ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Been playing the game for <5 days. Wanted to give my first impressions. Obviously, first impressions are... colored. I don't expect to be right about any of the assertions I'm about to make, but I think some newbie impressions are always valuable to people still developing a game. So, here you guys go (I hope I'm posting this in the right spot):

For reference, my character right now is lv37. Actually, Bulwark is the furthest I got (at 37).

1. I find it extremely odd mages are locked from new players on the onset - alchemists aren't user friendly. But that's okay I guess, I mean, the game is highly replayable.
2. The anti-magic skillset is more trouble than it's worth. I lose out on access to critical items. The skills feel kind of weak to me, even as a Bulwark, even as someone who hates mages.
3. My hate for mages - and for enemy archers - stems from all the fuckin' rooting going on. I'm a bulwark. I have low damage with a one-handed weapon and I'm fighting horde of enemies that are freezing, stunning, rooting, et cetera me for 6 or 9 turns - or worse - they're doing all this and teleporting all over the - place. It's super frustrating. The only thing that even makes the Bulwark playable is the passive skill which has a chance to remove immobilize every turn.
4. Mages are super easy - arcane blade, shadowblade, what have you. They get a powerful heal early on and their AOE spells one or two shot most enemies in wide swaths, plus they can teleport to safety. Berserker/rogue feel like garbage in comparison, it feels like mages or anyone with access to spells is simply better in every way, I'm sort of seeing a huge class imbalance here, but I'm wondering if that's not intentional. For a while, I was wondering if it was even possible to beat the game as a berserker. I'm sure it is, but for a while, I was convinced the game was designed to have us unlock new and better classes each time.
5. I've been one-shot twice. It's kind of dumb? Maybe I just have bad builds, but I pretty much focus on defense as much as possible and still wind up in situations where three or four mages show up and wreck my face with crazy burst. I accidentally summoned a level 58 mage and also found myself OHKO'd - though there was a massive level difference.
6. I haven't played archers at all. I started one, realized I had to reload every 8 shots, and promptly said, "- this." Does it get better? Because that looks like a really slow way to play this game. Can't the reload just be... automatic? At least let there be a setting, so I'm not spamming the reload button every so number of attacks.
7. Level advancement becomes very sluggish very quickly. That's fine, I guess, but it makes races that have a high experience penalty seem poor choices? I've been pretty much using Cormac this whole time because I don't like the idea of gimping myself in the long term just so I can have a few small racial bonuses. Can't the penalties be shifted over to something else?
8. I like the large amount of lore collection.
9. I like most of the features, especially the escort quest stuff (do more of this? random events in dungeons) - though it's annoying when the NPCs decide to run ahead of me while I'm killing shit.
10. It feels like spending points to upgrade skills only makes sense if you have no better use for your skill points. On the Bulwark, skills barely have +20% increased damage (which is minor when a skill already does 200% damage on hit). Why would I take that when I could just buy a whole new spell? Mages this feels like less of a problem, but even there, I'm noticing it. As a result, I feel my hotbar is quickly getting overloaded with skills and the game is losing its "tacticalness" as a I level up - it just becomes more of a 'roll your fingers over the keyboard to win' kind of game. Especially more true as enemy density seems to increase the further you go, further weakening classes like the Bulwark who have shit for AOE potential.

Okay, so this feels like ten whiny comments, but overall I like the game, just some features stand out as a little obnoxious.

You definitely want to pump many though not all of your skills. Some skills work great as one point wonders, others almost require a heavy investment to get the best use out of them.

As for the weakness of melee classes, it's not hardly true. They can eventually get to dealing stupidly high amounts of melee damage, but their weakness will always remain issues related to ranged fighters. This is why you get talents like rush, step up, and (for other classes,) bone grab, mindhook, etc.

I'm not a huge bulwark fan for melee though. In fact, all my wins have been at least pseudo mage/psionic in nature. My doomed came closest to being a melee fighter, spending it's time on gestures and mass quantities of debuffs.

Beyond that, there are a number of successful melee builds around.

As for classes being locked, the stated reason I've heard is an issue of complexity. We start with simpler to play and understand classes, and then pick up the more complicated difficult to manage ones as we go through.

And your primary talents (say, stuns on a melee class) are always talents you want to pump high. More stuns doing more damage, and lasting longer, is ALWAYS a good thing. Stun is practically key to melee survival.

1. I find it extremely odd mages are locked from new players on the onset - alchemists aren't user friendly. But that's okay I guess, I mean, the game is highly replayable.

This is very common feedback about the game. My personal opinion is that if people were to start archmage they'd be more likely not to stick with the game. The orbituary quest appears to confuse some new players, and it's also more difficult for classes that don't have good strength to begin the game without a transmogrification chest.

2. The anti-magic skillset is more trouble than it's worth. I lose out on access to critical items. The skills feel kind of weak to me, even as a Bulwark, even as someone who hates mages.

This by-and-large the consensus about going antimagic. Though the problem is that most of the best equipment in the game is powered by arcane forces, not that the antimagic skills aren't very powerful. The situation wouldn't be as bad with better item selection (especially later on).

3. My hate for mages - and for enemy archers - stems from all the fuckin' rooting going on. I'm a bulwark. I have low damage with a one-handed weapon and I'm fighting horde of enemies that are freezing, stunning, rooting, et cetera me for 6 or 9 turns - or worse - they're doing all this and teleporting all over the - place. It's super frustrating. The only thing that even makes the Bulwark playable is the passive skill which has a chance to remove immobilize every turn.

This is why most of the better players avoid spending category points to unlock trees and unlock more infusions instead. Even so, being able to deal with statuses is still one of the most important factors contributing to whether a class is considered "good" or not.

4. Mages are super easy - arcane blade, shadowblade, what have you. They get a powerful heal early on and their AOE spells one or two shot most enemies in wide swaths, plus they can teleport to safety. Berserker/rogue feel like garbage in comparison, it feels like mages or anyone with access to spells is simply better in every way, I'm sort of seeing a huge class imbalance here, but I'm wondering if that's not intentional. For a while, I was wondering if it was even possible to beat the game as a berserker. I'm sure it is, but for a while, I was convinced the game was designed to have us unlock new and better classes each time.

Again, this is a common interpretation of the game. From what I can tell it's more or less intentional to have class imbalance. But as for ranged classes being more powerful, I think that's mostly because you're far more likely to die if you're next to a bunch of enemies as opposed to skirting sight range. This is generally just a fact of life. Most games that strive for balance deal with it by making ranged classes weaker. ToME doesn't really do that (in fact, some ranged classes are made even stronger).

5. I've been one-shot twice. It's kind of dumb? Maybe I just have bad builds, but I pretty much focus on defense as much as possible and still wind up in situations where three or four mages show up and wreck my face with crazy burst. I accidentally summoned a level 58 mage and also found myself OHKO'd - though there was a massive level difference.

It's worse on higher difficulties, and moreso while playing roguelike. It's just a fact of the game. The better players know how to mitigate this danger, but it's mostly about playing very slowly and carefully (using skills that give you ESP like track). If you're the type of person that wants to blast through the game, you're probably going to be playing Normal/Adventure more.

6. I haven't played archers at all. I started one, realized I had to reload every 8 shots, and promptly said, "- this." Does it get better? Because that looks like a really
slow way to play this game. Can't the reload just be... automatic? At least let there be a setting, so I'm not spamming the reload button every so number of attacks.

Archers do get less annoying. There are some weapons/ammos that automatically reload, and there is a skill that increases the amount you reload per turn.

7. Level advancement becomes very sluggish very quickly. That's fine, I guess, but it makes races that have a high experience penalty seem poor choices? I've been pretty much using Cormac this whole time because I don't like the idea of gimping myself in the long term just so I can have a few small racial bonuses. Can't the penalties be shifted over to something else?

I pretty much only play 3 races - cornac , yeek, and halfling. Cornac for the extra category point and the other two for their racial trees. Yeek's racial tree helps *a lot* on higher difficulties and with more conservative playstyles.

9. I like most of the features, especially the escort quest stuff (do more of this? random events in dungeons) - though it's annoying when the NPCs decide to run ahead of me while I'm killing shit.

The escort AI is probably one of the most common complaints with the game. If you require one of their tree unlocks or skill unlocks for a build you're playing, it's especially bad when you get an escort that's unrescueable.

10. It feels like spending points to upgrade skills only makes sense if you have no better use for your skill points. On the Bulwark, skills barely have +20% increased damage (which is minor when a skill already does 200% damage on hit). Why would I take that when I could just buy a whole new spell? Mages this feels like less of a problem, but even there, I'm noticing it. As a result, I feel my hotbar is quickly getting overloaded with skills and the game is losing its "tacticalness" as a I level up - it just becomes more of a 'roll your fingers over the keyboard to win' kind of game. Especially more true as enemy density seems to increase the further you go, further weakening classes like the Bulwark who have shit for AOE potential.

Generally, skills that scale with some attribute like cunning are better kept at low levels, unless they're either a primary feature of your build or a stunning ability. Also, knowing when to add a new skill vs raise an old is sort of one of the key features of the game. Like the other response said, there are also skills that just completely blow with 1 point in them, but are ridiculous with 5 points put in them.

1: Its a lore thing as well. But more importantly, you found Alchemists not user friendly? In what way?

2: Wait until you get hit with manaclash as a mage. Antimagic and the Fungus skillsets are very powerful. (especially that fungus...) Also, there are some *very* powerful antimagic items. However I don't recomend newbies try antimagic until they are more experienced with the game.

3: You need to learn how to counter things. Infusions of Wild and Movement are very useful for a meleer. Also, I notice you say later on that you don't tend to put more than one point in a talent. This would be making your attacks weaker. (also, Bulwark isn't built for high damage output)

4: Ironically, Mages require less thinking to get good effect from than other classes. Also they don't require a good weapon to kill things. Once you get a good weapon with a non caster, you can start doing similar damage.

5: This is why you get multiple lives. Cos accidents happen, and it let's you learn how to deal with situations without having to play all the way up to the same place again.

6: Resting automatically reloads, also you can get special quivers that automagically reload for you.

7: Its more that the level advancement is accelerated at the start so you can get some build choices before it starts getting tricky. As for levelling faster, this makes enemies scale faster too. It all evens out by the end.

8: Grey is good at lore.

9: If they were smart they wouldn't need your help. (also if you click on their icon at the top of the screen you can tell them to wait for a bit)

10: If you want to more dps, you need to upgrade thost talents. Otherwise you just end up with a load of weakish talents. Also, if you don't have any aoe options, look for an Acid Wave rune.

Thanks for the tips, I'll keep that in mind.

Also worth mentioning is that teh antimagic talent tree scales off willpower, and is FAR more powerful on classes that pump willpower. (Bulwark is not one of these.) Since the abilities get stronger with more willpower, classes like Cursed (some builds), doomed, Wyrmic, summoner, and others who already want a lot of will, can find a great deal of use out of it.

And unless you've already seen the fungus tree, you've only seen half of what antimagic offers anyway.

Welcome to the game and to the forums.

Your comments are fairly typical of newbies and our responses usually boil down to, stick with the game as it's excellent and replaying it over and over remains enjoyable. For example, I've won about 5 times as a solipsist, but i still enjoy it.

The game mechanics take a long time to understand fully, and so doing can dramatically increase one's survivability and pleasure in playing. Tome is a very subtle game and small changes can have big impacts.

The best way to learn without a doubt is to post a link to your character, and then ask for advice on build strategy .

My key pieces of advice:
1. Movement, movement, movement. Use runs, movement infusions, artifacts, rush, etc, anything to get into the right position.
2. Increase your saves as much as possible.
3. Increase your core power, physical, spell, or mental
4. Increase your hit points. for first 30 levels or so, I wear all the + life gear I can find. You need at least 200 extra life.
5. Save plus stats gear to equip tol raise talent levels.
6. For talents, consider cooldown, cost, and status effects they impart or negate. These are much more important than newbies realise.

Have fun!

1: Mages are locked due to a combination of thematic concerns, and the fact that they're a relatively complex/overwhelming class.

Mostly thematics, though, I think. DarkGod likes the idea of mages being a hidden thing. That's why the unlock's easy.

Alchemists are actually designed as a newbie class, and I for one certainly got huge use out of them as a new player, despite multiple major mistakes in play with them. I would say that they're more not your cup of tea, then that they're not user friendly.

2: Antimagic is good, but oddly, it's only decent for Bulwark-the equipment loss is more notable for them than some other classes. It's rather an odd situation there. Try a Berserker with it some time, though, with a Str/Dex/Wil build.

3, 5: Elements of the same system quirk. ToME is, first and foremost, a Roguelike, and Roguelikes generally expect you to learn to play to them, not them play to you. And they all have different ways of doing this, be it Nethack being halfway to a puzzle or adventure game, or DoomRL being highly positioning/LoS abuse oriented.

In ToME, the focus is on things being fast; You have limitless healing, but with timed cooldowns, and enemies are built with matching and overcoming this in mind. This makes temporary retreats important, and you have to really judge the situation on the very first turn you see it, rather than waiting until you are hurt to react, in many cases.

If I saw four mages in my LoS, I would find some way to get at least some of them out of my LoS, and let them follow me to be killed in a more enclosed area. Movement or Teleport or Controlled Phase Door inscriptions are very good for this, as is Step Up if one's fairly close(for a Bulwark specific example).

4: Mages are stronger earlier and weaker late-the melee classes do a lot more damage in general, later on, and once you know how to build them, they tend to be better at burst damage even early(Max out physical power skills fast, for starters, like Weapon or Dagger Mastery.).

Berserker has one of the higher win rates, incidentally.

6: Reload is automatically used when resting, and quivers/pouches have egos that expand their capacity, give you more ammo per reload, and auto-reload every so often.

I think my Archer clear ended out with a near-90 ammo capacity quiver. That was a bit of an outlier, though.

7: EXP Modifier is highly controversial; I've seen people call it everything from crippling to utterly useless non-factor. Personally, I figure that means it's probably in a good spot.

10: Bulwarks are one of the more extreme examples in this, of high impact single skills and low impact leveling.

Anything that uses the general spell/mind damage formula(basically every mage/mind class) has a nice curve that basically doubles their damage from 1 to 5, while a lot of weapon talents have larger ranges than Bulwark's for how much they boost on leveling.

Having said that, Bulwarks do have some high impact skill level skills; Shield Expertise and Shield Wall are both excellent leveling targets, as are Rush and Shield Pummel. Assault gains more impact than you'd think as well, from leveling, and some skills such as Step Up are basically obvious 5 candidates.

Generally speaking, the amount of impact for a level varies a lot on the talent, so it's good to pay attention to that.

Also, don't think "I have sustainable damage, that's better than not having it!". Having sustainable damage is good, but having a burst that takes down enemies is better, to me. If you could have oneshotted those four mages, you wouldn't have been in trouble, and many classes with AoE can do that given sufficient focus on it. (And physical classes have an AoE option in Windblade, which is getting buffed next version.) Burst damage is very important too.

I think mind-based classes, such as Summoner and Wyrmic are easiest to play. Area damage/disables like mages, survivability like warriors. And only essential attributes. And a free skill tree from Zigur.

Though I personally avoid playing them, because I don't like betraying escorts.

I also discovered this game just this week (and this is the first roguelike I've ever played). I started with an Alchemist because I usually only play magic based classes in rpgs. I don't quite understand in how far the Alchemist is supposed to be "not user friendly". I like the class very much and I'm now completely hooked to the game.

PS: I started as a Shalore though, and the red crystals in the starting dungeon are a different story. They are a bit too hard for complete noobs imo.

Its always good to have new players post their views, as they see things different and can help to improve the game. As you already got loads of text to read through I will keep my answers to your points short.


2. I love antimagic, it basically gives you near infinite stamina and equilibrium in addition to helping with the most annoying enemies - mages. Some antimagic powered artefacts also get additional stats if you are antimagic and can become pretty strong.
4. Yup , mages are op but suffer when they get caught offguard.
5. Focusing on defense never hurts in roguelikes.
6. If you use rest and autoexplore ( which does activate resting ) it automatically activates reloading. You get bigger quivers and faster reloads later on.
7. I dont think you should worry exp penalty too much, as zones scale to your level to a certain degree.
10. Skills with low cooldown that you use often or skills that apply a better condition (e.g. longer stun) are easy picks for putting a lot of points into.

xagon wrote:I also discovered this game just this week (and this is the first roguelike I've ever played). I started with an Alchemist because I usually only play magic based classes in rpgs. I don't quite understand in how far the Alchemist is supposed to be "not user friendly". I like the class very much and I'm now completely hooked to the game.

PS: I started as a Shalore though, and the red crystals in the starting dungeon are a different story. They are a bit too hard for complete noobs imo.

You can (and should) turn around and leave the scintillating caves as a shaloren. Go do Norgos Lair or Trollmire (not the 4th area) first. Both of those are FAR safer for most builds, and generally the best place to start out. After doing both of them, depending on your build, Either Korpul or Heart of the gloom next. With both of those down, THEN you head back to scintillating caves, and Rhaloren camp after that. Applies to just about any build. The Shaloren dungeon set is just rough on everyone.

anuset wrote:Been playing the game for <5 days. Wanted to give my first impressions. Obviously, first impressions are... colored. I don't expect to be right about any of the assertions I'm about to make, but I think some newbie impressions are always valuable to people still developing a game. So, here you guys go (I hope I'm posting this in the right spot):

For reference, my character right now is lv37. Actually, Bulwark is the furthest I got (at 37).

1. I find it extremely odd mages are locked from new players on the onset - alchemists aren't user friendly. But that's okay I guess, I mean, the game is highly replayable.
2. The anti-magic skillset is more trouble than it's worth. I lose out on access to critical items. The skills feel kind of weak to me, even as a Bulwark, even as someone who hates mages.
3. My hate for mages - and for enemy archers - stems from all the fuckin' rooting going on. I'm a bulwark. I have low damage with a one-handed weapon and I'm fighting horde of enemies that are freezing, stunning, rooting, et cetera me for 6 or 9 turns - or worse - they're doing all this and teleporting all over the - place. It's super frustrating. The only thing that even makes the Bulwark playable is the passive skill which has a chance to remove immobilize every turn.
4. Mages are super easy - arcane blade, shadowblade, what have you. They get a powerful heal early on and their AOE spells one or two shot most enemies in wide swaths, plus they can teleport to safety. Berserker/rogue feel like garbage in comparison, it feels like mages or anyone with access to spells is simply better in every way, I'm sort of seeing a huge class imbalance here, but I'm wondering if that's not intentional. For a while, I was wondering if it was even possible to beat the game as a berserker. I'm sure it is, but for a while, I was convinced the game was designed to have us unlock new and better classes each time.
5. I've been one-shot twice. It's kind of dumb? Maybe I just have bad builds, but I pretty much focus on defense as much as possible and still wind up in situations where three or four mages show up and wreck my face with crazy burst. I accidentally summoned a level 58 mage and also found myself OHKO'd - though there was a massive level difference.
6. I haven't played archers at all. I started one, realized I had to reload every 8 shots, and promptly said, "- this." Does it get better? Because that looks like a really slow way to play this game. Can't the reload just be... automatic? At least let there be a setting, so I'm not spamming the reload button every so number of attacks.
7. Level advancement becomes very sluggish very quickly. That's fine, I guess, but it makes races that have a high experience penalty seem poor choices? I've been pretty much using Cormac this whole time because I don't like the idea of gimping myself in the long term just so I can have a few small racial bonuses. Can't the penalties be shifted over to something else?
8. I like the large amount of lore collection.
9. I like most of the features, especially the escort quest stuff (do more of this? random events in dungeons) - though it's annoying when the NPCs decide to run ahead of me while I'm killing shit.
10. It feels like spending points to upgrade skills only makes sense if you have no better use for your skill points. On the Bulwark, skills barely have +20% increased damage (which is minor when a skill already does 200% damage on hit). Why would I take that when I could just buy a whole new spell? Mages this feels like less of a problem, but even there, I'm noticing it. As a result, I feel my hotbar is quickly getting overloaded with skills and the game is losing its "tacticalness" as a I level up - it just becomes more of a 'roll your fingers over the keyboard to win' kind of game. Especially more true as enemy density seems to increase the further you go, further weakening classes like the Bulwark who have shit for AOE potential.

Okay, so this feels like ten whiny comments, but overall I like the game, just some features stand out as a little obnoxious.

1. Skinner Boxing. The unlocks give you something to accomplish even when you aren't good enough to win. T4 is one of only 3 roguelikes I've stuck with long enough for a win and I think that's mostly because I could make incremental progress by unlocking classes.

2. Antimagic is incredibly powerful when pumping will and cunning. Even if you're using too much equilibrium on other things to keep the shield up Silence is golden, and the shield is very good combined with other damage mitigation like the Psi/Absorption or Feedback or Ooze trees. Fungus is an exceptionally good tree as well.

3. Physical wild infusions will clear pin and ice and you can pump saves or seek immunity. Ice isn't bad, though, it reduces incoming damage and doesn't block regeneration so it can actually help you. Against pin it helps to have ranged attacks. Bullwarks are kind of rough because switching to a bow breaks their sustain and they have no native ranged attacks, but other classes do better.

4. If your play style leans in a certain direction you can find classes easy that others find weak. I'm better at the slow sustained classes like Sun Paladin and Wyrmic. Other people are better with the burst damage classes like Archmage and Berserker. There is real imbalance in the game (oozemancers, for example, are sustained high damage with excellent defenses across pretty much the whole game) but I'm not sure it has anything to do with mages.

5. It sounds like you're focusing on one kind of defense. You need to defend against everything if you play defensively.

10. Most active talents that use weapons indeed scale weakly because they primarily scale with your weapon. You'll probably want to boost the ones you use the most later, but where you are they're indeed a waste of points. There's some scaling on Riposte that's hidden by roundoff, though, and you should absolutely be putting 4 points into it even if the 2nd and 3rd point look utterly pathetic. I don't know off-hand of anything else with hidden scaling like that, though there may well be other examples. Where you are any weapon talent is fine at 1 point, though dissolve and flurry may merit a 2nd and the first talent in any weapon style tree scales stun duration, which may be useful to you. If you have dirty fighting as well, though, 1 point there may be worth more. I suppose Pinning Shot may be worth boosting for duration as well. If you have a class mastery (bow, shield, and off-hand are on class trees) max it before the active talents. It applies to all of them and usually produces more of a benefit. Except possibly compared to the stun talents if you only have the one available.

In general my preference is to have a working build by 25 or 30 with all my planned defense/mobility stuff done, and most of that needs lots of points to be good. Rush without range is terrible. Step Up at less than max is unreliable. Shields pretty much always merit full points -- except antimagic, which can outrun your equilibrium handling if you pump it too much. After that point I start pushing up my active weapon talents or pushing spells that are nice but not critical to how I planned to play the game.

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:

xagon wrote:I also discovered this game just this week (and this is the first roguelike I've ever played). I started with an Alchemist because I usually only play magic based classes in rpgs. I don't quite understand in how far the Alchemist is supposed to be "not user friendly". I like the class very much and I'm now completely hooked to the game.

PS: I started as a Shalore though, and the red crystals in the starting dungeon are a different story. They are a bit too hard for complete noobs imo.

You can (and should) turn around and leave the scintillating caves as a shaloren. Go do Norgos Lair or Trollmire (not the 4th area) first. Both of those are FAR safer for most builds, and generally the best place to start out. After doing both of them, depending on your build, Either Korpul or Heart of the gloom next. With both of those down, THEN you head back to scintillating caves, and Rhaloren camp after that. Applies to just about any build. The Shaloren dungeon set is just rough on everyone.

Thanks. I will try that sequence of dungeons when I start a new character. I somehow made it through the caves (at like the seventh try) and the next dungeons were a cakewalk in comparison.

Learning how to survive the scintillating caves as a level 1 character is a good way to learn how to survive the rest of the game.