ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The game is devastatingly hard now, at least for some characters/players. And yet DarkGod says that other players report no such problems. Here's my experiences with recent versions, and some speculation about why the game might be much more forgiving for other players.

Ranged Attacks Dominate

Due to the line of sight changes starting in 1.0.0RC1, melee characters get the shaft (as well as the arrowhead).

Previously, if you were happily stomping down a corridor and you turned a corner and found a crossbow pointed at your face, you could retreat back around the corner and ambush the crossbowman as it came running around the corner. The AI was stupid enough to move directly toward your last known position (or maybe even your current position, depending on how much it cheats); in either case, it would cut the diagonal coming around the corner, landing it right in your lap, giving you the first shot.

Now, you can't do that. In a standard 90 degree orthogonal dungeon there is literally nowhere you can stand to be safe from ranged attacks. The least dangerous place you can stand is 2 squares back from the intersection, like so:
When the skeleton archer moves one step east, you will be able to see each other, and shoot each other. Or rather, the archer will be able to shoot you. You will be able to stand there and bleed.

You can move toward the skeleton and get shot once before you can attack. That's the best you can do. Any other tactical position is worse for you. In particular, if you stand 1 square north of your position in the diagram, that would be the worst thing you can do -- due to the 1.0.0RC1 LOS changes, the skeleton archer can shoot you from literally any square in the entire east-west tunnel, as long as you're within his bow's range.

They Won't Let You Do Anything

Now, you might think "Hey, I'm a big tough fighter. I can take one shot!" Well, maybe. Maybe not. If the monster has a disabling attack of any kind, you might get hit many times before you can do anything. Or you might not be able to do anything at all, depending on just how unlucky you are. And the monsters only have to get lucky once. You have to survive every single time.

Most of the options available to allow you to survive these situations are simply not available in the early game. 100% confusion resistance ring? Not for you yet. You don't get anything like that until level 30+. Saves? Not for you yet. All you've got are a plain iron sword and maybe a piece of armor or two. You won't get your saves talents until level 8, or 12, or 16. Gear with saves? Possible, but not likely. Gear with negative effect immunity? Even less likely, and most of that gear is individually weak; you'd have to stack 5 to 10 of 'em to cover a single type of disabler (say, confusion). Otherwise, you've got a gaping hole in your defenses, and all it'll take is one disabler of the wrong kind at just the wrong moment, and you're helpless.

No Dungeons Are Safe

In earlier game versions -- even in 1.0.0 -- you knew what to expect when you entered a dungeon. If you knew that you would get your face shot off by ranged attackers, then you knew to avoid the places with crystals and mages. Instead, you would choose the places with trolls and snakes and rogues and minotaurs. This would allow you to level up and gear up (gear is more important than anything because the damned monsters scale to your level, but they do not scale to your gear) in a zone where you have a chance of surviving, before going into hell.

Now, hell comes to you. You go into a formerly safe dungeon like the old forest, and instead of bears and snakes and ants, you get more fecking crystals in your face. And not just one or two either -- no, the nice safe corridors are gone, too! Now there are meteors dropping every 16 steps, obliterating your nice terrain and leaving you open to the hundreds of crystals that can all do 2/3 of your max Life in a single instantaneous ranged attack.

So How Come Other People Aren't Having These Problems

I can only speculate:

• Maybe they're playing ranged attack classes, and have developed the discipline necessary to keep one alive. I have no idea how they can do that, but maybe they're just better than me.
• Maybe they're getting lucky on the dungeon layouts, and getting the nice safe dungeons with bears that want to hug you, instead of Mutant Alien Magical MechaWereCrystals Dropping From The Sky or whatever they are in the tier 1 and tier 2 newbie dungeons.
• Maybe they're playing multiple-life mode, where if you die, you respawn somewhere, and then you can try a different dungeon and roll the dice and see if you get to die again, or get to level up and gear up.

Ranged Attacks Dominate

Due to the line of sight changes starting in 1.0.0RC1, melee characters get the shaft (as well as the arrowhead).

Let's check the vaults for relative melee clears, then! Using specific versions is hard, given the rather fast bug release set of releases lately, so let's look at the last ten weeks. (Winner/Maj'eyal)

Archmages: 37 clears.
Archer: 17 clears.
Alchemist: 23 clears.
Berserkers: 40 clears.
Bulwarks: 20 clears.
Cursed: 32 clears.

For reference, the amount of those classes made to date;

67293: Archmage
65461: Berserker
52187: Cursed
50948: Alchemist
49090: Bulwark
39011: Archer

(Fighter existed for a while before Berserker/Bulwark. As such, Berserker probably exceeds Archmage for recently made characters, so somewhat more Berserkers are made than Archmages likely.)

Hmmm, nope, doesn't seem to have any notable bias, all told, when you count in the amount the character is played. Perhaps there's a bias towards specific classes...but that's not what you're arguing.

They Won't Let You Do Anything

Now, you might think "Hey, I'm a big tough fighter. I can take one shot!" Well, maybe. Maybe not. If the monster has a disabling attack of any kind, you might get hit many times before you can do anything. Or you might not be able to do anything at all, depending on just how unlucky you are.

As of 1.0.4, the only totally action-preventing status a PC can get hit by is, I believe, Sleep.

Which is quite rare. It probably ought to be retooled at some point, and I think there's plans for that.

Otherwise, all status spells can be cured. Status is a heavy danger in ToME and has been since the game was made; I don't think that's going to change. Simply because, well, it works both ways. Enemies don't get full immunities or total lockout saves(...except sometimes on Nightmare, for the latter).

Full on immunity isn't a required answer, but all told, I will admit something straight out right now; Given my recent experiences, I am fairly sure I am inordinately good at handling status. Keep this in mind with everything I say; I will be trying to as well.

Regardless, I think the best answer is better saves on earlier equipment, and less high end scaling for it-saves should probably go from +10 to +25 on equipment, and instead they tend to go from +5 to +20, I believe.

No Dungeons Are Safe

Now, hell comes to you. You go into a formerly safe dungeon like the old forest, and instead of bears and snakes and ants, you get more fecking crystals in your face. And not just one or two either -- no, the nice safe corridors are gone, too! Now there are meteors dropping every 16 steps, obliterating your nice terrain and leaving you open to the hundreds of crystals that can all do 2/3 of your max Life in a single instantaneous ranged attack.

I think you've combined two alternate dungeons here. >_>

Alternate dungeons only came out last version, and are area specific-you can't actually have what you described happen, because "meteors" is Daikara and crystals is Old Forest.

I do think you have a point on both of those alternates, however; This isn't the first time I've heard alternate Daikara referred to as unfair or a deathtrap, and it likely won't be the last-it's very unfriendly to melee-and that Shardskin is also.

(I actually would suggest that Shardskin lose the arcane spells/Gravity Well and get stripped down to Soul Rot, and gain some Reaver like Acid Blood/ skills and Virulent Disease to compensate-a much more fitting parallel to his physical-and-magic original version, and much less kill-y. I've been waiting for a complaint topic specifically about him, but none have come.)

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want this to seem like I'm blowing off your statements.

I'm not. But it's very easy to get personal biases and translate them into a more general problem. (Something I'm always checking, for myself, against the vaults every day, and with this forum.)

I think that, in part, it's possible you had habits that were based around the LoS being asymmetrical, and adjusting may be hard, for example.

If you were in the habit of abusing that, you weren't thinking with mobility skills-Movement infusions, Rush, etc.-perhaps, because you didn't need the investment; You had the LoS on your side, and could put those investments elsewhere.

But there's very, very few classes that can't either close that gap. In the case you showed, you don't even need those options; Hit 5, and the Skeleton Master Archer, if he's aware of you, will move towards you, allowing you to close the one square distance.

Then he backs away, yes, and you move farther, until you back him against a wall-at which point, he's stuck. As you said, it's a fairly optimal distance, admittedly. But a good Rush or Movement infusion, or the class/racial equivalent, can easily close the gap for practically all classes and races. And some exceptions, like Sun Paladin(who has to unlock Rush) and Reaver, have ranged magic instead.

It's hard to reliably wall status. So don't try to totally wall it. Don't let yourself get mobbed by multiple enemies that can status you at once, if at all possible-take hits if you have to, and consider not curing status instantly if you're in the bad situation of letting multiple enemies with ranged status at you-enemies will attempt on occasion to reapply it, and you can often walk away from enemies when under the effects of dangerous status like Confusion and Stun, albiet not very well. Think in terms of curing it, and if all else fails...well, some people swear by keeping multiple Wild infusions.

I cleared a Ghoul Archmage-which means very bad status handling options-on Nightmare/Roguelike, in 1.0.3/upgraded to 1.0.4. I drew about five alternates, including Daikara. I'm a little insulted by the idea that it's "just luck" or that players are "just not playing Roguelike".

(Admittedly, if I may go off on a tangent; Nightmare is biased as hell towards two specific classes and seems to kill the rest. Summoner and Archmage. I'd say that's a symptom of a mode that can do 1800 damage to you with a fixed encounter. But I digress.)

To be honest, ToME is just hard. And I don't think that the statistics are really bearing out the idea that it's hard for X reasons, per se-though I think you have some points on saves, and on the alternates potentially being nasty-they're new, things have to shake out with feedback(like this!). Again, I'm not trying to just ignore what you're saying.

But if you fixed those tomorrow, it would still be an incredibly hard game. The way it is designed, with players with insane abilities by most Roguelike(or even more RPG) standards and enemies that can two-shot you commonly enough in a single player game where you can permanently die, is simply nasty. You can make a mistake and die very fast. And I don't think any of those individual things are so much the syndrome as symptoms-high impact status that you need to cure immediately or die, ranged threats that require prompt action or they can kill you, they all fit into a game where things can splatter you fast, and where you can do the same.

Tie this to it being a long game, and it's just not a nice game at all. If you really know the game-quite hard, given the huge amount of skills and enemies-it's quite possible to manage all of those challenges.

But easy it is definitely not.

The game is hard, but you can do better. Don't give up with the declaration "it's not fair".

1) For a melee class always have a gap closer, like rush. Do not rush every enemy you see, retreat and draw it to a known area and only use rush if it has ranged attacks. You do not want to meat one foe and discover he has friends.
2) Always have a physical wild infusion ready, if you need to use it than you should seriously consider retreating immediately. But! Don't just automatically use it when you are stunned and especially not for blind. If you are blind than retreat until recovered, and use healing. If you are stunned do the same and only use wild if you have no other options.
3) Always have healing and or shields. If you used up your last healing than you better already be done with the fight or it's probably time to retreat.
4) Always have an escape after about level 10. Teleport rune or movement infusion are both good if you don't have a class skill.
5) If you are confused than assume that you will not have any action for the duration, if that would kill you than start healing and retreating now.
6) Always rest to full and all cooldowns after every fight.

greycat wrote: So How Come Other People Aren't Having These Problems

I can only speculate:

• Maybe they're playing ranged attack classes, and have developed the discipline necessary to keep one alive. I have no idea how they can do that, but maybe they're just better than me.
• Maybe they're getting lucky on the dungeon layouts, and getting the nice safe dungeons with bears that want to hug you, instead of Mutant Alien Magical MechaWereCrystals Dropping From The Sky or whatever they are in the tier 1 and tier 2 newbie dungeons.
• Maybe they're playing multiple-life mode, where if you die, you respawn somewhere, and then you can try a different dungeon and roll the dice and see if you get to die again, or get to level up and gear up.

Discounting other people's skill as luck is rude.

I am not going to try to say that melee has it easy; it is quite the contrary. I've cleared 3 melee dudes on roguelike since the LOS changes, and yes, it has made it harder for melee to just lure casters into melee range. If you try doing what you did before the changes you are going to fail. Like SageAcrin has said, mobility and closing distance have become much more important.

I took a glance at some of your recent melee chars that failed and a common theme seems to be lack of escape mechanisms, lack of mobility, only 3 infusions at level 20+, etc. So, no, LOS is fine, it's your bad habits that are the problem.

Supermini, I dont think greycat had any intention of insulting other players, I know him he is a nice fellow Just bad choice of words probably.

Greycat, I hear you on the alternate dungeons, the meteor one can be unfair I imagine yeah, I could as easily make it not break walls; it's mostly there for the visual candy anyway.

As for the LOS thing, yeah as others have said, mobility is important, I try to provide all melee classes with ways to either close in, grab a target or just deal with it at range; if you feel a particular one lacks please make a thread about it so it can be further discussed.

Last thing, status effects, most chars start with a physical wild which gets rid of most annoying things early on. You should also try the new runes that can remove specific effects too.

PS: I love the name of the thread

darkgod wrote:I could as easily make it not break walls; it's mostly there for the visual candy anyway.

Please do not change it like that. Changing terrain and tough "unfair" situations is the only thing I find interesting about the game, please don't lessen that. You could limit how close together they can hit though (time wise and/or space wise). A broken wall leads to a choice, a barrage clearing all cover around you is just bad luck.

Personally, I found ranged attacks to be nasty before the LOS change.
After the LOS change, I found spells to be more nasty to the user.

I love the changing terrain now. Too many roguelikes have boring, static levels. ToME now has two of my favourite dungeons - the sandworms and the meteored Daikara.

Of course I'm fully aware that those may be the most hated levels of all for many people :P

Chiming in to first say that I love the new alt-dungeons, they make the early game fun again.

As for the OP: Basically Boomfrogs advice is on the spot.

darkgod wrote:I try to provide all melee classes with ways to either close in, grab a target or just deal with it at range; if you feel a particular one lacks please make a thread about it so it can be further discussed.

Maybe make the Rush tree unlocked for rogue at the start. It's a hard first 10 levels with little damage, little hp, no mobility and now with more ranged enemies on the first levels.

If you want a rogue to start with Rush, play as a Cornac

Regarding ambushing ranged enemies with the old LoS (you can see "s", but "s" can't see you): Some AI have been changed to move RIGHT in that situation, not down and right. Heh, I don't think the old FoV/LoS would be as welcoming as you think , and the new FoV/LoS is undeniably more fair.

tiger_eye wrote: Regarding ambushing ranged enemies with the old LoS (you can see "s", but "s" can't see you):

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s.#
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Some AI have been changed to move RIGHT in that situation, not down and right. Heh, I don't think the old FoV/LoS would be as welcoming as you think , and the new FoV/LoS is undeniably more fair.

I agree with tiger_eye here. The LOS changes have made the game more fair between ranged and melee classes. In the example above, a ranged PC class used to be safe for the next turn and so could attack with impunity, now they can be shot just like a melee class.

On alternate Daikara, I think the best answer is to make it pick a random square within, say, five to ten squares of you, to drop rocks.

With the current version, it will always widen a hallway if you're in one when it triggers-this is mostly bad for you.

With that variation, it can produce defensive holes on the sides of a hallway as well as producing holes on top of you, the former being good for you and the latter bad, and it can also widen a hallway in front or behind you, and just generally produces a more varied and fair experience.

At least, that's my thought on it.

Grey wrote:I love the changing terrain now. Too many roguelikes have boring, static levels. ToME now has two of my favourite dungeons - the sandworms and the meteored Daikara.

Of course I'm fully aware that those may be the most hated levels of all for many people

Haven't had the pleasure (yet) of meeting the alt-Daikara, but I'll join you on sandworm being one of my favorite experiences in roguelikes. The fact that it *IS* so unique and even adjusts your playstyle (Gotta watch out for those crumbling tunnels), provides much entertainment. About the only problem I ever have with it is it running slower then other levels, and that's mostly my outdated PC. (Which is hardly fair to judge the level by)

From what I've seen and heard about the alternate Daikara, I'm similarly looking forward to it. Alternate dungeons offer a much needed relief from a game which is largely stagnant due to all the non-randomized dungeons. You know you'll meet lots of giants and dragons in Daikara. You know there will be bandit vaults in old forest. Trolls in trollmire. Crystals in scintillating cave. Now, we actually get a bit more variety.

Melee in this game, like in many others, are very gear dependent. My gripe is that I find characters who struggle because they can't find useful items. I'm abandoning a level 16 rogue, for example, because he hasn't found a single movement infusion - in any store, in any drop - and in general had terrible luck in items. Casters care much less about drops.

I'd be inclined to shuffle the stores so that they have more legitimate variety of items and that the basic ones are somewhere. They don't have to be overpowered, but "no movement", "no double infusion", "no regen" and "no shield" are surprisingly common. Alternatively, salt the minor early rune / infusion vaults with types that are actually useful, as opposed to four copies of Sun infusions or 3 60 point regens....This

Another thought would be to line up the entry level bosses to drop items that help your particular class. e.g. if a weapon, the weapon that your class most commonly uses. If armor, armor that's class appropriate. etc. This would be proper risk vs. reward and would at least avoid the "cleared seven dungeons, got nothing useable" syndrome.