ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Currently, most classes cannot autoexplore on higher difficulties because of the risk of being one-shotted. This makes gameplay unnecessarily slow and boring. At the same time, any talent rebalance to deal with this problem risks lessening the challenge that makes players try higher difficulties in the first place.

I suggest that damage taken while autoexploring should not be able to reduce the player below X% health (X to be determined by the devs). If health falls below that level while autoexploring, the player is rendered unable to autoexplore until health rises above Y% again. This should make autoexploring viable while having a minimal impact on actual combat.

I dont understand, as soon as you take any damage you stop AE anyway

I think he's saying that Auto-explore should have some sort of one-shot protection on it.

Theyleon wrote:I think he's saying that Auto-explore should have some sort of one-shot protection on it.

So a some kind of damage resistance for stupidity, you say?

In real life if you jump on the highway the cars hitting you won't check whether you've seen them or not, they hit you as hard either way.

I know the problem though, and have cursed that myself a lot of times. It's just a matter of getting some means of detection and stuff. The playing style has to adapt to more dangerous situations than what happens on Normal difficulty.

Marson's Autoexplore & Rest tweaks addon helps with this a bit. It allows you to stop autoexplore if you detect an enemy via telepathy or the like. It doesn't fix stupid deaths but helps alleviate the problems a bit.

The solution isn't to give autoexplore one-shot immunity (which really doesn't make sense), but to fix higher difficulties so they're a bit more balanced than "most rares are somewhat challenging, but these specific classes will one-shot you without a chance to react you if you ever find them around a corner". Fix summons and shadows double-dipping difficulty modifiers, high-level stealth talents scaling and the likes, buff the other rares to not be pushovers and this won't be an issue again.
If having enemies that can one-shot you from auto-explore on higher difficulties is an intentional design decision or balancing the higher difficulties isn't a primary focus (that's understandable, they're even labeled as unfair), then you could have auto-explore be automatically paused when a powerful enemy is ~15 tiles nearby, maybe as part of Heightened Senses? That way you still need Track/Arcane Eye/Movement Infusion to scout while removing the extreme tedium of having to use these at every corner.

This issue has been addressed in next patch. Nightmare is more or less the same but you should not have 'one-shot' issues on nightmare anyway.

New insane is nightmare on steroids. Mobs do not hit harder but there is a lot more rare / unique mobs that ofc are stronger than typical creatures you currently kill @ insane difficulty level but they are way weaker than rare creatures in current version.

Example (insane difficulty):

In current version when you start as skeleton you can expect lv ~12 skeleton warriors / mages with at least lv3 skills. Manathrust can one shoot you, stun will be 6+ turns long etc. Dungeon is VERY HARD

With new settings you will face ~lv8 skeletons with lv1 skill on avarage. It makes a huge difference. Instead of 140 manathust base dmg you can expect 70-80 dmg. Stuns can actually be resisted because mobs have lower level and stats and even when you fail save it doesnt automatically mean death. Rare mobs are still very dangerous because of additional skills they have rather than raw power. Ofc if you are unlucky you can still be one shooted by unique / boss mobs (it is less likely when you level up)

Changes are even more apparent when you level up. Instead of a few rare mobs with super high dmg output you encounter a LOTS of rare / unique / boss that definitely can hurt you but are nowhere as deadly as current rare+. You can forget about ritch flamespitter hitting you for 1.5k (they still benefit from difficulty multiplayer but they are deadly only on madness). Defense / accuracy is working much better. Many talents that are complete garbage now starts to work because you get hit more often but not as hard as now.

ZyZ wrote:This issue has been addressed in next patch. Nightmare is more or less the same but you should not have 'one-shot' issues on nightmare anyway.

New insane is nightmare on steroids. Mobs do not hit harder but there is a lot more rare / unique mobs that ofc are stronger than typical creatures you currently kill @ insane difficulty level but they are way weaker than rare creatures in current version.

Example (insane difficulty):

In current version when you start as skeleton you can expect lv ~12 skeleton warriors / mages with at least lv3 skills. Manathrust can one shoot you, stun will be 6+ turns long etc. Dungeon is VERY HARD

With new settings you will face ~lv8 skeletons with lv1 skill on avarage. It makes a huge difference. Instead of 140 manathust base dmg you can expect 70-80 dmg. Stuns can actually be resisted because mobs have lower level and stats and even when you fail save it doesnt automatically mean death. Rare mobs are still very dangerous because of additional skills they have rather than raw power. Ofc if you are unlucky you can still be one shooted by unique / boss mobs (it is less likely when you level up)

Changes are even more apparent when you level up. Instead of a few rare mobs with super high dmg output you encounter a LOTS of rare / unique / boss that definitely can hurt you but are nowhere as deadly as current rare+. You can forget about ritch flamespitter hitting you for 1.5k (they still benefit from difficulty multiplayer but they are deadly only on madness). Defense / accuracy is working much better. Many talents that are complete garbage now starts to work because you get hit more often but not as hard as now.

Thanks for this post, I went through something like 5 number revisions on Insane before I settled on this, and any feedback on it is *greatly* appreciated. Toning down spike damage and increasing reward for rares was a major goal here, I'm hoping Insane will be played by more than 3-4 people.

Edit: Er, forgot to mention that I'm strongly in the "autoexplore should be fairly safe on 3 out of 4 difficulties and unreasonable spike damage is the main problem to fix" camp. Spamming Track is effective and boring.