ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I need some advice.

Apparently the prides have been redesigned and have a new small entry level with random named class elites. For example I entered the Grushnak Pride (guarded barracks), and ran into 3 named Elites, Silythra (running Absorb life, dark ritual and Bone Shield), Poliseba the Elite orc berserker (running Elemental Harmony, shattering impact, and Berserker), and Bethawyn the Orc fighter (running Elemental Harmony). Along with 8 other orcs, including a non-named elite berserker.

Silythra uses fearscape. Poliseba uses blinding speed and battle call. Silythra can be beaten in the fearscape, but it drops you where he was - which is in the middle of all the other orcs, including the 3 other elites.

Poliseba seems to do 400 + 200 damage (shattering impact is the second damage I think) with a single attack (non-crit). With a 54% global speed bonus from a high level Blinding Speed.

As an Arcane Blade, I'd like to know how to deal with this situation. There's no place to really hide because its a small, custom level. Even with a 2 shield runes (240, 350) and a 530 regen I don't see how to tank that damage, even with a larger investment in the Aegis tree.

Is my only option, have the level be generated as low as possible, and come back at 50? That strikes me as not intended. But this is a level I have to be able to get by to win the game.

I've pulled out a "in case of save-corruption" backup and started retrying that one fight, just to see if there's any variation I can do to win it, but so far I haven't been able to. The character in question can be seen at: http://te4.org/characters/894/tome/5205 ... 1cc000edf0.

Should have I built the character completely differently?

I'm not going to continue the character, but I just want to know if the fight was even winnable in the first place. This is rogue-like difficulty, so no using a bunch of spare lives, just a single blood of life once.

Ouch... This sort of thing is tricky in an enclosed space. Personally I would have invested a bit differently in talents and stats (more Dex and Con, skipped Inferno, maxed Arcane Combat) but that's more a matter of taste I imagine. I also maybe would have levelled up more before taking on the prides - did you do the naga place?

I think the big thing letting you down though is very poor shield runes. They have long cooldowns, short durations and very low protective values, and Shielding only goes a certain way to helping with this. I guess this is a problem with shops as they are now though - the RNG can really screw you over with what you find randomly.

I'd say come back with an invisibility rune, it wont from them from hitting you but it will reduce the number of times this happens which could be just enough to make it through, alternatively controlled phase door to the other side

I haven't reached the prides since beta 20 I believe, so I'm not familiar with these new rooms. However, with plenty of past experience with the east and prides in general, I can say some things.

1 - You are way too low of level. Did you attempt to go back west and finish off the bosses there?
2 - I know ABs are very thin on stat points, wanting str, dex, mag, will, con - really everything but cun. But seriously, because you are a human, and an AB [meaning melee centric], I would have invested a lot more in con. Not only does it increase your hp [drastically needed without heavy armor/def], but it will also reduce all the damage you take [via the 1% resist all for every 7 points of con].
3 - As Grey pointed out, your shielding runes do suck major ass. I would have substituted the con based one for a pd or cpd rune as soon as I found one.
4 - You've invested quiet a bit into will, but what good did it do you, really? I understand it's five more mana/point, but unless you were mindlessly slinging a lot of thunderstorm and inferno, you don't have much of a need for a lot of mana.
5 - You could have also used the Rune of the Rift to take out one of the troublesome orcs temporarily multiple times as it's cooldown is only 15. This would definitively have given you some more wiggle room with where you could be.
6 - You have a LOT of activate capable equipment. You can summon a vampire to create a potential damage absorber and damage dealer. You can heal yourself with multiple pieces of kit as well. Not to mention the Rod of Spydric Poison - that thing is great; DPS and a decrease of healing with multiple shots before it needs to recharge. The Rod of Annulment would have also helped alot when going against a chosen named orc as it would potentially force their sustains/activates onto cool down, making some of them MUCH weaker temporarily.
7 - The Firey Choker would give you a LOT more fire damage, especially with having a five in Inferno without much of a penalty as you don't use cold based spells.
8 - As you were playing more of a caster AB, your fatigue is just way way too high. At 31, all your spells are costing you 62% more than they otherwise would. You can reduce this by changing up your kit a bit. For instance, I would be using the aegis wizard hat over the d-steel helm. That alone would have reduced your spell cost by 8% and you would [in my opinion] have been better off using that anyway regardless of the fatigue. And while yes, the dragon armor you have on is, in normal adventuring very very good, you are fighting things that are mostly attacking you in melee correct? Not so much elemental damage yes? Then why not use the nimble reinforced leather armor? This would have given you a bit more wiggle room as you would have generally been faster via movement than all but the one, and it would have lowered your fatigue by a whopping 16% [32% less mana costs]. With just these two changes, your spells would have only cost 22% [11 fatigue] more than they normally would, which is much better than 62%.

Onto my personal preferences:
I wouldn't have put any points into willpower just yet, and I wouldn't have invested so heavily into inferno, if at all at this point. Instead, I would have put those points toward dexterity and arcane combat to trigger flame for free as often as possible. I also wouldn't have been so concerned to get rush to level five, and instead would have put those points into Arcane Dexterity; to better help my spellpower even more, to make flame even better [which it becomes rather stupid how good it is as a level one spell when looking at ABs]. And, along with all this, as my first point was, you were just way way too under leveled. At this point in the game, you should be done with your core build, meaning the main idea of the character. I don't see what that is with this character, for two reasons. One, you are very spread out, you have a little bit of every thing, but it doesn't equal to what you were probably aiming for at this point. Two, you just weren't a high enough level to do what you wanted to do yet.

I hope this helps some.

I think he had the right armour choice. Remember that with the new armour system you need to be wearing mail or plate to get the full benefit of the armour training skill (and most importantly its boost to armour hardiness). With my arcane blades I always try to offset the fatigue penalties by using -fatigue items (mule's rings, certain diggers, Feathersteel Amulet). Getting the right fatigue value means sacrificing power somewhere, but it's one of the most important balancing acts of the class.

I've never gotten inferno with an AB. Much better is to max arcane combat and keep triggering the far cheaper Flames. Still, that doesn't mean that other builds aren't possible, and perhaps with a lightly armoured char and a few other tricks you could pull off a more caster-style AB. But it does require willpower points, which are hard to sacrifice when you need the stats for Con.

Final Master wrote: 1 - You are way too low of level. Did you attempt to go back west and finish off the bosses there?

I will point out this was the second Arcane Blade I've lost the the .28 beta prides.

The first being Valen Sky, who was took his first step into the Vor Pride (named Vor Bastion) at level 47. He can be seen at http://te4.org/characters/894/tome/db84 ... 1cc000edf0 (the Tome server was down when died). He had done the Vor Armory, Briagh, Temple of Creation, gone back West, done all the respawned bosses, gotten back and now started doing the Prides, starting with the Vor.

He died to an effective talent level 10.4 Glyph of Fatigue. That was up against a single named Elite caster plus another 6 or so orc casters. He took down the Elite, but then stepped on the glyph and was slowed by -0.928 for 2 rounds (although due to the way the game is coded it actually didn't let him act for ~13 rounds, but it only took 7 for the remaining orcs to finish him off).

I was actually trying to do something different than taking the prides at close to 50, because the talent scaling seems to start breaking the game at that point. In any case, the dungeons auto-scale in level. Here at level 37 they had effective talent levels of 6. At 47 they have talent levels of more than 10. I'm not sure at which end things are going to be easier.


As for stat reconfigurations, I can try some different equipment I have stashed back at the fortress. Also the save has 6 class skills I can pass around, so I can try pumping Arcane Combat to 5/5, for example. Although even with 40 Dex or so, a 49% chance is only about 47 damage per swing more than the 23% Arcane Combat currently has.

His base stats are 60 Str, 13 Dex, 60 Mag, 15 Wil, 10 Cun, 25 Con. Currently Con is being pumped each level, and I generally end with having it around 50-ish at level 50 with the remainder splashed into either Dex or Wil, depending on gear and how I want to play. But I can grab some dex equipment and see how things change (although generally itemization is Str + Con, Mag + Wil, Dex + Cun).

The problem with mobility on this level is it feels like every orc has rush or battle call or fearscape, plus you can only get 3 or 4 spaces of breathing room max. Anyways, I'll let you know if any of these suggestions work.

Edit: Oh, I've used this build style to win the game previously on both adventure and Rogue-like difficulties. Every few revisions I try the same build for difficulty comparison. Its useful to have a standard against which to compare. An example is: http://te4.org/characters/894/tome/6c3c ... 1cc000edf0

Its possible that this style is no longer viable, but we'll see.

Notes so far:

1) You need to hit 2 squares in the upper left and lower left to be able to open the door to the stairs down. A 850% move infusion + Boots of Speed + Chronomancers + Nimble will get you basically to both squares and most of the way to the door.

2) Behind the door is another orc: A unique Orc berserker.

darkgod wrote:I'd say come back with an invisibility rune, it wont from them from hitting you but it will reduce the number of times this happens which could be just enough to make it through, alternatively controlled phase door to the other side

Thus bypassing the room via Movement/Phase door/Invisibility is not an option. DG apparently covered that contingency.

3) I tried using a controlled PD rune for more hopping about, but it didn't really help, given one of the named Orcs was casting spells and hexes (quite funny to get hit by pacification watch the screen stutter and it calculates several rounds at once...) And everyone else seemed to Rush at me.

4) I tried invisibility to reduce incoming damage, but wasn't nearly enough.

5) I tried increasing Dex by about 20, and getting 5/5 Arcane combat, but the net increase in damage wasn't nearly enough (or even consistent which is bad in Rogue-like difficulty). A change in strength of 20 points is roughly 50 damage per swing, similar to the gain you get from Flame going off more with 20 more dex and 5/5 Arcane combat.

However, the situation is apparently winnable. I sat down and thought about whats the biggest survival boosts and damage boosts I could get.

The fact of the matter is, even if I had been pumping Con to 60 instead of say, Magic, I would have only increased my effective max health (including resistances) by about 230 (18% increased health), and sustainable health by 7%. And my damage output and shields would have been going down without the 35 spell power. Dropping 35 strength would have dropped my damage output by about 36%.

However, I realized the biggest increase I could get in my damage output over the short term was 50-60%. Via speed.

So here's the story, which was doable 2/2 times, although it required me to leave the level once I had taken out 2 of the 3 named elites via the front door.

I put on the Fiery Choker, the quick weapon (slightly more damage over time, plus con), and another gladiator ring (~6% more physical damage because of strength). I traded the wild infusion for a wizard's speed rune (59% for 4 turns, 19 turn cooldown). I spent 5 of the 6 class points on Blinding Speed 5/5. Relied on Providence 3/5 for negative effect removal.

So walk in buffed with Arcane Combat, Shielding, Frost Hands, Fiery Hands, Chant of Fortress, Inner Power. Activate Earthen Barrier. Activate a Shield. Activate Speed Rune.

Rush into the named Orc Berserker.

Kill him in 4-6 hits depending on crits and Arcane Combat triggering. Switch to the caster (who is right next to me). Use other shield once down, activate Blinding speed once first speed wears off. Take him down in about 5-6 turns.

Phase door to the entrance and activate Providence to remove negative effects. Walk out once all negative effects are gone (though generally with only 22 or 121 hit points remaining).

Apparently you lose out on the drops from the first two since I didn't see them when I re-entered. However, the rest of the orcs are fairly easy when they can only come one at a time and you're not taking 600 damage a hit. The named elite fighter went down to a refreshed Blinding speed and shield runes.

So the lesson I'm taking away from all this is speed is still king and sometimes you have to be very aggressive to survive.

Hirumakai wrote: 5) I tried increasing Dex by about 20, and getting 5/5 Arcane combat, but the net increase in damage wasn't nearly enough (or even consistent which is bad in Rogue-like difficulty). A change in strength of 20 points is roughly 50 damage per swing, similar to the gain you get from Flame going off more with 20 more dex and 5/5 Arcane combat.

You should also be maxing Arcane Dexterity. When maxed this will give you a bonus to spellpower of 45% of your Dex stat. With Arcane Destruction this further boosts your physical power, so each point of Dex works out as about equal to half a point of Magic and half a point of Strength, along with the general bonuses to Dex and to Arcane Combat proccing. Works even better if you improve the tree's mastery. This is why I like playing Skeleton ABs - get great Dex and St early, along with a fantastic shield and healing ability, both of which synergise great with the new Aegis tree.

(Edit: Though I note your spellpower ain't all that high. Could explain why you don't feel Arcane Combat is worth it, since your Flame damage probably isn't all that great either.)

(Edit2: For comparison, this is the sort of build I'm talking about, at a similar level to yourself: http://te4.org/characters/363/tome/dfee ... 1cc000edf0 (alas, he died to the old-style orc encounters.) Note the spellpower and physpower figures. Of course the fact that different builds can work is one of the joys of the game.)