Overpowered random enemies

[Mankeli]

Another "hit you from full HP" rare: forge giant stair guardian (arcane blade?). Was cabable of delivering at least 1900 points of damage in one turn. It wasn't invisible/out-of-los though, so I guess this is an improvement in TOME standards.

Also seconding Marson. It's pretty bad when the game is so full of filler monsters that you will be fighting freaking BEARS in High Peak ! The deviation of the monster difficulty makes the gaming experience suffer: most of the monsters are complete popcorn but you really can't afford to even kill them carelessly because there is always the chance that you might get one-shotted from out of nowhere and from full hp in one turn if take a wrong move. So you have to take even that High Peak bear seriously who, on his own, couldn't make any dent on your character's HP at all. Also it's tedious to kill monsters that really don't give anything in terms of challenge, loot or even marginal exp if have already achieved level 50.

(And, of course, what makes the above even worse are the track/arcane eye etc. talents. You can use them all the time, you should use them all the time, and probably 95 % time you do use them, you detect a monster that is probably not that much difficult than a bear. This is pretty frustrating.)

I prefered if 1) the monsters you fight would pose a threat on their own and 2) the rare threats you will face would be such that you don't get instantly killed before getting a chance to react.

[zypsilon]

I prefered if 1) the monsters you fight would pose a threat on their own and 2) the rare threats you will face would be such that you don't get instantly killed before getting a chance to react.

^This and what the OP said. Just registered to say that. The game has potential, but the unbalanced aspect being discussed here is super frustrating.

[bpat]

Another "hit you from full HP" rare: forge giant stair guardian (arcane blade?). Was cabable of delivering at least 1900 points of damage in one turn. It wasn't invisible/out-of-los though, so I guess this is an improvement in TOME standards.

Also seconding Marson. It's pretty bad when the game is so full of filler monsters that you will be fighting freaking BEARS in High Peak ! The deviation of the monster difficulty makes the gaming experience suffer: most of the monsters are complete popcorn but you really can't afford to even kill them carelessly because there is always the chance that you might get one-shotted from out of nowhere and from full hp in one turn if take a wrong move. So you have to take even that High Peak bear seriously who, on his own, couldn't make any dent on your character's HP at all. Also it's tedious to kill monsters that really don't give anything in terms of challenge, loot or even marginal exp if have already achieved level 50.

(And, of course, what makes the above even worse are the track/arcane eye etc. talents. You can use them all the time, you should use them all the time, and probably 95 % time you do use them, you detect a monster that is probably not that much difficult than a bear. This is pretty frustrating.)

I prefered if 1) the monsters you fight would pose a threat on their own and 2) the rare threats you will face would be such that you don't get instantly killed before getting a chance to react.

Stair Guardians are totally skippable and you should take advantage of that. They aren't just random enemies, they are random bosses meant to pose a serious threat. If you're getting oneshot by them and they aren't invisible and they don't burst you down in a turn from a distance (only Archers can do this on Normal as far as I can tell), it's because you're not being careful enough.

You can skip zones if you're overleveled, although I have no idea how you're hitting level 50 before High Peak on Normal unless you're a Yeek. Unless I used Farportals, I never hit level 50 before the final fight and never got past level 45 or 46 before entering High Peak (although I only played races with at least 25% experience penalty). It's completely viable to skip zones if you somehow hit level 50 early, my Insane Marauder winner skipped almost all the optional zones after Dreadfell, with the only exceptions being Ancient Elven Ruins, Ardhungol, Eruan, and the Charred Scar.

On Normal, except in very uncommon occurrences, the only enemies that can kill you in a turn from outside LoS are the Ritch Queen (seriously nerf her blight spit already) and randbosses, which only spawn from chests and in specific areas (Farportals and High Peak). You should be more careful in these zones than usual and the game requiring you to be careful isn't unreasonable considering how hard those zones are supposed to be.

[Mankeli]

I prefered if 1) the monsters you fight would pose a threat on their own and 2) the rare threats you will face would be such that you don't get instantly killed before getting a chance to react.

^This and what the OP said. Just registered to say that. The game has potential, but the unbalanced aspect being discussed here is super frustrating.

Thanks, "the flawed gem" methaphora comes out regularly when I've discussed about TOME (in other forums too). I do think it's a good game, I wouldn't have played it if I didn't think so, but I just think it could be so much better. So yeah, frustrating is the word .

Stair Guardians are totally skippable and you should take advantage of that.

This is false. As long as there are chances of monster one-shotting you instantly nothing is "totally skippable" because the monster can kill you before you get a chance to react (if you prefer not to use the stupid tools of arcane eye etc.)

They aren't just random enemies, they are random bosses meant to pose a serious threat. If you're getting oneshot by them and they aren't invisible and they don't burst you down in a turn from a distance (only Archers can do this on Normal as far as I can tell), it's because you're not being careful enough.

Here's the thing: My winning roguelike shalore bulwark, for example, completely tanked through the final bosses and 90 % of the stair guardians. Really, the final bosses were a joke and I'm not sure my character was below 1000 HP at any time even when I didn't even bother to play fully optimally (I know that the final bosses are usually not that easy, heavily depending on your class/items, of course). However, one stair guardian could have probably killed my character in one hit because of displace damage. I suspect this because I used my bulwarks regular bump attack to test out the displace damage and got badly injured. Had I used assault with over 3000 damage, it probably would have been a KO for my character (if I understand the mechanics of displace damage correctly, that is).

You are right in that paying close attention (to monster talents in this case) helps as it did for my bulwark who didn't die but just skipped the boss. However, the problem I have with the deviation in difficulty still remains: It's bad when you roll through even the final bosses and 90 % of the stair guardians with ease but are in a verge of destruction because of pretty much ONE monster talent (still, assuming I understood it correctly). This makes facing the stairguardians especially a reading exercise: you need to find those 1-3 talents that can instantly feck your character up. At least for me, it's hard to pay attention knowing that even the next rare, often times even a stair guardian, is probably a pushover.

As I explained in my forge giant example, the monster wasn't invisible so techically if 1) The monster didn't one-shot my character from around the corner (it didn't) and 2) if I had interpreted the monsters talent pool correctly (I didn't), then I would have been able to skip it. So you are correct in that more skill/information about the game helps to avoid this kind of situations. However, 1) it could have been invisible, 2) it could have one-shotted my character from around a corner and even if we forget about 1) and 2) then 3) I still think it is problematic to have monsters hit you for damage amounts that in some cases can't be survived even in theory in one turn from full HP with the HP heaviest class in the game. It is pretty tedious to constantly check out the rare monster talent pools because even the majority of the rare monsters are completely non-threatening and may even have talents, like anti-magic disruption + spells, which completely shut them down before you even do anything! So I truly do think that some balancing of rare monster talent combinations is in order.

(And no, I won't pick Cauterize (in normal) for avoiding this because I consider it to be a band aid for, what I think is, a game design problem.)

You can skip zones if you're overleveled, although I have no idea how you're hitting level 50 before High Peak on Normal unless you're a Yeek. Unless I used Farportals, I never hit level 50 before the final fight and never got past level 45 or 46 before entering High Peak (although I only played races with at least 25% experience penalty). It's completely viable to skip zones if you somehow hit level 50 early, my Insane Marauder winner skipped almost all the optional zones after Dreadfell, with the only exceptions being Ancient Elven Ruins, Ardhungol, Eruan, and the Charred Scar.

My cornac marauder normal/roguelike hit level 50 before entering the last pride. Zero farportals were used, no corrupted oozemancer nor the dark crypt (at least not the last level). Clearly, yeek is not the only race. My 25 % exp penalty characters have reached the High Peak Sanctum on about exp level 46-47. Also I don't like skipping levels because there are the few incredibly deadly rares + final bosses you will run into at some point and it's good to be ready for them.

On Normal, except in very uncommon occurrences, the only enemies that can kill you in a turn from outside LoS are the Ritch Queen (seriously nerf her blight spit already) and randbosses, which only spawn from chests and in specific areas (Farportals and High Peak). You should be more careful in these zones than usual and the game requiring you to be careful isn't unreasonable considering how hard those zones are supposed to be.

Great, we seem to agree that the occurrences are not common, that is something. However, I still think they are too common even when they are admittably rare situations. Why? Because this is roguelike and all. You invest in your character, then you do something stupid and it dies. For me, the point of roguelikes is to heavily punish this player stupidity -the game doesn't need to be stupid too.

[Pigslayer]

I have never died to a rare on normal. I've died many times to them on nightmare and insane. I'm fine with that, since those difficulties are suppose to be "unfair". People in this thread make it sound like murder machine rares are common. You don't have to kill every monster and complete every quest to win. Yes, that means playing cautiously and potentially skipping some content.

You don't need cauterize to win the game. There are hundreds of roguelike wins recorded before prodigies were added. People had no trouble winning, even in the less balanced early versions of tome. That being said, there are some problems with rares. They generate in towns, which leads to players drowning them for exp. They're a bit too common. And most of them are harmless.

Edit:

If you get one-shot due to recklessly attacking a rare/unique/boss without inspecting it, then you probably deserve to lose. If you suddenly turn a corner and get one-shot by an monster dealing absurd amounts of damage or you get instant-killed by a monster outside your LOS, then that needs to be fixed. Fortunately, that's very rare on normal.

[Mankeli]

I have never died to a rare on normal

Good for you (although I find this extremely hard to believe unless you spam arcane eye etc constantly). Maybe you are the best player ever. However, there are people in here who have and who feel some of their losses were unjustified and/or stupid.

People in this thread make it sound like murder machine rares are common.

Nope, you just completely made that up in your head. Actually, people in this thread use the expressions like "some rares", "oneshotting is not very common" and "not all rares are problematic". Next time, I suggest reading the thread first.

You don't need cauterize to win the game.

To my knowledge, no one has said it is impossible to win the game without cauterize. Please read the thread before posting. I've never picked cauterize and have won games in roguelike and adventure mode.

There are hundreds of roguelike wins recorded before prodigies were added.

To my knowledge, no one has said winning was impossible before progies were added. Please read the thread before posting.

People had no trouble winning, even in the less balanced early versions of tome.

To my knowledge, no one said that winning was impossible in earlier versions. Please read the thread before posting.

That being said, there are some problems with rares.

Yeah.

If you get one-shot due to recklessly attacking an enemy with reflective skin/displace damage/displacement shield, then you deserve to lose.

If there are something like 5 talents of what, over a hundred (or two-hundered??), of which are dangerous to, let's say late game melee characters, and those talents happen to be extremely deadly in that you can lose your characters in one turn then I would call this a balance issue. This is not just about extremely deadly encounters, this is also about the vast majority of things being harmless (in normal). I think it's also bad that some stair bosses manage to get 0 points from your HP (with regeneration) over 5 turns while some bosses can instakill the same character in 1 turn. I don't like the ones that do nothing nor do I like those that insta-kill.

If you die because you absolutely refuse to use scouting talents or inspect monsters, then you deserve to lose.

You obviously haven't read the part where many people, including me, tried to explain why using scouting talents can lead to extreme tediousness and how some people have actually quitted playing TOME because they despise using talents that have no cost in game (you can use them whenever) but a cost in real life (time, boredom). Actually, one of those people who had stopped playing TOME came back here and in this very thread just to give his opinion concerning the negative gameplay effects of scouting talents. You may, of course, disagree with scouting being tedious: maybe you really like using arcane eye every turn it's available. However, whichever is the case, these kinds of "you deserve to lose" statements are just plain lame.

If killing every single monster and clearing every dungeon matters more to you than surviving, then you deserve to lose.

*Sigh*. No one has claimed they always need to kill all monsters always. Please, read the thread before posting.

If you suddenly turn a corner and get one-shot by an monster dealing absurd amounts of damage or you get instant-killed by a monster outside your LOS, then that needs to be fixed. Fortunately, that's very rare on normal.

Nice, this is actually what we were talking about in here. It's rare, but apparently still too common for some people, like me.

[ohioastro]

If you want arbitrary deaths and if you want to force hyper-conservative game play there are plenty of other games out there to choose from. TOME shouldn't be one of them, and I am very grateful that TOME by design rejects such an approach. This game is far from easy - the percentage of winners is small, and even players who know what they're doing can stall out, especially when getting the feel for a new class.

I view sanding the edges off of "unfair" rares as part of the balancing process - unbalanced opponents tend to be the product of changes that make for unbalanced player characters.

I'm at the stage in TOME where I'm exploring some of the trickier classes to try and get winners. There is already the high difficulty class option for the macho-types. You don't need to enforce your play style on others.

[Faeryan]

Really well spoken ohioastro, I almost believed you, that's who convincing it was.
Having played and won a few times on normal mode i can agree with everything you said. Having played (not won) on NM mode I gotta say the game needs some stuff done in higher difficulties. Regular mobs on NM feel pretty good, a bit challenging and stuff, but especially the early game rares (can't say anything about late have rares as I've only reached level 30+) feel like a death sentence whenever I see them, that is if I ever get to see them before I'm dead, even if I buy movement infusion and any and ask detect charms as soon as I'm able.

Anyone who's faced the Wuthering Thing on NM knows how hard it can be. I don't wanna play a game where similar mobs can be behind every corner.
That's the sole reason I rather win the game with every race/class combination before I go for even one win on NM.

This issue is no game breaker for me though as the be campaign it's around the corner and I still have classes to win with in the current campaign.

[Mankeli]

If you want arbitrary deaths and if you want to force hyper-conservative game play there are plenty of other games out there to choose from.

Yes, thank you. Since there are more experienced players, like ohioastro, who feel this way, then it's hard to argue that this is just a stupid n00B problem (not that people have used that expression but they have used their experience as an argument. Also I have 5, very soon to be 6 wins so I don't consider myself a complete noob anymore either).

[Faeryan]

If you want arbitrary deaths and if you want to force hyper-conservative game play there are plenty of other games out there to choose from.

Yes, thank you. Since there are more experienced players, like ohioastro, who feel this way, then it's hard to argue that this is just a stupid n00B problem (not that people have used that expression but they have used their experience as an argument. Also I have 5, very soon to be 6 wins so I don't consider myself a complete noob anymore either).

Yeah, we both know 6 is still very nyyppämode, but the thing is ToME is a game like ask other games and its main thing is to entertain, not to measure your e-peen.
If you like a game cause of its features you should be able like it cause of its, surprise surprise, features - not because it just happens to fit your playing style.

In other words I'm pretty drunk and trying to say I agree with Mankeli; the game supposed to entertain, not make feel bad, and the former is easier to accomplish by making players feel good about themselves, not bad.

[Mankeli]

Yeah, we both know 6 is still very nyyppämode, but the thing is ToME is a game like ask other games and its main thing is to entertain, not to measure your e-peen.

Depends on who you compare but I'm certainly not claiming to be an expert of any sort in TOME. And agreed about the e-peen . Very true.

In other words I'm pretty drunk and trying to say I agree with Mankeli; the game supposed to entertain, not make feel bad, and the former is easier to accomplish by making players feel good about themselves, not bad.

You go have fun now / pidä hauskaa !

[Pigslayer]

I have never died to a rare on normal

Good for you (although I find this extremely hard to believe unless you spam arcane eye etc constantly). Maybe you are the best player ever. However, there are people in here who have and who feel some of their losses were unjustified and/or stupid.

Normal is easy. If nightmare didn't exist I wouldn't play tome. I only spam scouting talents in high peak, because I always skip the stair guardians. Otherwise, I mainly use them for tracking bosses and invisible enemies.

Nope, you just completely made that up in your head. Actually, people in this thread use the expressions like "some rares", "oneshotting is not very common" and "not all rares are problematic". Next time, I suggest reading the thread first.

I read the thread. I only see people complaining about rares and threatening to ragequit over them. Dying to them on higher difficulties is part of the fun, so I don't see why they should be nerfed. Nightmare has gotten easier over time. I don't want it to end up as boring as normal.

To my knowledge, no one has said it is impossible to win the game without cauterize. Please read the thread before posting. I've never picked cauterize and have won games in roguelike and adventure mode.

Sorry, I misread one of your posts.

If there are something like 5 talents of what, over a hundred (or two-hundered??), of which are dangerous to, let's say late game melee characters, and those talents happen to be extremely deadly in that you can lose your characters in one turn then I would call this a balance issue. This is not just about extremely deadly encounters, this is also about the vast majority of things being harmless (in normal). I think it's also bad that some stair bosses manage to get 0 points from your HP (with regeneration) over 5 turns while some bosses can instakill the same character in 1 turn. I don't like the ones that do nothing nor do I like those that insta-kill.

I agree. I think tome's difficulty is odd, but I'm used to dungeon crawl's consistency. Most enemies in tome are dungeon trash, while the remaining few are potentially lethal.

You obviously haven't read the part where many people, including me, tried to explain why using scouting talents can lead to extreme tediousness and how some people have actually quitted playing TOME because they despise using talents that have no cost in game (you can use them whenever) but a cost in real life (time, boredom). Actually, one of those people who had stopped playing TOME came back here and in this very thread just to give his opinion concerning the negative gameplay effects of scouting talents. You may, of course, disagree with scouting being tedious: maybe you really like using arcane eye every turn it's available. However, whichever is the case, these kinds of "you deserve to lose" statements are just plain lame.

You don't have to use scouting talents all the time or inspect every monster, but refusing to them at all is silly. If you intentionally handicap yourself, then it's your fault if you lose. No, I don't like scouting talents much. I'd prefer it if they were all passive.

Really well spoken ohioastro, I almost believed you, that's who convincing it was.
Having played and won a few times on normal mode i can agree with everything you said. Having played (not won) on NM mode I gotta say the game needs some stuff done in higher difficulties. Regular mobs on NM feel pretty good, a bit challenging and stuff, but especially the early game rares (can't say anything about late have rares as I've only reached level 30+) feel like a death sentence whenever I see them, that is if I ever get to see them before I'm dead, even if I buy movement infusion and any and ask detect charms as soon as I'm able.

Anyone who's faced the Wuthering Thing on NM knows how hard it can be. I don't wanna play a game where similar mobs can be behind every corner.
That's the sole reason I rather win the game with every race/class combination before I go for even one win on NM.

This issue is no game breaker for me though as the be campaign it's around the corner and I still have classes to win with in the current campaign.

On nightmare, the rares are worst early on. The game gets easier, due to better loot and increased exp. Still, any rares with pets are terrifying.

[Mankeli]

I read the thread. I only see people complaining about rares and threatening to ragequit over them. Dying to them on higher difficulties is part of the fun, so I don't see why they should be nerfed. Nightmare has gotten easier over time. I don't want it to end up as boring as normal.

Yeah, I understand that people want higher difficulty levels too.

I agree. I think tome's difficulty is odd, but I'm used to dungeon crawl's consistency. Most enemies in tome are dungeon trash, while the remaining few are potentially lethal.

DCSS is the roguelike I use for measuring stick for consistency as well (it has many flaws but it has gotten much much better during the dev team's work).So I would actually want to make some of the rares harder. I don't if I've been very lucky or something but mindslayer rares, for example, have always felt like complete pushovers in normal pretty much on any given part of the game. I don't know if others agree and I don't have that many wins yet.

You don't have to use scouting talents all the time or inspect every monster, but refusing to them at all is silly. If you intentionally handicap yourself, then it's your fault if you lose. No, I don't like scouting talents much. I'd prefer it if they were all passive.

Well, now I'm starting to think that in the end we actually agree on lot of things.

You are, of course, correct in that you don't have to use the scouting talents all the time and you make a fair point in that in some places you definitely get more benefit from them than in some other places (high peak stair guardians which you mentioned, or maybe searching for Vor to get ready for his meteor strike by shielding up). So only using scouting talents in High Peak and searching for bosses in Prides or Crusher in Slime tunnels after your escape teleport failed etc (or something like that, just throwing the examples out there before going to bed) is reasonable.

My point is that you do get marginal benefit from doing so even in not so dangerous benefits: so marginal that it may fully realize only in like 1:20 games or less but it is still there. Because no matter how rare the one-shottings from invisiblity/around the corner/out-of-los are, they are there -even on normal. And it's bad if this can happen after you have already invested hours of game time on your character.

Activated scouting talents are also part of the reason I'm having problems accepting very powerful and especially invisible/out-los-sniping rares: if scounting talents were passive, then it would save me from some tedium and some time in real life too and the reduced tedium would be time added to actually checking out the monsters stats and preparing for them. Also, it would mean that the number of out-of-los/invisible/around the corner one-shotting from rares would be even lower (=0). Also, since you would still have invest points in them (class/generics) there would still be a cost associated with them.

[bpat]

Really well spoken ohioastro, I almost believed you, that's who convincing it was.
Having played and won a few times on normal mode i can agree with everything you said. Having played (not won) on NM mode I gotta say the game needs some stuff done in higher difficulties. Regular mobs on NM feel pretty good, a bit challenging and stuff, but especially the early game rares (can't say anything about late have rares as I've only reached level 30+) feel like a death sentence whenever I see them, that is if I ever get to see them before I'm dead, even if I buy movement infusion and any and ask detect charms as soon as I'm able.

Anyone who's faced the Wuthering Thing on NM knows how hard it can be. I don't wanna play a game where similar mobs can be behind every corner.
That's the sole reason I rather win the game with every race/class combination before I go for even one win on NM.

This issue is no game breaker for me though as the be campaign it's around the corner and I still have classes to win with in the current campaign.

I agree about early game rares and I started a thread about the issue a while ago, but I don't think we came to any real conclusions. I think this issue could be solved by reducing the level scaling for the first two or three dungeons on higher difficulties or by increasing the starting money to 50g, but outside the early game I haven't had any major issues with rares on Nightmare. If you're dying early on Nightmare as a melee character, I suggest picking up a Mindblast Torque from Zigur to help you out. I would actually support a patch that gives all characters a t3 Mindblast Torque initially but unfortunately there's no way that's going to happen.

[Doctornull]

I would actually support a patch that gives all characters a t3 Mindblast Torque initially but unfortunately there's no way that's going to happen.

Addons can do that.

Heck, I can probably do that.

Anything else that ought to be on the Torque?