ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Is anyone else finding the first level of Temporal Rift kind of absurdly difficult these days? It's always been tough--for some classes in particular--but now I'm thinking I'm just gonna start skipping it altogether.

So I lost a lvl 34 (I think) slinger there last night, which is the second high-level slinger in the past week, which is in addition to all the other good builds that zone has killed. I don't think I'm a terrible player--this character in particular easily cleared the Dark Crypt, Dreadfell, and even managed to survive the Ambush encounter (harrowing, but I was pretty proud of that win). He laughed while slaughtering radiant horrors. So, I figured I'd just clean up the last of the side levels before heading east, and I'd skipped the Rift earlier as I was still in my tender years when I first found the portal in Daikara.

I made it about a third of the way across that temporal rift zone before I died pathetically, then pathetically died again after my BoL resurrection. This character focused on Rapid Shot (probably not ideal for this zone), and at that point each shot was dealing somewhere between 100 to 300 damage. I was sporting a wild infusion, regen, controlled phase door, movement infusion, healing charm, disengage, Eden's Guile--all ending up on cooldown as I tried to escape the crowds of tele-whatevers, only to end up teleported right back in to the middle of them on every other turn.

Maybe Archer-types have a particularly difficult time, seeing as how their shots travel somewhat slowly and the televorta's have a penchant for swapping places with you at the last second, so you end up just shooting yourself. But all the other features of the level are just kind of ridiculous--everything on the level descends on you at once, they resist status effects while loading you down with status effects, they hit pretty hard (and often, and en masse), they constantly teleport you around rendering most of your escape options futile....

Used to be you could find favorable positioning and pick them off individually, but that's no longer the case what with that swap talent (which I understand has been toned down in the next beta). The best strategy I can think of now involves having multiple teleport options and hoping one of them lands you near the exit. Other than that, though, I think I'll just be skipping it entirely (unless playing a class that can hit instantly with high damage).

I'll fix it so Swap requires line of effect (not line of site since that doesn't work in the Rift). In the SVN the swap is already resistable (with saves and teleport immunity) and the frequency cut in half.

Ah, okay. And in retrospect that wasn't meant as a whiny "this sucks/fix it" kind of post, but more of a "damn this is hard/is it just me?" kind of post (not that I mind the changes ).

I certainly don't mind having tough, challenge-type areas, and that place in particular isn't hugely rewarding for most classes. It just occurred to me last night that that one level has, surprisingly, become one of the most feared places in the game to me (at least for some classes).

The swap change wasn't meant to increase the challenge level but to prevent players from getting stuck in the zone. The way the targeting works on it though (or actually the range is higher is the issue) it made finding a safe haven in the zone nearly impossible.

In other words, I think the zone was hard enough My intention wasn't to make it more brutal.

edge2054 wrote:The swap change wasn't meant to increase the challenge level but to prevent players from getting stuck in the zone. The way the targeting works on it though (or actually the range is higher is the issue) it made finding a safe haven in the zone nearly impossible.

In other words, I think the zone was hard enough My intention wasn't to make it more brutal.

Well, it has some bad side effects.

EDIT: well, for some reason, trying to make an ascii map doesn't really work, it formats weirdly. I'll try to explain.

If you and the enemy are separated by the wall and the only way to reach each other is going the long way around to an opening (15-20) tiles, the swapping makes it very annoying.

If the swap thing is supposed to solve people getting stuck, then I'm not sure it's the most elegant of solutions. I don't want to pass judgment before I've seen the new version, but surely there are better ways?

EDIT #2: Oh brilliant. Changing the graphics style in the temporal rift broke my game.

A floodfill algorithm on level generation would be more effective at stopping people getting stuck :/

The new Swap requires line of effect. In other words if the teluvorta can't project to the target (ie there's a wall between them) the target won't be put on the list of viable targets for the swap.

Floodfill would be nice but I'm sure it's not that easy or otherwise that zone generator already would use one. (It's forest I believe so its the same issue that's causing scrolls to get hidden in walls in Trollmire).

supermini wrote:EDIT #2: Oh brilliant. Changing the graphics style in the temporal rift broke my game.

Yeah, attempting to save scum on that level will do the same thing. As a last resort, I've tried doing the ctrl-alt-delete escape method (I know, I know--I'm a bad person), reloading after killing the process resulted in constant lua errors all referencing the Swap talent. I then used the debug mode to cheat my way past that level to avoid the lua errors, but the game then wouldn't generate an exit after defeating the twins.

I think that was part of my frustration--once you enter, there's literally no turning back.

That was a bug that's fixed in the SVN.