ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

G'day all, been playing (and lurking) for about 8 or 10 days, but my girlfriend already sighs dejectedly when she sees me click on the ToME icon cause she knows then she's lost me for like 3hrs :p

I actually just had to rush out of the house to catch a bus, but I registered and posted from my mobile cause I'm that excited haha my first few characters were fairly exploratory and didn't survive long, I wanted to check out every level on the starting world map before deciding where to go first with my "okay playing for reals now" characters. First one of those was Trogdor, intended as a 'hulk smash'-style toon, who eventually bit the dust (for his last two lives - I clicked the resurrect-in-place option before I realised I should have chosen 'run away like a sissy girl', behind door number three) when rushed by two golems at once from offscreen in that graveyard place. He was 'terrified' just being there, but in my defense there WAS something shiny in front of me when I arrived! After finding the same artifact with my next character (Hackendash the Halfling Rogue), I discovered that no, the Phial of whatsimacallit ('lite' artifact) was decidedly -not- worth dying over, lol.. Live (or die) and learn, I guess!

Hackendash was decent, and I liked being all Roguey, but after getting to I think lvl 12-13 I realized that I reeeeally would have liked to spend my category point on another infusion, and lvl 20 seemed so far away... Reluctantly retired Hackendash.

Enter female Human Rogue "Vexorah Dominitas", the luckiest little nooby ever!! Not only did she come across a slime-covered dagger of daylight very early (5.5-7.15 base dmg and +6 slime / +7 light) but her _very_ daring little foray into the elven ruins netted a - wait for it - Quick Stralite Dagger of Corruption base is 31-40.3 which is ridiculous (for lvl 7 hehe), and on top of that the bonuses kick ASS.

Base power: 31.0 - 40.3
Uses stats: 45% Str, 45% Dex
Damage type: Physical
Armor Penetration: +9
Physical crit. chance: +8.0%
Attack speed: 90%
Damage on strike(melee): +8 darkness / +12 blight
When wielded/worn:
Accuracy: +4
Physical crit. chance: +8.0%
Changes stats: +3 Cun / +4 Dex
See invisible: +11

Now, that takes 35dex which took me another few levels to achieve - that little trooper is just to lvl 10 now - but an enlightening leather armor of the sky helped a little (+3 dex and other good stuff like saves), and the belt of burglary (82g, +4dex, +6 disarm, +2 infra) I bought from SherTul finally got me there! If that wasn't already awesome enough, a second shop in that village had a Helm of Grakul artifact for 29g!!

You may be thinking that's already enough to justify the label of luckiest nooby toon ever, but yes there's more - and this happened right before I had to leave the house.. Vexorah had a peek into the golem graveyard, thankfully only getting targeted by 1 at a time.. Picked up a bow and a staff, not paying much attention because those are usually useless to me-- OHWAIT, grey item.. "Elisaaaaa.." hehe--



*looks again*





...it's a staff called Yarugun that, when activated, teleports me anywhere on a level, for something like 60/200 power!!! So not only does it free up an infusion slot (YES), but it can be used 2, even 3 times in quick succession without cooldown!?! Fan-freaking-tastic!

Anyhoo, gotta go finish up what I was doing so I can get home and start trying out my new toy (it's orange text btw) More later, including Vexorah's dump - something tells me she's a keeper!

Regards,
- Matthew

EDIT: Okay, so unfortunately that staff *does* need to be wielded to be activated So it's a little less exciting, but still great I think it may be worth it to invest 6 points in Mag just so it's a one-turn.. hmm, TWO-turn equipment change (2h weapon doesn't replace two wielded weapons for some reason )

Gtg for now though, will add more later.

A warning about that staff: Activated items trigger at the "end" of your turn (after the delay) rather than the beginning like everything else. What this means is that when you use a teleport item, everyone nearby still gets one turn to attack you before you're bamfed out. So use it before you're critically low on HP, not after.

I'm not sure if that's still true in beta 32....

(The other issue with staves of conveyance as emergency escapes is that it takes a turn to swap them to primary. So you need at least that much time spent standing in one spot fiddling with equipment before you can even try to use it.)

(The other other issue with staves of conveyance as emergency escapes for Rogues in beta 32 is the stealth bug, meaning that if you attempt to swap equipment while in Stealth, you'll destroy that character completely....)

Aquillion wrote:A warning about that staff: Activated items trigger at the "end" of your turn (after the delay) rather than the beginning like everything else. What this means is that when you use a teleport item, everyone nearby still gets one turn to attack you before you're bamfed out. So use it before you're critically low on HP, not after.

Ah. Thanks for that, I had started to cotton onto that fact from using the Cinder Gloves artifact (spits a lousy 12-15 fire dmg but since I had nada ranged attacks or skills with that char it was better than nothing), and the fact that they get to move even before I get my targeting cursor. So that's effectively 4 turns; 1 to equip another item that gives the needed +5 Mag to wield the staff, 1 to unequip my secondary dagger, 1 to switch staff with primary dagger, then 1 to actually activate it... :/ I'm sure it could still be handy in some situations, and that I'll still be able to sacrifice a teleportation rune slot for an additional heal - or a speed! Soo glad I restarted in order to allocate my category points differently this time around

Right now though my gloves and amulet are pretty garbage (think I've literally only come across two of each so far - and yes even the artifact ones aren't much chop lol) and I have yet to find any cloak or digger, so I'm hoping for more of that luck to kick in on my next dungeon dive hehe

@greycat: while I do think I'll stick with this char on b31 for a little longer, considering her current momentum, even if it was b32 I'm not sure I'd get hit by that as I have yet to invest anything in sneaking - i assumed it probably wouldn't work so well against very high level mobs, so wouldn't aid me in my high-lvl pilfering, and I just haven't come across many situations where I think it would have helped me.. I guess if I had a higher infra and light radius it might become more attractive to me, but it always seems that by the time I see an enemy they're too close for sneaking anyway.

When you said 'not in b32', were you referring to the extra unequip step for dual-wielders?

Gliktch wrote:When you said 'not in b32', were you referring to the extra unequip step for dual-wielders?

As alluded to above there does not need to be an extra step. You can wield two sets of weapons and change between them using the X key. So press X when wielding your daggers, you will see you are not wielding anuthing and the daggers are now in the equiptment as "Secondary...". Then wield your staff. Now pressing X will swap between the daggers and the staff.

That said, the bug being refered to is that if you press X while in stealth mode it will break your character. This is not an issue if you do not use the rogue's stealth talent. Some do some don't. If you do you will need to remember to come out of stealth before pressing X. This will probably be fixed in a future beta.

It's also worth noting that if you have to swap gear to get enough Magic to equip the staff, then doing that and putting the staff into the secondary weapon set means it stays there, and you can x back and forth without needing to raise Magic again.

Reminds me of the time I made an alchemist, and my golem spawned with -32 stat points... Turns out he had spawned with an ego'd STRALITE mail shirt and the game had stats dumped a crapton of strength so he could wear it, Boy, but did he hit hard for a level 1 Golem *laughs* was a while before I could shore up its con and willpower for more juice though ^^

Now that the item activation bug is fixed, item activations can be real lifesavers. I remember when I realized my staff of stars activated for Magic-based damage(...and I was a Corruptor!) AND stunning.

There's also lots of decent activable items you can get early with some luck, like hats with stone prison(buys some extra turns), lamps or robes that cast glyphs of repulsions or explosions, and so on, metaflow boots(these are AWESOME as an arcane class..)