ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So with relatively recent changes the sell/transmog price of rare equipment was significantly nerfed, at least in the earlygame, and with it the income of low level players. In normal gameplay, I think this is not a very big deal. However, I feel one playstyle that significantly was affected is mindstar/staff melee characters. Often times these already start off very weak, due to unorthodox point and generic investments and the lack of a primary melee mastery skill for most of the earlygame.

Essentially, this very weak earlygame ends up being extended based on how hard it is to save up that 750 gold, and currently on an average normal game it involves doing every T1 dungeon, Arena, Ben Cruthdar, Lost Merchant, and the Maze, and sometimes some adventurers/Sandworm (sometimes less depending on your race) before that money can be saved. This can be even further complicated by whether your race/class has magical abilities it needs to avoid taking in order to have entry to Zigur or some items to buy from Angolwen before going Anti-Magic, the 750g fee puts a hefty delay on all these things. I feel like this is an extremely long time to go without a tree crucial to your character's combat effectiveness. I understand there is some weakness to building an unorthodox character, but I think this is a bit extreme for merely trying a different playstyle.

What are your thoughts on reducing the price to unlock Staff/Mindstar Mastery to 500g or even 250g? I feel like the current price is pretty excessive and arbitrary, seeing as it has little to do with the overall balance of the trees and merely makes it more tedious to try to get them.

I like it at 750, significant loss.

If anything needs to be fixed, it's the fact that getting it from Escorts makes the unlocked version worse. Otherwise, there's multiple notable cost options for it.

Just because your build needs something, doesn't mean you can't adapt in the short term. If that's a problem, there's always builds that can do without-Mindstar Mastery isn't a requirement, though it's very good.

By the way, Zigur allows you entry as long as you didn't come to the world map with an Arcane resource(like Mana). The guards may not like you, but as far as I'm aware of, you can still get to the store.

(For the record; I'd rather see the costs higher. But I'm not stuffy enough about it to seriously suggest that; I just like the idea of the cost being more significant, at least with Mindstar Mastery, the one that very substantially impacts a Mindstar wielder's Mindpower damage. Staff Combat doesn't up Spellpower, so it's less of a big deal. I honestly felt like Mindpower heavy classes were in a good place before Mindstar Mastery became universal and started heavily boosting Mindpower...)

The problem is that mindpower casters aren't the ones being nerfed by this. Solipsists, Summoners, Doomed, and Mindslayers can all blast their way through the early dungeons just fine without their free Mindpower boost. However Cursed, Marauders, AB, SB, and other classes that would actually look at Mindstars/Staves as prospective melee options are the ones who get hurt by this.

A big part of the problem is Alchemist Escorts making the tree worse if you get a skill from them first, yes. The 750g price would be a bit easier to meet if you could do Old Forest without worrying about wasting Alchemist Escorts going to waste, however I still think the niche playstyles are getting a short end of the stick here. A lot of these classes are already known to have very difficult time with the earlygame, I just don't see any reason to make it even harder. You can only juggle so many talent points, can't juggle stat points, and have very limited equipment options in the earlygame. It's not like you can just play Vanilla Cursed up until Sandworm and then completely switch gears once you have your arbitrary unorthodox build tax saved up.

Sedrahl wrote:The problem is that mindpower casters aren't the ones being nerfed by this. Solipsists, Summoners, Doomed, and Mindslayers can all blast their way through the early dungeons just fine without their free Mindpower boost. However Cursed, Marauders, AB, SB, and other classes that would actually look at Mindstars/Staves as prospective melee options are the ones who get hurt by this.

So...you're saying that the Mindstar users are already good anyways, and that the Stave/Mindstar users that would actually be interesting are being hamstrung by the cost?

...

Okay, I don't actually have a good argument for that, particularly given as Mindstar Mastery's impact is only truly notable later, thanks to being a talent-level-scaling multiplier... Fair enough, I'd be okay with 500 in that light.

Yes, you pretty much summed up my point in a more concise fashion than I could have.

750 was actually fine too, a few versions ago. My main intention is just to adjust the price to bring the purchase timing back around where it was before Rares got nerfed. (In other words, before you start doing T2 dungeons.) On average I find a Normal-difficulty character who doesn't spend any gold/have bonus dungeons will have around 450 gold by the time they finish T1 dungeons and side-quests, so I think a 400-500 price tag would be appropriate depending on how consistently a character should be able to get their respective mastery that early. Low-tier mindstars tend to have very poor Mindpower and nonexistent Will/Cun, so it should be of very little benefit to casters, however it would make playing mindstar cursed/wyrmic, staff AB, and other niche choices much less punishing in the earlygame.

On average I find a Normal-difficulty character who doesn't spend any gold/have bonus dungeons will have around 450 gold by the time they finish T1 dungeons and side-quests, so I think a 400-500 price tag would be appropriate depending on how consistently a character should be able to get their respective mastery that early. Low-tier mindstars tend to have very poor Mindpower and nonexistent Will/Cun, so it should be of very little benefit to casters, however it would make playing mindstar cursed/wyrmic, staff AB, and other niche choices much less punishing in the earlygame.

Yeah, this is basically the same thought process I summed up as "...".

Well, without the "Also, in order to get any notable impact by T2, a Mindpower character would have to make substantial sacrifices of high priority Generic skills for...+6 or so mindpower." part.

Here's an idea: split the 750 gp into three parts, and allow those parts to be purchased separately.

200 gp: grants the locked category at 0.8 mastery.
200 gp: if you have the category locked, unlock the category.
350 gp: if you have the category at 0.8 mastery, bump up to 1.0 mastery.

If you get lucky with a lonely Alchemist in the Trollmire*, good job! You've saved yourself 200 gp, rather than irrevocably screwing over your character.


*) There should totally be a ToME t-shirt which says "I got lucky with a lonely Alchemist in the Trollmire."

That does fix all the problems addressed in this thread rather well, it seems like.

You can start working on your build after T1 and optimize it during T2, and it makes for an easy fix of the escort issue.

An installment plan is an interesting way to go about it. It eliminates the primary issue (no early Mindstar/Staff Mastery) while still preserving the 750g pricetag, makes T1 Alchemists usable, and actually makes taking the talent category from them relatively useful and not just a character-ruining non-option. (Although I would generally prefer to take more levels in generics instead.)

Personally I'm curious if there's a way to make Mindstars/Staves an accessible melee option in higher difficulties without upsetting Normal game balance.

That would be like making greatswords a viable option for casters.

^Considering you can get Combat Training for 50g, it already is. Casters just don't ever use greatswords because, well, they're casters.

Staves and Mindstars already should be viable enough to use; The issue is, no class inherently has synergy with them. (You need two-hander or non-specific-weapon talents and Magic for Staves, and dualwield talents/Willpower/Cunning for Mindstars. I've heard of people doing good things with Mindstar Cursed/Wyrmic, but even then it's not that strong of synergy.)

But the Staff bludgeoning Adventurer I made sure felt like they were viable on Nightmare, and Mindstars are better if anything.

I can't speak for staves, but Mindstars are quite capable dual wield weapons, especially for a class like Cursed who has no Dual Weapon talent tree for 100% offhand effectiveness. (Although physical weapons have benefits of their own, such as Stone and Rampage synergy.) They actually make a decent choice for a lot of classes simply because Will and Cun are pretty universally useful stats. They can also make going Anti-Magic a lot more attractive for classes that wouldn't normally such as Marauder.

I'm unsure if they can match the damage of physical weapon dual wield, because Mindstars have a pretty defensive ego pool that lacks the on-hit damage that dual wielders love so much (barring the quite uncommon Mitotic ego) but I think they still make an interesting and effective dual wield (or even one-handed) choice that is primarily held back by the soul-crushingly difficult earlygame and inaccessibility of the tree in general.

Staves I think are more of a niche choice, as Mag doesn't quite have the universal benefit that Will and Cun do, and tend to be specifically geared toward spellcasting.

I'm sad that Temporal Wardens can't train Mindstars. It would fit them very well. They have two talents scaling with Wil, they would keep tolerable strength and carrying capacity despite focusing on Wil/Cun, they have dual wield talents, and they could save a cat point by not having to unlock Dual Weapon Training. No betraying Alchemists for them, they can't enter Zigur, and Spacetime Tuning can't be unlearned (it IS a spell). Worldly Knowledge won't do the trick, and it's one of rare cases which would make it sound exciting. People even told me you can't shop in Zigur when you deliver Grand Corruptor's regards.

b0rsuk wrote: People even told me you can't shop in Zigur when you deliver Grand Corruptor's regards.

I find it bizarre that people would even consider that this would be possible.