Does anybody else feel like you should start with money?

[DaltonRaccoon]

I feel like making a new character in ToME is like throwing pasta against a wall repeatedly until one of the noodles sticks. This is especially the case on the hardest difficulty modes, as some veterans can attest to. But even on nightmare, I have frequently lost characters to walking around the corner and being blindsided by a rare, when I'm level 1 and have no real escape options.

Often times, my survival depends on whether or not I've found a good rune/infusion or enough money to buy one before said rare appears.

I feel like the beginning of the game could have this extreme luck mitigated to a large extent by giving starting characters just a small pool of money, maybe 30 gold so that you can go to town before you fight and pick up one of the white, non-scaling runes/infusions. It would be SOMETHING, at least, and really make playing rogues especially suck a little less for the first few levels.

As far as I can figure it wouldn't have any impact on balance beyond the first zone, since by the time you clear a single zone you can afford a rune of your choice anyway. Would this break game balance in ways I can't foresee?

[Davion Fuxa]

This makes me think back to olden games like Final Fantasy 1 or Castle of the Winds - but in those games you started with no equipment, just money to buy it. I think it's fine how it is in this game - you have supposedly spent your money on some basic equipment to get you by.

[themuffinthief]

You start with 25 gold. If you're melee, go to Zigur and buy a mindblast torque for 10 gold (They have them there about half the time, if they don't just restart). That + kiting backwards (or bumping) carries you to 10 on its own without using a single other ability. If you're a mage it shouldn't be a problem anyway.

[Galax, the Trashman]

Kiting doesn't work 100% of the time, because the early rares consist of snakes, bees, and wolves who have a global speed of 130 or more. If you just happen to meet a berserker bee with 200% global speed around the corner, it's pretty much gg.

Zigur can also spawn psychoportation torques. However useful that can be.

Regardless, why not drown rares from towns? They can pretty much sort you out with some loot to help in the early game.

[starsapphire]

Regardless, why not drown rares from towns? They can pretty much sort you out with some loot to help in the early game.

Though it may be a 'inevitable sacrifice', drown innocent villager seem to do evil.
Why I go out for adventure with empty wallet? I am an adventurer, not a beggar, yes?
...Okay though I'm indeed a rogue. Poor guys gonna poor. Just can't rebut.

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Seemed classes having a poor time in very early game are often poor guys indeed in the plot. Rogues, Afflicted, Yeeks.
They can't go shopping just because they can't afford?

[breadsmith]

That's exactly right, you're an adventurer: A Murder Hobo that engages in some light tomb robbing from time to time. There's a reason that bands of adventurers are attacked by the Patrols.

[cctobias]

There are known ways to start each difficulty, these are known to be able to work (ignoring how silly or cumbersome they are). Additionally the standard normal start is not really adequate for Insane or Madness and is borderline sadistic but doable on NM (these are heavily dependent on class/talents and escort possibly)

So let's establish that as a given. The real things to establish is what would be an ideal start for each difficulty, not to strong, not to weak, gives needed options but leaves room for improvement and challenge.

I think a good approach here is to start with what is "needed" and then consider how one would go about getting these things in some sort of non-messed up way.

Assume a Zigur t3 Mindblast Torque for all below:

Madness
For melee I think you pretty much need a t5 weapon (whatever quality). Its good to have some good armor pieces. I have found an early strong shield rune (300+ ) especially helpful.
For ranged caster this is a bit different but roughly equivalent, something high end for SP/MP/damage and some kind of extra um on the inscription/ancillary eq side of things. But sniping makes the start easier than melee.

Insane
For melee I think you pretty much need a t3 weapon or higher, obviously t5 is better, but t3 at a minimum. Maybe one or two extra enhancing item (stats, defense etc)
For caster ranged, actually I have been able to start with just a mindblast torque when I had good CC.

NM
Nothing extra than the MB torque really. And defintely some starts don't even need that.

Now what things would really help out and make the start smoother?
-some kind of scouting, this is basically your way of avoiding one shots, corner gibs, just plain bad situations (cornered by three rares) etc. this starts to rear its head in NM


Personally on Insane and Madness if I try to get a wand of clairvoyance before finishing Trollmire and Kor pul. If Idon't have one I may restart.

So the question is, in an ideal world, what would be a good standard start for each of these? If you had you way would there be a shop with a guaranteed wand of clairvoyance, would madness givee you one free selection of a t5 green weapon? What would be reasonable and balanced given that currently a non-drowning start is impossible for some classes in Insane+? What do you aim for when you startscum?

[Hommit]

Madness
For melee I think you pretty much need a t5 weapon (whatever quality).

First things first, you need 48 str or dex to equip said weapon, no?

[cctobias]

Madness
For melee I think you pretty much need a t5 weapon (whatever quality).

First things first, you need 48 str or dex to equip said weapon, no?

The stat may vary depending on type and class, could be dex. But I suppose another aspect of starting on Insane and Madness is most people drown things and wind up level 8-10 (get lucky in bosses and you get pretty good xp). If you were doing maurader you could put all ~30 points into strength and be ok.

So I suppose that is another thing there, as far as I know, everyone who doesn't die like a dog drowns NPCs on madness and they always start at least level 7 or 8 before ever even attempting to fight anything. This has other non-equipment related conseqeunces as well (i.e. level 10 category unlocks are pretty close to your "start").

This does not really apply to NM in that drowning is not as advantageous and not as needed so many NM start at level one similar to normal, the main problem in NM is that you can easily run into a situation where you simply do not have the tools to counter like you would after doing a few zones and you may die with no recourse because you lack important counters/tools. This is usually not so lethal that a MB torque can't make up for it for just about any class, but it can be pointlessly lethal for a vanilla start for some classes.

On madness this, as one would expect, gets rather extreme. You can and will run into mobs with Kinetic shield 17 giving 90% damage mitgation or a 100 hp damage shave. And you run into them all the time in places like gloom or norgo. Countering that would be nice, but there really aren't any good counters to it except for dissolving acid from alchemist. The only other counter is Combo Kick but that is flawed as when you remove the KS it create a large damage shield and you need to do damage to get combo points. Thus for a physical damage melee character you need to hit really frigging hard, thus the t5 and well you would probbly high str anyway so you hit really frigging hard anyway.

On nightmare the MB torque alone will solve the problem, it hits hard enough and goes through the shield. The mob has like 1/4 the hp. So its feasible to start at one even with rares with a psi shield of some sort. And you only run in a few comapred to Insane/madness where you might be fighting multiple one with kinetic shield.

But anyway yes when we consider what is done in practice all viable madness starts and most (or many) viable Insane starts also start out at a higher level.

[Doctornull]

Regarding starting cash, perhaps it'd be neat if some classes started out with more or less.

Like, Alchemists might start with +50 gp because they earned it selling gemstones.

Rogues might start with +100 gp because they just robbed a couple of Alchemists.

Etc.

[HousePet]

Varied cash starting amounts would be a good way to balance the starting difficulty of some classes.
I'd probably still never go shopping until after beating all the t1 dungeons, but anyway...

As for higher difficulties, I think they should be handled better. Giving out cash or fixed item generation is just a bandaid. Like my suggestion of higher starter level to avoid talent juggling at low levels (which nobody took seriously).

Incidently, would anyone be interested in me looking into a ramping difficulty adjustment to replace the current method?

[Doctornull]

As for higher difficulties, I think they should be handled better. Giving out cash or fixed item generation is just a bandaid. Like my suggestion of higher starter level to avoid talent juggling at low levels (which nobody took seriously).

Sounds interesting to me but not really on topic for this thread.

[Mankeli]

So the question is, in an ideal world, what would be a good standard start for each of these? If you had you way would there be a shop with a guaranteed wand of clairvoyance, would madness givee you one free selection of a t5 green weapon? What would be reasonable and balanced given that currently a non-drowning start is impossible for some classes in Insane+? What do you aim for when you startscum?

Gotta agree with cctobias.

There is a problem and it's mainly on higher difficulties but it doesn't really have much to do with gold: You can't buy 5 tier weapons which, I think, are really needed (Murderblade is good also in 1.2.4) for melee classes on Madness (Sun Paladins actually can buy tier 4 weapons but usually not very good ones). I'm currenly playing a Sun Pally Madness/roguelike and let me just say that start scumming and getting Champion's Will usable (only 35 St requirement) before fighting a single monster is pretty different than having to cope with that iron greatsword of s hit that you start with.

The start scumming on madness makes a HUGE difference and I don't think you can even survive without it. The variance in difficulty is much much greater than in normal because you are so incredibly reliant on those first drops from drowned rares. On insane, you can still survive without scumming on very strong classes like archmages (at least I don't remember drowning any rares on my insane zero death winner). However, a good mind blast torque and/or nice drops from drowned rares are probably very much needed for melee classes on Insane.

So the question remains, can something, besides giving more gold which probably wouldn't work very well, be done about the huge randomness in the viability of early characters on higher difficulties? Guaranteed t5 weapons?

Like my suggestion of higher starter level to avoid talent juggling at low levels (which nobody took seriously).

This could be part of the solution too.

Incidently, would anyone be interested in me looking into a ramping difficulty adjustment to replace the current method?

I think some skills need hard caps and if these kind of caps already exist, then they should be lowered. I understand that rares/uniques/bosses a on Insane+ should be challenging, but it's a bit ridiculous to suddenly run into a boss that you simply can't seem to damage at all on Madness because of some very overleveled defensive talent.

So short answer: yes!

[cctobias]

I think that the OP's main concerns is that even on NM you sometimes lack sufficient counters. Even though shalore are the master race, they still start with no counter to stun. This can be deadly on NM. I believe he is proposing gold as a reasonable solution to this issue, in that you can probably solve it by simply buy a wild:phys which costs far more than a t3 mindblast torque.

I mean MB torque is a fine answer and all but it also kind of cheap and silly. Does anyone believe a t3 MB torque is actually worth 1/5 the price a single wild:phys?

I would guess all the OP really wants is a chance at some scouting and a way to deal with conditions. And that both of these are buyable fairly reliably therefore he is thinking hey just give NM 100g, easy peasy.

Honestly one of my main goals on madness is to get enough crap extra drops to make enough money to buy a movement infusion. I pretty much won't bother on madness without it. But really the same could be said for nightmare. Movements are amazing substitutes for a wild:phys those + a scouting/telepathy thing not only make a start far more nice, but are useful to the end of the game.

[Mankeli]

^Certainly, and something like a movement infusion really helps. However, the point I was trying to make was that it's fairly easy get things "money can't buy" on insane + madness by drowning towns people and restarting if not getting something good -and you still get cash from the trash you don't need for movement infusions or whatever from the drowned uniques.

Towns certainly have good things like undeterred boots etc. to give some form of status protection but good weapons (meaning insane + madness worthy), for example, are hard to come by.