ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I decided to write this little thing - a so-called guide if you will - or rather "Avoid these to survive" collection of tips, for few reasons: 1) I'm bored at work, 2) to better concentrate my thoughts after actually "saying" things out loud and 4) to gain valuable feedback and tis from more experienced players.
#3 was intentionally left blank. If you come here and gain any new insight into anything you can call that a #3.

So, that out of the way it's time for yet another prologue. Since I'm writing this from the top of my head I'm bound to forget the most important stuff and other stuff will jump from topic to another instead of following a straight line.
At first this might seem a little short but I plan on wiriting new stuff constantly when I have something to tell, so fear not, my keyboard will eventually break and I will stop bothering you.

I've mostly played melee characters so this will be mainly melee point of view but I'll add some magery stuff eventually once I get comfortable with the classes.

SPOILER ALERT!!! Just a reminder that you're in spoiler section and the tips below WILL be spoilers. While possibly helpful they will also spoil the fun of finding and discovering things yourself.

Helpful tips & Oservations top100:

- Get some proper means to get the f out effing fast. This spells Teleport, be it either controlled or not, at times you will want to get away from certain death. In some occasions I've found my teleport runes fizzling without having status anomalities, but psychoportation has never failed me. Once you find a tool with psychoport it will be your friend. No matter how much luck that little furry feet will bring you or how much armor penetration you get from a nice digger, they won't save you from death like psychoport. Learning that took me a lot of time and deaths of dear characters.

- Get some means to get close to the enemy and fast before it'll kill you from range. This means Rush, or at worst - a movement infusion. Why I don't like movement infusion as my first attack tool is that some enemies have higher speed than others so if I pop that 500% move infusion I can't be entirely certain I will move 5 squares before anyone else gets a chance. This is why Rush is a friend. I prefer to max it rather soon. Movement infusion will act as a secondary tool, for both attacking faraway enemies and fleeing dangerous situations.

- Learn to differentiate instantaneous usage speed vs. 1 turn usage speed. When you run into an oh shite situation there's a pretty little difference in popping that regeneration infusion and hoping for the best and popping Thaloren racials for damage resistance, few ent bodyguards, a movement infusion and finally popping that regeneration behind the corner. Sure the ents and damage resist might sound a little overkill, especially if you run behind an empty corner, but doing that you've just lost around 30 rounds of waiting for cooldowns but also avoided a possible death.

- Explore all levels. At times you will get a message saying the area is too easy and that you will trample straight down to boss level. This effectively means that for a Cornac character doing the Tier1 dungeons in order of Trollmire, Norgos, Heart of Gloom, Scintillating Caves, Rhaloren Camp and Ruins of Kor'Pul you start trampling down stairs in Scintillating Caves effectively missing around 9 levels (depending on alt layouts) worth of things to kill which will gain you two extra levels alone, not to mention the loot that'll turn to money or in the best case scenario - worthy items.
If you're wondering if it's safe to do that it is. If you've been able to beat the boss you can do the earlier levels too. If you can't then you've had it coming anyways sooner or later and realizing that early is going to save you time and lives.

- How about them pesky bosses that'll get you killed every time, like Urkis, The Master and Shardskin? Just one little trick and your chances of surviving those encounters will raise by quite a bit. Think I might have mentioned this little thing called teleport. When you explore the boss level and run into him earlier than expected just teleport out. Most likely the place you'll end up is safer than the boss himself, especially if you do that while still in full health instead of being killed to near death by the boss. Just remember not to use Phase Door since it'll teleport you next to the boss, unless you can control it to other side of the wall or something.
By teleporting out whenever you see the boss you will eventually have cleared all the level except for the boss that'll make an unknown battlefield into nice and easy game of cat & mouse and we all know a smart mouse will win. You will want to be the smart mouse.

- Know your enemies. If you're in a corridor and come into a big room in where you see a skeleton, don't rush it unless you know there's no skeleton mages waiting behind the corner. You can show yourself to the skeleton, possibly shoot it with something and lure it away from the room to be killed safely.

- Earlier I pointed out your best tool friend. Hope you didn't throw away that pickaxe when reading that, since there's still use for it. Back in the days they were called the anti-summoning corridors and I guess they still are. In some levels where you know are summoners or a lot of ranged attackers it's good to dig this zig-zag pattern in a wall, kinda like a checker board thing in which you can dive so that only one enemy at a time can attack you. Unless you have a spell to do so it's better to dig them early since you won't be able to dig if there's an enemy in sight.

- Don't stare blindly at just one stat or ability. I learned this the hard way when I played a lot of Dwarf Berserkers. Money is Power they say and that holds very true, especially for dwarves because of their racial that grants amazing saving throws.
Just recently I played a Thalore Berserker, a very different kind of character. My saves around lv30 were around 30-40 whereas with a dwarf they were nearly 70 at lv 20+. With Thalore I had this nice resist all and few meat shields to call in to stop ranged attackers from pummeling me with whatever they could throw at me. This was a lesson of humility I should say. Instead of concentrating on one thing it was better to be moderate in just about everything. Needless to say that Thalore character fared a lot better than a dwarf.

- Learn your enemy. More than once I've been surrounded by enemies and knowing who to hit first has saved my life often. Status anomalities causing enemies are my top priority. After than the mages and such who fall easily but can hurt you a lot if not taken down fast. Also AoE clouds spewing enemies, like Shivgoroths and some horrors are starting to hurt in the long run if you're forced to stay inside the cloud. That bear gnawing on your feet isn't gonna surprise you by casting impending doom, unless of course it's a purple one.

- Purple enemies, oh so wonderful way to get yourself killed. Whenever you see one be sure to mouse over it and check what it can do. If you keep that ant behind other enemies you might suddenly have a ritch flamespitter tossing flames at you or if you rush that wolf head on you might be in for a surprise in the form of some nasty damage shield.

- Your enemies are more like you than you might imagine. They have cooldowns too. That absolutely horrendous many-headed wyrm can't cast armageddon every turn. Use this to your advantage.

Most of these look good, but something you've overlooked is mentioning that you CAN do every tier 1 dungeon. It'd surprise you how many new players do 2, then follow their journal to the Tier 2's.

Also, for most characters, I'd advise against antimagic. Again, it's amazing how many people see that and rush for it with their berserker, or bulwark, or rogue, etc. It's very difficult to get a substantial gain from it, unless you are willing to train the willpower stat it uses. And the cost of giving up your teleport and arcane powered loot is significant.

Mayfair, your fizzled teleports sound like you're wearing a piece of equipment 'powered by arcane disrupting forces'. Check your inventory next time it happens. The only other cause of a fizzle, is if you can't teleport in the 15 square minimum radius, because the map is too small, or every tile inside the radius is no-teleport. (All vaults are no teleport, though if you can reach the outside of them, that's fair game for a teleport destination.)

If you want to take the antimagic path, you -must- get a movement infusion (or two) as quickly as you can, it means no waiting to find one by luck in some dungeon, but going into every town shops selling infusion/runes and buying a movement infusion if you see one once you have the money for it.

For an antimagic character, it's your only way to really escape, and while not as good as a teleport/phase (that antimagic will prevent you to use), it is still a life savior.

And be warned that the antimagic path only pay off when you have invested lots of points in the various skills you get with it, meaning it will take a lot of leveling to actually have the skills becoming usefull to balance the -heavy- loss of not being able to wear some good items and losing the great teleport/phase escape button.
Making your game actually more difficult for a long while.

For the teleport rune, it seems great to get one with very high max range, but be warned that it will mean that you will fail to teleport in the too small ambush battles, because the rune is not smart enough to teleport you at max distance in balance to the map size, if the teleport range it picks is higher than the map size, it will simply do nothing and more dangerous -waste a turn- (meaning all those orcs surrounding you will all hit freely).

For ambush battle escape, the most usefull are the movement and the phase door (due to phase having a much lower max range to teleport).

Teleport only fizzles if it has nothing in MINIMUM range. Max range is irrelevant. If it's too far, it just pushes closer until it either hits min range, or finds a spot. I can reliably teleport on the Ambush map, which can only be done in about 2 tiles. Doesn't fail there, so unless every time I do it it's picking exactly 15 tiles (unlikely) min range is the important one.

Didn't knew it was able to limit itself to the min range of the rune, as i constantly had the teleport rune failing on those ambush maps (18x18 tiles size) with my min range of 15 i must then have been extremely unlucky.
But it's a lot of time and versions i didn't tried a teleport (due to that constant fail i observed) during an ambush and kept a phase instead.

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:Most of these look good, but something you've overlooked is mentioning that you CAN do every tier 1 dungeon. It'd surprise you how many new players do 2, then follow their journal to the Tier 2's.

I'm not done yet with the thing, by I never realized someone wouldn't do all the maps.

Also, for most characters, I'd advise against antimagic. Again, it's amazing how many people see that and rush for it with their berserker, or bulwark, or rogue, etc. It's very difficult to get a substantial gain from it, unless you are willing to train the willpower stat it uses. And the cost of giving up your teleport and arcane powered loot is significant.

True that. I've been trying to come up with a melee beast that would utilize willpower so I could get synergy for antimagic. Mindslayer ain't really my slice of the cake.

Mayfair, your fizzled teleports sound like you're wearing a piece of equipment 'powered by arcane disrupting forces'. Check your inventory next time it happens. The only other cause of a fizzle, is if you can't teleport in the 15 square minimum radius, because the map is too small, or every tile inside the radius is no-teleport. (All vaults are no teleport, though if you can reach the outside of them, that's fair game for a teleport destination.)

Definitely not arcane disrupted, that I'm sure of, but the vault rooms and/or nowhere to port sound possible. One occasion it fizzled I remember being Telmur's tower which indeed is small. Psycho worked though. Guess it doesn't have minimum range.

This is correct. Psychoport has long range, but no minimum. This means it could move you 40 tiles, or 1 tile. And yes, that latter occurence HAS happened, and cost a life. Odds are pretty low, granted, but it is possible, and it's a hazard of psychoport over teleport.

Robsoie wrote:...failing on those ambush maps (18x18 tiles size) with my min range of 15 i must then have been extremely unlucky.

Just to be clear, that minimum range of 15 on the rune is the radius of the teleport; on an 18x18 map, there are only a few spots that are 15 tiles apart. If you are more than a few tiles from the very edge of the map, then every square is too close to teleport to. But you can teleport from one edge to the other edge, barely.

you don't need movement for antimagic for all characters. oozemancers are better without one, as they have other means to move around. and solipsists too.

i've won with both and never used a movement infusion.

but heroism infusions? they are truly your best friend!

More gaming and less forum spamming so this thread has been a bit quiet.

- Whenever you equip new gear with active skills remember to renew your hotkeys.
It's been several times that I've replaced my old psychoport with a new one but when using the item I realized the hotkey was still of the old one so it re-equipped the old one with a new cooldown.


- When clearing the area from mobs and moving on remember to check your health. Few times I've died just because I thought the fight was over and went on not noticing there's a few AoE clouds on top of each other hurting me for like 15% of my total HP every turn.

This is a great list of tips, but there are a few things I'd like to add. As long as you aren't undead and you don't have other ways of dealing with stun you should always have a physical Wild Infusion. You should never waste your Wilds for the resistance unless it will protect your from certain death (like DoTs when healing is on cooldown) because you never know when you'll need that stun remove. Additionally melee characters with good stun resistance should still consider keeping a physical Wild to deal with disarm, which is almost as devastating as stun and harder to resist or get rid of.

I also recommend being especially cautious when dealing with rares, since some classes are much more scary than others to deal with. If you're against a Marauder or Anoritihil you shouldn't have much problem, but I've noticed a few classes are especially scary, namely Oozemancer, Paradox Mage, Archer, and Doomed. Doomed is annoying because you can easily be overwhelmed by shadows, especially if you aren't ranged or you don't have vision of the rare itself. The other three can unload insane amounts of damage very quickly. 90% of my deaths to rares have probably been to these four classes so I'd be extra careful when facing them.

The point about psychoport having no minimum range is a good one, i had one poor unfortunate mindslayer port 3 times in a row to just the other side of the master in dreadfell and died each time, once right into the middle of his minions, that was the day i learnt that psychoport is always the 2nd from last resort. (also of note with mindslayers is that movement infusions will be broken by your telekenetic weapon if you move past a monster, annoying that.)

Poe wrote:(also of note with mindslayers is that movement infusions will be broken by your telekenetic weapon if you move past a monster, annoying that.)

Turning on or off your TK weapon is an Instant action, and there's no cooldown on the weapon activation, so you can manage it very actively when you plan to use a movement infusion.

Doomed (the guys that summon shadows) actually aren't all that nasty as long you don't suddenly find yourself at point-blank range before taking out their defenses. Although if you DO suddenly find yourself at close range... then yeah, those shadows are lethal. Although please note that on Nightmare mode a certain low-tier boss has shadows AND the ability to jump to melee range instantaneously. The trick is to drain their resource (hate) from afar before closing in. Creating new shadows drains hate rapidly. So if you snipe their shadows away you can eventually close in and kill them pretty easily.

Personally, I've tend to have a lot more problems with Necromancers. The guys surrounded by black spots. They can have a deceptively high amount of health due to blurred mortality. They can summon hordes of high-damage combatants adjacent to you very rapidly. And most frightening of all, they can cast a deadly damage-over-time spell (Impending doom) at low level that can easily cause damage equal to your entire health pool and also prevents many types of healing. This latter can be removed by quickly killing the necromancer, use of a Wild Infusion or other effect that can remove magical conditions, and/or quickly leaving the level before the spell kills you.