different theories and combinations. I'd often play kind of from level 42 onwards -- there weren't many hard fights at that point -- but I really should have been testing tactics against different enemy types and learning from that.

4. Learn solid tactical movement. I'm an okay tactical player, but if I want to continue on to beat Insane and Madness, I'm going to need to get much better. Say the enemies look like this --

ooooAoo
oooooBo
oo---oo
oooooUo
oo--ooo

"A" and "B" are nasty enemies with ranged attacks; "U" is you; "o" is empty space; "o" is cover (wall, tree, etc) that you can't see through. You're badly wounded. Where will the enemies be if you move west one square? Southwest one square? What's the best pattern of movement to run around and waste five turns for your important cooldown to come back? I still don't know this stuff, I'm an adequate tactical player at best, but I imagine it's critical to beating the highest difficulties.

5. Learn the standard tough enemy repertoires. At High Peak, I couldn't understand why the two endgame bosses were sometimes consistently slamming me for 800 arcane damage per turn, and sometimes couldn't touch me. I still don't know. I'll have to get some experience with arcane characters and learn the basic abilities they're using to really get when they're dangerous or not.

6. Know how equipment and abilities play together, and keep an eye out for the right stuff. At any given time, there's different good builds your character could specialize into; unless an item is overwhelmingly good, there's quite likely less a "best" item to be wearing and more like a best set of stuff for the situation. Healing modifier items are great if you're healing through lots of damage with fungus; or do you want to stack up on speed and damage items with a Timeless/Unstoppable mix? I should have paid more attention to this.

7. While learning, get items, prodigies, and abilities that are forgiving and flexible. "I Can Carry The World" is great if you're learning and your character benefits from strength and maybe even if not. You can pack any armor/items around that look even possibly good. This doesn't benefit your character directly as much in battle, but lets you as a player compensate for not knowing yet which items really combo well later in the game. Items that increase max hit points are good for just about everyone except builds that try to never take health damage (or make it irrelevant like Unstoppable)... even then, they give you a margin of error.

8. Play slower. There's no timer. You can sit and think about a really bad situation for quite a while. The best advice I ever read about Nethack is: "Remember this isn't Quake."

9. Stop playing when you're on tilt. I played a couple berserkers to learn my way around the game before committing to try to win with a wyrmic. I found deaths often came in bunches, when I was playing sloppy. As soon as I start mashing buttons, I take a break. I took a break at High Peak on my last life and really carefully thought through how I'd fight the rest of the battle, and played for max safety (fleeing after using even one of my three big heals, and fleeing liberally until Spellhunt Remnants, Wrath of the Woods, and Nature's Pride were all off cooldown)... if I'd kept grinding away with the initial strategy I used to lose five lives, I'd have lost the sixth. Instead, I won on that last life.

10. Flee earlier. You only want to commit to sticking around if the battle is mandatory, if you have no way to improve before coming back to this battle (no way to flee and return while higher level or better equipment), and if sticking around longer makes you more likely to clear the fight immediately. So if you've got almost everything on cooldown but this brutal boss with regeneration is down to 5% life, maybe you stick around and cross your fingers. But otherwise, run. Running is usually correct; you fights thousands of fights in this game; a 0.1% chance of dying through risky play means you're losing a life. In the later game, I'd always flee if Relentless Pursuit was on cooldown unless there was no safe place to flee or I was about to imminently take out the biggest threat there. Seriously, run much earlier. You don't get bravery points in this game, so flee early and stay alive.

Ok, I still consider myself very much a newbie, but I tried to write a post that would be useful if I read it when starting out. Good luck racking up those Nightmare wins.

[dukereg]

8, 9 and 10 are great points to make because playing on autopilot, rushing, tilting, or being optimistic when almost dead will get you killed on any difficulty.

[MoloMowChow]

Nice job. You even did it on Wyrmic which, from what I heard, is quite underpowered compared to most other classes.

I think there's also a Wyrmic remake in the coming patch, or soon...well timed?

Don't know if you're aware already but, for point 5, right clicking an enemy then "Inspecting" them can reveal to you all their secrets, more than just mousing over them. All their stats and skills are laid bare to you. You can see what talents and passives they have and decide what kind of immediate threat they pose. If you really wanna try insane and madness, you will need this.

[Wolls]

You even did it on Wyrmic.

While Wyrmic is more defensive I can't see it as being in any way offensively handicapped. On the highest difficulty settings its about raw damage: hit and get out; and the Wyrmic has no pure offensive procs so its bump attacks are amoung the lowest. Add too most ERR all of Wyrmic's breath attacks are low.. buttering almost in that sense of saute. That said the Wyrmics best attacks are Fungus related. ( Most ppl opt for a 5-1-5-1 investment. ) That second skill of Fungal Growth will trigger/proc the third skill of Ancestral Life ( giving u back a %turn). So Swallow as crowd control will proc for a free turn as will Wild-Gift Call of the Wild / Nature's Touch. Also if you go Mindstar then Nature's Equilibrium will also be a free turn because any instant heal will proc Fungal Growth which in turn will proc Ancestral Life. ( In order to count Ancestral Life will want to create a Regeneration effect.. so you need to right/click cancel any previous Regen effect.. as such for example if you want Nature's Touch to go from a usage speed of 1 Turn to ==> a Free turn, you can't already be under a Regen Effect and it is the same with Swallow which tries to create a 'regaining life' effect. )

NOTE: Healing Infusions don't proc Ancestral Life but with a decent Heal Mod have a better tactical use v regen infusions.

Damage wise I think the prodigy Swift Hands would be useful. Your two best damage attacks are Wild-Gift Venom Aspect / Dissolve and Wild-Gift Higher Draconic / Prismatic Slash. Dissolve hits 4 times or 8 times if you are dual wielding. Prismatic Slash always hits twice, once for damage and then secondly procs one other damage effect. That's at least two skills which most players just ignore. If you go dual wielding go Mindstars versus a sword and dagger and yea weirdly you can invest in both, or go for Mindstars PLUS Two-Handed or Sword/Shield [ Class and Generic Talents FTW].

Strength / Willpower / Cunning as point investments = Strength always matters, or one point in strength equals one point in physical power.. all of your weapon talent masters give physical power and your base damage starts here even if your master is not directed towards Strength. ( I think its 5/5 and at base 65 physical power so which amounts to 65 Strength without investing a single point towards...ie Will based weapons use Physical Power which = Strength as a before base which your weapon %Will acts on. ) Do not invest in Strength thinking it will give you OP breath attacks because it won't. Honestly you can do way more with specific damage penetration and +Damage modifers and as such for example an Archmage with invested +Fire will have a better or at least equal Wild/Fire Breath damage... the increased damage through Str is meaningless.

Wrymics don't naturally have a lot of STUN's ( Torn-naaa-da is a stun.. seriously?) so rather than invested Breaths, bark up another tree. That said, you can win on Nightmare with out a true stun. Easily. But both of the optional trees ( Technique / Two Hand or Shield Offense) have TRUE stuns which is better than Combat Techniques / Rush or Wild-Gift Fire Drake / Bellowing Roar which will only Daze. Daze is good in groups but once you hit you get hit and the Wild/ Breaths do both. Although IF you get the Effective Talent Level high enough you can attack out of line of sight with a breath atttack / or go beyond the radius of 10 range which enemies accept as fact.

Of course with Wyrmic's you also have Wild/Call of the Wild. The 4th skill Nature's Balance allows you to reset the cooldowns of Wild gifts. So back-2-back 8 hit Wild-Gift Venom Drake Aspect / Dissolves.. and or 2 free Wild Mindstar / Nature's Equilibrium. All I know is put the min so you can reset the skill you want. So 3/5 Natures Balance was enough to reset the cooldown of a 5/5 Dissolve and Prismatic Slash +other skills.
[Honestly I don't get the math here, for example I had 1.5 Master with 5 points so 7.5 Effective Talent Level of Wild/Dissolve and with only 3/5 Nature's Balance( at 1.2 master so EffecticeTalentLevel of 3.6) and I was at "allows you to reset the cooldown of 5 of your wild gifts of tier 4 or less. ". SO 7.5 ETL is Tier 4? Or I have ~20 ETL to work with?].

If you can get any kind of offensive procs ( Destala's Scales.. for example) then even your bump attacks are enough to get you through High Peak on Nightmare. You want Mind Power for crits, build Strength for a bigger starting base or/and prodigy Superpower OR/AND through damage in Two-Handed Assualt/Shild Offense.

Again most of the knocks against Wyrmic have to do with its lack of natural offensive procs and stuns. Which you need to survive and out damage on the higher difficulties of insane/madness. Honestly the free heal through a proc'd Nature' Touch=>Fungal Growth=>Ancestral Life should be enough of a difference on the normal class difficulty. And again most people go for a Fungus 5-1-5-1 and so under that constant Regen Effect you need to right-click/cancel the prior Regen Effect before hand: or that heal is 1 turn and this is why I suspect most find the Wyrmic hard. You can win as a Wyrmic without ever truly proc'ing => Defensively ( Nature's Touch ) or => Offensively ( Swallow at min).

Another thrown away skill is Wild-Gift Cold Drake / Ice Wall. It is so nice being able to divide the Prides or even in the High Peak Final to put your character +Aeryn and just ONE of the wizards on one side so you can truly gang up on. Or even just as a rest period.. Ice Wall a corridor as a preface/bonus before an attempted escape and lightening speed out.

Gah. I ramble on but nice win. Congratulations are in order. Great opening post and sweet sweet win. [ Any chance of a character report? ]

[donkatsu]

Again most of the knocks against Wyrmic have to do with its lack of natural offensive procs and stuns. Which you need to survive and out damage on the higher difficulties of insane/madness.

Wait, what? The reason Wyrmics, or any class for that matter, is weak on higher difficulties is because they have no damage mitigation that is useful there. Has nothing to do with procs or stuns or whatever.

[Ragnarok]

Again most of the knocks against Wyrmic have to do with its lack of natural offensive procs and stuns. Which you need to survive and out damage on the higher difficulties of insane/madness.

Wait, what? The reason Wyrmics, or any class for that matter, is weak on higher difficulties is because they have no damage mitigation that is useful there. Has nothing to do with procs or stuns or whatever.

This is actually true, best classes for above nightmare are the ones that can deal with truly insane amounts of damage and CC coming flying at you. VIA killing enemies offscreen or before they can react to you or being something like archmage/corruptor shields or berserk with unstoppable.

It's like summoners being faceroll in the lower difficulties and then it gets extremely hard to win when your summons get rekt instantly.

[Effigy]

Good advice overall. You may be new to the game, but your analysis is on point.