ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

ToME is my second-favorite game this year after Dark Souls. I've played about 150 hours on 1.0.4 with about 10 characters on Normal, taking three through the end of the game. The developers seem to appreciate feedback, so here is my input. I won't debate any of these, but I can elaborate if requested. I understand some of these go against long-standing tradition and some probably have been suggested before. You can keep features that cater to your core audience while enabling options to appeal to a wider audience.


Easy Suggestions:

- The title music should continue to play during new character creation.
- Tannen's Tower and the Ruins of Telmur both have overworld music, when they should have dungeon music.
- Final boss battle should have different music from the rest of High Peak.

- Stats should appear in the same order in the character sheet as they do in the level-up sheet.
- Items that grant undead status relieve the character of the need to breathe. Yet ghouls suffocate in water. None of the undead races should need to breathe.
- The concept of adding a category point to boost an unlocked category is good. It is disappointing in practice. Changing this to a 10-15% bonus on one selectable damage type (including healing) should be a simple improvement that skirts complex balance issues.

- Every zone should have a flavor text pop-up as in the Last Hope Mausoleum. Suggest you make flavor pop-ups for bosses as well.
- Every zone should show a level range on mouseover as in the Wiki. Quest-recommended zone lists are not thorough enough. Stepping into a new zone to see the "you feel" text under-levels the zone and hurts long-term progression.
- Sludgenest and Dogroth Caldera should have higher appear rates, preferably 100%.
- If the Grand Corruptor is spared, the game-winning text says he's taken over Elvala. Not true upon revisiting Elvala. This text should be removed until any Grand Corruptor - related endgame quests are implemented or debugged.

- Irresistible Sun is overpowered. Suggest you reduce damage by 1/4 - 1/3.
- Girdle of the Calm Waters is overpowered for T1; suggest T2-3.
- Eden's Guile and Steel Helm of Garkul are overpowered for T2; suggest T3-4.
- Gwai's Burninator is vastly overpowered at T3. Suggest you make it a wand and drop to 1/3 - 1/2 damage at T3 or make it a T5 wand.
- See the Threads has too much impact to be attached to an item (Threads of Fate). Suggest you replace it with a weaker chronomancy-type talent on Threads of Fate.

- 50 gold for armor training is very cheap for the early boost it gives classes who start without it. Suggest you raise to 200-400.
- It's disappointing to blow your late-game cash on Urthol's unique items only to get bonuses that don't match your build. I found through save scumming that about 1 in 5 supported a build reasonably well. Suggest Urthol generate a list of 5-10 options after the player chooses an item type.
- I never saw a plain ring or amulet at T4-5, despite having good gems I wanted to imbue with. Suggest you boost drop rate.
- Shopping in ToME is poor: the stores are useless for the majority of the game. Tripling the inventories, raising rare item appearance rates, or having store item tiers rise with character level are some options to improve this.

- Make a difficulty between Normal and Nightmare. This might be too much effort depending on how the engine is coded.
- Permadeath is fine on very short games like QWOP or Tetris. It's tolerable on games that might last a couple hours such as FTL or Pixel Dungeon. Blizzard released stats showing that only 9% of Diablo 3 characters use permadeath. Permadeath will discourage a large portion of the gaming audience in ToME, which takes around 30 hours. If save scumming wasn't possible, I would've stopped playing after about 5 hours. Unless you characterize the free version as a "trial" with the "full" version only available to donators, Exploration mode should be enabled and the default.
- I think a level cap in a single-player game is a terrible idea, especially for a game with permadeath. You should eliminate this and allow players to grind Farportals to improve their characters if they're worried about surviving the final stage.
- I despise unlocks in games. How many people have praised this decision in ToME? You've hidden the most interesting classes from a casual player. All locked races, classes, and talents should be enabled on first install. Most Prodigy unlocks are reasonable because they're straightforward to achieve.

- I didn't realize I could take a Prodigy until my first winning character was level 36 (6 levels late). Suggest you make a popup when Prodigies become available.
- I spent about 40 hours with mages before I realized that Command Staff changed the elemental damage type. Just assumed it was a weak no-mana attack. Suggest you change talent name to "Change Element" or similar.
- I got destroyed the first time I entered the Temporal Rift with a melee character because I didn't realize what a huge effect the movement penalty had. Suggest you make this clearer in the zone entry pop-up text.


Harder Suggestions:

- Monster max levels and/or per-zone monster lists need scrubbing, particularly for simple animals. The worst case I ran into was a level 55 grizzly bear in High Peak.
- Simple animals should not have rares / elites with class abilities.
- I had a poor early impression of the game when a snake, a bear, a troll, a wolf, and a thief were all racing to kill me on the same screen. Only a handful of levels make use of opposing monster factions. Factions should be expanded so that enemies aren't obviously waiting around for the player character.

- Dreadfell is way too long and boring. Same monsters, same tileset and layout density, same dreary music. Every time I got a character mid-way through there, I stopped playing ToME and switched to a different game for weeks. High Peak is very long but the stair guardians make it more interesting. Suggest halving the Dreadfell levels or adding some compelling spice to them.
- I didn't like being told "this is exactly what happened to you" when playing the special Cursed level. Most (?) of the other classes are nice blank slates. Tranquil Meadow doesn't fit the rest of the game's style. Suggest overhauling this or moving it to an add-on.

- A sense of scale is important in games. The largest enemies in ToME are twice as big as the player, which is unimpressive. Big monsters should span many tiles; zooming them like the huge sandworm is fine for a quick fix. Hit detection and obscuration of other monsters might be a problem with the game engine. Narrow hallways shouldn't be an issue as big monsters could smash through them.
- I learned about ToME after playing FTL and then doing searches for roguelikes, which I hadn't played before. ToME is in great shape compared to Kickstarter / Greenlight vaporware / alphas that get stories on gaming sites. Suggest much heavier promotion of ToME to gaming sites.


Compliments:

- The talent development and class/build variety are fantastic.
- The transmogrification chest is the best loot management system under encumbrance limits I've ever seen.
- The music is very good for a free game. Celestial Aeon Project should get a cut of the donations.
- The lore is good. The salvation story did a terrific job of relating the conflict with magic.

A few comments on suggestions:

Agree with music comments.

Upgrading a category mastery is being made cheaper.

Flavour text on entering an zone is a great idea. But instead of spamming players with the same text every time they make a new character, how about a generalised look command that describes your current environment. This could also include the out of depth level warning messages. Existing popups that mention important stuff should remain.

Moving the out of depth level warnings to appear when you step on the transition to that level would be great.

Commissioned artifacts should be better next version due to ego overhaul.

Shopping is good if you know when the stores are restocked with higher level equipment. We need a message telling us when this is.

Did you try Adventure mode. Most players find it to be a good middle ground.

I must chime in lest the unlocks go unloved. Having goofy or difficult goals with some reward has kept me working at some classes or quests I would have otherwise glossed over, and has added hours of enjoyment. Maybe more transparency is good, though, as far as how to achieve them.

weather wrote:ToME is my second-favorite game this year after Dark Souls. I've played about 150 hours on 1.0.4 with about 10 characters on Normal, taking three through the end of the game. The developers seem to appreciate feedback, so here is my input. I won't debate any of these, but I can elaborate if requested. I understand some of these go against long-standing tradition and some probably have been suggested before. You can keep features that cater to your core audience while enabling options to appeal to a wider audience.


Easy Suggestions:

- The title music should continue to play during new character creation.
- Tannen's Tower and the Ruins of Telmur both have overworld music, when they should have dungeon music.
- Final boss battle should have different music from the rest of High Peak.

No issues with this. Certainly not a bad suggestion, though picking which piece of music by the artist who's music is used would be more challenging. Perhaps sift through the works offered by Celestial Aeon Project (who did the music used in this game) and find an appropriate one to suggest?

- Stats should appear in the same order in the character sheet as they do in the level-up sheet.

It's different? Not really sure that I ever noticed or was particularly bothered by this... I typically check the levelup screen to check my stats, only using character when I need to check saves/powers/resists/etc.

- Items that grant undead status relieve the character of the need to breathe. Yet ghouls suffocate in water. None of the undead races should need to breathe.

Can't have a good retch if you can't get a good lungful. If you tried, you'd just dribble. (And I'm sure folks are now picturing this.)

- The concept of adding a category point to boost an unlocked category is good. It is disappointing in practice. Changing this to a 10-15% bonus on one selectable damage type (including healing) should be a simple improvement that skirts complex balance issues.

I can't comment on what the new versions are doing with cat points, but there are some builds that hugely benefit from a category point on particular categories. In .4, Bone is a great category to pump for reavers/corruptors, as bone shield scales with effective talent level. In .5, it scales with raw, and is thusly, less useful. Stealth is another good category to bump, given that it's possible to reach permastealth, with 100% unseen action chance. There are a few others that can heavily benefit from a cat point. Shadows gets an extra shadow with a bit of mastery. (but they can also use a practically made for them artifact to boost matery, rendering cat point a poor investment, directly. Though with ENOUGH boosts through artifacts and cat point, one might be able to generate another extra one.) There are more examples, but many trees do indeed receive poor buffs from the decision.

- Every zone should have a flavor text pop-up as in the Last Hope Mausoleum. Suggest you make flavor pop-ups for bosses as well.
- Every zone should show a level range on mouseover as in the Wiki. Quest-recommended zone lists are not thorough enough. Stepping into a new zone to see the "you feel" text under-levels the zone and hurts long-term progression.
- Sludgenest and Dogroth Caldera should have higher appear rates, preferably 100%.

No opinion on the first. The second isn't a big issue, as every zone and it's enemies level with you anyway. Therefore, an area you enter early has lower level enemies, leaving you at a marginally lower level, meaning other areas are ALSO lower in level. So it keeps scaling with you. Because of this scaling, the idea of grinding is more or less eliminated. Is an intentional part of design, though offering warning feelings before entering might help with decisions on dungeon order, and reduce questions.
Sludgenest and Caldera are 100% for Thalore and Yeek respectively. Not allowing them to all appear to every character is partially designed to prevent experience/power creep, and is an intentional design aspect. (Doubly so given some abusive tricks that can be pulled with the sludgenest.) This shouldn't change, though I wouldn't be averse to seeing them be marginally more common if you don't have the unlocks yet.

- If the Grand Corruptor is spared, the game-winning text says he's taken over Elvala. Not true upon revisiting Elvala. This text should be removed until any Grand Corruptor - related endgame quests are implemented or debugged.

Easy fix. Kill the Grand Corruptor after slaying Zigur with him. You get the hexes reward, AND save the world from his evil. (And Zigur's evil, making it a twofer.) As for the rest, this presumably takes place after your character has moved on, leaving the world. Also, who says he hasn't? Maybe he's in one of those buildings you can't see. Just because it's not obvious, doesn't make it wrong.

- Irresistible Sun is overpowered. Suggest you reduce damage by 1/4 - 1/3.
- Girdle of the Calm Waters is overpowered for T1; suggest T2-3.
- Eden's Guile and Steel Helm of Garkul are overpowered for T2; suggest T3-4.
- Gwai's Burninator is vastly overpowered at T3. Suggest you make it a wand and drop to 1/3 - 1/2 damage at T3 or make it a T5 wand.
- See the Threads has too much impact to be attached to an item (Threads of Fate). Suggest you replace it with a weaker chronomancy-type talent on Threads of Fate.

Many, many, MANY artifacts/prodigies were adjusted in the coming .5 version. Wait and see them there before suggesting any further changes to them. (.5 is already doing a HUGE amount of rescaling and rebalancing.)

- 50 gold for armor training is very cheap for the early boost it gives classes who start without it. Suggest you raise to 200-400.
- It's disappointing to blow your late-game cash on Urthol's unique items only to get bonuses that don't match your build. I found through save scumming that about 1 in 5 supported a build reasonably well. Suggest Urthol generate a list of 5-10 options after the player chooses an item type.
- I never saw a plain ring or amulet at T4-5, despite having good gems I wanted to imbue with. Suggest you boost drop rate.
- Shopping in ToME is poor: the stores are useless for the majority of the game. Tripling the inventories, raising rare item appearance rates, or having store item tiers rise with character level are some options to improve this.

Uhhhh, 200-400 for armor training is almost... obscene. And the use it offers you on most classes that don't start with it, is merely the ability to equip gauntlets/metal boots/metal helms. Thick skin doesn't come into heavy play until you pump con, and that's typically at least a secondary, if not tertiary stat for most characters who don't get armor training. Exactly how is this overpowered?
The merchant always rips you off. Just sac him to the assassin and get that nice prodigy instead. It's not murder, it's preemptive revenge for his blatant theivery.
Also, a great many of those serve at least SOME purpose. Part of it is picking which slot you want both based off current equipment, and possible egos for that slot. Some builds are also far more flexible then others, so 1 in 5 is probably an understatement.
There's a guaranteed voratun ring and 2 amulets. Just beat a certain optional superboss.
Agreed on general lack of decent items from stores. However, increasing selection increases the chance that a key artifact might end up in them, beyond your financial reach. (Choker of dread for 24000?) This can cause problems. They're also far more useful on the higher difficulties, where you actually need the small edge they can give you, especially early on.

- Make a difficulty between Normal and Nightmare. This might be too much effort depending on how the engine is coded.

Difficulties are largely modifiers, what modifiers are you suggesting? Also, there already is one, courtesy of an addon. And another between nightmare and insane, in the same addon. And nightmare was already added (back) to give us one between normal and insane.

- Permadeath is fine on very short games like QWOP or Tetris. It's tolerable on games that might last a couple hours such as FTL or Pixel Dungeon. Blizzard released stats showing that only 9% of Diablo 3 characters use permadeath. Permadeath will discourage a large portion of the gaming audience in ToME, which takes around 30 hours. If save scumming wasn't possible, I would've stopped playing after about 5 hours. Unless you characterize the free version as a "trial" with the "full" version only available to donators, Exploration mode should be enabled and the default.

I played and won with the free version. Since then, I have won 3 additional times. No savescumming. No exploration mode. Nothing fancy. And adventure mode is there for a reason. If you want less permadeath then that, you aren't in the right game, or ever the right genre. Almost every roguelike espouses permadeath. (The only one that doesn't, off the top of my head, is Elona. And for rougelike-esque games, Perhaps Castle of the Winds would count.) Currently, the game is (quite well) balanced around adventure mode, with roguelike mode designed for a challenge, or for the purists who think "That's the way it should've been." T4 already took a HUGE risk in putting in those limited respawns on adventure mode, as it goes HUGELY against the grain of 'roguelike games'.

- I think a level cap in a single-player game is a terrible idea, especially for a game with permadeath. You should eliminate this and allow players to grind Farportals to improve their characters if they're worried about surviving the final stage.
- I despise unlocks in games. How many people have praised this decision in ToME? You've hidden the most interesting classes from a casual player. All locked races, classes, and talents should be enabled on first install. Most Prodigy unlocks are reasonable because they're straightforward to achieve.

Level cap is there to prevent certain scaling issues in maingame, as a balance feature. I suggest first, take a look at the infinite dungeon, which holds no cap. I also suggest taking a look at the I500 addon, which lifts the cap when a game-winner enters the Infinite Dungeon from the campaign. (The Vanilla game does not do this, sadly.)
Unlocks aren't there to 'keep the interesting classes from you'. It's about complexity. A lot of those classes are significantly more complex and difficult to run, and locking them until you are more familiar with the game is done for balance issues, and so that the entire game isn't thrown at you cold. I deeply enjoyed the unlock system, and relished the challenge of completing key tasks to unlock something new.

- I didn't realize I could take a Prodigy until my first winning character was level 36 (6 levels late). Suggest you make a popup when Prodigies become available.

This is reasonable It isn't immediately visible on the main levelup screen. That button pulsing might not be particularly visible anyway.

- I spent about 40 hours with mages before I realized that Command Staff changed the elemental damage type. Just assumed it was a weak no-mana attack. Suggest you change talent name to "Change Element" or similar.
- I got destroyed the first time I entered the Temporal Rift with a melee character because I didn't realize what a huge effect the movement penalty had. Suggest you make this clearer in the zone entry pop-up text.

Questions like this are often best handled from the in-game chat, which is often quite good at helping players out. I'm surprised you didn't run across this info in there already.
Agreed on the second one, a bit of lore popup about 'difficult movement' might be appropriate, though you also could've moused over the debuff that showed up.

Harder Suggestions:

- Monster max levels and/or per-zone monster lists need scrubbing, particularly for simple animals. The worst case I ran into was a level 55 grizzly bear in High Peak.
- Simple animals should not have rares / elites with class abilities.
- I had a poor early impression of the game when a snake, a bear, a troll, a wolf, and a thief were all racing to kill me on the same screen. Only a handful of levels make use of opposing monster factions. Factions should be expanded so that enemies aren't obviously waiting around for the player character.

Exactly what do you mean with the first part of this? 55 in high peak is low. And be glad it was only a grizzly, not a randboss 'Champion Of Uhrrok' with 5 classes of talents, at effective level 12 across the board...
Why not on the second? Rares are randomly determined, and I see nothing wrong with this.
Most enemies are out for your blood. It's quite rare for them to fight one another, and this is how it should be. I'm honestly not sure that having them fight one another is ever the right answer, bar some thematic things. (Mage-hunters and mages, for instance.)

- Dreadfell is way too long and boring. Same monsters, same tileset and layout density, same dreary music. Every time I got a character mid-way through there, I stopped playing ToME and switched to a different game for weeks. High Peak is very long but the stair guardians make it more interesting. Suggest halving the Dreadfell levels or adding some compelling spice to them.

Dreadfell is supposed to be fairly special, which is a part of why it's so large. And if that isn't enough 'variety' for you, you could open Dreadfell vaults, which are some of the worst deathtraps in game. (It's not impossible to find 2 level 60 enemies at a Dreadfell vault entrance. Dreadfell vaults are almost there just to kill your character.) A different map type like High Peak uses partway through wouldn't hurt though.

- I didn't like being told "this is exactly what happened to you" when playing the special Cursed level. Most (?) of the other classes are nice blank slates. Tranquil Meadow doesn't fit the rest of the game's style. Suggest overhauling this or moving it to an add-on.

It was already incorporated from an addon. And I approve, it explains where your curse came from. This is a nice touch. Roleplay your way through it, which is what it was designed for. This isn't 'how your life happens', this is one small fixed event. (A fixed point in time, if you will.) It's no different then an Elder Scrolls game saying "Here, you're this completely customized character who can do whatever you want, but in your past, you were a criminal. No exceptions."

- A sense of scale is important in games. The largest enemies in ToME are twice as big as the player, which is unimpressive. Big monsters should span many tiles; zooming them like the huge sandworm is fine for a quick fix. Hit detection and obscuration of other monsters might be a problem with the game engine. Narrow hallways shouldn't be an issue as big monsters could smash through them.

Sandworm sized monsters are a bit of an issue, and would provide mechanic issues, for certain. I could see adding some quad-tile sized enemies, for sufficent things, but they aren't going to be common, since I can't think of too much the game has that would have that size.

- I learned about ToME after playing FTL and then doing searches for roguelikes, which I hadn't played before. ToME is in great shape compared to Kickstarter / Greenlight vaporware / alphas that get stories on gaming sites. Suggest much heavier promotion of ToME to gaming sites.

This isn't a game that expects to be promoted in a lot of places hugely. Despite being as good as a AAA class console title, we don't have the budget to hugely pay folks to promote ToME. By all means, if you like the game, encourage your friends. Spread the word.

ToME is already on the greenlight list at steam, and will only be denied if there is no god.

Compliments:

- The talent development and class/build variety are fantastic.
- The transmogrification chest is the best loot management system under encumbrance limits I've ever seen.
- The music is very good for a free game. Celestial Aeon Project should get a cut of the donations.
- The lore is good. The salvation story did a terrific job of relating the conflict with magic.

In order, yes, it's quite nice, and keeps you playing for many many MANY games, no matter how many characters you lose, or even how many you win with.
It's certainly helpful, though I wish they hadn't moved the unlock from the Sher'Tul fortress, where it belongs.
DarkGod already donated to Celestial Aeon Project, IIRC. In his words, because they deserved it. As for the music being good, yes, it really is.
Except that Zigur is wrong, and filled with evil heathens who don't understand magic. That did a terrific job of demonstrating how horrible all the antimagic followers are. Just because there was a big magic explosion a long time ago, doesn't make magic evil. But heartlessly slaughtering innocents who had nothing to do with it, blaming them for this explosion, is the mark of an ignorant savage lacking 2 brain cells to rub together. In other words, a Zigurist.

weather wrote:- I despise unlocks in games. How many people have praised this decision in ToME? You've hidden the most interesting classes from a casual player. All locked races, classes, and talents should be enabled on first install. Most Prodigy unlocks are reasonable because they're straightforward to achieve.

Hm, pretty much everybody? The unlocks are great, in fact in the past we had to restrict MORE than what is there now because people would troll the forums about how "X class is too hard! Why isnt this one of the locked classes?! It makes noobs not want to play the game because we choose it, get stomped, then ragequit forever!"

You say you came from FTL? Im pretty sure, in fact im 100% sure, FTL has persistant unlocks that you need to achieve. I stopped playing FTL because the unlocks in that game are just ridiculous, at least in ToME you have a good chance to get any of the unlocks on any playthrough, most of the ones in FTL are purely RNG based.

Does this mean FTL needs to get rid of all unlocks too, even though that was one of the things the game was praised for?

How about The Binding of Isaac which has a staggering amount of unlocks? Just make everything available from the get-go?

This is what helps replayability. I dont play isaac so I can look at the same dungeon layout for hours at a time, I play because almost every time I die, I unlocked something new and think "Oh snap, what IS this new thing?! I have to find it!"

Same thing with ToME. Gotta get the unlocks. People love them.

Maybe we should hide those -locked- fields from char select? So players dont know they're there? That way the unlock is even more of a surprise. I remember way back when I first played this when it was still troubles of middle earth 4 and I didnt know the game even had unlocks, I watched a tree summon a bee and got the message "You unlocked Summoner class!" and I thought to myself "LOL what? I got an unlock for THAT?! Wow I have to keep playing and see what else I can find"

Sradac wrote:Gotta get the unlocks. People love them.

Those who don't love them just quietly use one of the unlock hacks.

It's so easy to avoid them if that's what you want.

I'm not gonna comment most of this stuff since everyone has their opinions, but few things I'd like to address are:

1) Unlocks, love em. The game wouldn't last this long without them. And by lasting I mean the replayability value.

2) Permadeath, there for a reason. Adventurer mode is a perfect tool to fix the worst part of permadeath issue.

All in all I'd just like to say some things are too easy and some are too hard, some are pleasing and some not so. This is what life is and what ToME does. That's how it should be.

Things that I don't comment on, I have no notable opinion on.

- Items that grant undead status relieve the character of the need to breathe. Yet ghouls suffocate in water. None of the undead races should need to breathe.

I'd be okay with that.

- The concept of adding a category point to boost an unlocked category is good. It is disappointing in practice. Changing this to a 10-15% bonus on one selectable damage type (including healing) should be a simple improvement that skirts complex balance issues.

No, it just makes it woefully boring and simple. It doesn't even make it more effective-probably less, as 10-15% damage bonus, on a damage type that someone has stacked 100% on, is very little actual damage indeed.

And it makes it a newbie trap to boot, as they're going to see that damage bonus and think of it as boosting their damage by 10-15%, instead of a value closer to half that on many of the most elementally centric builds.

- Sludgenest and Dogroth Caldera should have higher appear rates, preferably 100%.

They don't because they're late additions, and because too many dungeons equates to too many dungeons people feel like they have to do.

Considering they're mid-game and have a guaranteed way to reach them for unlock purposes, I don't see a problem. Scumming for them is certainly impractical.

- Irresistible Sun is overpowered. Suggest you reduce damage by 1/4 - 1/3.

Already done in trunk, IIRC.

- Girdle of the Calm Waters is overpowered for T1; suggest T2-3.
- Eden's Guile and Steel Helm of Garkul are overpowered for T2; suggest T3-4.

Outliers relative to the tier are fine to me, and I'm not the only one that feels this way. (You missed some, too.) Just as long as they're not the standard, merely something that makes people happy to see when they get it, and when they don't dominate too horribly long term. Those don't. (Eden's Guile is also being capped off somewhat in trunk, though. It allowed for too much scaling with Cunning.)

- Gwai's Burninator is vastly overpowered at T3. Suggest you make it a wand and drop to 1/3 - 1/2 damage at T3 or make it a T5 wand.

That suggestion would make it worse in every respect than Void Shard.

I disagree with it being overpowered to start with, though. One shot of decent AoE per battle is certainly nice and certainly flexible, but it's not soul crushingly powerful.

- See the Threads has too much impact to be attached to an item (Threads of Fate). Suggest you replace it with a weaker chronomancy-type talent on Threads of Fate.

By the time you can get it, scumming for gear's impact is fairly low. Most of the gear in the game has already gone by you. It'll get you some bonuses, but short of running Farportals a few dozen times-which has its own risks-it's not a big deal.

- 50 gold for armor training is very cheap for the early boost it gives classes who start without it. Suggest you raise to 200-400.

Why not just make it a universal category, instead? That fixes the problem as well.

- It's disappointing to blow your late-game cash on Urthol's unique items only to get bonuses that don't match your build. I found through save scumming that about 1 in 5 supported a build reasonably well. Suggest Urthol generate a list of 5-10 options after the player chooses an item type.

Trunk version has rebalanced egos designed to appeal to a wider variety of characters, and people who have tested them have reported a large increase in relevance from the randarts from that store. (And in general, for that matter.)

- Make a difficulty between Normal and Nightmare. This might be too much effort depending on how the engine is coded.

I coded one; DarkGod's been too busy recently to really check it out, but hopefully soon. There's an Added Difficulties addon for it, if you want to try out Intense.

- Permadeath is fine on very short games like QWOP or Tetris. It's tolerable on games that might last a couple hours such as FTL or Pixel Dungeon. Blizzard released stats showing that only 9% of Diablo 3 characters use permadeath. Permadeath will discourage a large portion of the gaming audience in ToME, which takes around 30 hours. If save scumming wasn't possible, I would've stopped playing after about 5 hours. Unless you characterize the free version as a "trial" with the "full" version only available to donators, Exploration mode should be enabled and the default.

Adventure gives a lives stock and balances out the fact that this is not a short game, to a fair degree. As you point out, there's around 30 hours in ToME, and 3-5 in many short games, but ToME gives you seven extra chances. Which comes out to about a life every three or five hours. Not too bad.

Also, I note that you save scum constantly and will remember this for how practical your suggestions on things being overpowered is. You've not noted that any enemies are overpowered, merely player options, then admitted you can't clear the game without more than seven stock-this makes you somewhat suspect on that regard, I feel.

I don't mean any offense when I say this; I assume you're just feeling like the game is meant to be played with multiple lives. It wasn't designed that way, though; IIRC, originally the game only had "easy mode" lives and normal mode with one life.

- I think a level cap in a single-player game is a terrible idea, especially for a game with permadeath. You should eliminate this and allow players to grind Farportals to improve their characters if they're worried about surviving the final stage.

Discouraging grinding is a main goal of ToME's design.

- I despise unlocks in games. How many people have praised this decision in ToME? You've hidden the most interesting classes from a casual player. All locked races, classes, and talents should be enabled on first install. Most Prodigy unlocks are reasonable because they're straightforward to achieve.

A lot of people, and I'm one of them, have praised this design. It's an excellent way to keep people from being overwhelmed, and there's an addon on the same site that unlocks everything(without permanently messing with your unlock settings if you decide to revert this decision; Handy, that.) if people wish.

- Monster max levels and/or per-zone monster lists need scrubbing, particularly for simple animals. The worst case I ran into was a level 55 grizzly bear in High Peak.

I think simple animals possibly need better very high level talent lists. I should see if I can do some tweaking for unlocking new skills at very high levels...

- Simple animals should not have rares / elites with class abilities.

Why not? (If you say verisimilitude, I'm going to be sad. I enjoy my class-having bears. That sort of thing makes ToME feel very different from the average fantasy game.)

HousePet -

Yes, I read about the store restocks in the Wiki. But when I checked a few stores after the events, nothing interesting appeared for me.

Yes, all my games were Adventure mode for Permadeath. Thalore Mindslayer was super strong and didn't need the seven extra lives. Ghoul Cursed didn't exceed that until the Fearscape Slime Tunnel Orb Guardian, which I found impossible with limited healing (even with the Fiery Choker). I only beat him after 10-15 tries when (for whatever reason) he didn't launch the Fearscape. Higher Lich Necromancer also exceeded seven lives, but with more retreating and more defensive gear choices, he might have pulled it off.

Stores are sticked by random numbers, so there are always going to be times when nothing useful generates.
Ego rebalance will also help with that.
Another possibility is that there are gaps where certain builds cannot get items that are good.

Crim -

I tried killing the Grand Corruptor after clearing Zigur, but couldn't damage him. I just checked (post-win) the Mark of the Spellblaze, and he's not there to kill.

It seems I didn't run into the superboss with the plain jewelry. I did one Farportal and didn't try the Infinite Dungeon, but I think I cleared everything else, including back-up guardians, in the main campaign. Edit: Are you referring to Atamathon? I never beat him, but I considered him outside the main campaign.

Okay, addons for other difficulties seem fair.

To me, a character feels more powerful when fighting against increasingly imposing and supernatural enemies. He/she graduates from simple animals to demons, etc. On the other hand, I suppose it's nice to have an egalitarian world where a grizzly can hang out with a Champion Of Uhrrok.

Great to hear that the musician is compensated.

Sradac -

Yes, the FTL unlocks are ridiculous. I took one look at the requirements and downloaded an unlocking save file. In ToME, I didn't download the unlock file until after 30-40 tries to unlock Mindslayers with a Yeek Summoner (rather than recalling and coming back 20 levels later). I haven't played The Binding of Isaac - can't get past the visuals.

I still think we should have caravans briefly show up on the world map when the stores restock, just as flavor and a notice.

Also, I think the stores should be slightly weighted by the town they're in -- so the Thaloren town would have great infusions, the Shaloren town would have great runes, etc.

And I think by the time you return from the East, virtually every infusion should cover two effects.

In general, raise prices on the good equipment, and make it considerably better. The only reason for money nowadays is at the very start (to get a better infusion/rune) and at the very end (to buy items from the merchant). You should be able to buy a very very good item (but not merchant-level), but doing so a few times should make it harder and harder to have the funds to eventually pay the merchant.

SageAcrin -

Yes, verisimilitude

On overpowered enemies - the toughest fight for my Mindslayer was a level 33 non-vault Eternal Bone Giant when the character was level 18. I tried 10-15 times at various levels until I finally beat him around level 28. At first I didn't like this, but soon I began to enjoy having a nemesis to come back to (I didn't count those deaths in my post to HousePet above, since reloading after a visit with my buddy was just for fun). With save scumming, I wouldn't say any of the main campaign enemies were overpowered. Playing without save scumming is a different game - one I wouldn't have enjoyed.

Even I've won the game a few times without save scumming.
The problem with save scumming is that you don't learn how to not die as quickly. (that is learn quickly, not die quickly)