First impressions

[Elhazzared]

I'd have since I'd be good at nothing.

Alright, I do remember reading that changing direction made the moviment boost stop working, but maybe it was for something else related to movement, but again, a potion that doesn't even gives me 200% is not very useful and I never found one that went that high. To be useful as an effective means of escaping combat I'd see a need for +600 or 700% in order to be able to get beind cover many times.

I don't agree with you on the information. Sure if we have all descriptions for what everything does it would be too much clutter on the screen, using the inspect creature is good to give those descriptions. But at very least you need to know all abillities it has by mousing over as well as a cooldown indicator on them.

I didn't said i used teleport, i used phase door or whatever it's called, i just call it all a teleport anyway since it basicly teleports you elsewhere.

Because I wasn't sure it was a bug at time. Reporting it now is not going to have much impact without actually being able to show it.

Same thing with wild infusions. Sometimes they remove stats but ther are times that they don't do anything at all. I wasn't sure it was a bug so I didn't posted it as a bug before being sure. Now that I know I'd need at least screenshots to show it.

No I don't. I've pretty much made my case several times. Even if in some cases there are things that can possibly get you out of your current situation, they are not reliable. Out of the frying pan and into the fire isn't much of an alternative. Sure, I can be lucky and lad in a safe place, or I can just land in another death trap. Recurring to luck to get out of a bad situation which was only a bad situation in the first place because of bad luck isn't exactly reliable or strategical. It's jsut RNG on top of RNG.

Just because you don't agree that the game is very RGN doesn't means that what I say is any less accurate.

On a last note I'd like for you to think about what I'm writing here. It's not as if I'm comming here just to complain about the game and piss all over it. If I come to the game's forum and provide feedback is because I hope that my feedback will help improving the game.

[marshmallowpeep]

Just because you don't agree that the game is very RGN doesn't means that what I say is any less accurate.

Thing is, a ton of have played the game a lot more than you and somehow manage to not run into all those random, totally unavoidable cheap deaths you're talking about. Either we're super lucky, we're lying to you for some bizarre reason, or it's not a matter of RNG but of experience.

[jotwebe]

Yep, I've played plenty of Dredmor, plenty of FTL, and both of these are way more luck dependent than ToME (still good games though). I wouldn't say Dredmor gives you more information either - all those tooltips where stat bonuses are only shown with minuscule icons, and you're supposed to tell the dexterity swishy man from the dodge swishy man. Plus forget about inspecting monsters for what they can do (granted, it's usually only one or two things).

I'd recommend trying out Adventurer difficulty until you have a win: by allowing you to go right back into a fight, you can immediately try out different tactics, or even let yourself be transported to the overworld for a change in strategy.

I agree that the mouse-over information is a bit lacking. I use Hachem_Muche's Plenum Tooltip addon myself - it does give you nearly all the information you need, at the price of being a lot more terse than the vanilla tooltip. Give it a try.

The quest line is another actual problem, I think. The thing to do is not to follow the questline, but to do all the starter dungeons you can access, then do the tier 2 ("Into the Darkness") dungeons. It might be better if the questlog told you to do that.

The weirdling beast fight is pretty hard (or can be, depending on your build), but there's no RNG bullshit involved in it.

If you have problems with Archmage: it's one of the most powerful classes, perhaps the most powerful, in the game - but you do have to know what you are doing with it. Try a Cornac instead of Shalore and use your category point to get the Temporal tree ASAP. Get Timeshield, abuse it. (Shalore is also very powerful, but again not a good choice for beginners)

Beware anything mentioned in this thread: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=39658

Read these threads for some good general advice (maybe a bit dated in places):
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=37987
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=38030

[cttw]

I have given a few examples of cheap deaths. In any of them I had no way to survive. I had no way to kill what was in front of me, nor I had a way to flee from it.

(...)

It should always be incredibly clear which stats to shot for first and the third should always be for when you hit cap.

What I read from what you wrote is that you would like the game to be easier. You would like to be winning it after 3 days. Well I may be a bit slow but it took me over a year of playing it on and off until I had my first winner, and what a rush that was! You complain that the optimal stat allocation choice is not "incredibly clear", and before you complain that your build gets to a point where it is obliterated by what the game throws at it. Have you considered the chance that with more experience you will know where to allocate your stats and skills, make a better build that might survive later game challenges? It is natural that if your build is not good then you will eventually run into a challenge you cannot best. Learning is always a hit on the ego, and you sure have an ego problem to be thrashing a game like this after 3 days. But keep trying, it will be incredibly rewarding. When you have learned (much much) more, your build won't suck, your choices won't such, and you will win like many other players do.

Your comparison to FTL is particularly inept. I gave up on FTL precisely because of completely RNG determined it was, whatever you wanted to do was completely put on the back burner and you had to make do with the 3 items that show up at each shop. If the items in your run made for a viable ship, then you might have a shot at winning. Other runs are entirely unwinnable. Boring.

Tome does have some RNG singularity beasts, quire rare, which you probably haven't found yet in 3 days, which are extraordinarly unkillable. I got a screenshot of one a few weeks ago that would straighten the back of the darkgod himself. You are supposed to run from those. Yes, I am not kidding.

[grayswandir]

Alright, I do remember reading that changing direction made the moviment boost stop working, but maybe it was for something else related to movement, but again, a potion that doesn't even gives me 200% is not very useful and I never found one that went that high. To be useful as an effective means of escaping combat I'd see a need for +600 or 700% in order to be able to get beind cover many times.

The minimum is +300% movement speed. This was nerfed from +500% fairly recently, so in all possibility it may need some tweaking. However, I find it very helpful in most situations, even with this reduced speed, so you may want to try it before just declaring it useless.

I didn't said i used teleport, i used phase door or whatever it's called, i just call it all a teleport anyway since it basicly teleports you elsewhere.

Using the proper names for things would help a lot.

Just because you don't agree that the game is very RGN doesn't means that what I say is any less accurate.

Regardless of any opinions I might have, your statements aren't very accurate to begin with. You've been misnaming things and getting mechanics wrong. (Which is perfectly understandable, given the length of time you've been playing. It just doesn't do much for your argument.)


Basically, in all of the scenarios you describe, either I know exactly how to deal with it, or it's so vaguely worded I have no idea what you're talking about. I just honestly don't see the RNG factoring into this at all.

[Davion Fuxa]

There is a huge amount of RNG to this. I may be relatively new, but I've put many hours into this game already, probably over 40 in 3 days (I'd say 4 but I barely played today). If after so much gameplay time and a relatively vast experience with roguelikes and generally very hard games you ar still feeling that all your deaths or at least the vast majority of them were pretty damn cheap and that RNG is playing a huge role, then it probably is right.

This isn't FTL or some other short Roguelike, Tales of Maj'Eyal is going to require a lot of time to understand the sheer depth of it. Before even playing Tales of Maj'Eyal I probably spent 60 hours JUST watching YouTube videos of people playing Tales of Maj'Eyal. In terms of actual gameplay, I probably spent 60 hours playing playing and getting killed repeatedly before I started by first run that successfully won the game. This also ignores all the written guides I read or strategies I looked up on to give myself as much of an edge as possible.

I don't consider myself to be the average Roguelike player either - I'm well above the average player in terms of winning Roguelikes. I wouldn't expect someone even familiar with other Roguelike games to be able to get a win within 120 hours of just delving into the game - outside of maybe Gamehunter (TheUberHunter). It is an extremely high hurdle to get over the initial learning gap for this game and it will require a lot of patience to eventually even come close to winning it.

[Sradac]

Let me say some roguelikes I've played recently.


Dungeons of dredmore (and all it's DLC)

Sword of the stars: The pit (with all the DLC)

Well there's your problem right there. Those are the only 2 actual roguelikes you have played, and not roguelike-lite-lite-like, and they are both kind of easy mode. As far as lack of info, I would say SOTS is far worse when it comes to telling me what something is and when I might ever want to use it, not to mention the pure RNG nature of getting new crafting recipes.

Those two also offer the player 0 freedom. You have one linear path of progression: down.

ToME lets you go nearly anywhere at any time. Its up to you if you go someplace too soon. Plenty of games offer that kind of freedom and are praised for it.

[cttw]

Yeah a couple of tips gathered from what was said would be to use teleport runes instead of phase door (quite a difference) and to find a list of the suggested order of dungeons.

[Sradac]

I'd say, play ToME and die. And die. And die some more. Learn through experience. You aren't supposed to win your first run.

Look at my registration date on this forum next to this post. I think its 2007. I've been playing ToME / PernAngband since probably a year or two before that. Know how many times I have won, across all of ToMEs different versions? Once. And I'm fine with that. I've never beat any other real roguelike like Nethack, ADOM, or DCSS. And I'm fine with that also. Roguelikes are for *fun* not necessarily for winning.

[Elhazzared]

Yep, I've played plenty of Dredmor, plenty of FTL, and both of these are way more luck dependent than ToME (still good games though). I wouldn't say Dredmor gives you more information either - all those tooltips where stat bonuses are only shown with minuscule icons, and you're supposed to tell the dexterity swishy man from the dodge swishy man. Plus forget about inspecting monsters for what they can do (granted, it's usually only one or two things).

I'd recommend trying out Adventurer difficulty until you have a win: by allowing you to go right back into a fight, you can immediately try out different tactics, or even let yourself be transported to the overworld for a change in strategy.

I agree that the mouse-over information is a bit lacking. I use Hachem_Muche's Plenum Tooltip addon myself - it does give you nearly all the information you need, at the price of being a lot more terse than the vanilla tooltip. Give it a try.

The quest line is another actual problem, I think. The thing to do is not to follow the questline, but to do all the starter dungeons you can access, then do the tier 2 ("Into the Darkness") dungeons. It might be better if the questlog told you to do that.

The weirdling beast fight is pretty hard (or can be, depending on your build), but there's no RNG bullshit involved in it.

If you have problems with Archmage: it's one of the most powerful classes, perhaps the most powerful, in the game - but you do have to know what you are doing with it. Try a Cornac instead of Shalore and use your category point to get the Temporal tree ASAP. Get Timeshield, abuse it. (Shalore is also very powerful, but again not a good choice for beginners)

Beware anything mentioned in this thread: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=39658

Read these threads for some good general advice (maybe a bit dated in places):
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=37987
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=38030

I did played my first game on adventurer and only because I thought I'd have it set to roguelike on default. Everytime I got up, even if I felt it was a cheap death, it felt equally cheap to me doing it.

I agree the questline could be a problem, but I am not going to know in which order I should clear the dungeons. I just avoind going into any I don't have a quest to, least I clear it and later get a quest there since things don't respawn.

The weirdling is... weird (pun not intended). I got to it 2 times. The first I got there, wacked it on the head. Used a regen rune. Wacked it some more. Dead. It was your average par of the course boss. The second time I got there, it had over 1000 life. The shield completly blocked my attacks (it didn't do it the first time) for a very long while, I only started hitting it for damage once I was at half health and this time I even had 11 turns of invunerabillity to start. Once I shaved some 300 to 400 health from it, it healed all the damage up and put up a second shield. And I just never damaged it again. I got obliterated with no chance to beat it. A clearly distinct experience from the first time... If there is no RNG involved in how powerful the weirdling is when you get there. I am not sure what happened either the first or the second time, but they were clearly polar opposite experiences.

As for the archmage. Yeah I'm sure I'm not playing it to it's best abillities but I just get obliterated before I get to level 10. I also play Cornac but again. It's always a very quick an nasty death waiting for me. i simply have no way of avoiding ranged damage. I take a spet, there is a couple mages and I die instantly. Ocasionally I do die to the odd ranged boss which will either oneshot me or leave me nearly dead for any other minion with it. i am unsure of how I could drop any for of reliable way to survive the first round of a surprise attack with it.

I have given a few examples of cheap deaths. In any of them I had no way to survive. I had no way to kill what was in front of me, nor I had a way to flee from it.

(...)

It should always be incredibly clear which stats to shot for first and the third should always be for when you hit cap.

What I read from what you wrote is that you would like the game to be easier. You would like to be winning it after 3 days. Well I may be a bit slow but it took me over a year of playing it on and off until I had my first winner, and what a rush that was! You complain that the optimal stat allocation choice is not "incredibly clear", and before you complain that your build gets to a point where it is obliterated by what the game throws at it. Have you considered the chance that with more experience you will know where to allocate your stats and skills, make a better build that might survive later game challenges? It is natural that if your build is not good then you will eventually run into a challenge you cannot best. Learning is always a hit on the ego, and you sure have an ego problem to be thrashing a game like this after 3 days. But keep trying, it will be incredibly rewarding. When you have learned (much much) more, your build won't suck, your choices won't such, and you will win like many other players do.

Your comparison to FTL is particularly inept. I gave up on FTL precisely because of completely RNG determined it was, whatever you wanted to do was completely put on the back burner and you had to make do with the 3 items that show up at each shop. If the items in your run made for a viable ship, then you might have a shot at winning. Other runs are entirely unwinnable. Boring.

Tome does have some RNG singularity beasts, quire rare, which you probably haven't found yet in 3 days, which are extraordinarly unkillable. I got a screenshot of one a few weeks ago that would straighten the back of the darkgod himself. You are supposed to run from those. Yes, I am not kidding.

I don't say I'd like to be winning after 3 days. I took me weeks to even finish a run of sword of the stars: the pit in the vanilla edition. There is a clear difference between feeling you ar each and every time progressing a little bit and getting stronger. Sure with the ocasional RNG BS thrown at you but overall getting better and just being able to deal with things easier. And actually feel that at every corner you are thrown either a new BS or some that you are unable to deal with. I have a rather good build. I've messed around with it quite a bit and this is the way it works optimally. I focus mostly on damage with a little bit throw into survivabillity. I've also tried giving it more survivabillity instead of as much damage as I normally do but I just die eariler because the extra survivabillity is scales very badly and doesn't helps me that much in comparison to killing the enemies before they can kill me... i must add that still there are few things that can actually hurt me as it is. Still, when something can hurt me, I tend to get quite a few of them together in an unavoidable situation.

My comparison to FTL is fair. Some FTL ships are plain broken and not meant to be used. But starting with a decent ship will meand 9 out of 10 wins. The odd RNG will get you but say, the starting ship will almost always finish the trip and win due to the simple fact that it already starts with 2 very good weapons.

and yeah. I'm pretty sure I haven't found everythin in the game yet and if you are telling. There are unkillable or nearly unkillable enemies. I can only call it bad game design. You are supposed to be clearing out dungeons, not playing cat and mouse... i can understand tactical retreats to recover health cooldowns and think up a new engagement strategy, but if you tell me some enemies are not supposed to be fought, that is already bad in my opinion.

Alright, I do remember reading that changing direction made the moviment boost stop working, but maybe it was for something else related to movement, but again, a potion that doesn't even gives me 200% is not very useful and I never found one that went that high. To be useful as an effective means of escaping combat I'd see a need for +600 or 700% in order to be able to get beind cover many times.

The minimum is +300% movement speed. This was nerfed from +500% fairly recently, so in all possibility it may need some tweaking. However, I find it very helpful in most situations, even with this reduced speed, so you may want to try it before just declaring it useless.

I didn't said i used teleport, i used phase door or whatever it's called, i just call it all a teleport anyway since it basicly teleports you elsewhere.

Using the proper names for things would help a lot.

Just because you don't agree that the game is very RGN doesn't means that what I say is any less accurate.

Regardless of any opinions I might have, your statements aren't very accurate to begin with. You've been misnaming things and getting mechanics wrong. (Which is perfectly understandable, given the length of time you've been playing. It just doesn't do much for your argument.)


Basically, in all of the scenarios you describe, either I know exactly how to deal with it, or it's so vaguely worded I have no idea what you're talking about. I just honestly don't see the RNG factoring into this at all.

I did say the best infusions for speed I found were 176%. why do you say the minimum is 300% is beyond me. even then many times all you need to to run 3 or 4 squares away to get out of Los. But many times you have a long corridor as your only way out of a dangerous room filled with ranged enemies with ranged CC as well. a potion that doesn't gives you a huge movement allowance is not going to save you then.

I did use the proper names if you look all my posts I did post what I did exactly use. However I do refer to it as teleport ocasionally for simplicity sake. Sorry if I was unclear.

My statements are pretty accurate. If I am saying. I got there. This happened. I had no way out. It couldn't be any more accurate, that's just how it went down!

Basicly all scenarios you probably know how to deal with it, but would you have been able to beat them? Maybe. Perhaps you'd have something I didn't had. Perhaps you'd have more luck. there is a lot of things that can be said in retrospective and in light of. I'd do a different selection of things. it also doesn't means that you wouldn't get thrown a different situation for which you weren't prepared to deal with.

There is a huge amount of RNG to this. I may be relatively new, but I've put many hours into this game already, probably over 40 in 3 days (I'd say 4 but I barely played today). If after so much gameplay time and a relatively vast experience with roguelikes and generally very hard games you ar still feeling that all your deaths or at least the vast majority of them were pretty damn cheap and that RNG is playing a huge role, then it probably is right.

This isn't FTL or some other short Roguelike, Tales of Maj'Eyal is going to require a lot of time to understand the sheer depth of it. Before even playing Tales of Maj'Eyal I probably spent 60 hours JUST watching YouTube videos of people playing Tales of Maj'Eyal. In terms of actual gameplay, I probably spent 60 hours playing playing and getting killed repeatedly before I started by first run that successfully won the game. This also ignores all the written guides I read or strategies I looked up on to give myself as much of an edge as possible.

I don't consider myself to be the average Roguelike player either - I'm well above the average player in terms of winning Roguelikes. I wouldn't expect someone even familiar with other Roguelike games to be able to get a win within 120 hours of just delving into the game - outside of maybe Gamehunter (TheUberHunter). It is an extremely high hurdle to get over the initial learning gap for this game and it will require a lot of patience to eventually even come close to winning it.

I wanted to actually watch more youtube of it to understand it better before going in too. The problem is that I can only find old stuff that are for earlier builds of the game which means there are changes that made many things different and as such unviable. So I kinda had to give up on that. Similarly there are no good beginers tutorials in the forum, not that I could find anyway and if we are to be more specific, beginer tutorials that would apply to the current version of the game... I still didn't go in completly blind, but i learned a lot in the first 30 hours or so, from there i haven't really been learning much but almost every single death still feels cheap... The ocasional - up happens and I recognise when i die to them. I't a bit frustating but I just man up and start a new when it's the case. dying to BS however is just aggravating.

As for whether you are well above the average or not. I don't know, never seen you playing. I know I'm not the best player in roguelikes out there. I know I'm not the worst either. In fact I know for sure that I am at least above the average since I see many other people playing them and keep facepalming ibn the vast majority of cases.

Sradac - SotS: the pit can be worse with information but at least it has a very clear advantage. You find an enemy, you don't know what it does. It doesn't matters, they have one or 2 types of attack at best and there are no such things as cooldown. You fight them once and you pretty much know what to expect. In here, not so much... some enemies are simple and predictable. Some enemies have multiple attacks and abillities with cooldowns.

I will agree that the freedom TOME gives you is great. I never said TOME is a bad game. It has an awesome set of mechanics and everything to be an awesome game. There are just some things that need to be ironed out before it actually turns into a pleasurable experience. Right now it's a frustation manager game. It draws too much on RNG. Some RNG is to be expected in roguelikes and sometimes the RNG hammer just says, nope. This is expected to a degree. but when all the game is based on it then the dificulty is just too artificial.

Again my problem is not winning. it's a roguelike, I couldn't give less of a crap about winning. The fun is seeying how far you can go and what arises and how you deal with it. If you do happen to win, well cool, bragging rights and stuff but it isn't ever about that. The problem is when every time you die you just feel cheated. You were CCed to death. You were fighting something that was so overpowered that you couldn't stand a chance to even fight it. Maybe you triped into a place with lots of ranged enemies that can mostly ignore you armor.

And yes, I realise a teleportation rune may save you there. But let's be honest here for a second. You were in a bad situation because RNG threw you a curve ball with a way too tough encounter for your level/class. Then you are telling me that the way to survive is to relly on RNG to get you out of it. Because a teleport rune takes you somewhere else in the map. You can just drop in the middle of an even worse room. Or maybe it's not worse but at that point it's already enough to kill you anway.

All roguelikes have some RNG. The most important thing you learn while playing roguelikes is not to flip a coin. Take whatever is granted and reliable. Minimising your own RNG is the first step to get further into the game.

[Marson]

You are supposed to be clearing out dungeons, not playing cat and mouse...

Who said that? You didn't write the game—Darkgod did. This is why I said that getting somewhere in this game often requires a person to change their overall view on it. In general, you can't play it like other games, even some other roguelikes. I tend to be a 'completionist', but I had to let that go. It still gets me into trouble when I fall into old habits.

I think this is the core of the issue here. We can try to explain how specific things work and whatnot, but if you hold onto this view, you will probably always feel that the RNG is unfair (whether it is or not). This is not a game about being an unbeatable superhero. Just as in real life, there will be things you can not best. (You do have the option of coming back later, BTW.)

[Sradac]

I think this is the core of the issue here. We can try to explain how specific things work and whatnot, but if you hold onto this view, you will probably always feel that the RNG is unfair (whether it is or not). This is not a game about being an unbeatable superhero. Just as in real life, there will be things you can not best. (You do have the option of coming back later, BTW.)

Thats a really good way to put it. Dark Crypt? F that place. I almost never go there. Whatever the name of that other crypt in the east is? Went there once for the unlock, stay the hell away every time. I still never go into the underwater place in the east.

Atamathone? lol.

Room of Death? *fun*

Spellblaze Scar...Ring of Blood...Zigur...

There's a lot of places I tend to avoid unless I have a specific reason to go there. It's all through experimentation. Sometimes the Ring of Blood is amazing, sometimes its nothing but a waste of time for your character. Same thing with Spellblaze Scar. Could be a huge boost, could be your death. Urkis? that guy...

I remember when I tried to clear EVERY dungeon in the game, nothing good came from it. Attrition either wore my character down, or my sanity.

[edge2054]

Getting hit with a bad debuff can certainly lead to some early game cheap deaths. There's a few starts, that after three days I assume are still locked for you, that can be fairly brutal (Undead, Yeek, Celestials). But these aren't something a new player should be encountering, at least not in the first dungeon.

Otherwise though if you stick to the starting dungeons and don't open any vaults and otherwise avoid areas with explicit warnings (Bill the Stone Troll), there's not a lot you can't tackle with starting runes or infusions.

There is one tier one boss that I think is a bit overtuned and something of a newbie trap. I'll talk to Darkgod about it and see if we can nerf him a bit.

That said, some general advice. There are parts of the game that you just won't be able to do on every character. There's areas that are brutally hard. And they're optional. Don't open vaults. No you really don't need the gear that bad. Once you save up some gold you can buy good gear in towns that can easily see you through till the mid-point of the game. Don't do every dungeon that pops up. Ask in game chat or use the wiki. ToME is a game that encourages both patience and discretion. Not every fight is meant to be won and not every dungeon is meant to be beaten on every character. Some fights and dungeons are designed to be opt-in encounters. They're challenging and the rewards generally aren't that great. They're mostly for bragging rights, though a few are tied to class unlocks.

But talk to the other players. As much as I'd love for ToME to be a game that doesn't rely on spoilers, and I'm sure it's possible to beat without them, it is a game that has grown up around a chat interface. Sharing information with other players and learning from them is part of the game.

Aside from that, if you've already opened a vault door or set foot in an optional dungeon you can't turn around and blame the RNG for the choices you made. Take it as a learning process and remember that discretion is the better part of valour.

[Marson]

Thats a really good way to put it. Dark Crypt? F that place. I almost never go there.

Oh Crom yes. That's one that you actually can't come back to, as the ability to enter only shows up once per character. I've done it a few times, but if I care about getting anywhere with a character, I just say "no". It's now gone for good, but hey, I lived.

[Davion Fuxa]

If you are looking for more recent videos on ToME, you might consider looking into the current Let's Learn Series I have going right now FOR Tales of Maj'Eyal. I recently started YouTube series after the 1.2.0 Update.

View this thread Thaloran Shadowblade Let's Learn Series or jump to my actual playlist for the Let's Learn Tales of Maj'Eyal.

As a note, even a lot of the older content that I have as well as from other players is still going to be good to learn from. Belmarduk's Let's Play: Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME) - A Beginner's guide was good a year ago when I initially viewed it and it is still just as good now - sure there have been updates, but a lot of core elements are still somewhat the same.