ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

"The battered remains of a flame imps hand. It still burns with that unnatural flame."

Light radius +1
See Stealth +10
Can be used to activate talent flame.


Every time I get this thing I think to myself that it should be a light rather than a tool. It simply doesn't fit well into the "tool" slot with things like pick axes. It goes very well though in with other light sources. So I'm going to officially suggest that this unique gets moved. It should be a really easy fix.

it's a magical charm that emits somewhat dim light, what's the problem? Wands, torques, totems and spyglasses occupy the same slot.

The point is that it stacks with whatever's in your light slot for +1 light radius. A light with a base 1 radius would be absolutely terrible when there are things like Bright or Health egos.

A light level one, see invisible, and low end flame is pretty bad regardless.

At low levels in the tool slot it's competing with things like the tooth of the mouth, telekinetic core, and eye of the dreaming one. Even most of the picks have decent stat boosts, torques act like an extra rune/infusion and also often have stats . . . this thing just has an activate similar to what you'd find on a pair of gloves like Flamewrought.

But Flamewrought also has + to willpower, + to fire damage, +fire damage%, 2 armor, etc . . . This has +1 light and +10 see invisible (not even stealth detection). I agree that it probably should be improved. Very good point.

If you made it +2 light and added +10 stealth detection it would make a much better early game light. Or if you wanted it to remain a "tool" then adding in a bonus to fire damage% would make it more useful for fire arch mage builds, Doombringers, and fire specialist Wyrmics. Unfortunately my suggestion wasn't about improving the artifact . . . just that it didn't thematically fit well into the tool slot and would fit better in with lights. If this discussion thread results in it getting a buff though I'm all for it! lol

To be perfectly honest right now this is something you slot if you are DPS and have a hole in your talent cool downs, or if you completely lack early ranged abilities and want some. Most likely its just vender trash or something to toss the apprentice mage without losing a better drop. Its a very niche specific tool/light/whatever.

Winddbourne wrote:A light level one, see invisible, and low end flame is pretty bad regardless.

At low levels in the tool slot it's competing with things like the tooth of the mouth, telekinetic core, and eye of the dreaming one. Even most of the picks have decent stat boosts, torques act like an extra rune/infusion and also often have stats . . . this thing just has an activate similar to what you'd find on a pair of gloves like Flamewrought.

But Flamewrought also has + to willpower, + to fire damage, +fire damage%, 2 armor, etc . . . This has +1 light and +10 see invisible (not even stealth detection). I agree that it probably should be improved. Very good point.

If you made it +2 light and added +10 stealth detection it would make a much better early game light. Or if you wanted it to remain a "tool" then adding in a bonus to fire damage% would make it more useful for fire arch mage builds, Doombringers, and fire specialist Wyrmics. Unfortunately my suggestion wasn't about improving the artifact . . . just that it didn't thematically fit well into the tool slot and would fit better in with lights. If this discussion thread results in it getting a buff though I'm all for it! lol

To be perfectly honest right now this is something you slot if you are DPS and have a hole in your talent cool downs, or if you completely lack early ranged abilities and want some. Most likely its just vender trash or something to toss the apprentice mage without losing a better drop. Its a very niche specific tool/light/whatever.

Tooth of the mouth has horrible stats and should pretty much never be equipped, you can use dig regardless anyways.
Telekinetic core is not that great at all, the only good one you mentioned is eye of the dreaming one not to mention halfling foot, torques and totems are much better than these.
I agree it could use a buff but making it a lite is probably not the way to do it.

Tooth of the mouth is good for early game corrupters and Reavers. It gives a 4% bonus to blight damage which is their main damage type, and adds 15 blight damage to enemies when hit. For reavers it pairs up especially well with another early game relic: Skullcleaver which gives another 8% blight damage plus life drain.

Telekinetic core adds 6% physical damage, 5 willpower, 3 physical power, 3 mind power, 12% physical save . . . and it lets you use the pull talent. Again it's a niche low level artifact. It seems to be specifically geared towards low level cursed characters but could be viable early on for both Wyrmics and Mindslayers as well.

Eye of the dreaming one is in the same tier . . . it gives +5 to willpower, a bonus sleep talent, ten mental save, and ten mindpower. The big difference between it and telekinetic core is HOW it enables battlefield control. Pull brings enemies into range of a cursed who is pumping hate and wants to minimize downtime or deal with a pesky archer . . . eye of the dreaming one puts your target to sleep so you can heal, move to a better position, or just get the bleep out of there. I'd agree that it is better because sleep is a more versatile skill . . . but only marginally so.

I am curious however as to why you value the halflings foot so much? I don't usually consider that one to be very good at all. Perhaps I'm overlooking something.

The main point of Eye of the Dreaming One is the sleep immunity, which is nice even lategame.

Lol just read the description of halfling foot and you'll see why it's good. Free cleanse from dangerous statuses.

Also give me one reason to use imp's claw over a 5 light radius +45 hp lite and sure, it'll be a good buff.

I challenge anyone who says this is a useful item to send me a screenshot from Zigur's mindstar shop where no torque or totem is better than this garbage artifact.

I haven't really used Imps Claw, but one advantage I can see from it is in early in the game when you don't yet have Light Radius 10. The key thing I can see from the Imps Claw is that it can boost your ability to see enemies hiding in the darkness; and then also see Stealthed enemies a bit better on top of that.

To the opening post, I don't think it needs to be moved to the Lights slot; though it could use a buff perhaps to make it more noticeable among the Tools.

1 lite radius is not a good argument for this being not useless. Radius 10 isn't so important that this would ever be worth equipping. Flamewrought is a similar item that actually works because it gives decent stats and has a spammable active but this has no redeeming features.

Instead of moving it to the tool slot, reducing the power cost of Flame by half and maybe giving Demon Telepathy would make it good.

Isn't that sort of the point though - you 'don't have' Light Radius 10, you have less then that value, and you are trying to get closer to it?

And, isn't it already a 'Tool' in the Tool slot?

I think bpat's point is that other items in the tool slot provide much more value than a simple +1 light radius. Even simple things like an armor totem would be more useful the majority of the time.

Then that is a question of what players value more. Personally I can see a little benefit from it if a player wants to be able to get their Light Radius closer to 10 when they haven't got powerful Lites available yet, and commonly such dungeons where needing extra light would come into play also tend to have hidden enemies like Thieves and Rogues running about. Much like how Winddbourne stated that Artefacts like Tooth of the Mouth and Telekinetic Core have niche uses, this one has them - though related to specific dungeons, and I think that's mostly fine.

If there is some problem though in that the Tool Slot items you can buy seem to me overpowering Artefact Tools, then I'm not against attempting to address that. Maybe Tools should get a price increase so players really have to pay to begin using them. But I don't see a need to have to change all the low Tier Artefacts, Imp Claw included, to address this sort of balance issue.

It's a tier 1 item, so it shouldn't be that good, and people will sometimes use it simply because it's the first tool slot item they find, or possibly a choice between that and a weak pickaxe or something.