ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This is a weird bit of asymmetry with literally every other class since you can't get good Steam Generators or Medical Injectors in AoA without the tinker zone (and those aren't very strong ones either but they're better than starters) so you end up heavily gimped if you want to use salves or heaven forbid an actual class that needs steam.

And then there's steamsaws. Guns would be bad but launchers aren't as important as ammo but sawbutchers are absolute suffering in the early game since all your damage hangs on you getting lucky with finding 2 t3 steamsaws from drowning or your damage is shit. I know the expac was balanced around Normal (why????) instead of fun difficulties but this class is just ridiculously unfun to start at the moment

So give tinkers a starting town (also this lets them actually have a lore reason to exist maybe) or a shop in LH for steamsaw + gun + injectors + salves + maybe schematics please

<DarkGod> lets say it's intended

Tinker Classes are non-canon for AoA, since the technology for it only really exists with the Atmos and Kruk Pride. It even pretty well says so when you unlock them for use in the main campaign. Essentially they are not really intended for AoA, so really there likely isn't real reason to make them work for it.

Additionally it sets a precedent that future expansions with classes will be playable in AoA. Personally I think it is fine that you 'can' play them if you want, and just make do with the difficulties they encounter as a result.

Davion Fuxa wrote:
Additionally it sets a precedent that future expansions with classes will be playable in AoA. Personally I think it is fine that you 'can' play them if you want, and just make do with the difficulties they encounter as a result.

tedium =/= difficulty, it'd be like saying ADOM is difficult

i can start scum for 10x as long to get good steamsaws instead of buying them like every character does normally, and can't even use tempest of metal unless i get lucky with an escort or steam gen drop so it basically just means you restart a lot more instead of actually playing the game. there's no difficulty here, just annoyance - compare literally every other class in the game where you are ready with just 1 unique/randboss in LH and you can buy whatever t3 weapons from the shops

There's an addon sticking a tinker shop in derth, iirc, if it really bothers you. Totally agree anything like that should be the domain of addons, though. The stuff's seriously out of place in the main campaign.

... also yeah, while the early/mid can be kinda' iffy in AoA (though re: steamsaws, it's much less of an issue if you actually use that one schematic the game gives you specifically so you can convert other melee weapons into them ), later-mid and late game is just fine. The steam generators and injectors that start showing up around the dreadfell area playwise and beyond'll match embers ones without any issue save maybe the slightly lower density, and usually even that isn't really a problem. It doesn't take all that long once you hit the tier 2/3 dungeons for you to start more or less tripping over the things.

Frumple wrote:There's an addon sticking a tinker shop in derth, iirc, if it really bothers you. Totally agree anything like that should be the domain of addons, though. The stuff's seriously out of place in the main campaign.

thankfully the addon creator had enough sense to put it in LH

Frumple wrote:though re: steamsaws, it's much less of an issue if you actually use that one schematic the game gives you specifically so you can convert other melee weapons into them ),

do you normies just not understand how I+ early game works? t3 weapons are the bare minimum you should be using. i'm not going to use the shitty default steamsaws until dreadfell where t3 stuff to melt finally becomes common, and rely on schematic rng

It's more not care than not know, tbh. If it's that much trouble/you care that much about tinker class balance in the broken difficulties of the campaign they're explicitly noted to not be intended to be played in, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take much to whip up another addon that starts you with a steamsaw or two worth of dwarven steel. Maybe whatever else you'd need to do some early game steamsaw conversion or whatev'.

Link's here, though, if for whatever reason the addon page's search function wasn't working for you. Did misremember the town, though, as it's last hope instead of derth. Eh.

Frumple wrote:If it's that much trouble/you care that much about tinker class balance in the broken difficulties of the campaign they're explicitly noted to not be intended to be played in

What

I'm being trolled right


e: normal is the broken difficulty http://te4.org/characters/20007/tome/76 ... 3b972199a3

Nope, that's actually a legitimate response. No one really cares to do anything about Tinkers as while they may be playable in AoA, they are very much a 'vanity' meta-class. For serious play in the AoA campaign you should use canon classes, or resort to the use of addons.

Davion Fuxa wrote:Nope, that's actually a legitimate response. No one really cares to do anything about Tinkers as while they may be playable in AoA, they are very much a 'vanity' meta-class. For serious play in the AoA campaign you should use canon classes, or resort to the use of addons.

gameplay should always come before story


"insane is not meant to be played in" is so blatantly wrong it might as well be a troll post also

Oh cmon, if there can be a secret tinker place, revealed by the tinker escort, then we can have a secret little tinker town, right? I'm sure Hogulus would love to write the lore for that.

Eh, that'd probably be alright. I'd just personally rather it be an addon, or at least not bother folks working on core content with stuff like it. Tinker shops seriously shouldn't be ending up in normal maj'eyal towns, though, not without it being through addon material.

That said, it's still something that'd be really wonky lore wise. Every other secret enclave or whatev' actually has some sort of meaningful influence, etc., etc. Lot less weirdness to just... not have it. Cave's enough for general play, anyway.

ster wrote:"insane is not meant to be played in" is so blatantly wrong it might as well be a troll post also

You are the only one that's typed that line, here. It's broken in the sense of exactly what you're complaining about; if you functionally can't start the game without skipping like half the item progression process and starting with items that are 15-20+ levels/half a dozen+ zones into play, something is broke, things ain't workin', and it's probably questionable if it's worth fixing beyond that when it's only happening in silly mode X+<whatever>. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that from a personal enjoyment standpoint, but working around the (entirely optional) broken parts of the game isn't really something that should be intruding on the parts that aren't quite that messed up, especially if doing so would seriously screw with the core setting. Which sticking tinker shops in AoA maj'eyal, would.

Gameplay should come before story, sure, but we're not talking gameplay, here, we're talking optional gameplay that isn't intended to work particularly well in the scenario that's being discussed. Stuff like that really shouldn't be handled by junk stuffed into the main game. Most I'd potentially recommend for actual inclusion is just starting tinkers with the cave access, really, and it's probably more effort than it's worth for the folks that actually can include stuff in the main code (of course, if someone else writes the code it's probably more likely to end up included...).

What should really be done, tbh, is to just cut the BS with drowning and whatever out and start higher difficulty crap with better items. Fiddling around a bit tells me I have no clue how to get the ruddy game to do that, but someone with a bit better idea how to kick the code into working shouldn't have much trouble just punting starting items up a material level or two and maybe sticking egos on them.

A little offtopic:
Ster please mind your language. I've told you already multiple times.
Thanks.

The best way to give tinker classes some better access to their tools in AoA is to give them their own exclusive town like the chronomages have. Say, there's some secret steampunk blimp flying around in exploration and you start from there. Maybe even giving you a specific T1 starter dungeon.

Just start AoA tinker classes inside the tinker cave and make the robots friendly shops instead of hostile enemies.

I understand devs have their own priorities, but it is depressing that something so simple as "add a shop so this class isn't automatically worse than every other class at everything for the entire first half of the game" would have someone opposed to it strongly enough to type up lengthy posts about it. Reminds me of this comic.

Frumple wrote:There's not necessarily anything wrong with that from a personal enjoyment standpoint, but working around the (entirely optional) broken parts of the game isn't really something that should be intruding on the parts that aren't quite that messed up, especially if doing so would seriously screw with the core setting. Which sticking tinker shops in AoA maj'eyal, would.

in the end this is a game about Magic Bees, dude. it's not exactly a deep or coherent setting that would be screwed by canonising steamtech.

Frumple wrote:but working around the (entirely optional) broken parts of the game

Insane only seems broken to people who don't play it. (Madness is probably the difficulty you're thinking of since insane is well designed and has important mechanics that aren't used much in lower diffs, madness is the joke unwinnable one) Incidentally, playing this game is entirely optional - should we not balance it at all then?

Frumple wrote:What should really be done, tbh, is to just cut the BS with drowning and whatever out and start higher difficulty crap with better items. Fiddling around a bit tells me I have no clue how to get the ruddy game to do that, but someone with a bit better idea how to kick the code into working shouldn't have much trouble just punting starting items up a material level or two and maybe sticking egos on them.

i hate drowning too, mankeli had a good idea for what to replace it with but clearly the new design meta is to only care about Normal Adventure (and the idea was literally just drowning but it doesn't take forever to get what you want)




e: forgot to mention but on every difficulty you skip up to t3 the moment they're available lol. t3 melee wep of massacre is like 50 gold, you can essentially buy one after trollmire on normal