ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I don't know if it's the right place to post this, but anyway :
it's my 1st game where I reach the far east.
And now I am stuck there until I find these parts at the orcs fortresses (to build the far portal at the morning gates apparently) !

But it doesn't seem logical : the fortress should have an option to teleport us back... it even has a "far portal" but we can't use it like the one to go to the far east (the orb doesn't work on it).
The problem is that I am too low level to start the orc fortresses now, I would have done a few optional dungeons before that, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of optionals in the east except the nagas, but I visited them already (and the spiders of course).
I even had the ingredients for 1 of the alchemist potions, but I didn't go to take it because I was sure I would be able to go back using the fortress...

Also having the ability to use more than 1 savegame would allow to avoid this kind of situation...

While I am at it : I tested quickly the class of sun paladins and some parts seem to be missing : when we get back to maj'eyal with the naga because of the explosion, nothing tells us we have to fight her. Since we arrive on a stair and she was too strong for me the 1st time, I just left, had a walk around, and realizing that I missed a few things got back and finished the fight, which gives the rod to teleport. And then no quest update, nothing to tell what to do now, except "find a way to get back to the far east". Well ok at this point we know already the dungeons in the west so we can visit them without any quest pointers but it gives the impression to be unfinished. I expected some talk with some high ranking official to get started, like the one from last hope... I visited him to check, but he had nothing to say...
Anyway it's just ideas !

No.

You aren't supposed to fight the Orc Fortresses once you get to the East.

I've always thought the portal situation was weird with the fortress. Especially since, depending on what you do, it's possible for their to canonically be a permanent portal to a Western city that you...can't...use... but the real answer is the game wants to make certain quests mandatory for certain benefits, and no one has modded away around that. One thing that might help you is Vor Armoury is not Vor Pride. Getting to that part of the portal quest will reveal a new dungeon nearby Vor Pride that is difficult, but not as murdery.

The lack of multiple savestates comes from ToME being a roguelike! If you want to make people paranoid about every unknown enemy or new dungeon, you don't want them rewinding time to before they made a mistake. (but if you want to do it manually, you can copy your save folders from the ToME folder in your user folder when you're really worried. Be careful that you don't hurt your experience, though.)

You're right that there should probably be more direct ways to look for a way East than aimlessly murdering thousands of monsters. But for the most part I think you're also on the nose that it's assumed the player knows how to proceed even if the character doesn't. For next time, the rod of recall will actually drop from the first boss you beat no matter who it is. The quest still won't advance, but if you want to beat up Prox instead you have that option.

Thanks for the reply, twas Brillig...
Well the east is the big secret area while you are in the west, but once you get there why not allow the fortress to serve as a passage between the 2 ? Plus it seems very logical considering the way it's built and what is inside.

For the vor armory, well I tried the "vor armory back entrance", and the orcs there are around level 38, 10 levels higher than me, I can still manage a few fights, but murderous is a good word to describe the fights !

And I didn't know the rod was dropped by the 1st boss, no matter who he is, good to know, thanks. This part would still need more details at least for the sake of immersion though...

Yeah I know I can backup the save, I have done that in my first games, but didn't do it once for this character, plus I really wasn't worried at all when stepping through this portal because for me it was similar to the lightning mage situation where the mages send you there and you return thanks to the fortress...
Too bad I never moded anything, adding the ability to the far portal of the fortress to react to the orb and then propose 2 destinations shouldn't be that hard to do...
Anyway thanks for the infos, I'll try to find a solution for my game...

I wouldn't say that having a farportal that always leads to a random far away place as being a logical reason for being able to teleport between continents.

Unless you are referring to the rod taking you back to the fortress, but I think that is there for convenience not plot.

Yeah to both : the teleport rod implies an orbiting space ship with a teleporter so it could reach any place at the surface of the planet, but maybe it would be reasonable to limit this to only visited places to avoid to reach some places too early, like the far east !

And the farportal takes to random locations by default, but with the orb to use it, it should be similar to the ones created by the orcs or the one we try to build in the morning gates, that's how I see it at least.

But anyway I am still stuck, and it's really too bad because it was my best character with quite a few lives left (3 from memory), but they become useless now... unless I want to try to survive the vor armoury with fights so hard that they are no fun at all anymore... Really too bad...

At that stage of the game, the level of enemies isn't overly important.
There is also the Shadow Crypt you can try if Vor Armoury is too hard.

HousePet wrote:I wouldn't say that having a farportal that always leads to a random far away place as being a logical reason for being able to teleport between continents.

Unless you are referring to the rod taking you back to the fortress, but I think that is there for convenience not plot.

No question, having the rod take you back to the fortress is about convenience. The exploratory portal is by nature exploratory, but my problem is with the one from the Melinda quest.