ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm willing to give this game a few more chances, but I'm about to quit in frustration. First off I'm not new at roguelikes, and even had a couple of Tome winners back before it became it's current incarnation. I've also played ZAngband, Angband, UnAngband, Moria, Nethack, ADOM, and probably others, but never completed any of those. I'm mentioning those because I've never been as frustrated with any other roguelike as much as this one.

So on with the details. I've been playing a dwarf bulwark - haven't moved into any other race/class, just to try to 'get into it' and learn the ropes on one character. After about 20 deaths excluding abortive starts where I die in Reknor, I've run into an impasse. It seems that when I die, there's nothing at all I can do about it, and I think the problem is fundamental to the game as it was designed.

In ToME, there are no potions, scrolls, and tools are relegated to either magic wands/staves or duplicating some minor abilities that either my dwarf doesn't need or can't use. So my toolset that I have to use is pretty much the following 3 things: skills, equipment, and infusions. It could be that I'm investing in the wrong skillset, but if anyone wants to tell me where my build went wrong, feel free, but I'm going to explain my problem.

So, skills. I invested in offensive shield skills and as much as possible in general accuracy, weaponmastery, and armor. I invest in that skill that gives extra spell save (forgot the name for the time being) because I can see a glaring weakness in the character to magic/mind/whatever. It isn't enough. Damage types are so varied that I just can't cover my bases to a minimal extent. I was killed once by a trap doing 125 arcane a hit, and I have no idea if any skill could have helped with that. There's no skill that gives mind resistance that I can tell, and the 'recover from effects' skill doesn't look attractive because it's not powerful enough. If something is going to kill me with 8 bad effects on the stack at once within 3 turns, recovering from an effect every few turns doesn't do any good. And if there were more skills I wouldn't be able to invest in them because I'd have to weaken my build by spreading out my points even more.

For equipment, there's just not enough protection available to guard against the things I'm most vulnerable to. I may be a tank, but if a weak mind creature makes me act randomly it is all for nothing if I don't recover. So even if I see a halfway decent piece of armor with protection from something I almost always pass it up. Why? Because the protection is too narrow. Why downgrade my armor rating just to get 10% resistance to electricity? The resistances offered just aren't big enough or broad enough. I do swap some things if I know what I'm getting into, but so far that's really only been useful a single place - the lightning elemental attack on the Hobbit-town (yeah, I know, I forgot the name) - and even then I only got something like resist lightning +15% (which means that if my resistance is one, squat...) and a torc that I could activate to reduce electrical damage 15pts a turn, which is pretty weak when creatures are zapping me for 150 a pop. So I suggest that the narrow typical roguelike set of resistance buffs on equipment is not good enough any more.

Infusions - these are the worst offenders. So we don't have scrolls, potions, and wands of anything useful anymore, but we get infusions. What good are they when some random undead puts them in cooldown for 6 turns? Dead. Why do I invest so much time collecting the only tools I can find only to have them all taken away when they matter? The only way to teleport away is with an infusion. My healing is all infusions. My +600% movement (that I can't even attack while using) is an infusion. I haven't yet found any artifacts which give any escape skills, the most powerful being a torc that allows me to cast Juggernaut (ignore 20% damage or so), but it's totally ineffective. Always having some form of escape is a core tenet of the roguelike - you learn it early and you always abide by it. But I am given no other options in Tome 4. I was recently awarded my most frustrating death, when I opened a grave in Daikara only to meet a named wraith that gave me about 8 bad conditions all at once and was able to kill my super-armored 575 hp dwarf (compared to his level) in three turns without any chance to respond. All infusions were on cooldown. I had an 80% chance each turn to do something random. I died because I had no options.

I'm well aware that roguelikes are punishingly hard. The random deaths are expected, in a certain quantity. But ToME has risen to a new level of frustrating for me.

So the reason I'm writing all this is because I've never had the experience before in a roguelike so often that there was really nothing else I could have done. When I played Nethack, I died a lot, but I learned a lot, and there were innumerable times where I looked back on my death and realized what I could have done, but not with ToME 4. So please, give me the tools I need to experience challenges and win, not just a binary results of beating them down easily or dying helplessly. Give me more options (or at least tell me why I stink...).

Thanks for listening...

EDITS: English!

I find the same problems in general with Tome. I've flitted about with a number of classes and it's basically the same story, except with lots more places to make mistakes make a terrible build by investing in underwhelming skills, or failing to grok the "true" build intention.

Further, the gameplay goes like this:
1. Hit Autoexplore
2. Autoexplore stops when you find the next "windshield" monster to steamroll. Very boring.
3. Go to step 1. Repeat for 30 minutes
4. Find a Boss or Rare who probably can kill you within 3-6 turns. Desperately try not to die as they point out that your build actually sucks against anything challenging.
5. Either die, or go to step 1.

I'm desperately trying to find what others like in the game. But the early game is so boring, and then by the mid-game I usually end up running across some boss that just crushes me in a few turns.

Perhaps you're not investing enough into status effect protection? Wild infusions are almost always pretty critical on my characters - physical for stun or pin and mental for confusion. Furthermore, stun and confuse immunity are a million times more useful than any damage resistance, and bulwarks get a sustain that gives them +65% stun immunity, which makes it pretty easy to push up to 100% early.

Try something other than a bulwark? It's probably one of the harder classes to play, as it offers few ranged or recovery options. You are right about individual damage resistances - especially in the early game, they aren't worth trying to stack. Confusion immunity is something you'll want to build on any class that is low on mind save. I checked your profile, Xitax, to see if there was anything glaringly wrong with your build, but it doesn't seem like it has updated in a long time. I'll admit that the lack of "panic button" items has taken me a long time to get used to; I find it helpful to be preemptive with inscriptions and other recovery skills, though that can require spoilerish knowledge and some luck.

It's worth noting that ToME isn't very Nethack-like at all, so it might just not be your thing.

@mrrstark: If you find the early game too boring, you can usually get along fine with only doing two or three of the starting dungeons and then moving to the second tier. The level scaling is pretty forgiving.

bricks wrote:@mrrstark: If you find the early game too boring, you can usually get along fine with only doing two or three of the starting dungeons and then moving to the second tier. The level scaling is pretty forgiving.

Actually, that's a really good call. I've been 100% clearing the starter zones because I thought I basically had to to have any chance in the later zones. Maybe that's actually working against me?

I admit I don't understand how the zone scaling works, and I guess similarly, what the expected path through the game is in the face of scaling.

Zones are scaled to your level the first time you enter an area that can generate enemies, with upper and lower limits. This page has a list of all zones in the game and their limits. For example, the Tier 2 dungeons scale from 7 to 16 and Dreadfell starts at 15.

I actually find bulwarks as one of the easier classes to play as. I'm at the point now where I can pretty much always make it east with a bulwark - and there are very few deaths where I don't immediately go "Ah, I should've done this instead." Such as my most recent one, where I was trapped and forgot I had a psychoport torque.
That was my first time trying antimagic on a bulwark, though, so I expected to make a few stupid mistakes.

Skills:
I think you are severely underestimating the status recovery skill. With 5 points and high enough constitution you can get around a 70% chance to remove an effect each turn. I view it as reducing the average duration of confusion to 2 turns. It sounds like every time you died to some sort of status effect, and not melee damage - so you should probably divert some points from armour training into that skill. Also, spell save is of questionable importance, especially in the first half of the game. I can't think of too many 'bad' magical status effects. If you really need to you can just swap in a magical wild infusion. The first skill ain't half bad either - it lets you just ignore a lot of poison type effects, and the healing trigger is fairly handy as well.

(The arcane trap is broken and has been fixed in the next version)

Equipment:
Again, I think that you're overestimating armour rating. If your main complaint is dying from status effects, then you should start weighing status effect defense higher than basic armour points.

Infusions:
The movement infusion is a great escape tool - primarily, it's instant use, so it can never be put on cooldown from being stunned. I wouldn't use it for offense much. And as a bulwark, you shouldn't have much trouble with being stunned, anyway. Shield Wall alone gets you a 65% resistance, and grounding equipment is fairly plentiful - it shouldn't be hard to get up to 100%. I prefer to just keep around a physical wild infusion (which also can't be put on cooldown from stun), though, and use my equipment to focus on other things. Even if your teleport rune gets put on cooldown, you can just pop the wild infusion, take 2 steps back, and then teleport.

For escape talents on equipment, there's torques of psychoportation, boots of phasing, amulets of teleportation, Eden's Guile, that cloak with 2 phase doors, earthrune hats, warding hats, and rings of pilfering. I'm sure I missed one or two there.

Stun and Confusion are the two most debilitating common status effects; stun starts showing up almost immediately depending on your start, so building up resistance to it quickly helps a lot. Confusion starts becoming frequent in the Maze and Daikara, so keep an eye out for stuff that boosts confusion resistance as well.

It's worth noting that those effects are just as effective on most enemies as they are on you, including rares and bosses, so if you run across something dangerous, try to keep it disabled.

So, skills. I invested in offensive shield skills and as much as possible in general accuracy, weaponmastery, and armor. I invest in that skill that gives extra spell save (forgot the name for the time being) because I can see a glaring weakness in the character to magic/mind/whatever. It isn't enough. Damage types are so varied that I just can't cover my bases to a minimal extent. I was killed once by a trap doing 125 arcane a hit, and I have no idea if any skill could have helped with that. There's no skill that gives mind resistance that I can tell, and the 'recover from effects' skill doesn't look attractive because it's not powerful enough. If something is going to kill me with 8 bad effects on the stack at once within 3 turns, recovering from an effect every few turns doesn't do any good. And if there were more skills I wouldn't be able to invest in them because I'd have to weaken my build by spreading out my points even more.

Wrong way to be thinking, I'm afraid.

Single skills in ToME, even at L1, can often have far more impact than pumping another point into a skill you already have. Armor Training has linear returns, yes, but Weapon Mastery and Accuracy do not, instead having diminishing returns-For every twenty "real" points you put into a Power stat, Accuracy, Defense or a Save, it requires one more "real" point per point for one "modified" point.

So for example, to boost from 15 to 20 you need 5 points, as listed on your equipment, skills, whatever. For 20 to 25 on your character, though, you need 10 points as listed. For 40 to 45, you need 15 points. Etc. It can be a bit of a trap overly focusing your build-consider your other options a little bit before just deciding that you'll die from branching out. Of course, overly building skills and having nothing but 1s in everything can be equally dangerous, so you do have to strike a balance.

To boot, you're focusing heavily on offensive skills? You're playing a Bulwark. You're a defense tank. Shield Wall is your money skill. I admit, I made the same mistake when I first started, but I wasn't too surprised when I figured out it was a mistake. (By the way, Shield Wall gives you a ton of Stun resistance, so you have a lot less chance of being Stun killed then.)

For saves, two races have Save skills. Power is Money on Dwarves can serve you well, but if you're finding your saves aren't high enough early, try running a Thalore-their save skill doesn't run off money, is available earlier, and is also excellent. I'm not a big Thalore fan, but that's definitely a selling point they have, for me.

The recover from status every turn skill is free, and can work the moment a status comes in. It is better thought of as a save check that keeps checking every turn, rather than status curing. In that light, it's very good status protection, isn't it? Especially since, with very high Con, it can reach 50%+.

Infusions - these are the worst offenders. So we don't have scrolls, potions, and wands of anything useful anymore, but we get infusions. What good are they when some random undead puts them in cooldown for 6 turns? Dead. Why do I invest so much time collecting the only tools I can find only to have them all taken away when they matter? The only way to teleport away is with an infusion. My healing is all infusions. My +600% movement (that I can't even attack while using) is an infusion. I haven't yet found any artifacts which give any escape skills, the most powerful being a torc that allows me to cast Juggernaut (ignore 20% damage or so), but it's totally ineffective. Always having some form of escape is a core tenet of the roguelike - you learn it early and you always abide by it. But I am given no other options in Tome 4. I was recently awarded my most frustrating death, when I opened a grave in Daikara only to meet a named wraith that gave me about 8 bad conditions all at once and was able to kill my super-armored 575 hp dwarf (compared to his level) in three turns without any chance to respond. All infusions were on cooldown. I had an 80% chance each turn to do something random. I died because I had no options.

The big thing I'm not seeing mentioned is your Wild infusion. Wilds that cure physicals will cure Stun instantly and cannot be set on cooldown by Stun-though, they do have problems if you have other status on you at the time-while Wilds that cure Mental can cure Confusion. Physical/Mental Wilds are extremely useful, though uncommon, as they can catch either if they show up. They're hardly perfect-a Physical or Mental Wild may hit another status of that classification if you have one as well-but usually they're fine if you're suddenly Stunned or Confused, which are definitely two of the most dangerous status.

There are Charms that can teleport you as well, that can never be set on cooldown. Psychoportation. They're not too common, but they're well worth considering if you see one.

Also, this is why I highly recommend physical characters-who have none of these things through their skillset, often-should buy more Infusion/Rune slots. You can do this by saving a Category Point when you get one, then attempting to use a Rune/Infusion when you're full up on three. You'll be given the option there(you are also informed of this the first time you get three infusions, in the overwrite screen). For a Bulwark, it is not at all unreasonable to get slots to their maximum of five with your first two Category Points, and this incredibly helps your survival rate.

As to equipment...well, I will grant that later equipment has the broad spectrum defenses you're craving, and that earlier equips have some issues. Later enemies get more and more competent and PC-like in skillset, but your equipment does indeed tend to be incredibly powerful. Earlier equips tend to not cover status holes as well as they probably should, for those that want to stack up on them.

There are some more advanced things to note, too. Often you can just walk off Stun. You're a Bulwark-your Defense and Armor both can be very near game-best, so an enemy trying to smack you as you walk off will generally not be felt unless they have magical backup-at which point, tread more carefully. There's magical stuns, but they're much less common than physical.

Confusion is harder to deal with, but items cannot be interrupted by Confusion, so any item skills you have will still work 100%. Instants also always work while you're confused, so Wilds can't be stopped there either.

My biggest advice, though? Try some other combo. It's easy to get suckered into a trap by ToME being overwhelming, and to want to use the most traditionally simple combo, the hulking, optimally dwarvish, tank. However, ToME has a spectacular range of class designs, with distinctive playstyles, and while Bulwark's a good class, I would not rate it as one of the top tier ones.

To boot, Berserker is even simpler than Bulwark-build up Berserker(the skill), ignore your feeling about the -10 to Defense and Armor and just go with it anyways, let your HP do the tanking, and hit people really hard with a two-hander is generally good Berserker strategy for quite a while. And they have some really excellent skills that give them large amounts more offense and passive regeneration through their offense.

Hope some of this is helpful advice!

I have to repeat the advice of trying other combos. Dwarves have a very hard start, and bulwarks can be fairly equipment reliant. Alchemist or Berserker are fun classes to try where you can concentrate on offensive damage more and enjoy killing things fairly easily.

Beware that some areas are just hard, like the storm over Derth quest or the many high level vaults, and it can sometimes be best to ignore these.

If you have any suggestions for changes or improvements then voice them - DarkGod is very responsive and fresh viewpoints are always welcome.

Grey wrote:I have to repeat the advice of trying other combos. Dwarves have a very hard start...

Definitely echoing this.

I would second the alchemist suggestion. Beyond that...

- Know what your defenses defend against. Armor, for example, defends against melee attacks. If you have enough armor that you're doing fine against the melee attacks, then you don't need any more, and should focus on other things.
- If you aren't missing much, don't bother to buy more accuracy.
- Stat resists and saves are somewhat of an either/or proposition. It's not entirely the case, but if you're 100% on your stat resists, your saves aren't that big a deal, and if you have saves cranked through the roof, your stat resists aren't doing much for you. Saves in particular seem to be the sort of thing that some folks (like me!) try to really crank to get the benefits of really cranking them, and a lot of folks pretty much ignore without much loss. In your case, I'd probably suggest going with "ignore them" until you get your feet under you.
- Bulwarks in particular tend to rely pretty heavily on standard bump attacks. Build up your defenses and utilities first, possibly investing in one or two good attacks along the way.
- If you're playing a bulwark, you ought to have a shield. If you have a shield, you ought to be teaching yourself how and when to parry effectively.
- damage when hit is, in some ways, one of the better defensive stats there is - it lets your enemies batter themselves to death on you, even while you're throwing around the "try to stop dying" powers.
- If you aren't playing adventurer mode, you should start. Cuts the frustration *way* down for the "figuring out how this all works" phase. Note that I am saying this as one of the guys who campaigned to keep roguelike mode when the question was being asked.

Invest in combat accuracy, top priority

daftigod - how so? If you're hitting fine as you are, why would you need more combat accuracy? Generally, I find that any class that's heavy on the dex can very nearly ignore it, and even the ones that skip dex entirely are hitting pretty consistently with only a point invested every once in a while.

+1 for this thread. I agree with original poster.
It is frustrating to get into a situation where I even in hindsight can't see any way to escape death. I hope Tome will continue to balance & enhance the player experience.