ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So after playing around last year with a Bulwark, then coming back in 1.0.3/1.0.4 and leaving plenty of archmagi to rot in Dreadfell, I decided to roll a summoner. I've played roguelikes for a decade and a half now, and this is the only time I've come remotely close to winning (which I'm sure says something about both my skill level and my derangement level). While I obviously died, it was nothing like my experiences with archmage. My mages die because the skeletons in the room next door sneeze too loudly. My summoner deaths were things like getting blindsided by The Master and his entourage while actually blind, or not knowing about The Room of OMFG *What* Level Are Those Dragons?, or not knowing when/where to expect the pride bosses, and they all came in parts of the game which were new to me. I never felt like I was really in serious danger, something that hasn't happened since my AOEing Angband priests.

My downfall was the always deadly combination of curiosity and hubris; in this case, "I keep reading this giant golem thingy is pretty hard - I bet my drakes and other crap can keep him busy while I dart among the trees". I don't think there was a single summon which wasn't one-shot, and the couple times I managed to pull off a teleport, I was hunted down within five turns. Biggest surprise for me was that I didn't get the option to respawn on the world map upon death.

Regardless of the tragic (read: stupid) circumstances of my death, it was my first level 50 after not getting much past 25 on any previous character, and what could have been a reasonable contender for a first win. It certainly inspired me to register and moan^H^H^H^Hpost about it here. Do questions and feedback still get the going rate of .02 USD?

Character dump is here.

Questions/comments:
1) Is summoner generally one of the easier classes? Seriously, nothing I actually was prepared for had a chance to kill me, and most the things I wasn't prepared for, including several nasty rares and bosses I came around corners into melee range of. Farportals (which I thought would be terribly difficult, based on what I read), bosses, even The Room of OMFG WTF once I was prepared for it - the outcome of the fights was really never in question, except for the couple times I was forced to fight through corner summons and couldn't actually see the boss to know how things were going. I really felt OP, which takes some doing for me.

2) Likewise, is archmage so much harder? I followed both the summoner and archmage guides, but my mages keep running into brick walls after Daikara.

3) What was with the inability to revive on the world map? Is that just a peculiarity of the Atamathon fight, or was something bugged? Seriously, he cost me my last four lives plus the resurrect-for-free elixir thingy. I get that he's a very hard fight, challenge-mode-ish, but that was something I didn't expect (despite the "you think this would be very unwise" confirmation dialog).

4) Gear - I've seen several people throwing around vague references to "by this point you'll probably be in all oranges", but I couldn't manage all tier 5 by the time I hit 50. I ended up with some T5 yellows, but I also had several T3/4 yellows and a couple blues/purples, and that was even after purchasing a few special unique items. Was this just a bad run with lots of arcane yellows I couldn't use, or do antimagic characters have it harder?

5) Speaking of uniques, a couple of UI tweaks would make it much, much, much nicer. First, the ability to cancel out of the pick-your-item-type dialog would be really helpful. I hit the option out of curiosity, not out of desire to purchase. Once I saw I had to pick an item, I couldn't remember what I needed most, and I hit 'I' or 'C' or something to bring up my character sheet. That picked an item for me, which turned out to be a nice set of heavy voratun plate or something I couldn't equip. Second, it would be nice to see a tooltip for the item you're going to get - two of the three items I got were Hate-related, which was a total waste of a stat/ability. Granted, they were better than the T3 greens/blues they replaced, but I was hoping for something more class-specific.

I think that ends the wall of text for now. I enjoyed the run, especially the anticipation of beating the game, but I don't think I'll roll another summoner for a while. Compared to archmage, where I constantly felt like I was going to die (usually for good reason), it felt a bit anti-climactic. I'll probably spend the remainder of the night trolling through the metaclass forums trying to pick a new class. All in all, a fun experience, one which unlocked a ton of new toys, and one which I hope to beat within my next few runs.

I can't address all of this, and unless you dos some significant farportal farming, I can't imagine wearing nothing but oranges. And probably not then, since there are a few artifacts that trump almost any randart (orange). Umbraphage comes to mind, for instance. Also possibly eden's guile, wrap of stone, a few other's really jump out. Great caller for a summoner... (God blesses the summoner that finds it, which never ahppens. You generally find it on mages, bulwarks, reavers, and others with no use for it. *sigh*)

As for wearing alot of oranges, the reason that's probably said is that you can find some ridiculously overpowered oranges (especially on the higher difficulty levels, where they get generated to the higher zone level/enemy level, and end up with stronger powers as a result) that trump most yellows. (Still only most.) Finding good/bad ones is luck of the draw.

As for summoner being an easy class, it is considered one of the easier ones, especially since at the moment, enemies appear to be REALLY stupid about finding you again after they finish fighting your summon. (allowing some of the existing corner cheese. This is mostly fixed in next version, IIRC.) Beyond that, the fact that you have lots of meat shields to throw in front of you offers you a very fair bit of survivability. I expect a bit of a difficulty hike for them in the next patch, courtesy of the buffed AI, but they'll still be one of the easier classes around. Though some of it's in your head anyway. People say bulwarks are easy to learn on, but I'll be damned if I can even get one through dreadfell. Alchemist's are derpy easy, but I can't manage to clock the game with one of those yet either. Some people adapt more easily to a certain playstyle then others. Maybe summoners are just your thing.

The respawn issue. Certain regions prevent respawning on the world map. Often, this is to prevent breaking the game. (For instance, the final boss fight, certain once-only dungeons (Think the undead starter counts), and this happens to Athy's region once the fight starts. This is to try and prevent you fleeing after experimentation. Sorry to hear you got trapped by this.

In general, a lot of the mage classes seem to be easier, due to them not being in melee range of enemies. Everyone can be shot from a distance, but mages can't be meleed as easily, and have lots of tactical shot options from a distance. Summoner takes that to extremes with meat-shield-bombs. Other mages may well be similarly easy. (I recommend Anorithil, which became my very first win, stomping through the prides for the first time with a total win, never having seen them before. Still had 8 deaths at the end, but that worked out fine, since I still had the magic blood of life left over, after using the ring.)

For canceling out of the item creation dialog, hit the suggestions forum. That probably does need to be added.

You also mentioned farportal bosses not providing much challenge. They can be a horribly mixed bag. You might get an ooze with nothing but rogue/bulwark talents. Or you might get a Nightmare Horror with Oozemancer/archmage/mindslayer/corruptor/super-screw-you-over talent combos. They can be horribly lethal, or tame pusscats. Or anything in between.

Congratulations on your almost-win. Getting that far once makes it so much easier to do it again, and I anticipate hearing of a win from you soon with your next character (or one of the ones after it.)

Thanks for the reply. It's good to know that it really is the class, and that I didn't suddenly develop some competence at this game. I actually gave anorithil a try the last few days and found it quite to my liking. I did get seriously frustrated with escorts, since i couldn't auto-regen negative energy, but it'll likely be my next serious run. I'm currently running around with a corruptor, who after a few early scares is preparing to hit dreadfell here in a few minutes. You'd think that two mage-y classes I like would mean I'd grok archmage, but apparently that's not how it works.

Sucks to be me stuck on Ata, then. I knew better than to try it, but couldn't resist, given how easy things were going. And after all, I could always just spawn on the worldmap.

I will head over to the suggestion forums to mention the item thing.

Krsqk wrote: 2) Likewise, is archmage so much harder? I followed both the summoner and archmage guides, but my mages keep running into brick walls after Daikara.

My current character is a level 34 Halfling Archmage with zero deaths. I experimented a lot with Higher running Arcane/Aether but my first time playing Fire/Wildfire makes Arcane builds seem weak in comparison. Once you get Wildfire (the talent, not the tree) to 5/5 you can simply cast Fireflash on yourself and take almost no damage while dealing tons of AoE damage. Additionally the Fiery Choker gives 30% fire affinity so you heal by a lot when you get caught in your own fire AoEs. Also your Burning Wake cures status effects and you should always be in it one you get 5/5 Wildfire so you don't really need saves or physical/magical wild infusions anymore.

For any Archmage it's important to take advantage of shields and the Aegis tree. Disruption Shield and Displacement shield are both really good and with the Shielding and Aegis talents it's almost impossible to die. I also maxed Con second and didn't have many mana issues thanks to a Manasurge Rune and Disruption Shield.

Archmage IS much harder, because you need to juggle all that shields. And you need to unlock Wildfire first (with Alchemist or Arcane Blade, most likely).

Archmage is high power, high skill requirement; Used correctly, it can handle basically everything, but even marginal screwups can kill you amazingly fast.

Summoner's less powerful but has a lot less of a skill requirement to tap the power.