ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I find it is very atmospheric, but I also find its not as playable... Does the algorithm have a dense/sparseness factor? As in, maybe if the forest was less dense it'll be more playable? (But also possibly more dangerous I guess)...

yeah, I find that for the most part I tend to skip the trollshaws now as it is a pain to navigate through on a laptop (at least).

If it helps, the exit is always somewhere on the right edge of the screen.

But yeah, it's overly dense right now.

Agreed for what it's worth. The new trollshaws are brilliantly forest-like and well-done ... but no fun.

Canderel wrote:As in, maybe if the forest was less dense it'll be more playable? (But also possibly more dangerous I guess)...

I'd find it less dangerous, if it were more open. But then, I've had the best results with ranged attackers (archers, mages, summoners). (Except for that one Fighter who did really well.) I'd much rather be able to see the monsters at a distance, than to come upon them suddenly while going around a tree.

(It's also because the monsters in this area are all non-ranged attackers. If there were skeleton archers in the Trollshaws, it would be a completely different matter.)

Lately, my strategy has been to head to the town almost immediately, get a couple phase door scrolls, do the Trollshaws until I'm level 5, then do the Old Forest. I don't even bother taking out the bosses unless I want their artifact drops for that specific character. I've never yet had a character who wants Bill's drop, so... no point killing him, eh?

I played a ghoul berserker that went straight for Bill. But I really have found myself going Old Forest then Maze simply because they are actually kind of easy now that I'm familiar with them and the new feel of the game; and the boss drops are almost universally good for all my characters that I play. That, and the bosses themselves I've come to find are a bit of a pushover (except for Old Man Willow with a hobbit slinger... still haven't beaten him with one of those). I do like the bit of a makeover for the Trollshaws though, seems to keep things more interesting for more character types.

Heh, along the lines of skipping dungeons, last few runs I hit level 2 in the shaws (or maybe amon, but that's risky), then went Old Forest -> Tol Falas, skipping everything else; Amon's got the doom boss, Shaws is a navigation hell, the Maze is trap hell (though easy to navigate), and in the sandpit, the walls kill you. If I could skip Tol Falas, I'd do that too. Shame there's no way to lure the Master somewhere else...

Honestly, most of the levels are pretty brilliant, but they cause a cautious player -- and T4's induced insta-death paranoia worse than any RL I've played -- to go 'haha, no' and go around. It's kind of an interesting meta-choice for the player, albeit a bloody annoying one to have to make, heh.

I find it annoying purely because I can't be assed to complete the whole map. Normally I did so in Beta2 trollshaws. It was also much easier to search for items and so on.

I always kill Bill. heh.

My wyrmic char had the most interesting method, I'd use ice claw, wing buffet then heal and repeat.