ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

First let me share my 3 playthoughs:

1. Normal/Adventure Cornac Oozemancer (AoA) - Too easy for every scanario mid/end game. Especially since it was in 1.6.0 when the Orc pride map are huge and lagged, I find myself quickly dull wanting to end the game. Almost everything can be solved in normal attacks, and even the clone is impossible to beat (oozemancer being the top tier class). In endgame, I have 2 category points and many more points, wondering where to allocate. This playthough, albeit unlocked something, and is still there serving as a feature-locker (the vault is not possible due to a mod formerly valid) was still terrible!
2. Nightmare/Adventure Whitehoof Archmage (EoR) - It was an imperfect build - I have air/earth/stone/tempest as focuses, which was not really sane, and the temporal is not unlocked by default (started the save at 1.6.0 and finished at 1.6.2?) Save scum a lot in order to quick finish it, for unlocking the Insane, but eventually, when I met the final boss, the level gap was not possible to overcome. File deleted by game.
3. Nightmare/Adventure Drawf Summoner (AoA) - In order to try to unlock Insane AGAIN. In early game I may need to save scum a few times, and this time I choose to enable "save every level" to save the time (which, ironically, was proven unwise). The character build was steady and the late bosses are easy to fight, with myself bored with the class mechanic and the maps again. (In the QQ chat group, people often says "lose interests when the game goes to Dreadfell") I accidentally save scum again in High Peak 11 after the dialogs finished and Aeryn appears, but when I reload, the Aeryn setting disappeared, and there is no way to beat them (bosses, who are Level 98 and 96) without her. (I doubt the chance to beat are low even with her!) Still file deleted by game, and I felt a huge sense of frustration!

Conclusion/Tips (No offence to any developers with limited funds/voluntary helping):

1. If you feel the game is becoming of little interest, even painful (don't wait until AoA orc prides!), but only feel the need to unlock/gain achievements, better give up the game (or even give up all the PC games)

2. Backup the file before the "no-turning" point of the campaigns.

3. Get an "unlock-all" file, or wait devs get more unlock mechanics by time.

4. Save at the right time. Don't overuse save-scum like me (This means the difficulty, the build or the whole game would be just not fit.) (But I really think Nightmare is still dull in most circumstances - e.g. Arena Mode)

5. There are overpowered classes waiting to be nerfed - Oozemancer and Doomed (Their unique/bosses are also nuisances/disasters), and other classes whose build/talents may be problematic.

Trying to unlock insane with a Summoner.... probably not the easiest choice. Try something overpowered like TW or PM next time.

Oozemancer is among the strongest classes on Normal. It had difficulty killing high end enemies in 1.5 Insane due to relatively low damage output (which is why I posted the Tinker Oozemancer guide, given how much Crystal Edges and Alchemists Helper boost their output), and I can only imagine how difficult it is in the current 1.6 bananas talent scaling meta (not sure what they have that works well vs ACT, and even a simple Waters of Life often screws your rotation completely). I can understand why you say it’s awaiting nerfs, but the experience of playing it on Normal is only a part of the picture there.

what is the point to save scum? it makes it boring
personally i don't like the annoyance of the higher difficulties (limitations to autoexplore, a lot more painstaking loot sifting, less leeway in your builds) so i simply don't play them even despite most likely i could beat at least nightmare roguelike, i beat a few different roguelikes including normal roguelike tome4 (tbh i mostly play tome4 to check something about the class or to get an unlock or achievement and then abandon the character, tome4 is just too long to seriously try to win with every your character)

Snarvid wrote:I can understand why you say it’s awaiting nerfs

i got my first win as oozemancer so many years ago and people still think it deserves nerfs lol
i bet it was nerfed multiple times since then

tabs wrote:Try something overpowered like TW or PM next time.

I think there's no "next time", at least for the 2 story campaigns. I choose summoner for it saving too much clicking for myself. The problem is the sudden rise of power at Last Boss(es) while we are smoothly going through everything for 10+ hours, also we have no turnback if not prepared.

kyuubee wrote:what is the point to save scum? it makes it boring
..., tome4 is just too long to seriously try to win with every your character)

You are right gal/guy, it's wise to abandon playing for years until the game learns to not wasting players' time.

I’m afraid that is the position I’m taking as well (I’ve stopped updating my guides for the current run of 1.6x patches) and several others appear to also be feeling similar levels of frustration. It’s not clear what, if any, impact this is having on the game’s future development, but it feels like a significant crossroads for Tome.

@kyuubee: it was. First Nature’s Balance went fixed, so that Slime Roots could not reset it, and then Drem’s Frenzy went fixed, for the same reason (which was a change I requested). The increased prevalence of powerful flat DR talents on enemies also constitutes a significant nerf to Oozemancers - DoTs are generally balanced around more damage per cost spread out over time, with the time delay already being a disadvantage (because “dead” is the best status effect, as we used to say in 4e CharOp, and dead enemies are better when they arrive sooner), but when time = a multiplier of flat DR it often completely reverses the cost/benefit ratio for DoTs.

2 amyhistoria

I didn't mean it's something bad, it's inevitable for many games

2 Snarvid

thanks, i see
also I have checked that thread but unless it was fixed I didn't see any problems they mention in the first post there
heck, I even accidentally saved yeek from subject z in one of my runs lol
they are speaking about normal difficulty too

btw i have recently returned from a very long hiatus, think 1.1 something or maybe 1.2 tome4, what i can say, the game looks significantly easier, if 1.5 was even more easy i understand why so many people play higher difficulties, maybe i should switch to them too lol, that's despite urkis was clearly buffed
embers look easier than the main campaign, at least till lvl 40 which my current gunslinger in it just got
the sun paladin patrols made me laugh lol, are orcs like that too nowadays? I have to get a character there in the main campaign... in any way embers need some strong boss like master early-mid game imo

lore could be a bit more brief btw but overall it's ok

I suspect the talent scaling issues won't show up on Normal. Nightmare is apparently a bit harder. As someone use to 1.5 Insane, 1.6 is much higher variance. This sounds good, but in practice it means "most things are impotent, a tiny number of things 1HKO you without much regard for your build or tactics."

But I'm not attempting to replicate the other thread here, just tie the two together, as it seems to me they are part of the same ongoing conversation.

Yes, it's a shame that a combination of things have made 1.6.x so death spiky. The thing is - the longer you have spent on a game, the more time you have to lose by having things vary from mostly harmless to death-without-regard in one or a few turns.

I was pretty positive before, but insane already has such powerful enemies that suddenly having damage spikes or hugely synergistic NPC talents means a LOT of folks are having insane games fail through nothing that could have been prepared for and even with careful play in combat.

Okay, now that's out of the way, do you have a list of what you feel needs to be done to eliminate (preferably) or severely reduce (if eliminating can't be done) the spiky sudden deaths in Insane+ on 1.6.x so it's still fun and challenging and skill-based (at least on Insane) so that players don't continue to leave permanently or "temporarily"?