What do you like and how's the progress going?

[Elliott]

Since we don't have anywhere to post characters (and since its still Beta, that's to be expected) yet, I'm curious to see what people are playing and having success with, plus people's general feelings about classes, races, etc.

I'll start.

My best character was a level 29 Dwarf Arcane Blade who died in the Vor Pride because I had a sudden fit of stupidity and took on a cyromancer and a pyromancer at the same time, while wounded. I really like Arcane Blades. Reasonable melee damage and the Conveyance and Divination schools are tremendous utility. I've come to feel the Arcane Combat talent, which feels like it should be their offensive core, gives a fairly mediocre damage return for the talent points you have to invest, though its better than nothing. His two key moments were getting a ring of mana (which is pretty much THE key moment in the career of any Arcane Blade), and then realizing I could scum the Black Market fairly easily, so I did so until a nice electric mithril battleaxe of massacre popped up. Dwarves and Skeletons seem to be the best for Arcane Blades though Dunedin aren't bad and anything (well, maybe not hobbits) is doable as long as you play appropriately.

After Arcane Blades I've had the most luck with Archers, though while their offense feels totally overpowered, I've never done better than die to the Master. Probably because their detection is crappy, making them easy to ambush.

[Patryn]

Ahh, nice idea!

I'm currently playing a nandor archmage a.k.a. "The Insane Weapon of Mass Destruction" or short: Nocturne.

I'm currently clearing the third pride (Rak'shor) and about as advanced as my beta9 mage (I didn't have much time during b9). Allthough meeting very few lost adventurers I had the luck to rescue a sunpala twice giving me lvl2 "Chant of Fortress" which makes thanks to massive spellpower some awesome 29% physical resist. xD
The orcs tend to notice me (at best) as a flicker popping up nearby a wall, incinerating everything and instantly disappearing again. The unlucky Ex-Master didn't even see me once. *haaarrrr*

Though I lost my Blood of Life in a folly encounter of a bunch of cryo- and pyromancers it may turn out to be a winner - hopefully. The equip is pretty decent already (found Eowen) and right now everything crubles to nothingness before me. What makes me worry is MtDoom right now. That may put a real strain on my potionstack... and of course I'm still afraid of those nasty one-hitting-stealth-naga but since I havn't seen one fishy jewelery yet that has to wait anyway...

[yufra]

I have been playing Nandor Anorithils as of late. My roguelike skills (aka patience) are fairly weak, but I think this character has Far East potential and I suggest looking at the class if you have managed to unlock it. They cannot output as much damage as the Archmage, but their Chants/Hymns make them a bit more resilient. Some of their talents are getting tweaked, but only for the better and I am interested to see how Second Life ends up implemented.

[paboperfecto]

I have been playing Nandor Anorithils as of late. My roguelike skills (aka patience) are fairly weak, but I think this character has Far East potential and I suggest looking at the class if you have managed to unlock it. They cannot output as much damage as the Archmage, but their Chants/Hymns make them a bit more resilient. Some of their talents are getting tweaked, but only for the better and I am interested to see how Second Life ends up implemented.

I don't have that unlocked yet but my current Dwarf Fighter has gotten a level 2 hymn of detection from some escort quests. That hymn in the sandworm lair and the maze with my fighter made those zones extremely easy.

[phalaris]

I have played a bunch of shadow blades. I lost a many early, but once they get past level 20 and have EoS and controlled teleport they get much easier. Flurry was doing 2000+ damage, and there wasn't many enamies i couldn't one hit kill. I ignored all the cunning skills and pumped dex and con, had about 1200 life by level 40. Valley of the moon was the hardest quest, failed it very quickly and had to teleport away and use many greater healing pots. lost my last character(skeleton) to the two blue wizards in the high peak. Killed the white(?) one, and the other had about one flurry hit left. the room filled up with summons and one of them got me.

i think if i play another one i will play on nightmare, as the damage from flurry and ability for controlled teleport makes the late game less difficult then i would like.

If you make it to the slime caves, don't enter until you are ready to finish the level(have all four orbs of command) because it freezes the game if you reenter(I had to delete the slime.teaz in order to reenter). also the orb of destruction does not recharge so use the other three first.

[darkgod]

I'll check out that orb thing.

Anyway good job getting this far!
Although yes 2000+ is far too much I'll take a .. look .. at flurry
How did you like the endgame ?

[phalaris]

I tried not to kill any oozes in the slime tunnel. Oozes were the only enemies i activly avoided in the endgame because of how explosivly they replicate. slime tunnels would have been difficult(impossible) if i had to hack through hundreds slimes and didn't have controlled teleport.
I noticed that whole sections of levels in the high peaks would not have any monsters generated. maybe increase the number generated. I liked the dissappearing starecases, made it really feel like an endgame/ one way mission. liked the fire imps, they would deal alot of damage when generated with melee enemies. The demons with rush, disarm and tons of life were fun. summoning portals in the boss fight was evil/very nice.
A general question about the ai. any chance of getting intelligent spellcasters/archers. I think it would be fun to have them keep out of melee range and try to destroy from a distance. by expoiting corners i never had to face a spellcaster outside of melee range. maybe make them wait in corridors. just a thought, maybe an option for the harder difficulty settings(if its not to hard to implament).

[darkgod]

Thanks

Yeah that's planned and it could be a good idea to restrict it to harder difficulties as it would make things quite harder IMO

[teachu2die]

i've played a good number of shadowblades/rogues and archmages, and i've dabbled in most other classes. my best character was a level 34 skeleton fighter. i abandoned playing him after completing all the available prides in beta 8 i think, haven't made it far east since. i found fighters fun, but rather overpowered. even towards the end of the east, he was taking very little damage (except from spellcasters), and i didn't have to think too hard about many combat decisions. i found skill management fairly difficult with shadowblades and arcane blades. this is mostly a good thing, but the classes can be a bit difficult to get off the ground. i really like rogues, but they seem maybe a tad underpowered..? i have tried pumping stealth, but i always get noticed almost immediately. my more successful rogues usually pump dual wielding, lethality, and dirty fighting, and their damage output was pretty impressive. they definitely need another talent tree or two (some of those suggested on the forum seem pretty great). archmages are probably the most well-thought out and complete-feeling class in the game. berzerkers are fun, but given how important defense is in this game (far more important than in most roguelikes), their moderate boost in damage doesn't seem to compensate for the loss of armor. sun paladins and anorithil are pretty cool, but could also maybe benefit from another class tree. wyrmics seem very underdeveloped, but i like the ideas there. summoners are probably the most fun and interesting take on the concept in any rogue-like thus far. the big worrisome thing about wilders is the inability to achieve 0% fail with any of their skills, even with 0 equilibrium - i haven't gotten very far with either of those classes, but any chance of failure in later levels can very easily spell death. the alchemist still seems a confused and confusing class to me. archers and slingers i haven't spent any real time with.

the races are great so far, i think - i'd just like to see many many more implemented! i was thinking about race ideas a bit last week, i will post something later today.

i like the way stat gain works in te4, but it does lead a bit to all class/race combinations developing the same. even if a race starts with a significant penalty in some stat, it generally only takes an extra two or three levels to even things out - this was the case in tome 2 and vanilla to a degree, but it took about 1/3rd of the game to compensate for these deficits. it might be interesting if races had certain stats that had additional boosts as you increased them - ie dwarves got an additional point in str/constitution for every 5 points they invested in the respective stat, hobbits got an additional point in dex/cun, etc.

i'm glad that charged egos must be worn to be used in beta 10 - defintiely a step in the right direction. i still would like to see more interesting ego types implemented, and i think wands and rods would be generally preferable.
the new escort quests are great, they add a lot of variety, and they give you much more incentive to go through every level of a dungeon instead of just scumming the top floor. i will need to complete more of them to get a better feel for how their rewards effect character development.
as much as i like the new directions that te4 has taken, i would like to see a few more 'traditional' rogue-like elements. particularly, it would be nice if there was at least one dungeon somewhere that was near-bottomless, had a traditional angband style layout, and every floor was randomly generated (some kind of recall system would need to be implmented first, or maybe every floor or every other floor could also have a stair that led to the surface).
i would also like to see the more traditional dungeon layouts (moria, elven ruins) resolve in a more logical fashion...i don't like the weird dead ends, inaccessible regions, and tunnels to nowhere - in particular, these inaccessible regions can, with one ill-planned phase, result in a frustrating end to a character...

[darkgod]

About your class comments you are quite right in most cases indeed.
(and yes the archmage being the most thought out, it's not surprise to anyone that I'm a mage player at heart ;> )

New races? go on suggest!

As for a more angband-like zone, it's planned, it's even already in the game files, the infinite dungeon.
I plan to use it as a "punishment". A monster could banish you there on a random floor and you must find your way back.

[Fela]

For indiscernible reasons i always liked Kobolds in both Angband and Tome2 (mind, i was never very good with them, though ). So seeing those would be nice-ish.

I love the shadowblade (SB) class - and quite seriously, I think SB and archmage are currently the only classes that are decently playable.
Why? Conveyance and divination.

In some of the orc prides i have no idea, how anyone without phase door (PD) at least at 4 would be supposed to survive. Also the new escort quests sometimes seem impossible without PD5. Sense seems too handy to not have either and in heavily trapped levels with nasties (think Osse) sense 5 is almost vital.

As for the SB class itself, it seems a bit overpowered (but then i like overpowered ). With 2 stuns and a blind they have more than decent crowd control. Add to that flurry - i can't reproduce the 2000+ damage i read about, but my setup is more defensive i suppose, 2 flurries will still finish most biggies - and the above spells and you've got a killing machine that can pick time and place of battle. Also with my emphasis on defense (both talents on 5, dex and magic primary stats) he's almost untouchable in melee so i can - and must, due to the high frequency of elemental shields - concentrate on resistances.

[Kemsha]

First of all, I really like this game, it's an amazing affort and it's really paying off

My best character so far was a dunadan figther who was a bit overconfidant and died a stupid death trying to save the sun paladins on mount doom (beta 8, I think)

To tell you the truth, right now I don't understand how did I manage to go that far because since then all I have is a growing pile of lower level dead bodies

I like variety so I've tryied all classes a few times and I like most of them. (this is why I'm not a big fan of the unlocking feature)

I didn't the summoner because I like to be in the middle of the mess myself and still couldn't have a rogue survive past level 10 but they all look cool and different

I'm going with a sun paladin right now, he seems promissing but they all do, don't they?

[Patryn]

Small update:
My Archmage now reached lvl36 an thus has a basically complete build. All 4 orbs are in my posession and the char would in theory be ready to head towards highpeak. However, I'm still hanging around and farming the Vor Pride. Why? Because until now with none of my chars I found the unlock to one of the *mancers. Nor did this char ever see an "amulet of the fish" (so Osse is still undone), though I regularily visit Angolwen and the jewelery. The "Valley of the Moon" is unvisited too, since the book didn't show up anywhere too and I seriously want to test both Osse and VotM before I head on... this is veeeery annoying...

@DG: Couldn't you increase the droprates of those 4 crucial items just a bit?

PS: This char seems to be very unlucky anyways... Very few world artifacts (BoL, both potions, Staff of Destr. *1, Eowens armor) makes me still stuck with that lousy bright feanorian lamp of clear sight and the escorts seemed to be quite rare too.

@Fela: In b8 I did the availible prides (Vor and necropride) with a sunpala. It wasn't easy but perfectly doable if you sneak around the border of the lvl and take cover in/around the houses. However, the prides were seriously buffed with b9 so I don't know how that'll work out now.

[darkgod]

You are indeed quite unlucky, as neither the amulet of the fish or the book for the quests are rare. (The book has a very low rarity for an artifact and has high chances to drop on some bosses)

As for the *mancers unlocks I dunno the current method is not very fun I know and I'm trying to think of something better..

[Patryn]

Aha, speaking of the devil... This time I found the ancient tome.