ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

http://www.te4.org/characters/19271/tom ... 31f8e63db3

Looking for any advice on gear choice, skill choice, race choice etc.

I've heard dual wielding is superior for AB, but I'm not really sure why.

My basic plan was to flame/flameshock my way through the first bit, unlock stone magic at level 10 and get earthen missiles/earthquake going for fire immune enemies. After that work on maxing inner power and crystalline focus for the extra power.

Stats wise, once I had enough str/magic for my spells, I start focusing heavily on con to get thick skin.

Would it be worth-while to step up to a heavier tier of armour? I felt like the fatigue might be too much for my mana pool to deal with.

averaen wrote:http://www.te4.org/characters/19271/tom ... 31f8e63db3

Looking for any advice on gear choice, skill choice, race choice etc.

I've heard dual wielding is superior for AB, but I'm not really sure why.

My basic plan was to flame/flameshock my way through the first bit, unlock stone magic at level 10 and get earthen missiles/earthquake going for fire immune enemies. After that work on maxing inner power and crystalline focus for the extra power.

Stats wise, once I had enough str/magic for my spells, I start focusing heavily on con to get thick skin.

Would it be worth-while to step up to a heavier tier of armour? I felt like the fatigue might be too much for my mana pool to deal with.

Arcane Blades are currently one of the weaker classes.

Arcane destruction can trigger with each hit, allowing 2-3 hits for dual wield/flexible combat builds for potentially massive aoe damage if your crit is high enough as well as the bonus offensive stats from 2 weapons.

ABs do generally work better as casters for the first bit, although you can always keep moving the points around speccing/unspeccing until 10 if you don't want to actually waste points on flame for the long run.

Skills:
I wouldn't max out arcane combat early because it also greatly increases how much mana you spend.
Try to pick up the light tree.


thats all ive got for now, hopefully someone else can add more for you

Well, take my advice with a grain of salt because I have not beaten b43 Dreadfell with AB (last was b41, I think) nor do have I had success with an AB in the end-game. But I found that I had to have five inscriptions that meshed well with the Aegis tree (Shielding+Shielding rune or Arcane Shield+Heal, depending on what inscriptions I find) because I found it nigh-impossible to get enough stun immunity by Dreadfell. Stone is sexy and the damage is great, but you don't really need that much damage in Dreadfell. The physical resist penetration that Crystalline Focus provides in particular is not useful in Dreadfell. When you get something like Wintertide Phial, that's a great excuse to drop mental wild infusion and go all-in on physical/magical. There's going to be lots of stuns and lots of disease.

I guess I count as reasonably knowledgeable about Arcane Blade.

Generally speaking, Arcane Blades have an okay earlygame(thanks to the spells) and a good lategame(thanks to the powerful basic physicals thanks to Arcane Combat, plus good support spells and lots of stat boosting class skills), but the midgame is rough.

Some things I found generally helpful, though...

A: Races...Cornac and Skeleton are the best.

Cornac can easily invest in a fourth infusion early, and they level fast. Arcane Blades have a high life modifier(so they get more, relatively, from leveling, and it counteracts the Cornac's relatively low life modifier) and have this massive pile of skills they want to get up and running as fast as possible-almost all of Arcane Combat is useful, and there's a bunch of other nice tricks they can consider like the physical trees, but they definitely need to build up a spell or two for the earlygame, so it takes them a while to start really building up the excellent support sustains/passives.

The extra category point is nice too. Invest it instantly in a fourth rune/infusion. Between Shielding, Aegis and Conveyance you've already got a good tanking setup, and trying to leverage it more doesn't hurt. It's certainly not overkill with their rough midgame.

Skeleton on the other hand just has Bone Shield, which even without Dex investment hits 500. Shielding combined with that is pretty impressive, and they have extra healing, buffs to Shielding runes thanks to Shielding, and class teleports, so many of the Skeleton downsides are mitigated. Status is an issue though, so if that's a problem at all to you, run screaming. And of course, they level really slow-see above for how Cornac is good for leveling fast. Still, if you can pull up four or five barriers, you may be able to just outlast everything.

You can try other races, and see how you feel, but I like those two the best.

B: Equipment...twohanders and dualwielding are both good(by next version, when they get the new trees, you basically can run whatever you want, but I'd avoid sword/shield for now.). They humorously have some use for Exotic Weapons as well(Trident of the Tides is really good for them), but that's more of a later game choice if anything.

For armor, I'd go 2 Armor Training all the way. Mails are very worth it-you need that defense and armor, and especially the Armor Hardiness-but the fatigue on massive is crippling. You can level Armor Training more for more Hardiness, though-Stone Skin's a nice chunk of added armor. But stick with mails.

C: Celestial/Light can be very worth it, if you save an Anorithil. Again, Shielding+barriers is great. This is another way you can leverage a Cornac's extra category point.

For the midgame...I can say that Earthquake helped me a ton during the mid-game, but at the same time it didn't feel like that great of a long term invest(not bad, though). Having Celestial/Light definitely felt like a big help there, too, and above all else, play very defensively and carefully for Dreadfell.

Basically, dying at Dreadfell is pretty normal for this class, the way it's built. Don't get too discouraged by that-if you can get past, you've got better odds than it seems, I feel.

http://www.te4.org/characters/10195/tom ... 55a1a94601 This was my AB.