Vzar, Accursed Dwarf. Died to the Dreads of Dreadfell.

[orange<]

I hope I've posted this correctly. I tried to only post the information I thought necessary.

This was the strongest feeling character I've yet made. But, when I got surrounded by seven dreads in Dreadfell, everything kind of fell apart.

Levels 1-9 I spread out my talent points, putting extras in gloom. From 10-23 I focused on the rampage tree, and getting surge.
Generics were mainly spent on combat as far as stats allowed and Relentless.

Any tips or advice on how I could build this character better would be very much appreciated.
In particular, I see a lot of people writing "max x stat." Should I ignore every other stat and just get Strength with Cursed? Maybe putting in enough Willpower for talent requirements?

Code: Select all

  [ToME4 @ www.te4.org Character Dump]

Sex              : Male         STR:  70
Race             : Dwarf        DEX:  17
Class            : Cursed       MAG:  8
Level            : 23           WIL:  59
Exp              : 99%          CUN:  25
Gold             : 2818.51      CON:  48

Accuracy(Main Hand):  46        Life             :     -2/769   Encumbrance      : 96/166
Damage  (Main Hand): 100                                        Difficulty       : Normal
Permadeath       : Adventure
APR     (Main Hand):   4        
Crit    (Main Hand):   9%       
Speed   (Main Hand): 0.90       
                                
                                
                                

Fatigue          : 31%          Spellpower       : 4
Armor            : 59.56        Spell Crit       : 7.3%
Armor Hardiness  : 82%          Spell Speed      : 1
Defense          : 28.425       
Ranged Defense   : 32.425       
All damage       : 10%
Physical damage  : 22%
Cold damage      : 25%
Nature damage    : 20%
Darkness damage  : 24%

Physical Save    : 41.116666666667
Spell Save       : 29.75
Mental Save      : 28.725

All Resists:   9%
Cold Resist(cap):  27%( 70%)
Nature Resist(cap):  36%( 70%)
Mind Resist(cap):  36%( 70%)
Confusion Resistance:  75%
Disarm Resistance:  21%
Pinning Resistance:  26%
Stun Resistance:  75%
Fear Resistance:  75%
Knockback Resistance:  99%
Instadeath Resistance: 100%

Number of NPC killed: 2050
Most killed NPC: giant white rat (66)

  [Talents Chart]

 - Race / Dwarf                       (mastery 1.00)
    Resilience of the Dwarves (generic) 1/5
    Stoneskin (generic)               1/5
    Power is Money (generic)          1/5
    Stone Walking (generic)           0/5
 - Technique / Combat training        (mastery 1.30)
    Thick Skin (generic)              3/5
    Armour Training (generic)         4/5
    Combat Accuracy (generic)         5/5
    Weapons Mastery (generic)         4/5
    Dagger Mastery (generic)          0/5
 - Cursed / Slaughter                 (mastery 1.30)
    Slash (class)                     1/5
    Frenzy (class)                    1/5
    Reckless Charge (class)           0/5
    Cleave (class)                    0/5
 - Cursed / Endless hunt              (mastery 1.30)
    Stalk (class)                     1/5
    Beckon (class)                    1/5
    Harass Prey (class)               1/5
    Surge (class)                     2/5
 - Cursed / Strife                    (mastery 1.30)
    Dominate (class)                  1/5
    Preternatural Senses (class)      1/5
    Blindside (class)                 1/5
    Repel (class)                     0/5
 - Cursed / Gloom                     (mastery 1.30)
    Gloom (class)                     5/5
    Weakness (class)                  2/5
    Dismay (class)                    1/5
    Sanctuary (class)                 2/5
 - Cursed / Rampage                   (mastery 1.00)
    Rampage (class)                   5/5
    Brutality (class)                 1/5
    Tenacity (class)                  5/5
    Slam (class)                      0/5
 - Cursed / Cursed form               (mastery 1.00)
    Unnatural Body (generic)          1/5
    Relentless (generic)              5/5
    Seethe (generic)                  1/5
    Grim Resolve (generic)            2/5

  [Inscriptions (4/4)]

Infusion: Movement
Infusion: Regeneration
Infusion: Healing
Infusion: Regeneration

[nate]

Looks like you were pursuing a totally viable build. It looks like you've handled stats fine; 70 strength at Dreadfell is impressive.

How'd you die? Get confused? Get surrounded? No see invis?

Even if you can't see a target, you can still blindside it. So long as you were keeping your rampage and move infuse off cooldown (vital), I don't see why you couldn't have gotten away (retreat to the previous level, where you wait for all cooldowns to expire). Unless you were confused. Or unless you accidentally bump attacked something invis during your movement infusion.

[orange<]

I think it was 63 Strength (+ 7 from Grim Resolve.)

I blindsided a rare alchemist. Next thing I knew I was surrounded by dreads, I counted seven, there ma have been more. I was using the spectral sword (the artifact which removes penalties for attacking invisible foes) and had picked up some see invisible/stealth from an escort. But they dished out damage far quicker than I could handle it.

Tried approaching from different angles upon being revived, but ended up getting surrounded every time. Maybe next time I'll try to jump up and down the stairs, but the method seems tedious.

edit:
You are the one who posted "Your First Cursed" on the blog?
Thank you for writing it. I found it very helpful.

What's your opinion on the Unnatural Body generic talent? It feels like I should be trying to get it to 5/5. It reminds me of the Vitality talent which seemed to serve me so well while playing Berserker.

[nate]

Glad that it was useful! Haven't really had any time for playing recently, too much time spent coding.

Hit and run (doesn't have to be stair scumming) can be tedious, but it's pretty much essential. If you just want to wade into a group of bad guys and start swinging until one side is dead, cleave is a better choice than surge (can always close with blindside, reckless charge).

My opinion on the Unnatural Body generic is that it's a useless relic of a previous version of ToME. I never take it past 1. But I've never done much experimentation with it. Just taking a look, I see it capping out at a max rate of 22 life per turn (with 60 WP and 5/5 Unnatural Body) which isn't going to make much difference to anything. But maybe next time, I'll put my spare generic points in there, instead of Grim Resolve and Seethe (1 pt in each is awesome, but the returns diminish really, really fast). I usually play a Thalore with Cursed Aura, so it's not like I've many generics to spare. And my hardest fights tend to be solo fights against random bosses (which I can't bring myself to skip, they're too much fun), so I don't prioritize talents that rely on kills, or that don't synergize well with hit and run. Big masses of bad guys never kill me-- I find it pretty easy to chokepoint them (dreads, of course, being an exception, and I take them as seriously as bosses).

[kazak]

Yeah, seems like you found a dreadmaster, which can be awful for melee types. Unless something's changed recently (I haven't played many melee characters that far recently), that guy will keep summoning hordes of dreads until you take him out or just abandon the level altogether. They'll also chase you across the whole level (again, unless that's changed since Tome came out of beta). Sometimes you can get lucky and take him down before he starts summoning, other times he'll surround you with dreads and the whole thing can spiral downhill pretty quickly.

To deal with it: you have blind fight and good accuracy I guess, which is good, but doesn't help much if you can't take down the dreadmaster quicker than he can surround you with dreads. Because they can move through walls and surround you on all sides, you typically need a better escape than those movement infusions (teleport rune, generally). Once there are already several summons out, I typically either:
1) stair scum and attempt to take out the dreads and eventually the dreadmaster one at a time;
2) teleport away and look for the next staircase, then just abandon the level;
3) or use teleport and maybe attack runes/wands to whittle them down and take out the dreadmaster.

That last is tedious and risky, as once you get away from the stairs, it's easy to get surrounded and run out of options. On the bright side, that's pretty much the only place you're likely to see dreadmasters, and it doesn't happen every game. The worst is when they pop up with the Master.

[jenx]

Looking at your character sheet, here are some suggestions:

1. Your mental and spell saves are too low. Dwarves should be 1/1/5/1 asap. Saves are very, very important in surviving in Tome. For instance, if you get spell-shocked, your resistances will drop dramatically, so having high resists is pointless without high saves.
2. Your accuracy is too low to hit dreads and dread masters. They have high defence and you'll miss them about 50% of the time at your level of accuracy. So get it up closer to 60. You might want to consider balanced weapons in your kit, to bring out when you encounter dreads, if you don't want high accuracy the whole time.
3. Your talents points are spread rather then. In general, you are better off with 5 in one talent than 1 in 5 talents.
4. Cursed work best when they take advantage of cleave or repel or surge at 5/5. People have won with all three. And remember, you don't have to have the bonus combo to use these talents. That is, cleave works with two daggers/mindstars, or sword and shield. Surge with two-handed etc. So choose one strategy and stick to it.
5. If your defence is higher, many things won't be able to hit you. But casters ignore def.

I can't suggest more without knowing what went wrong and what status effects the dreads were giving you.

[orange<]

Thanks for your help, everyone.

I made another run, with pretty much the same build, but I hit-n-ran a little more often.
Dreadfell was a cinch, this time. I did die twice to the master. I came up the stairs, took a step, and got surrounded by undead, and the master killing me with darkness. But, it was far easier than the previous run. And definitely felt better than losing all five lives to a bunch of dreads.

Build differences were slight. I ignored Con in favour of a little more Strength - actually maxing it until I hit late 20s where I started focusing on Con and Will a little more.

I started pumping Unnatural Body when I had filled Armor and Accuracy, just to see what it was like. God damn it Nate. Spot on. I haven't seen it give me more than 22hp/turn. You're right that it's not very helpful for hit-n-run.

I also feel like a had better equipment. I picked up Withering Orbs, so I didn't need to change to an inferior weapon while attacking invisible things. And my orange greatmaul tore thing apart - I was taking out most of Dreadfell in two or three hits.

Jenx, I didn't realise that high saves helped your resists. I'll have to consider that in the future. I was mainly running Dwarf because I like Tolkien's Dwarves (I'm also finding Tome Dwarven lore to be very entertaining - but nowhere near as much as I enjoy reading about the Halflings,) and the HP mod.
Surge was the talent I was working on at the time of posting. I think I would have fared better if I had not put the second point into Weakness, and used in in Surge, instead - as I did on this run.
However, your comment mentioning 5/5 in one talent is better than 1/5 in five talents is against most I've heard about Cursed. Indeed, it appears every point you put into a talent reduces what you get out of it significantly.

I was very much ignoring defense, as my Dex was so low, I didn't think it would help so much. I was going for the strategy of tank through or run away (read run away as cross my fingers and try to tank harder - something I tried to avoid on my second run.) I'll consider sparing a few point for Dex, next time, and rate + Dex and +Accuracy items higher.


Thanks again for your help, everyone.

I'm of the kill some Orcs to save all those pretty Sun Paladins. Wish me luck.

Code: Select all

  [ToME4 @ http://www.te4.org Character Dump]

Sex              : Male         STR:  86
Race             : Dwarf        DEX:  14
Class            : Cursed       MAG:  8
Level            : 30           WIL:  66
Exp              : 87%          CUN:  23
Gold             : 4757.81      CON:  51

Accuracy(Main Hand):  48        Life             :     686/1003 Encumbrance      : 94/194
Damage  (Main Hand): 174                                        Difficulty       : Normal
Permadeath       : Adventure
APR     (Main Hand):  11        
Crit    (Main Hand):  25%       
Speed   (Main Hand): 1.00       
                                
                                
                                

Fatigue          : 15%          Spellpower       : 13
Armor            : 34.2         Spell Crit       : 4%
Armor Hardiness  : 95%          Spell Speed      : 1
Defense          : 22.6         
Ranged Defense   : 22.6         
All damage       : 0%
Physical damage  : 22%
Nature damage    : 6%
Light damage     : 9%

Physical Save    : 42.475
Spell Save       : 26.1875
Mental Save      : 32.3125

All Resists:  12%
Physical Resist(cap):  26%( 70%)
Fire Resist(cap):  17%( 70%)
Cold Resist(cap):  36%( 70%)
Lightning Resist(cap):  17%( 70%)
Acid Resist(cap):  16%( 70%)
Nature Resist(cap):  38%( 70%)
Blight Resist(cap):  29%( 70%)
Mind Resist(cap):  38%( 70%)
Confusion Resistance:  75%
Blind Resistance: 100%
Disarm Resistance:  20%
Pinning Resistance: 100%
Stun Resistance: 100%
Fear Resistance:  75%
Knockback Resistance:  99%
Instadeath Resistance: 100%

Number of NPC killed: 2739
Most killed NPC: storm drake hatchling (124)

  [Talents Chart]

 - Race / Dwarf                       (mastery 1.00)
    Resilience of the Dwarves (generic) 0/5
    Stoneskin (generic)               0/5
    Power is Money (generic)          0/5
    Stone Walking (generic)           0/5
 - Technique / Combat training        (mastery 1.30)
    Thick Skin (generic)              4/5
    Armour Training (generic)         5/5
    Combat Accuracy (generic)         5/5
    Weapons Mastery (generic)         5/5
    Dagger Mastery (generic)          0/5
 - Cursed / Slaughter                 (mastery 1.30)
    Slash (class)                     3/5
    Frenzy (class)                    3/5
    Reckless Charge (class)           0/5
    Cleave (class)                    0/5
 - Cursed / Endless hunt              (mastery 1.30)
    Stalk (class)                     1/5
    Beckon (class)                    1/5
    Harass Prey (class)               1/5
    Surge (class)                     4/5
 - Cursed / Strife                    (mastery 1.30)
    Dominate (class)                  1/5
    Preternatural Senses (class)      3/5
    Blindside (class)                 1/5
    Repel (class)                     0/5
 - Cursed / Gloom                     (mastery 1.30)
    Gloom (class)                     5/5
    Weakness (class)                  2/5
    Dismay (class)                    1/5
    Sanctuary (class)                 3/5
 - Cursed / Rampage                   (mastery 1.00)
    Rampage (class)                   5/5
    Brutality (class)                 3/5
    Tenacity (class)                  5/5
    Slam (class)                      0/5
 - Cursed / Cursed form               (mastery 1.00)
    Unnatural Body (generic)          5/5
    Relentless (generic)              5/5
    Seethe (generic)                  1/5
    Grim Resolve (generic)            1/5
 - Uber / Strength                    (mastery 1.00)
    Flexible Combat (class)           0/1
    You Shall Be My Weapon! (class)   0/1
    Massive Blow (class)              0/1
    Steamroller (class)               0/1
    Irresistible Sun (class)          0/1
    I Can Carry The World! (class)    0/1
    Legacy of the Naloren (class)     0/1
    Superpower (class)                1/1


  [Inscriptions (4/4)]

Infusion: Movement
Infusion: Healing
Infusion: Regeneration
Infusion: Regeneration