ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Stealth seems extremely ineffective at the moment. You are far better off with an invis infusion - even with 5/5 stealth, maxed cun, and a +9 ring, I still get spotted EVERY time from across the room by anything with eyes. I feel the rogue class, in particular, should be able to reliably hide with maxed stealth attributes - as is, despite my focus on it, I can count my successful Shadowstrikes on one hand. I'm not sure if there is a bug with light levels or something (as the stealth talent says it disables light) but even with no light source equipped at all, I get no joy... it feels like a total waste of points, and is pretty harsh on a squishy class like pure Rogues.

I get spotted by poison ivy.

Its sad when you can't even sneak past a plant from 10 paces away.

You're either still low level or... well, to try to put it kindly, you might want to try paying a bit more attention, though I don't exactly blame yeh for not noticing the good the talent's doing you, as it's kinda' obtuse about letting you know what's going on.

Stealth as is is both very powerful and very consistent once it gets going (mid-teens or earlier, once you've got a solid amount of cunning and maybe some stealth boosting kit, if you're lucky), but it's... wonky, and the feedback is kinda' off, so to speak. Being spotted doesn't necessarily mean you've had stealth broken, and until you actually lose the stealth sustain, stuff like shadowstrike still works; I can't count the times my rogue attempts have walked up to something that spotted them -- and nailed the rogue with some ranged attacks! -- and still laid into them with a shadowstrike boosted flurry. Being spotted also doesn't always mean they'll always aim at the square you're in if attacking at range, among other things, and there's probably a half-dozen other oddities I'm forgetting.

Stealth needs some work, but not really on the power side of it; most of its problems are feedback related and not being very clear about exactly what's happening. The talent description and related talents mostly just need a hefty dose of clarity, really.

5 it, build up Cunning, and put a category point into it.

You'll get spotted, still, but you may be misunderstanding how spottings work. Just because an enemy sees you on one turn, doesn't mean they still can the next, and as long as they can't see you, they will act as though you just blinded them-firing in random directions if they aren't tactical and generally acting stupid, and if they are tactical AI, attempting to fire in the rough direction you're in(often missing with anything short of a cone/ball) and still not having a perfectly clear idea of where you are.

It's high investment, but when I cleared(before Scoundrel was added), it felt like the only really uniquely good part about Rogue. It is quite a solid defensive skill.

Have you ever seen a dread or rogue or something flicker in and out of visibility as you move around and do stuff? That's what stealth looks like to the AI, because those types of creatures are in fact using stealth. "Being spotted" means that you flickered into visibility for a bit, and they know you're around - but it doesn't mean you don't flicker back out, and it doesn't mean they know exactly where they are, and it doesn't mean they will be able to effectively attack you (in fact if they have spells and are in a big group they will often blast their buddies), and it doesn't mean that you won't be able to Shadowstrike them.

I would like to see it scale a little better for the early game though. Have the low level monsters stealth detection lower so low level rogues can use it too.

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the clarification, then. In that case, the feedback ingame could definately do with some work.

As far as all that being unique... I find the traps and poisons to be the fun part. There are 3 classes with stealth, hardly unique.

I think "noticed your presence" would be a better in-game description for the notification.

Also, what I'd really like is for stealth to have a range at which you're always invisible to the enemy, which decreases as your stealth ability improves. Perhaps only for very level 4/5 of the Stealth skill. Would ensure some guarantee of safety at certain distances.

nukularpower wrote:Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the clarification, then. In that case, the feedback ingame could definately do with some work.

As far as all that being unique... I find the traps and poisons to be the fun part. There are 3 classes with stealth, hardly unique.

Marauder doesn't have stealth. Shadowblade does, but it's locked-like I said, this is a category that works best with a category point boosting it, so that's a huge investment. It makes the Shadowblade version look very different and backended.

Poisons are on Marauder, though. So it's just Traps, and to be honest Traps, while awesome early, are not that special lategame. Sadly. It's a shame they can't crit...

Also, what I'd really like is for stealth to have a range at which you're always invisible to the enemy, which decreases as your stealth ability improves. Perhaps only for very level 4/5 of the Stealth skill. Would ensure some guarantee of safety at certain distances.

That'd be interesting. Or maybe just a range factor, like +2 Stealth in the calculation per square you are from the enemy.

Stealth could stand to be more useful at lower player level, and yeah, some sort of indicator for "searching but not perfectly aware of you" would be solid. It's one of my favorite parts of the tiles version of Crawl. As a general improvement to stealth, I think it would function better as a negative status effect that is applied with a random duration, during which time you are guaranteed to go undetected (assuming there are no disruptive actions, like using talents or activating traps). The duration would be a function of stealth power vs. target mindpower/stealth detection, or however it works. This has some interesting gameplay consequences. Low-level stealth would let you avoid encounters, whereas high-level stealth would give you a guaranteed sneak hit. At moderate levels of stealth, you could sneak in with some tactical movements, and in large groups of monsters there is a good chance that one of them would detect you quickly. Combined with visual feedback like a flashing question mark + duration counter, and this could be an incredible improvement to stealth. It'd also help distinguish stealth (especially perma-stealth) from invisibility.

Also, the boss-telepathy behaves really... stupidly with stealth. They hone in like a laser-guided missile to your location until they get in sight, and then stumble around like a drunk. Not sure what to do about that; it would be a huge class-specific buff for rogues to avoid boss telepathy. I dislike boss telepathy in general but I guess that's another discussion.

Well, now that I've stopped panicking as soon as I see "has spotted you!" it's working a lot better. So thanks, ya'll

SageAcrin wrote: Poisons are on Marauder, though. So it's just Traps, and to be honest Traps, while awesome early, are not that special lategame. Sadly. It's a shame they can't crit...

As a side note, I have to wonder if people that say this have bothered to put a couple points in trap launcher, or if you're using the same traps I am, or what, cuz I am getting pretty late and traps are still my crutch. Who cares if they can crit when your ranged stun does 450 damage anyways (at level 32), not to mention 3 DoT traps that tick for 100 (200 for the gas trap) a turn, EACH? All on 8-secish cooldowns, too.

As a side note, I have to wonder if people that say this have bothered to put a couple points in trap launcher, or if you're using the same traps I am, or what, cuz I am getting pretty late and traps are still my crutch. Who cares if they can crit when your ranged stun does 450 damage anyways (at level 32), not to mention 3 DoT traps that tick for 100 (200 for the gas trap) a turn, EACH? All on 8-secish cooldowns, too.

Because they don't crit, they break stealth, and lategame my basic physicals outdamage that. By endgame, Flurry was outdamaging every single trap combined, and that's ignoring the fact that they are strictly worse than spells(since you have to drag an enemy through them before they can work, meaning there is at least one turn of delay on them-also a turn where you have to be obvious, so that you can make them move into the trap...and you don't want to be obvious, since you have Stealth...).

They're a good earlygame trick, sure, but so are a lot of things. Like practically every class of magic in the game.

Thinking on it, they'd be a lot better if they didn't break stealth. Feels like they really shouldn't, either. What kind of thief is obvious when laying traps?

I'm putting together an addon for grammar and spelling in b43 just like I did for b42:
http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/fresh- ... ent-tome-4 This time, I'm tackling talents as well. If an experienced player could write a better description for the talent and for the notifications the player receives I'll implement them. After the addon is complete I'm going to submit it as a patch to DG for inclusion.