ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Shielding rune is a pretty basic element of many builds, much like Wild and Movement infusions. However, it seems to be relatively rare that Shielding runes spawn in shop inventories. and even more rare to find one with >100 damage shield even in T3 towns. It's pretty common that I don't find a single Shielding rune in any of the towns, including Angolwen, after making a new character. I think this should be made more common, similar to the spawn rate of Regeneration infusions.

Shielding runes have a material level of three. Dropping it down to 1 or 2 would make them show up a lot more in general. Regeneration and Healing are material level one.

It's a noticeable issue for undead starts and a bit less noticeable on archmages.

This has been brought up before and I can't endorse it enough.

For many classes, lacking a decent shielding rune is absolutely crippling. Having them classed as T3 items is, to my mind, absurd.

I agree, and I think the minimum values on them should be increased. Shalore starts with a 100hp Shielding rune, but most of the ones I see in shops are considerably weaker. I've actually seen one with 50hp...that would be like a Regeneration infusion for 30hp, assuming the starting inscriptions are the baseline.

Would be nice to remove egoless inscriptions from stores too. I made an addon that did that and it makes getting a decent one so much simpler when the shop isn't cluttered up with 60 hp regen infusions.

Razakai wrote:Would be nice to remove egoless inscriptions from stores too. I made an addon that did that and it makes getting a decent one so much simpler when the shop isn't cluttered up with 60 hp regen infusions.

This I strongly disagree with. Egoless inscriptions are cheaper and that's important for shalore, especially those with an eastern start: the slazesh fens are really nasty without a physical wild or heal infusion. Egoless wilds should actually be cheaper: they're not quite in starting budget.

Yeah, the egoless inscriptions have their place. Affordability is important during the early game.

I think I bring up the rune/infusion thing like once every couple of months, it's always been one of my few big beefs with the game. Most other drop/gear-related stuff you can work around, but having decent runes/infusions is pretty much a necessity for beating the game with any class that has no self-heal/self-shield/reliable condition removal, and there's a surprising number of those.