ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hi everybody. I'm going to gripe for my first post. I've played more roguelikes than I like to admit. There was a time where I was borderline obsessed with ADOM. I joined the board because I feel VERY strongly about the trollmire, and I wanted to share my n00b experience.

I stumbled upon TE4 after getting Tome2 on my android. I fired it up, played the tutorial, and jumped in as a human fighter (of some flavor I can't remember). My initial experience almost made me uninstall and quit. I'm glad I gave the game a second shot, as playing as a Thaloren Elf (spelling, I know) made things make sense to me.

As a new player, the Trollmire is a very confusing place. With no overt goal, and such a random and scattered map, it seemed to me to be a pointless place to kill weak monsters. It wasn't until after playing other races, with different starting locations, that I realized that there was more to the trollmire.

Even with my new understanding on early game mechanics, I still HATE the trollmire. I just don't think it's fun to play. All other early locations have some sort of structure. The trollmire is a random stagger through the forest killing ants. Some kind of trail, path, or some sort of structure would make this area much more n00b friendly, and IMHO a more fun location to explore.

/rant

I'm loving TE4, but I think the trollmire needs to be nuked from orbit.

weazil

Did you read the opening dialog when you started as the human fighter? It should have given you some foresight about this being your first adventure and you wanting to test your meddle in a forest known for having trolls. And, as an experienced roguelike player, I'm surprised you didn't just find stairs, go down stairs, kill more things until you find stairs, then repeat. 'cause, you know, that's what we all do anyway. ;)

Y'know a winding clear path through the trollmire would be quite cool, and would add a feeling of purpose to the start. The rest of the level would still be the same copses of trees, but you don't have to veer off the track if you don't want to.

A path through the mire might be interesting, yeah. Maybe a series of small troll camps leading toward the down stairs, with the areas around them being populated by not-trolls. The player could decide to either go through the more easily navigated, more directed, troll-filled middle (maybe add some lower level troll elites, just to make the fact that it's more dangerous more obvious), or strike out along the less navigable, less XP/loot filled edges.

Something to make th'old mire more spicy, really. It's not my least favorite of the first tier dungeons (the yeek ones, th'dwarf start, kor'pul, and the rhaloren camp hold that honor, due to not being lit), but it's certainly a bit of a PitA. Especially for folks that don't like to mouse move, hum.

The lore scramble in Trollmire is my least favorite part. It does seem like a rather dull beginning to ToME, when compared to the Scintillating Caves and Escape from Reknor. (Hell, at least it's snowing in Norgos's Lair.) I'll admit that I also gave ToME a shot, was trounced by an unending mob of trolls and snakes, and then gave up. Really glad I came back to it. A new level generator for Trollmire (and really, any zone that uses the same scheme) would be swell.

Somewhat off-topic thought; an introduction to escorts would be a nice addition to the tutorial. New players are bound to encounter an escort almost immediately anyway.

I don't like the current Trollmire either. I always do it third (or even as late as fifth, with dwarves). I prefer to start in Norgos' Lair. One of the major reasons for this is that I cannot receive escort quests in Norgos' Lair (unless I'm a Thalore), so I'll have a few levels on me (and therefore on the escort) by the time they start showing up, and therefore they'll have a bit better chance of survival. But the second reason is simply the horrible, horrible slog through the Trollmire's tedious layout.

I really like Grey's suggestion of a partially open, partially same-as-now layout instead, especially if the damned lore can be guaranteed to be within X tiles of the open area.

Another user chiming in to say that I was almost driven away from ToME by the Trollmire. It's just not a very good starting dungeon. A major issue is that it's easy to miss the lore items or the stairs to the next zome and get completely confused. It also just doesn't feel like you're exploring anything interesting.

Personally, I'd suggest making Kor'Pul the dungeon humans start in instead. I mean, it'd make no mechanical difference, since you can just leave and enter the one you want (except that, I guess, you could get escorts on Trollmire 1 and not on Kor'Pul 1, then), but in general Kor'Pul seems much more friendly and interesting.

It was Kor'pul at one point, ha! Actually, switching it back might be friendly nowadays, I'unno. The problem in the past was that the Shade was a lot more dangerous than Bill (and certainly Prox, now) for a long, long, time. Shade boy had a good chance of doing a one-action-on-your-part (stepping into range of the Shade's spells being that action) insta-kill on a lot of characters. Freeze and mana thrust (especially if you don't know by experience which tile will trigger the shade coming after you) is still a damn deadly combination, definitely worse than Prox or Norgos, possibly even the Spellblaze Crystal. In previous betas, it wasn't just deadly, it was outright murderous.

But now... less so, less so. Something to consider, anyway~

Hah, that's funny. Kor'Pul used to be the starting dungeon... it was changed to Trollmire because Kor'Pul was simply too dangerous. Skeleton mages attacking you with ranged spells from out of lantern range are just not fun.

Of course, at the time the switch was made, Trollmire had the same layout as the Old Forest. It was much nicer then.

Later, DarkGod decided he wanted Trollmire to have a more "natural" layout, so we have the current one.

Heh, I did actually read the dialogue at the start, but the goal of "exploring the trollmire and seeing what lurks there" is not a very motivating mission (at least until you learn that it means to find and kill the boss). I explored for a while, then decided I learned that some trolls and snakes are what lurks there, and without any sign of progress, decided to explore elsewhere. I really liked Norgos' lair because it was clear where I had been and where I needed to still explore. The trollmire just feels random.

I don't think Kor'pul would be a good start because that boss is too tough (but I may be showing my n00bishness a little). I just think the current trollmire needs some sort of direction. Perhaps some winding and branching animal trails or tracks of destruction leading to different areas.

I'm glad to see that others agree, or at least are resisting the urge to flame.

Stoopid n00b, I pwns.... no, no, just kidding, I agree with you as well.

Just wanted to say that the trollmire is literally the only area in the game where I feel compelled to just click on random unexplored areas of the map rather than actually 'playing' my way in that direction. The fact that all of the lore in this area is required to open the path to Bill is just salt in the wounds.

Heh, I've actually taken to completely ignoring Bill until at least post home-fortress, simply to avoid having to hunt down those bloody lore pieces. Getting the lore from the library at home opens up Bill's spot just fine.

Can actually be a nice thing, really. Bill scales on up with you -- my latest character didn't kill him until returning from the east, and the trolls and junk were dropping stralite and whatever. Bill 'imself didn't drop crap worth crap, but still.

Frumple wrote:Getting the lore from the library at home opens up Bill's spot just fine.

!!

Frumple wrote:It was Kor'pul at one point, ha! Actually, switching it back might be friendly nowadays, I'unno. The problem in the past was that the Shade was a lot more dangerous than Bill (and certainly Prox, now) for a long, long, time. Shade boy had a good chance of doing a one-action-on-your-part (stepping into range of the Shade's spells being that action) insta-kill on a lot of characters. Freeze and mana thrust (especially if you don't know by experience which tile will trigger the shade coming after you) is still a damn deadly combination, definitely worse than Prox or Norgos, possibly even the Spellblaze Crystal. In previous betas, it wasn't just deadly, it was outright murderous.

But now... less so, less so. Something to consider, anyway~

Personally, I'd rather have "wow, that's hard" than "this area isn't any fun."

The current layout to the Trollmire is just not-fun.

Though, granted, perhaps the best solution is to make it more fun rather than to switch the starting dungeon. It's just that it's particularly bad that one of the worst levels in ToME is also the first thing many players are going to see.

If I had to list my problems with it:

First, yeah, it's directionless. There's no sense of progress or exploration. This could be solved by, perhaps, dividing it into big open areas with paths through thicker walls of trees -- maybe each section consists of four or five huge glades of varying sizes, or some such thing.

Second, and much more annoyingly, it's easy to miss the stairs to the next area, because there's nothing to indicate where they are. Some of my worst memories of ToME are of having to go over the edge one tile at a time because I couldn't find the exit. This is made even worse for new players who don't know how it works, because if they miss even one piece of lore, there won't BE an exit on the second-to-last level, and there's nothing to indicate why, so the logical assumption is to assume that they overlooked it and to search harder along that edge.

Maybe make each level one huge circular glade with walls around the edges, and clear paths indicating the entrance and exit. (I would also eliminate the lore-hunt for Bill completely -- there's already more than enough warnings there, and it doesn't really add anything.)

Aquillion wrote:This is made even worse for new players who don't know how it works, because if they miss even one piece of lore, there won't BE an exit on the second-to-last level, and there's nothing to indicate why, so the logical assumption is to assume that they overlooked it and to search harder along that edge.

Wait, wait, what? Trollmire is three levels deep, the same as all the other first tier dungeons, and you certainly don't need any lore to reach Mire 3. The lore is only for access to what amounts to a special vault, or separate level, sorta' like the OF -> Nur -> Fortress thing. Though the Fortress is a somewhat poor comparison, as Nur itself has no boss without lore, but Trollmire does. Still, it stands. Bill's encounter is perpendicular to the actual Trollmire experience, not an extension of it. Prox is the Trollmire boss, nowadays. Prox could stand some lore, though. He's kinda' faceless at the moment.

If that was the worry, I'd suggest upping Bill's power (again) and/or making the Bill fight more dangerous, to truly separate the mire's difficulty from the special level.

It would be kinda' nice to have more stuff like Bill's encounter laying around, though. Side areas of greater risk, but greater reward. Possibly allow for more mutually exclusive stuff, like Telmur and the Shoeimp, only divided by difficulty instead of a particularly slanted reward. Would also help keep the XP bloat down.