First win Insane Shalore Paradox Mage

[Kiba333]

Chronomancers have been my favourite class ever since i unlocked them for the first time. I just love the whole concept in general, especially the timeline splitting abilites of the paradox mage are just mad fun.

After clearing nightmare as a paradox mage a few month ago i took a break from tome. As i decided to give it a go again i first took a look at the character vault and noticed that no paradox mage had ever cleared insane difficulty. So i thought i should give it a go:
http://te4.org/characters/107553/tome/2 ... c375a3f84d

To my dismay i finished it with only 2 lifes left, dying a total 5 times. Most of those deaths can be attributet to my own carelesness, tactical misjudgement and even blatant stupidity in one case (i entered the dark crypt even though i knew i wasn't ready for it ). Had i played much more progressively i should have been able to manage without dying.
I have to admit though that i certainly made use of the item vault and sent some pretty gear over from my older characters. Not really insanely powerful random artifacts, but some unique artifact which i thought to be necessary for my strategy to hold ground: Telos Top Half, Life Drinker, Untouchable, Threads of Fate and Ring of the Dead are the most noticable ones i think.

While doing this playthrough i learned a whole lot more about the paradox mage than i had ever imagined could still be learned. In my opinion the best way to play a paradox mage is not as a pure nuke caster like archmage but rather playing from a much much more strategical and creative point of view. The class offers a lot of seemingly gimmicky abilities but if you see their hidden synergies and think up creative ways to use those for your purpose it's possible to come up with some tricks that are so good they can almost be called broken.

I think i can share at least one of those: If you use cease to exist on an enemy you can afterwards drink the potion of invincibility giving you a 1 million shield. then all you have to do is killing said enemy before cease to exist runs out, which will turn back time to the point before you drank the potion. Hurray for infinite invincibility potions. This makes you unkillable against enemies you are sure you can kill within 10 turns. The -50% resist reduction of cease to exist helps a hell lot with killing them fast. But to be safe you can beforehand always safely check with precognition whether you are able to kill them in time.

For my playthrough i used a couple more tactics which i won't share just yet though. Before i do that i plan to defeat madness with a paradox mage, afterwards i can write a guide or something in case people would like to read it.

[Mankeli]

I think i can share at least one of those: If you use cease to exist on an enemy you can afterwards drink the potion of invincibility giving you a 1 million shield. then all you have to do is killing said enemy before cease to exist runs out, which will turn back time to the point before you drank the potion. Hurray for infinite invincibility potions. This makes you unkillable against enemies you are sure you can kill within 10 turns.

Good job figuring this out but this sounds to me like another one of those unintended exploits chronomancy has offered in the past -or a downright bug.

I wonder if this works with Ring of The Dead too...

[donkatsu]

Good job figuring this out but this sounds to me like another one of those unintended exploits chronomancy has offered in the past -or a downright bug.

Not at all; people have been doing this for a while. It's like a lesser version of Unstoppable, except Paradox Mage damage is generally lower than Berserker damage (Echoes of Time not withstanding) and if you fail once then you can't ever use it again.

There are a lot of """exploits""" with chronomancers but the broken ones have been removed.

[Mankeli]

Lol, so does that mean it doesn't work with Ring of the Dead? Has it at some point?

[edge2054]

Grats on the Win

As to exploits with chronomancers I'm inclined to leave some of these in as long as they don't completely break the game or encourage extreme amounts of tedium. I think the Potion thing is fine in this regard.

[Kiba333]

Grats on the Win

As to exploits with chronomancers I'm inclined to leave some of these in as long as they don't completely break the game or encourage extreme amounts of tedium. I think the Potion thing is fine in this regard.

Thanks

Yes, the potion trick also has quite some drawbacks. You have to get the potion of invincibility in the first place, with bad luck this can take until nearly the end of the game and you'll also have to juggle the alchemist quests in order to prevent another alchemist from finishing first. Then it takes at least two turns to set this up, 1 to cast cease and 1 to drink the potion, during this time you will still be killable and might catch some debuffs. Some enemys may also remove the shield effect of the potion or may have shield penetration.
And finally as stated before if you fail to kill the enemy in time only once your potion will be lost.

There is only one paradox mage *anomaly* i think is somewhat exploity which is why i never used it during serious gameplay. That is using redux to cast cease to exist first on weak enemy "A" and then on strong enemy "B", if you then kill enemy "A" time will turn back but the existence of enemy "B" will be anulled instead. It is a little unreliable to reproduce this bug since it somtimes works and other times it won't under seemingly identical circumstances. I even managed to "kill" a training dummy in the shertul fortress while testing it by reduxing cease onto one of my haste afterimages...
I never tested it on bossed but if this can be used to kill even stuff like atamathon in a single turn it should be fixed imo.

Lol, so does that mean it doesn't work with Ring of the Dead? Has it at some point?

Sorry... but i don't really know. Actually i never once got to see the ring activate. I died while wearing it but appearingly the 7 extra lives of adventure mode are used up before the ring is, maybe the ring only activates if you die with your last life or maybe the ring effect won't work if it is sent over via vault.
How does the ring resurrection look like? are you instantly revived at full health without being sent to the eidolon plane? If so then the debuffs on the enemies should remain which would mean it should be possible to turn back time by ceasing the existence of a previously debuffed enemy. It might fail however, like for example precognition and see the threads automatically fail when you use them before checking(generating) the inventory of a shop for the first time.

[Mankeli]

How does the ring resurrection look like? are you instantly revived at full health without being sent to the echolon plane? If so then the debuffs on the enemies should remain which would mean it should be possible to turn back time by ceasing the existence of a previously debuffed enemy. It might fail however, like for example precognition and see the threads automatically fail when you use them before checking(generating) the inventory of a shop for the first time.

Yup, no Eidolon plane. I've had the ring activate but I don't remember if the death screen pops up or not -the one where one can use the Blood of Life.

Yeah, and grats!

[Isotope-X]

Congratulations, and I'm tempted to go back to trying to get a Paradox Mage winner (not on Insane). You had some great luck with escorts, getting 5 levels of Spin Fate is nice.