ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

A couple of things before I break things down.

I've been playing ToME for about 2 years (I started around March 2011) moving over from the other Roguelike that I've played extensively, ADOM. While I feel that both games are excellent, I wish to commend DarkGod on his constant improvement of a game that continues to impress me realise after realise. Where ADOM in many ways for me is the ultimate Roguelike, ToME is the logical movement forward for the genre. Where I feel ADOM will never achieve critical success for a variety of reasons, I hope and think that ToME can. Astounding accessibility for its genre, a fantastic interface, response to problems, and strategic depth all make this a game I continue to put in time to.

This is maybe only the third or fourth time I've played through with the intent to win with an adventure level character. I basically play with Roguelike characters 99% of the time. Seeing one of my friends get very close to winning on adventure mode encouraged me to be lenient on myself and play on adventure mode, this once, or so I maintained.

Some Observations:

- I only used 5 activatable offensive effects throughout the whole game: Rampage, Blindside, Slam and Mana Clash, and Silence

- Slam I stopped using after Dreadfall

- I used Silence maybe a dozen times

- I used Mana Clash only on Mr. Atmathon, though I don't think I could have killed him without it.

- Essence of Bearness is buggy

Deaths seem to be of the "unlucky variety" 3 early game deaths were from multi crits in a given round, after I returned the monsters were shortly killed with no loss of life the second time around. This leads me to believe I may never be able to win on Roguelike by virtue of the fact I don't put enough care into my play to be vigilant 100% of the time and will be murdered by sloppy play. I feel if I were to play to a level where I could win on Roguelike I would no longer be enjoying the game as dungeons would take twice as long and I would be a nervous wreck playing. I don't think this is a problem to be resolved, but I feel that a particular personal quality is required to win at Roguelike, a certain meticulousness that I lack.

I will continue playing on Roguelike with the understanding that I will probably never win, and it makes me a little sad.

Any questions or comments are welcome, I actually lurk on the forums a lot but I didn't feel qualified to post until I had won.

Congrats !

NovastormMegaton wrote:I feel if I were to play to a level where I could win on Roguelike I would no longer be enjoying the game as dungeons would take twice as long and I would be a nervous wreck playing. I don't think this is a problem to be resolved, but I feel that a particular personal quality is required to win at Roguelike, a certain meticulousness that I lack.

Just want to say, this... this is pretty much the core fundament of roguelikes, as I've seen them. I don't know of any that aren't... ngh. Okay, the only one I've personally experienced not like that is Incursion. Maybe the Gearheads, especially 2 which mostly lacks permadeath. But that was pretty much exactly what happened to me in my DC:SS wins -- I was a bundle of quivering cowardly nerves by the end of the game, and it certainly wasn't fun to play at the higher levels. Challenging, yes, but not enjoyable -- much of the game was specifically curtailing exploration and investigation in favor of victory, and it's primarily the former pair that has me play roguelikes.

Which is one of the reasons I mostly play on Adventurer, in T4. I get much, much more wiggle room to explore, and investigate, and try things just to see if it'll work. Just can't do that in most other roguelikes (without cheating, anyway, which takes a bit out of it, y'know?), if you're intending to gain a victory in a time span measured in years instead of decades.

Anyway! Congrats on the victory, yeah. Hope you stick around

I played DC:SS for...eleven? wins, including HECj 15 rune.

I play on Adventurer here.

ToME is actually harder, based on win rates(Roughly similar win rate in latest tournaments to the Adventurer clear rate in b43, with close to 1/6th that win rate for Roguelike-around a quarter of a percent of runs on Roguelike clear!), but that's not why-if it was, I wouldn't have 15 runed. (And several of my Adventure characters are actually no death.)

I play on Adventurer here because it gives me the freedom to make small mistakes-or take entertaining, challenging risks-and still not blow 10 hours. I feel that same stress when I feel like I might be blowing a no-deaths run, because, well, I really like getting no death runs. But if I screw up? Meh. I'll be fine, long term.

Adventurer is pretty great, and given the sheer length of ToME, it feels like the only way to play, for me. I might get a Roguelike win with one of the strongest classes, some day, but for now I'm just enjoying the lower stress level while still getting real, legitimate challenge and a real feeling of loss when I screw up and die.

(Heck, I pretty much wiped a Skeleton Archer-ditched it after four deaths-recently, just a few days back. Terrible luck, no Shieldings anywhere in the game for me until lower Dreadfell, where I found a 140~ one, fairly bad equips. Tried to gamble on a Farportal and got an enemy capable of killing me two more times, in addition to the two that Urkis killed me because I underestimated his damage output on the build, and chucked the character as a loss. Even on Adventurer the game still holds plenty of real, game-ending challenge.)

Welcome, another Adventure mode player here.

http://te4.org/characters/17275/tome/a8 ... d7a7876a70

I found your character page(^^), and I'm still amazed at the variety of legitimate builds for all of the classes. I tend to play much more activate-heavy builds, but I may need to try out a similar one to yours soon.

Congrats on the win!

NovastormMegaton wrote: I will continue playing on Roguelike with the understanding that I will probably never win, and it makes me a little sad.

My first roguelike win was a dwarf berserker. I find that having loads and loads of HP helps avoid some of those unlucky deaths. Still, it took me a LOT of restarts and stupid deaths. I was close to resigning myself to never winning on roguelike when I caught a few lucky breaks and made it east without a hitch, and after that it was mostly smooth sailing (apart from the ruin banshee necromancer/summoner farportal boss - that fight took half an hour). Point is - don't lose hope.

I actually prefer playing on adventurer, and I agree with SageAcrin on the reasons why I think it's really the best difficulty - it allows you to take risks and try stuff you normally wouldn't - and that's more fun than playing safely. I just seem to restart so much when I die on adventurer that I end up just switching to roguelike...

NovastormMegaton wrote: Any questions or comments are welcome, I actually lurk on the forums a lot but I didn't feel qualified to post until I had won.

You could have. Elitism is generally looked down upon in this community, from my experience.
Welcome to the forums.

@ DarkGod: Thank you sir, I don't think I can express how much great work I think you do, or I guess it's expressed in hours of play. In any case keep up the good work.

@ Frumple: I will likely be here for a very long time, but I'm not really the kind to participate in a conversation unless I think I can put in a unique voice. Shyness isn't quite right... maybe lazyness

@ SageAcrin: I am not convinced that at Adventure is best, but I did throw away a Level 49 Alchimst on Roguelike by activativing Atamathon. I suppose my LOVE of risks is in direct antethesis to Roguelike. I do however feel that Adventure is an excellent entry point for those unfamiliar with Roguelikes and had no real appresiasion for it until this run.

@lukep: I am amazed as well sir. I forgot that I did use Dominate quite a bit so basically I used Dominate, Blindside and Rampage as my main forms of offence. I favor playing tough mean melee brutes with little thought and plenty of smashing face. I like to imagine my characters run around in Doom Berzerk mode all the time looking for new targets
The idea for my build was to max the number of turns that I spent rampaging, therefore I optimized my bump attack in an attempt to simply use basic attacks all through Rampage. This would mean pre-healing at the start of the fight with a regenerate and Dominating if I had the time. In the mid and early game my Rampage would usually activate through the fight so I would "double tap" it for 12 turns with space for healing in between. Into late game I was not taking enough damage to activate Rampage so usually I would have to activate it after buffing and debuffing.

@supermini: I had both a Dwarf Berserker and a Ghoul Berserker Killed in their 40's due to bug's, it made me very sad. I have found the community to be excellent. I think in part because you kind of have to not have an ego to play a roguelike (and if you do, it get's beaten out of you pretty quick)