ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I was browsing the character vault and got the idea to search for low level winners, so I entered the level range 1-45, campaign to maj'eyal and only winners.

There were only 3 listed (not counting the level 50+'s that somehow qualified for 1-45 range) and one of them was an Oozemancer and two others were Skeleton Archmages.

So, I decided we could have a challenge in which we try to beat the game with low level characters and then post the link here.

I don't want to set any rules, but let's say a win with say a lv40 Yeek Berserker is more impressive than one with lv37 Thalore Oozemancer. Same goes with difficulty levels and roguelike mode.

I like this idea! It'll be interesting to have to adapt to an entirely new playstyle where we can't kill mobs or look for loot past a certain point to avoid overleveling. This challenge may be more difficult for Yeeks because of their exp bonus.

I'm going to have to wait on this though; I have yet to beat the vanilla game, despite many, many attempts (but I'm not discouraged, still hooked!).

The final bosses give an insane amount of EXP, is the thing. A character who reaches the final room at level 30 will be over 45 when they win.

Yes, the final battle experience is usually enough to get you to level 50.
My last winner , a skeleton archmage reached the Sanctum at level 43 or 44 (despite having cleared every dungeons of the game previously, but 40% XP malus is really showing) and after defeating Elandar and Argoniel, he went to level 50

Not complaining as it's good for doing some post-endgame fun, but for the challenge, it's going to be difficult to keep your character "low level" if they win.

I knew the bosses give a lot of xp but kicking to nearly max from lv 30 is quite bad. This effectively means that in order to beat the game with low level you'd have to skeleton and a pretty strong class at that.
The ability to turn off xp gain would be neat to get a real challenge, or we could just make it up to the Master.

With Master as the goal I bet more people would join the fun.

We could also work out what level they were before the final battle, no?

If people want to be honest, then they could link the character, and say "began final battle at level x, now level y.". That's if they can be honest...

Faeryan wrote:I knew the bosses give a lot of xp but kicking to nearly max from lv 30 is quite bad. This effectively means that in order to beat the game with low level you'd have to skeleton and a pretty strong class at that.
The ability to turn off xp gain would be neat to get a real challenge, or we could just make it up to the Master.

With Master as the goal I bet more people would join the fun.

Master is a good measuring point, maybe add a bonus for surviving the Ambush.

You could also call it the High-Peak Lowball Challenge and look for the lowest clear of High Peak.

Tiger_eye did quite a lot of low level completes but yeah tye final battle pushes the levels up quick.

In the interest of improving this contest, it's worth noting that wyrmics can reach the top much faster, though not necessarily win once there.

Assuming it hasn't changed, use burrow at the entrance of the unremarkable cave, and exit to worldmap with it active. Walk across the world map to HighPeak, and walk right in, skipping the prides, slime tunnels, etc. Should get you up there at much lower levels. Not sure if it helps with the mass EXP gain off the bosses, but it might.

Just finished normal mode with a Mindslayer with whom I entered the final battle at level 44.
Funny thing was that I had Facebook notifications enabled and it showed that level instead of lv 50 that I was when I finished it.