ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Went to sleep. Got sent to the dreamscape and got insta killed before the screen even finished drawing. I read the quest flavor text from the death screen. Lame. Seems like I should have at least had the first turn.

Huh, what? A bit more context? Where you in the caldera or something?

jotwebe wrote:Huh, what? A bit more context? Where you in the caldera or something?

I was in dredfell. The problem is that I don't really have context -- I went to sleep, something happened off screen that caused a new map to suddenly load, but I insta died on the new map before I could even see it, and the flavor text for the new popped over the Eidolon.

You may have been hit by a dreaming horror? They're, er, quite deadly for most characters. If it was a rare, especially, you could have died from a sequence of spells that prevented you from ever having a chance to react. Not a bug in that case, just a very dangerous opponent. A powerful opponent that uses solipsist and/or temporal spells can do that to you.

The new map loading does sound like a dreaming horror, or maybe a rare with solipsist talents or fearscaping ability. Neither of those should instakill you, unless you were very very low on health. In which case it would have been more of a coup de grace then an instakill.

The first time I was just under max health. I say first time, because I went back to see wtf did that... and it happened against. Again it attacked from off map (though I have a good sight range), and did a sequence of spells (I presume) where there was absolutely no chance to react. Dreadfell is otherwise leveled fine for my character.

It seems like the balance needs to be tweaked here.

sage wrote:The first time I was just under max health. I say first time, because I went back to see wtf did that... and it happened against. Again it attacked from off map (though I have a good sight range), and did a sequence of spells (I presume) where there was absolutely no chance to react. Dreadfell is otherwise leveled fine for my character.

It seems like the balance needs to be tweaked here.

If it was, indeed, a dreaming horror (or, worse, a rare dreaming horror), it's not so much an issue of balance as of you just getting really unlucky. They're not common, so it's not as if you'll be running into them constantly and dying every other step. Dreaming horrors can be defeated even before Dreadfall -- I just defeated one under Lake Nur a few days ago -- but you have to be careful and powerful. Thing is, we've all had our fair share of deadly monsters that take us down before we can blink. 95 times out of 100, your best strategy against something like that is to run away as fast as your teleport runes will take you. Technically, there's very little that literally unavoidable. Vision runes, various mapping spells, telepathy sources, etc are all means of keeping track of your environment. You won't always succeed, but it's not supposed to be easy.

Running into something like that is frustrating, but it's just the [terrible] luck of the draw. Sometimes you'll get a giant white mouse in Dreadfall. Sometimes you'll get a blood lich. C'est la vie.

jotwebe wrote:The new map loading does sound like a dreaming horror, or maybe a rare with solipsist talents or fearscaping ability. Neither of those should instakill you, unless you were very very low on health. In which case it would have been more of a coup de grace then an instakill.

If you disturbed the dreaming horror, you did kinda ask for it. They are 'asleep' if you leave them alone. If you found a solipsist rare, you need to update your version, solipsist talents were removed from rares a few versions ago, in v1.0.0, they don't exist. In dreadfell, I don't think there's anything else capable of having those talents, but I could be mistaken...

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:If you disturbed the dreaming horror, you did kinda ask for it. They are 'asleep' if you leave them alone. If you found a solipsist rare, you need to update your version, solipsist talents were removed from rares a few versions ago, in v1.0.0, they don't exist. In dreadfell, I don't think there's anything else capable of having those talents, but I could be mistaken...

sage wrote:The first time I was just under max health. I say first time, because I went back to see wtf did that... and it happened against. Again it attacked from off map (though I have a good sight range), and did a sequence of spells (I presume) where there was absolutely no chance to react. Dreadfell is otherwise leveled fine for my character.

So that rules out the Fearscape (would take longer) and Solipsist rares. So it looks like a dreaming horror rare. But I don't see how the dreamscape could kill you at full health.

I wonder if I triggered with my alchemist AOE attack. That would be my guess. The 2nd time I was definitely at full health, and I definitely died in one turn, and before it appeared on screen. It was pretty brutal. Unfortunately I didn't save my log.

Did you at any point see any pink bubbles called 'dream seeds'? Those are surefire indication of a dreaming horror, though not necessarily a rare version. AoE hitting dreaming horror offscreen could certainly wake it up, if that is the case. I still haven't fought the one and only dreaming horror I've encountered, or, for that matter, seen it. I saw the seeds and ran. No plans to go back either. I hear HORRID things about those horrors.

Strictly speaking, multiple dream seeds are a sure sign of a Dreaming Horror. It's possible that a single dream seed will spawn on its own, just to scare you. Still, I'd advise not risking it.