ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Until we get a Demented forum, thought we could chat here about the stuff we've found. Spoilers, obviously. Mostly, I'm taking dumb risks to explore all the neat new stuff I find and dying, which is kinda nice, actually...

In no particular order, stuff I've learned.

1. Zigur let the demented into their city - maybe Insanity is just too new a resource for them to know to hate it yet? Clearly they would not be into it.

2. Time pressure for worm eating your city - note that you can leave and come back, you start a 999 turn timer when you go to the surface that stops when you enter its body. You can be in the city when the timer counts down and not die, I dunno what happens if you then go kill the worm. *GIVE ME BACK MY CITY!!!*

3. How to Writhing One - TIL tentacle damage benefits from Arcane Might. Ogres will Ogrewield to keep an empty hand open for tentacles. Class seems to all but demand going Tinkers, based on both melee damage base and huge benefits in being able to kit out your Worm that Walks with Spiked Armor, Weapon Mods, and an Alchemist's Friend. I really want the Overgrowth skill to be good, because it should work with Ogrewielding well, but because it randomizes the position of enemies it's really hard to use against non-adjacent enemies. Defiled Blood, OTOH, seems like the key to strong consistent damage output and is very nice with Bloodcaller. Bloated Horror does a ton of damage and has a good, high power confusion, but will shoot you in the butt.

4. Drem Unlock - go to north room in starting city, copy symbols, put in Portal you find in the world, fight a bunch, learn cool story, unlock Drem. Yay for me needing to handwrite notes to myself!

5. Eerie Cave/Bizarre Contraption - I have found 2 of the same cave in my current game, crashed satellites with a misc item that triggers a short dialog on the overland map. Not sure whether the multiples are a bug (sometimes I get to fight Shashy a bunch of times in a single playthrough) or intended for later

6. Fighting inside worms, Gastric splashes - when you're in a worms innards, you will frequently receive warnings that gastric acid is coming for you. I was quite scared of these and made some bad tactical moves to avoid them, finally got hit by one and it vaguely tickled. Also, it's really dark inside them, so get yourself a good lamp radius.

7. Getting swallowed on the overland map - you can choose to teleport away or stay and fight, I chose the latter. You meet an ally inside a worm who offers to help you defeat it. Due to insanity and maddening ally AI, my ally died, so I'm not sure if there's a reward for making it through with her intact. Found chunk of godflesh on final boss, no known effect.

What else?

6. Gastric waves give 70% all res to monsters and remove all their debuffs upon application. For you it removes all buff and increase the duration of all debuff iirc?
That's not mere tickling

I was more thinking it was going to be a ton of damage and/or insta-kill. Tickling is relative to that - I found it often not worth giving up tactical position to avoid getting hit, which cost me a couple lives earlier on. I didn't actually know that it helped enemies, tho, so good to know.

Wintertide blade seems new? Tier 5 One-hander that creates friendly AoE slowing ice swirl that can be solidified into ice walls.

it's not new, it's even 25% chance to drop upon killing the mummy lord.

Hmmm. Goes to show how often I play classes that care about one-handed weapons (guess it never dropped when I was playing TW).

Worm Nest robe is new. Body slot armor with no armor or defense value but flat 22 DR, Carrion Feet skill, bonus blight damage, and some Spellpower.

I found something really weird, and I just had to share this.

So I found an item called the fanged collar, and if you die while wearing it, it will replace your head with a parasite, bringing you back to life.

You lose your head slot and can't change neck slot, you can't level your old racial skills but keep any you had.
You do gain a new racial for parasite though, including a +global speed talent.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 9FC384DCA/

THAT. IS. AWESOME.

In case you want to see the model.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 423868DBB/

I'm glad the game has such weird and wild things now.

Does that thing drop reliably anywhere? Seems like a nice way to transition a Cornac to having a racial tree after benefitting from the bonus cat point, assuming they don't dock you for it.

Once you have the Parasite race, then you'll automatically eat any escorts you encounter, giving you a generic point. I think you also eat other NPCs too, but I don't know if that gives you a generic point as well.

Arcvasti wrote:Once you have the Parasite race, then you'll automatically eat any escorts you encounter, giving you a generic point. I think you also eat other NPCs too, but I don't know if that gives you a generic point as well.

Probably just coincidence but it feels like a Kiseijuu/Parasyte reference.

A little parasite testing:
- Cornac does not lose unspent class/generic/cat points already gained when become a Parasite.
- You do gain a death but do not lose a life on becoming a Parasite, and you can simply drown yourself to accomplish it if you like
- You do not harm town NPCs or merchants as a Parasite
- Yeek/Parasites are a nice combo, as they can walk around with a base 140% global speed due to their combined talents.
- Lore implications: due to your still being able to call on Wayists and such I think it's nice that the Yeek were able to bring the Parasite along into the way, although one wonders about the mix of Ultra Instinct (without the distraction of thoughts or self your body can react faster to aggression) and the obvious references to thought in Yeek talents. Yeek/Parasite = pure vessel for the Way without any individuality at all?
- Possessor might be a particularly strong class to benefit from Parasite, as it talents scale off either Constitution or the best of Strength/Dex/Mag, and many hosts provide a strong bump to Con. Also, the last talent of the Parasite tree is a potent damage shield and Possessors love to protect their bodies from damage. The regen from the first talent might also be a nice way to regen a little Psi. EDIT: on the other hand, Possessors *really* benefit from Possession amulets, and Parasites can't remove the Fanged Necklace from their neck slot.

Nice observations Snarvid.

I'm also curious if a cornac would continue to gain their bonus points.

After all, it still lists your original race on the character sheet.
I have no idea about XP penalty either.

I managed to keep the ally alive in the worm with nature's touch. After you get out the ally asks for a reward for "helping" you kill the worm and escape. You can choose to give the ally a reward or not, and when choosing to give a reward you get some options like in escort missions. Giving reward seems to do nothing to your own character, and I haven't tried not giving a reward. Also haven't met that character again yet, so I don't know if choosing the reward even matters.

It's been mentioned elsewhere, but Drem can be Stone Wardens. The Stone Fortress buff is applied when using your summon. They also make great Melee classes in general due to Spikeskin, but especially if you're running around with Bloody Butcher or a way to bleed (Misery rings or Death Dance, for example). The summon is really handy for a melee build too as it drags jerks to your face.

Krog are really good but very situational. Unlike Ogrewielding, using two 1-handers even with no hit penalty is simply not viable with as many classes (Berserker for example has many talents tied to a two hand weapon, and this has no use for any Shield/Mindstar user either). On top of that even without taking Antimagic a Krog cannot use magic, which locks it out of a couple more classes that could take advantage of this setup. Still, with the right class they downright own. The obvious choices are Marauder and Rogue for offhand penalty reduction. Cursed, Wyrmic (especially come 1.6 when they get Flurry), and possibly Mindslayer could also get some fun use. Oh, and remember that though Wrath of the Wilds's stun rate after the first 100% hit looks puny you are hitting twice with Warborn (it goes up to 20% according to tometips, only 2% less than 5/5 Gesture of Pain).