A First Win! (a retrospective analysis of my Shalore TW)

[hammerspace]

First off, I just want to say thank you to the creators of this excellent game. I particular enjoyed the plot, as it twisted and transformed to fit the successes and failures of my particular actions. The writing is incredibly well done, and I just want to say that they are not going unappreciated by any means. I look forward to becoming a stronger and more creative player.

I started playing a little over 1 week ago. My rogue-like background consists of just one game: Dungeon Crawl (multiple 15-rune wins). I can honestly say that it prepared me for a lot of the controls (auto-explore, etc.), as well as an expectations about how some of the items worked. This may have worked against me at times, but I nevertheless appreciated the experience I had.

My first character to get anywhere, really, was a Dwarf Wyrmic that maxed out the entire acid tree. I never quite got to the Master, unfortunately, but it showed me what level 20-ish was like. The next time I got that far was a Dwarf Bulwark; that shield wall just let me tank like no other. I made it to the Far East for my first time, then perished in one of the orc lairs because I had no idea where I was going. But one important thing happened with that dwarf: I unlocked chronomancers.

My first few temporal wardens died within level 20. I was pretty clueless, until I read this. This person identified a very particular synergy between two skills: Invigorate and Timeless. This synergy, and his explanation of a two-phase TW, is what fueled my build. I made several different skill choices, but ultimately it was in the same spirit. It looked like this...

Part I: Bow Warden

Your first 25 or so levels will be as a bow warden. The set up for part II requires maxed skills at the end of several trees, and you won't have access to skills like that until around then. So, buckle in and go full in on the bows. Your priorities are to maximize bow damage in the following two ways:

1.) Pump dexterity until you can max the bow damage passive, and also max the temporal weapon sustainable. The bow warden does incredibly little damage, especially at first, and these are very important in order to get you up and running. Put all "overflow" points (when you cap out on dexterity) into constitution (after sprinkling a few in mindpower/magic to get some skills up).

2.) Pick up some nice arrows. Don't worry about the bow; the game actually hands you a tier 5 bow with incredible modifiers on Daikara 3 (provided you win the boss fight). But you must pick up arrows. Around level 8, I bought some tier 3 elemental arrows from Last Hope. These lasted me until level... 26? They also trivialized the entire grind up until (and most of) Dreadfell. Do not skimp out on arrows. Their importance is trumped even by healing inscriptions; save all your money until you have great arrows.

If you're doing both of those things, all you need to do is survive. I used my first category point for an inscription, and ran around with two regens and two damage shields. Use dimensional step frequently, use wormhole for escaping tight situations, and don't be afraid to spam your speed boosts at the start of battles, to give you the upper hand. Most of all, do not rush; I found myself trying to spam my arrows out at bosses and taking a few more hits than I meant to as a result. Seriously, take it nice and slow. Your ideal battle is one where you simply do not take any damage.

Once you're done with the ranged passive (should be fairly early, especially with any help from items), pump constitution and mindpower so that you can get thick skin and the skills for the next stage as quickly as possible.

Part II: Staff Warden

Around when you go to the Far East (probably level 29-30), you can switch over to staff warden. Here's a pretty comprehensive list of skill requirements you'll need in order to carry this out:

Timeless (max)
Temporal Wake (max)
Spacetime Mastery (max)
Invigorate (max)
Echoes from the Past (max, use your second cat. point to unlock it)

Okay, this is pretty straightforward. Grab a staff, switch to temporal. Put on as much spellcasting gear as you've got; the more the better. Then find some monsters to bash. Here's the order of skills:

1.) Use instantaneous buffs (@ endgame: heroism, grace, haste, damage shield, telugoroth form - all at once)
2.) Dimensional Step to position yourself for a better temporal wake.
3.) Temporal Wake, but don't overshoot, stay close to the monsters.
4.) Echoes from the Past.
5.) Invigorate.
6.) Timeless.
7.) Echoes from the Past.
8.) Temporal Wake, but this time also get out of melee range, if you were.
9.) Cool down for 1-2 turns (@ endgame: cast Stop, Slow, switch to bow and fire like 6 shots with your 250% speed)
10.) Temporal Wake, don't overshoot, stay close to the monsters. This should be ready fast due to Invigorate.
11.) Echoes from the Past.
12.) Dimensional Step out and run like crazy until invigorate/timeless are ready again.

With haste and the Shalore speed buff, we're talking about 200% global speed here. You've just fired off thousands of temporal damage, and those echoes from the past will scale with the enemies hit points. That combination of skills took down every boss, creature, and mob of monsters in the entire game. I personally never touched my bow again after the switch (I took the skills off my sidebar and everything). When you make the switch, dump everything you have into the magic stat to empower your wake/echo attacks.

Some great things to max on the side are the magic boost sustainable, Stop for the stun, Haste because it's awesome, and Displace Damage because we actually want to survive out there (and it's about 25% resist all if you do the math).

I did die a handful of times. My first death was to the Master - I think that was an honest death and he just outplayed me and my arrows. However, the next few deaths I had were just silly. I died to an orc ambush in the Far East, and a bone giant in the final tower climb. Twas ugly, and shouldn't have happened. As a staff TW, you have so much mobility that escaping should be second nature - step/wake around a corner, hit wormhole. But, sometimes you get a little unlucky. If I had to play the TW again, I don't think I would die in those situations (out of sheer practice of where to step/wake).

Lastly: prodigies. Draconic Will and Temporal Form. Enough said. The only thing stopping you in the second half of the game are things like blind (can't see where to wake) and silence (can't cast). Draconic Will disables those, and works with Timeless and Invigorate to ensure that you're pretty much always (except for a turn or two) covered by condition immunity. Temporal Form... total overkill. The extra temporal damage is just completely unnecessary. Feel free to pick something else, but know that if you do, your wakes are likely to hit +1k temporal damage apiece, and those echoes are going to be insane.

A few quick tips to make your TW really easy to manage:

1.) Set Spacetime Tuning to "use when available" so that resting lowers your paradox.
2.) Set Draconic Will to "use when enemy is visible" so that you don't have to bother with keeping it up.
3.) Set all your sustains to "use when no enemies are visible" so you don't have to bother with them either.
4.) Avoid putting extra points into the Spacetime Mastery tree - instead prioritize the race and combat trees.
5.) Early on, save all your +dex and +con gear so you can hit 5/5 bow passive and 5/5 thick skin as fast as possible. Do not be afraid to actually by such gear off of merchants.
6.) Precognition note: I don't have a point in it. Why? Because whenever I want to use it, I take out a point from somewhere, stuff it in precog, use precog, and then reassign the point afterward. In my opinion, it's a wasted point, but it's nice once in a while.
7.) With escorts try to get sustainables that use other resources. For example, get a chant of fortitude for the extra saves - it'll be up for the rest of the game since you don't care about light/dark. Or get the premonition buff - it'll also be up for most of the game, or at least each level until your mana gets drained. Anyway, early on the combination of these two buffs does a whole lot to increase your survivability.

That's all I got for you. I'm sorry I didn't make a gameplay video - it's a little moot since now I'm using the endgame staff and nothing really stands in my way. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to send me a forum message.

Thanks again for the great game - see ya'll out there!

[Ethereal Reaper]

I'm trying to follow in your footsteps having just lost my summoner but gaining a TW in the process. However I seem to be having trouble clearing the scintillating caves and shaloren camp, is this just RNG issues, or do you have a preferred zone order? It's also possible I'm just a scrub.

[MarginalMagus]

This is awesome! I am currently exploring this beautiful build myself, and feel lucky to be so in on the zeitgeist. To Reaper: Start in Trollmire or Bear Lair (Norgol). Then clear whatever you like of T1 dungeons.