ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello!

Here comes an easy one (I hope).

I experiment with a fire based archmage and wildfire.
In the labyrinth I meet my first fire resists 100%, a couple of light horrors.

What is the common way for elemental specialists when they meet immune or very high resist to your special force?
I have the arcane bolt at lvl 3, but they deal high damage, crumble my shields fast fast. Im at lvl 16.

Any tip?

Resistance penetration and always have a backup or two.

Long term, fire mages eventually have Wildfire, which grants some respen. An alternative, is to run tribeam on top of the fire. (Manthrust 3 or higher, flame 5 or higher, and lightning) This gives you 2 decent attacks to throw at fire immunes. (Pulverizing auger is a third low-cooldown attack, that can be thrown at fire immunes. Good damage too.)

Don't forget that you can always just run away from them too. (especially since those things come in 3's, always.)

I'd hardly call Pulverizing Auger low cooldown. It's not as bad as, say, freeze, but if it was your only non-primary element attack it wouldn't do much against stuff immune to your primary that it didn't one hit kill or that came in groups that failed to line up nicely for you.

Uh, 6 turns IIRC, not the 3 of the tribeam, but fairly low. And damage is at least on a par with lightning, maybe better, since it's not so random.

I went 5/5/5/5 in both fire and wildfire and I dealt with luminous and radiant horrors by using lvl3 manathrust and lvl1 lightning. Don't bother with resistance penetration against those guys because they have damage affinity meaning they heal from fire damage, so it's better to do nothing for a turn than to cast fire spells.

bpat wrote:I dealt with luminous and radiant horrors by using lvl3 manathrust and lvl1 lightning.

This.

It's technically possible to burn a luminous horror with 5/5 Wildfire, I've done it just to see if it could be done, but it's very time-consuming and not really worth the bother.

You may even be better off using Command Staff to change your damage type and just bonking the damn thing to death.

Indeed, never underestimate the power of a melee archmage. When wizards get mad, they cast big spells. When they get REALLY mad, they bash things with a stick.

There's also second Meta spell that allows your spells to cut elemental resists by 20%.

Always get manathrust to at least 3/5.

Best, cheapest, and easiest way to do it. Next to nothing resits arcane.

Just watch out for Losgoroth's from a meteorite event.
They have immunity to arcane and fire.

I personally like 3/3 on Manathrust/Lightning.

You get a bit over 80% of the damage from L3 that you would at L5, so it's generally good enough. Often a good thing to remember in general, in fact.

Wands of Conjuration are also useful as an off-element option.