ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've been running tonnes of chars on rogue mode for b42, and keep striking crazy instances of lack of balance. Powerful characters (for their level) are suddenly instakilled by overpowered critters, or fire and paralysing traps side by side burn up 600 HP in one turn, from which you can't escape.

But this one takes the cake. I'm in Kor Pul, lvl 2, and I'm a lvl 11 Cornac Cursed. I open a vault, and guess what greets me .....



Yes, that's right, a lvl 25 ELITE fire wyrm, with 796 hit points. It has Fire Breath (5) and can do 228 HP dmg with this one talent, and two confusing talents. At this stage of the game, as is often the case, I have no mental infusions as I've yet to find one. I also have found no phase door or teleport, so I'm stuck here with my fiery friend.

Surely it could be coded to avoid such ridiculous game-wrecking encounters????

Hmm... The root of the problem might be that you entered at level 11. The dungeon is scaled when you enter, and has upper cap of 5, but obviously this does not apply to vaults, which are always of higher level - don't follow the cap. I wonder if the vaults are scaled to the user (or even multiplied by user/dungeon scaling ). In that case the RNG was very mean to you.

A wyrm in Kor Pul does feel like overkill, though, so you have my sympathies.

I think some of the vaults are just silly with how overpowered they can be. +10 levels on an enemy is fine when you're level 40, but just insane at level 10. Many vaults are kinda boring and predictable so it's easy to get too relaxed about them.

I've opened thousands of vaults, but rarely does something like this appear. Particularly when I'm a lvl 10 character.

There was a lucky aftermath - the wyrm was sleeping and didn't notice me, so I just walked away!!!!! then died to two rares together smashing me before I did anything (

darkgod wrote:

I open a vault

hmmmm it's a fine excuse for roguelike pros, but... new players may not quite follow that logic.

Level 25 enemies are the norm in early vaults from what I can tell so it's always a risk you take diving in there. The rest of this is a case study in "why you should hunt for movement/escape items/skills before taking big risks".

Those new to RL are probably playing on normal and would have a life to burn as they learn the ins and outs of vaults, level scaling, out of depth stuff, etc...

Vaults are risk/reward. Sometimes, in Roguelikes in general, you need to decide the risk is or is not worth the reward.

ToME is pretty nice about that in general, powerful escape options abound and the actual rewards are worth considering.

I suppose some more obvious "Sealed door=risky" correlation in a tutorial would be good, but in general I don't see anything wrong with the concept. Go into a vault, take your life into your own hands...or, possibly just take a bunch of loot into your hands. Or manage to take down something risky and get the loot too. Or be clever and find a way to status out a risk temporarily, or forceably teleport it(of course, that means it is wandering around somewhere...), etc.

Grey wrote:I think some of the vaults are just silly with how overpowered they can be. +10 levels on an enemy is fine when you're level 40, but just insane at level 10. Many vaults are kinda boring and predictable so it's easy to get too relaxed about them.

Maybe a % multiplier would be better? Hrmmm

That is nothing.
I opened a vault on level 1 of ID and got a level 47 demony thing.

ID has basically zero checks on that sort of thing

You can get level fifty demons in an ID one vault, and pick up voratun just off the bloody floor. It's not exactly likely, but th'infinite dungeon doesn't really have the main campaign's sanity checks, heh.

The point is, I've opened thousands of vaults over the last twelve months or so, but this is way over the top for anything I've encountered. Yes, sometimes I die to skeleton warriors who stun me, but I can accept that as part of the luck of the draw.

But this is outside the bell curve, as they say. And that's what's wrong about it, imho.

If it only happens once in 1000 vaults, that is normal for a bell curve.
Why are you saying this is wrong?

Ya I had to learn the hard way not to risk opening a sealed vault door until I have phase door or teleport.

Sometimes it's still wise to leave them until you clear EVERYTHING else out (including end boss) just so you dont have to ever come back and risk bumping back into whatever you unleashed wandering around.

Anyways, I like how it is tbh. Risk/reward like the others are saying, and Tome is pretty generous with all the escape mechanisms available.

Game wouldn't be the same if there wasn't always that risk of bumping into some hilariously strong rand elite. It's that tension that makes the game for me.

It's not about risk vs. reward, though. It's about risk vs. risk mitigation. No amount of reward can balance out an unsurvivable risk, after all.

The question I have to ask myself every time I'm about to open a vault is, "What's the worst I can expect to find in here, and am I strong enough to deal with it?" In my experience to date, the answer to the first part at any point before Daikara or so has always been roughly "A handful of Skeleton mages", which makes the answer to the second part "As long as you can duck around a corner and take them on one at a time, probably". If you're telling me that the answer to the first part is actually "A ridiculously out-of-depth monster that can instakill you", then the answer to the second part becomes an un-nuanced "No", and my strategy has to change to "Never open any vault, ever". Which I can live with (and so, more to the point, can my characters), but it means the game has been misleading me on the first point.

The problem with having things like this as a ten-sigma event is that they create a false perception of the level of risk involved in opening a vault, screwing up the "can I deal with this?" calculation. That, as I understand it, is jenx's objection.