ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This is my strongest character ever, in exploration mode:

http://te4.org/characters/7470/tome/89e ... 1b1f9767b6

It has an unthinkable number of deaths because I was exploring the east for the 3rd time and I wanted to see some things out of curisosity, like if the objects that spawn near the vor armory's monster unkillable wyrms were different than last time. That was about 1/3 of the deaths. Another 1/3 was lack of concentration on my part, and the rest I attribute to a weak build and bad timing when a hard fight started when I was still recovering from the previous.

This build was centered around an item, the robe I'm wearing, which has +104% critical multiplier. When I found it in the low 20's (level) I thought it was brutal. In the end of the game my critical multiplier was 340%, and I had 66% chance mental critical. It was awesome casting blast for 2600 damage when the stars aligned, but this damm robe kept me from doing a more solid build with better resistances and immunities. It was just too tempting to get that +104%. I had my favourite doomed outfit, the spydre robe, but I wouldn't put it on.

I had maximized my shadows early so I had a good army of thugs to keep the enemy entertained until it was blasted. They are strong enough to handle almost all non-rare and non-boss throughout the game. A bug where they would sometimes stop spawning even at full hate caused a few deaths too, and reentering the level fixed it. They also die when you level up.

Then in my early 30's I found the amulet of mastery for Cursed/Force of will (0.23). That gave me lvl 8.7 blast, deflection and Unseen Force. Blast would often clear rooms after the damage enhancing preparations. The 4 pieces of the fragmented essence of xorn? One shot. Assembled xorn? One shot. I was living the life! Unseen Force was just smacking everyone from one side of the room to the other like the hand of god, hitting for 1k damage each.

But now the armor and amulet slots were taken and the build suffered. Doom works great on defense because of it's many defense mechanisms that work in depth. But as I found out, wearing a dress and a fancy necklace is no way to go through High Peak. I had many deaths that could have probably been avoidable, but lack of concentration and some bad luck. I transmogrified about 10k gold of items and not a single psychoteleportation item was generated. So when it was bad, it was real bad. The thing that kept me alive the most was a lucky random totem that gave +62 armor and +70% hardiness, found in the early lvl 20's. What a game!

I played Thalore when I usually play Dwarf. I ended up only using Wrath of the Woods as an added instant to the blast combo, with a single talent point. The physical and mental save from Unshackled would have saved me some stupid pinning deaths, so that's something to remember. Doomed is so starved for generics and I ended up not getting the 2 generic point alchemist potion, because noob and bad luck with the ingredients.

On the Antimagic, which takes more generics, I think I should have invested in Aura of Silence earlier, instead of getting 4/5 Mana Clash. With the crazy critical multiplier, few mages survived a critical mana clash. But a room of mages that can't all be blasted together was a problem.

I should also have invested earlier in Feed Strengths. With the tooltip addon, feeding was like going shopping in terms of resistances. You look over the toughest monster you can see and feed. It would regularly max out my resistances against elemental specific foes that have their own element resistance.

So, as I said earlier, high peak was tough. My resistances were inadequate and the rares were too tough to quickly kill. lvl 70 rares against my lvl 45 with a dress killed me many times. In the final fight (I had never seen it) I knew you could close the monster portals but didn't know how. I thought the orbs had been used up in the pedestrals before. So at first I didnt close them. The fight starts and my ally attacks the male mage boss. I go for the female, which I manage to dispatch without dying. Then I go look for the others, as the fight had scattered and there is only the male mage boss left, no sign of my ally. This mage whipped me hard, costing me about 20 lives until I learned enough about portal closing, inventory selection, silence casting discipline and kiting to kill it with this character, for an exploration mode win.

Any tips or discussion are welcome.

I'd have to say this is very poor itemization. With relentless and relentless pursuit, you can get by without a single wild. Instead of that t3 massacre ring you could have worn bloodcaller. Amulet, light source are poor. Wearing -20% physical resistance belt is suicide. Robe is actually one of the better pieces of gear you had. Those gauntlets are overkill when you're wearing that robe.

Choice of race is very poor. If you didn't plan on boosting racials, you should have went Cornac.

What I also don't understand is the choice to not boost resolve and antimagic shield, and go for mana clash instead. Resolve is passive and would have stacked nicely with just one level of feed strengths. That way you save generic points for the same effect, and you don't depend on feeding on something powerful to boost resists. Antimagic shield is quite good when maxed.

Biggest mistake was going AM and not going fungus. Fungus is the main attraction of AM at the moment if you ask me, and if you're giving away a huge chunk of your possible gear choices and great utility options (premonition, shield runes, teleport runes), you need to replace them with something that's worth it, and mana clash isn't it. Aura of silence is good for prides and such but if I had to choose between that and fungus, fungus wins no contest.

There are wasted points in Gesture of Pain and Gesture of Malice - if you're focusing on summoning and creeping darkness and you're wearing -physical% gear you don't want to be bumping in close combat. Plus, your gear has a lot of +physical% damage, and gesture of pain does mind damage. If you were going to spend points in gestures, it should have been gesture of guarding or gesture of power.

Seethe is also a poor choice imo, but I guess that's debatable. The whole purpose of boosting stuff like shadows and creeping dark is to not take damage every turn. You even went with 5/5 in focus shadows which should keep baddies busy for a long time and always works.

All things considered, your resistances aren't all that terrible (except that physical *shudder*). But this build is pretty bad, and the number of deaths reflects this. No matter what your concentration levels were, with this gear and this build you wouldn't get anywhere near the final fight on roguelike difficulty, which is one of its advantages, because it teaches you how to play the game.

I'd have to say this is very poor itemization. With relentless and relentless pursuit, you can get by without a single wild. Instead of that t3 massacre ring you could have worn bloodcaller. Amulet, light source are poor. Wearing -20% physical resistance belt is suicide. Robe is actually one of the better pieces of gear you had. Those gauntlets are overkill when you're wearing that robe.

Im sorry, the inventory you saw online was me trying out some items I got from the mages and another 4k item I paid the shopkeeper for a 3rd artifact. (that was the -20% phys resist, for 4k gold!!). Anyway, I've now set my inventory back to what it was when I faced the mages.

I found that I often needed the wilds, as well as relentless pursuit, which has a high cooldown. As for the rest, I wore the desert scorption gauntlets that would let me pull the enemies into their slow projectiles, but their range was not too great. The light source was the best non-arcane light source that was generated. I wasn't lucky there either.

Choice of race is very poor. If you didn't plan on boosting racials, you should have went Cornac.

I found that doomed are starved for generics. Thalore's first racial is a willpower based damage boost/reduction instant that only requires one point for maximum effect. Thalore's starting stat bonuses are also decent for doomed. That is what I thought, pretty much.

The problem with Cornac is that the experience bonus, or lack of experience penalty, means you level faster and the game scales up faster with you, meaning more difficult fights. Let me know if I understood this wrong. Also I haven't found fears very useful in other characters, so I didn't need yet another cat point.

What I also don't understand is the choice to not boost resolve and antimagic shield, and go for mana clash instead. Resolve is passive and would have stacked nicely with just one level of feed strengths. That way you save generic points for the same effect, and you don't depend on feeding on something powerful to boost resists. Antimagic shield is quite good when maxed.

Biggest mistake was going AM and not going fungus. Fungus is the main attraction of AM at the moment if you ask me, and if you're giving away a huge chunk of your possible gear choices and great utility options (premonition, shield runes, teleport runes), you need to replace them with something that's worth it, and mana clash isn't it. Aura of silence is good for prides and such but if I had to choose between that and fungus, fungus wins no contest.

Thanks, that's good info. I need to look better into fungus, obviously... I didn't use more AM shield because I kept getting too much equilibrium, and I see fungus can help deal with that, so thanks for the tips.

There are wasted points in Gesture of Pain and Gesture of Malice - if you're focusing on summoning and creeping darkness and you're wearing -physical% gear you don't want to be bumping in close combat. Plus, your gear has a lot of +physical% damage, and gesture of pain does mind damage. If you were going to spend points in gestures, it should have been gesture of guarding or gesture of power.

I found that often there would be need for direct combat, but maybe not often enough to justify these points. Still, I was bumping for 300-400 at the end.

Seethe is also a poor choice imo, but I guess that's debatable. The whole purpose of boosting stuff like shadows and creeping dark is to not take damage every turn. You even went with 5/5 in focus shadows which should keep baddies busy for a long time and always works.

I tried one level of seethe and I found that it was almost always on when needed. Then I invested a bit more. There's often some AOE, some acid or gas or a trap that will not be too dangerous but will tick up seethe until you get a decent dmg bonus.

All things considered, your resistances aren't all that terrible (except that physical *shudder*). But this build is pretty bad, and the number of deaths reflects this. No matter what your concentration levels were, with this gear and this build you wouldn't get anywhere near the final fight on roguelike difficulty, which is one of its advantages, because it teaches you how to play the game.

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The resistances are better with the gear I fought with. Sorry about that. I can now see several ways I could improve the build, so thanks a lot! I've been playing on exploration because I hadn't even seen the final fight yet, and even on exploration it wasn't easy.

Ok, that equip makes much more sense.

I'd still change the necklace and the light source but good light sources are hard to find for AM.

I found that doomed are starved for generics. Thalore's first racial is a willpower based damage boost/reduction instant that only requires one point for maximum effect. Thalore's starting stat bonuses are also decent for doomed. That is what I thought, pretty much.

The problem with Cornac is that the experience bonus, or lack of experience penalty, means you level faster and the game scales up faster with you, meaning more difficult fights. Let me know if I understood this wrong. Also I haven't found fears very useful in other characters, so I didn't need yet another cat point.

Yes and no. Surviving is always easier on higher level. While dungeons scale with you, they all have a cap. Dreadfell scales from 15-26. Going in at level 30 is much better than going in on level 18 - you overlevel everything by 4 on the first floor.

As for the extra cat point, there were several things you could do with it: boost a category, get mobility tree, get call of the wild tree, etc.

I guess taking thalore for the first talent isn't a distaster but it's hard to justify the xp penalty. Racial bonuses to stats are insignificant in the long run.

I found that often there would be need for direct combat, but maybe not often enough to justify these points. Still, I was bumping for 300-400 at the end.

That's a bit weak. You should be hitting stuff for 1000+ in the end game. Bumping with gesture is a legitimate tactic but it requires a different build.

The thing with doomed is that you can't allow yourself to focus too much on one thing, and yet you still can't be all over the place. Looking at your build a bit more:

-you boosted force of will category and wore a boosting neck and yet you didn't max Willful strike.

-you invested 5 points in madness and yet you have limited number of useful abilities that do mind damage (as you haven't invested in reproach or agony, nor do you have aletta's diadem)

-seethe is ok for doomed as a one point wonder, it's hard to justify an investment there

-5/5 in focus shadows is probably an overkill

Well, I hope that helps. If you try to win on roguelike, my advice would be to plan out where you're putting points in advance, roughly at least. And do more far portals - it's a great way to get good gear and experience, for a reasonable amount of risk.

supermini wrote: I guess taking thalore for the first talent isn't a distaster but it's hard to justify the xp penalty. Racial bonuses to stats are insignificant in the long run.

I haven't checked the numbers for tome but usually an xp penalty is irrelevant in roguelikes. The xp penalty is linear while the gaps between levels are exponential meaning you usually end up at most 1 level behind. It might be the difference between level 5 & 3 early on but later it's the difference between level 27 & level 28.

wobbly wrote: I haven't checked the numbers for tome but usually an xp penalty is irrelevant in roguelikes. The xp penalty is linear while the gaps between levels are exponential meaning you usually end up at most 1 level behind. It might be the difference between level 5 & 3 early on but later it's the difference between level 27 & level 28.

I don't know about other roguelikes, but your numbers are way off for ToME. In practice it works out to be up to 8 levels difference in the early game. With yeeks, for example, you will overlevel everything in the west quite fast - hitting Dreadfell at level 30 without having to do farportals and being way overleveled for most dungeons you do, while skeletons will have a different experience. Levels between 20 and 30 are crucial for a lot of classes - that's when the class really takes off. A difference of 5 or 6 levels is not insignificant at that point.

Level difference aside, if you hit dungeons at their max level there's more chance of getting better loot - because loot scales with dungeon level.

You can make up for the difference in far portals, but it's not something I like to do early game. It's much easier to die to a nasty combo than later on.

It the long run it evens out, but making it alive to the long run is not a trivial matter.

Yeah, I will second this on EXP mods.

The difference between -15% and 40% in current ToME is the difference between hitting L50 before doing the Prides or after the first one, and the difference between hitting L50 just before the final dungeon, if not the final battle, long term. That's a lot of area, even late, where you're not at max potential-the levels add up across the game, though the amount really varies on the point in the game you're at. 22-30 split at Dreadfell sounds about right to me.

Of course, Farportals can catch you up-40% EXP mod characters probably should do a few-but even done late, a Farportal can be quite dangerous, and those levels would have been more useful early(where the Farportal is really iffy).

The big thing about EXP mods is that your HP modifier gets some kind of odd, level-based scaling (I found the formula for this, but I can't recall it.). Essentially, the higher your level, the more HP you get from HP Modifier. So for anyone relying on their HP modifier without much or any Con boosting, leveling speed suddenly becomes a much bigger deal. It's also why +2 HP modifier Yeeks(and any Cornac) can keep up on durability pretty easily despite their low mod, until the very end of the game when L50 catches up to them.

So, your relative level means a lot for your survivability, especially as many of the riskiest enemies in the game are spell heavy-which tend to scale poorly past L5. Basically, yeah, EXP modifier matters more than it looks, though it's not extreme unless you're playing a class where everything needs to fall together for a setup, like Arcane Blade.