ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Lapsang Souchong the level 22 Thalore berserker: https://te4.org/characters/281402/tome/ ... 2a88b3b316

I've made it farther with her than any of my other characters by focusing on just damage mitigation, debuff resistance/removal, and damage output. Did some research on what runes/infusions were best, have been avoiding flashy and overspecialized talents/categories, etc. I expected Urkis to instakill me but he rolled over very quickly after just one stun, so now I'm worried about getting overconfident

Anything I'm missing here? Anywhere I need to urgently focus? Talents/categories that would be handy, prodigies I should take with level 25 coming up? Having only 23% stun resistance feels like very not enough, esp. with ditching my second Wild infusion to use the Dissipate rune - maybe I should switch my first back to Shatter Afflictions, if I can find a Warrior/Titan one with low cooldown? Urkis might be pushover but I've a strong suspicion the Master won't be.

You may want to post this on the ToME sub on Reddit as well, it has a bit more traffic than here it seems: /r/ToME

Since you are not anti-magic, I would switch at least one of those Wild infusions for a Shatter Inflictions rune (removes 1 phys+mental+magical when used, only downside is it can't be used when silenced).

I always find a movement infusion to be really good, it allows you to escape from nearly anything as it also breaks stuns/pins.

So I would do Heal, Regen, Shatter, Movement (works when silenced since it's an infusion, breaks stun, perfect escape, save for emergencies).

I think that you could do with fewer points in some skills: Rush 5 is overkill in my opinion. In the past Rush could also be used as an escape, but now it needs a target, so it is less useful than it used to be. I wouldn't put more than 3. Same with Fast Metabolism: it doesn't really scale well, a few hp per round aren't going to save you. I wouldn't put more than 1 point.

Your saves may be a bit low, because of your stats. I would put at least 1 point in Spell Shield. Saves will not save you against super powerful bosses, but it will help shrug off a lot of status effects from the lower level mobs surrounding them, allowing you to save Wild/Shatter inscriptions for when it really matters. Alsol, put some more points in Conditioning/Unflinching Resolve. Having a decent chance to remove all kinds of status effects passively every round can help a lot. In the skill screen, press X to switch the view to where you can see the progression every for every level, it helps to see how well things scale later on. I would put at least 3 points in Unflinching Resolve. Weapon Mastery doesn't scale all that well at the highest levels, 5 is probably too much at this level, getting defenses up is more important. There are a few skills where you want to max them ASAP, but Berserker doesn't really have any of those in my opinion.

Also, since your dex is really low and you have only 1 point in Combat Accuracy, your total Accuracy is probably a bit on the low side. Weren't you missing a lot of your melee attacks? Accuracy also improves the bonus on your weapon (every weapon type has some stat that scales with Acc). Time is your most important resource, and spending turns not hitting is giving the enemy free turns.

Race: Thalore is pretty much always good for any class. But I think that Dwarf or Halfling would make the first half of the game a lot easier on Normal. Set their first skill to auto-use when enemies are visible (and don't put more than 1 point, just rest after each combat to get it off cooldown). Both add saves and defense at the start of combat, so strong enemies are more likely to fail their opening attacks. Dwarves also get Power is Money to boost saves, and Halflings get extra crit from their first skill (scales with Cunning) and get a skill to remove status effects. Check out their racial skills on the wiki, all of them are really useful. Dwarves also get 2 extra starting dungeons, meaning a bit more xp early on and more items.

And at 20 I would consider picking a Class skill tree instead of a 5th infusion (pick the 5th infusion at 3rd or 4th Category point). If you shave a few points off of Rush and Death Dance and Warshout, you should be able to pick up a bunch of useful skills from a new tree. You can max those other skills later on when you have points to spare.

Also, did you suicide by drowning in Last Hope or something?

Thank you for the advice! I was trying to follow someone else's Berserker skill guide, but I think it was for an older version (re what you said about Rush), and the game does seem to favor putting a point or two in everything and only specializing at high levels I guess?

And yeah, I was bored with the character and had accidentally killed Melissa with Death Dance, so I decided to give her an apropos exit.

If the guide has a link to the characters vault, it says what version the character is. Some classes such as Necromancer have been completely reworked for 1.7 for example, so any Necro guides from before that are no longer useful.

It really depends on the skill whether you want to max it sooner or later, or not max it at all. As for Rush, it is about finding a nice cutoff point. It doesn't really matter if someone is out of your attack range if you are also out of their attack range. I think 1 point or 3 points are nice goalposts, depending on preference. And it can no longer be used to flee except when there is a weaker monster nearby to attack, but you really want a movement infusion for fleeing on a Berserker.

I would check out the ToME sub on reddit, there are many more recent posts on there than on this forum. Not sure why this forum is so quiet when so many people play ToME. Perhaps they are all on discord or something? Which looks more like a chatroom to me than a forum.