Tell me about advancing after tier 2.

[PorcelainCow]

So I've picked up ToME a little bit ago, played it a bunch, streamed a lot of it for my friends who've subsequently picked it up aswell, but I'm still stuck so to say. I mostly try not to use spoilers but after losing a few characters to "exploring" I've gone and started looking at the wiki's zones listing to figure out what levels zones are supposed to be, but I still run into problems, mainly:

1) After the tier 2 zones the game wants me to go to Dreadfell for the main story. On my last character, a Temporal Warden, I'd cleared all available tier 1 zones, all the tier 2 zones, Halfling Ruins, Hidden Compound, Lumberjack Village, Lake Nur, etc etc.... and finally decide to "well, I have to." and head to Dreadfell at level 24, an area I know supposedly scales up to 26. By the time I make it to the last floor I've just reached 27. I enter the final floor and get the "Heart beating/terrible dread" etc. message telling me this area is waaaaay above me, but with no place left to go I proceed to find the Master and he's lvl 37, surrounded by dreads and dreadmasters I dare not kill for the chance of Will'O'Wisps, drains life and all in all wrecks everything. I die, and my Blood of Life proves how useless a ressurection without cooldown resets is within 5 turns.

So my question is.... am I really supposed to go there and beat this guy at that point? Thinking back on the lore scattered in the tower, is there a gimmick to the fight where I need to hit him with a Sun Infusion to wreck him due to his light weakness or something?

2) Another thing I've ran into is that as soon as I'm 24 and take about 5 steps on the world map I get the prompt for, what I've found out, is the Dark Crypt. Which supposedly happens starting at 24, but starts scaling at 35. So far on all characters I've refused to enter it after I went ahead and had a look at what supposedly would be in there, which came up as "casters that teleport you into the middle of a room full of casters to wreck you..... with a time limit". Read about the whole Melinda bit etc..... so my question is, realisticially, should I really go in there at 24, and if so as what kind of character, but most importantly: What am I missing out on with Melinda? I suppose there would be XP and loot, but does rescuing Melinda gain me anything significant in the course of the game I wouldn't have otherwise?

Some more miscellaneous stuff:

3) Cease to Exist, the Paradox Mage ability.... I can't quite figure out if it removes XP or not. I'm fairly sure it removes loot from the monster you're cutting from the timeline, but I've seen my XP counter jump to 27% from 25% when I killed the monster, back down to 25% when time rewound but then immediately up to 26%..... so it seemed like it might give reduced XP ?

4) Does the "Eat 20 Bosses" achievement refer to the Wyrmic's Swallow?

5) Is there any way at all to make escorts not be suicidal maniacs that think THEY should be tanking/fighting the boss and NOT the eternal bone giant I have around just for that?


Thanks to anyone who can provide some insight.

[Parcae2]

I have never seen the Master summon Dreadmasters. It sounds like you got very unlucky.

Generally speaking, the way to beat the Master is to do what damage you can, then teleport out before you're in real danger so as to rest and regroup. He rarely regenerates much health.

You can also try going the antimagic route and hitting him with a weapon with the Manaburning ego.

[Dekar]

1) Yes, Dreadfell comes after the Tier 2 dungeons and there is no trick involved to the bossfight. But as you might have noticed from the 9 levels of dreadfell, it marks the end of the first half of the game and thus has an increased difficulty. There are a few threads with tips for the fight on the forum already, but the most important ones are to slowly clear the level before killing the boss and keeping at least one teleport ready to escape the boss. The Master's minions die if they run too far away from him.
If you get Dreadmasters there you better have a good backup plan to get rid of them, because they can mess up non casters up big time.

There are a few other things you can do before Dreadfell if you feel you need more levels:
-Halfling ruins, should be on par with T2 dungeons.
-Farportal runs at your "home"
-Ancient Elven Ruins, should be above T2 but I personally think its not a very hard zone as it is very large with low monster density and lots of corners. Just watch out to not get ambushed by the boss.
-Spellblaze: Lots of casters and a very nasty boss.

2) If you happen to get it with such a low level you should skip it, especially if you are not a veteran player. Doing it after Dreadfell when you should be close to level 30 and with better loot is probably the earlierst time you should attempt it.

4) Yes!

5) I think the next version changes their behaviour.

[bricks]

The Ruined Halfling Complex or whatever is a good damage/survivability check for Dreadfell. The Crypt of Kryl'Feijan can be a nightmare for certain builds; I think of it more as an achievement/bonus dungeon. The Ancient Elven Ruins and Spellblaze can both get awfully dangerous; if you want to clear these, I'd almost suggest going in just before you hit the last level of Dreadfell.

The tough part about the Master, IMO, is positioning. You start in what is already a fairly difficult dungeon, and then add a boss that can lock you down and swarm you with minions. Up to that point in the game there aren't many other situations that require so much field control to succeed. The best strategy, IMO, is also the lamest: teleport around the dungeon, heal up, wait for the Master to show up, and then teleport away after getting a hit in.

[Dervic]

The Master is a huge step-up in difficulty comparing to the early game, so it's perfectly understandable that you're having trouble with him. Unless you're using a really powerful class killing him revolves around the same lame strategy present in modern day roguelikes: get a couple of hits in and tele/movement away before you're in danger (because he can't heal himself).

Time Warden is a class relatively difficult to master, but it has more escape options than any other so you should be fine.

P.S.: People were having trouble with the Master BEFORE he could mass summon Undead, so he's probably overtuned at the moment.

[ohioastro]

I'd agree that the current version of the Master is overkill.

In terms of tactics, some version of teleport or phase door is important. In terms of preparation, you also need to look at your toolkit. Rather than building up a number of stats and skills evenly, the game rewards stacking your essential stats (e.g. Strength for melee), keeping up in Constitution, getting minimal skill levels in a full set of abilities, and concentrating points in a handful of workhorse talents. For example, archers will want Steady Shot maxxed (short cooldown); Anorithils have the Moonlight Ray ability; Summoners want some maximized summons; and so on.

Something that I do is to leave a couple of the more dangerous dungeons behind (the spellblaze, elven ruins) and test the waters in Dreadfall. If the character is having trouble, go back and try other places. The mini-bosses in the Tower are a good readiness check as well.

Finally, different race/class combinations level at different rates - a Yeek can be pushing level 30 at the Master, which is a big help in terms of abilities. You may also want to think about resisting the temptation towards opening new talent trees and having more slots for infusions and runes.

[PorcelainCow]

I've done the Halfling Ruins before every attempt at the Master. I regularly do them before the Daikara even. Ruined Dungeon aswell. The biggest problem for my Warden was..... the Master came to me right at the stairs. I ran into a Dreadmaster and a Dread and 3 steps into the Hallway there was the Master, with the Necrotic Aura and Will'O'Wisp sustained, he and the dreads cluttering the stairs. I had pretty good infusions, Cure Phys/Mental and Cure Phys/Magical to (usually) let me get up stairs, with Dimensional Step and switching places it seemed like a good shot, but I took so much damage at once I pretty much died, and Blood of Life was utterly useless since all my talents were left on cooldown.

So far I've not managed to unlock the exploratory Farportal by the time Dreadfell comes up, am I supposed to do Lake Nur way way earlier? I generally save up all artifacts I'm not gonna wear to feed to the fortress as soon as I get it and usually get my Rod of Recall powered up pretty quickly from it. Can I not power up the rod in hopes of using the build up energy for the Farportal or something?

Apart from that I'm kinda clueless, the Warden easily was my most capable and lucky character, though lacking in artifact weapons (of course I find the Sword of Possible Futures and Dagger of the Past every time I DON'T play Warden...) and pretty good at dealing with spellcasters, aswell as incredibly lucky with Escorts (Premonition at 2, Providence at 2).

Also anyone know anything at all about Cease to Exist?

[Dervic]

So far I've not managed to unlock the exploratory Farportal by the time Dreadfell comes up, am I supposed to do Lake Nur way way earlier? I generally save up all artifacts I'm not gonna wear to feed to the fortress as soon as I get it and usually get my Rod of Recall powered up pretty quickly from it. Can I not power up the rod in hopes of using the build up energy for the Farportal or something?

I usually don't transmog any gems before getting the Fortress, and it's barely enough to open the farportal... sometimes it falls short at 26-28, but then i just go do daikara or something.

[bricks]

Dreadmasters are a great way to kill Temporal Wardens. In fact, I find Dreadmasters to be more difficult than most bosses. I've rarely taken one down without stair dancing or teleport spam. The first time I took down the Master was with a Temporal Warden. The problem I had was dealing with all the incidental mobs, since you lack a lot in the way of AoE. Biggest issue I have with the Master is that he essentially has no weaknesses, nothing that you can try to turn the fight in your favor. He has excellent crowd control, unlimited minions, strong melee, powerful spells, and an extra life. Your inscriptions and artifacts seem to have a bigger bearing on the fight than your build, since you'll be spending most of your time running away, healing, and removing status effects. Bleh.

[donkatsu]

The Master's weaknesses:
-Very low mana pool, easy to constantly deactivate all of his sustains (including Necrotic Aura!) with manaburn damage
-Pinning (pin him when you can see him but he can't see you)
-Confusion
-He has phase door but his minions don't, so if you teleport away, eventually he'll leave his undead army behind and they'll all die on their own outside of his Necrotic Aura.
-No healing
-Only has 70% stun immunity