ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Thalore seems to be a good choice for melee due to the racial disease immunity and the treant meat shields. I went cursed for this one because I always had success in normal.

Build plan:

Anti magic w/ maxed gloom. The idea is between the race and class abilities there are many layers of defense. The stat plan was full str until maxed weapon damage, full will until level 5 sanctuary, then rest in con to eventually get thick skin.

Notes:

Reckless charge is an excellent ability. I just realized after playing all this time that since reckless charge doesn't target an enemy it can be used defensively. This greatly enhanced my escape particularly since I never found a psychoport torque. I think completing anti-magic school should come with a green basic psychoport torque as a reward (and there should be some equivalent quest in algowen that rewards a teleport necklace).

Notable items:

Very early a rare dropped salmon boots that had 18 darkness damage and 10 fire damage on attack. This was a huge boon to the abysmal cursed early game.

Deaths report:

#1 - level 12 - shadowblades at assassin lord - without a teleport I had no way to get out of range of the shadowblade's numerous pursuit abilities and a pair of them brought me down, the cursed lack of any reliable CC outside of slam makes this fight very difficult

#2 - level 20 - rathna at daikara - was a tough one with a thunderstorm in daikara, there was a storm drake and greater gwelgoroth behind rathna bolting me every few turns, I tried to flee when first losing but didn't make it around the corner fast enough to get out of the last freeze + breath combo

#3 & 4 - level 23 - elven ruins level 54 assassin - after urkis the the graveyard coffin bosses I was maybe 10% into level 23, I wanted to get higher into the level before delving into dreadfel and all that was left was the rift and ruins. Since I was pretty sure rift would get me to 24 I went to the ruins. Ruins really highlight how ridiculous the scaling on nightmare is. All of the skeletons have shields, heals, and re-assemble. This assassin had numbing and crippling poison so I could barely do any damage. Also he had a 9(10?) turn evasion and a regen rune so any damage I did was quickly removed. After he killed me once I returned and went to flee, but somehow he stealthed, took a step forward, and doublestriked out of stealth for ~600 damage to 1 shot kill me again. At that point I had elidon take me out of there.

#5 - level 23 - dreadfel 2 vault level 49 armored skeleton - this was the value where you had to dig through every wall, the armored skeleton used overpower and crit every hit doing ~650 damage 1 shotting me

#6 - level 23 - dreadfel 2 vault level 60 greater multihued wyrm - not having a teleport hurt for killing these, I was hit and running against them and I guess I miscalculated my wanderer's rest jump because a crit sand breath hit me for ~400

#7 and final - level 25 - dreadfel 5 - both aletta and borfast spawned on the same level and a lot of other baddies, I fought them pretty well but eventually borfast hit me with a 500ish point assault to finish me

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Lessons leaned: not having teleport sucks; melee is pretty much futile in nightmare

Wanderer's Rest is certainly notable-- I think that it's probably the most valuable artifact a Cursed can luck out on finding. Particularly at that level. Between it, blindside, reckless charge, rampage + surge, relentless, and whatever infusions you've got, there's a lot less need for psychoportation.

Reckless Charge is weird. It's really a third rate closer. Since it works at global speed, a rampaging, surging Cursed can often walk and bump in less time than it takes to complete a Reckless Charge. Its real strength is the ability to use it out of pin/daze. I use it the same way-- as an instantaneous escape. A lot of Cursed abilities are like that: they look like offense, but are much more effective when used as escapes. I'm thinking Rampage (with Tenacity for DOT protection) and Blindside especially.

Level 12 is a hard time to get stuck with the Assassin Lord. Those dreadfell vaults can be nasty.