ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I've been trying to beat the Master - I did it ONCE last Friday at work but that character is on my computer at work and he is at 0 lives and had some god-like equipment.

This last time I was doing great with this character: http://te4.org/characters/19954/tome/6f ... 5027e3565b

I REALLY want to kill him once more, unlock the other race, and hopefully make my way to unlock Oozemancer. Plus just be able to consistently beat him.

I get surrounded by his minions he summons and no amount of movement helps - a teleport tool would have been great but yea, had nothing. Also I've learned the hard way to NOT open the vaults in Dreadfell. They were the cause of 2-3 of my deaths.

Any suggestions on my character or what I can do differently?

Thanks!

Teleport is pretty much exactly what you need. Most of my fights with the master have turned into peek a boo matches. I clear the rest of the level (immediately teleporting, if I see the master), and then start hunting him. I find him, pop an attack, two if I'm lucky, he summons minions, surrounding himself and/or me. I hit teleport/psychoport (phase door won't be enough, you need to kite cross-level), rest up, heal, and wait. If I'm topped up, its' time to start looking for him again, followed by one, maybe two more attacks. Then teleport again. If you get lucky and confine him in a hallway, where you can fight him a bit more with more cover from his summons, you can try to stick it out longer, but at the first sign of even a minor threat to you, you teleport away. It takes a long time to win like this, but the master cannot heal. Ever. So taking a long time actually works. Use that lack of healing against him.

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:Teleport is pretty much exactly what you need. Most of my fights with the master have turned into peek a boo matches. I clear the rest of the level (immediately teleporting, if I see the master), and then start hunting him. I find him, pop an attack, two if I'm lucky, he summons minions, surrounding himself and/or me. I hit teleport/psychoport (phase door won't be enough, you need to kite cross-level), rest up, heal, and wait. If I'm topped up, its' time to start looking for him again, followed by one, maybe two more attacks. Then teleport again. If you get lucky and confine him in a hallway, where you can fight him a bit more with more cover from his summons, you can try to stick it out longer, but at the first sign of even a minor threat to you, you teleport away. It takes a long time to win like this, but the master cannot heal. Ever. So taking a long time actually works. Use that lack of healing against him.

Thanks - yea, I figured that was it.

Also is staying clear of the vault rooms a good idea? I want the treasure but in Dreadfell I ALWAYS seem to get smashed by a huge elite level 40+ dragon not to mention all the adds.

Also if I name my character one name will it continually save over them in my character vault or will it just list them all as the same name? I ask because of your signature and I noticed once I tried to do that it gave me some warning.

I'd rather name them all the same though.

I usually do the vaults, and I usually die once or twice.

Looks like your character is currently out of extra lives, so I'd avoid the vaults with that one.

Come back later and do the vaults ... maybe when you are ready to take on the backup guardian?

Oh that character died on the master - so no more vaults.

Working up another right now though.

It will overwrite a savefile for a character of that name on your computer. So if they are named the same thing, you can't have two savefiles of different characters, with the same name. However, the character vault will repeat names. The only way the character vault on site can lose something is if you enter it and manually choose to remove an item from the list.

Technically, after a chracter dies, it saves a 'prebuild' file for it, so you can choose to run that same character again off the prebuilt list on the new character screen. These are also tied to name, and only one per name.

So in other words, don't ever name a second character the same thing as a character that's still alive. If they're dead, you just lose the 'prebuilt' option. (And it'll always pop an error, to warn you.) As for my vault, they're all different because I name them assorted videogame/book/anime/movie/whatever references. Not because I use a different name to keep them there. (I do have a few duplicates, where I had to try several times to get a build running)


As for vaults, I recommend opening the vaults in tier 1 dungeons, always. In tier 2, you have to learn to judge whether you can handle them or not. Some are rather harder for some builds (for instance, the snow giant town vault in daikara). Others are easier, like the troll and bandit vaults in old forest.

For vaults AFTER that? Extreme caution. Dreadfell vaults can scale out of control with endgame enemies, and levels over 40. They're notoriously deadly, and I honestly leave all dreadfell vaults completely alone when I'm clearing dreadfell (one exception, detailed below). I tend to clear them out later, when I come back from the east, for the extra experience. By then, I'm typically level 30-35, and they aren't ludicrously deadly. In the east, pride vaults can be equally dangerous, but by the time you're doing them, you are already level 35 or so, and have some good tier 4 or 5 equipment, and most of the thigns your build needs to dominate. They can be as rough as dreadfell vaults, with higher levels, but you're more prepared for them then. It's up to the player at that point.

Should you eventually get further, on high peak, you will skip all vaults, for a rather obvious reason.

Now, the one exception to this, is if I have arcane eye. ARcane eye can tell me what enemies are in a vault, beforehand. If I can scry a whole vault with it, and determine that there is nothing dangerous to me in there, I'll pop it open. This is rather rare, but it's the only time I'll open a dreadfell vault early.

The master doesn't heal so the key is escapes and not dieing. Mind your defenses, get out when you think you might be in danger two turns down the road, and keep an eye on your health bar. If you have Sun Paladin unlocked it's a good class for this part of the game, though I've seen people complain about their early game. Pretty much anything that can tank damage without regard for type should do well.

Antimagic characters need to be a bit more careful because movement infusions don't let you run through summons, but if you can engage at range you can usually run. Wyrmics and Mindslayers are good at that, though I find mindslayers have a terrible early game.

Another trick is to do Dreadfall 1 at level 15 then come back after clearing everything but the elven ruins. I don't think this makes The Master easier directly, but the rest of the monsters will scale to their minimum level (15 for Dreadfall 1 and +2 per level thereafter I think) so you're less likely to wind up still in over your head after a teleport. The downside is the loot also scales that way so you'll get tier 3 equipment from it instead of tier 4.

I wonder; does anyone know if The Master's ability to respawn resets if you leave the level? i.e., If you killed him once and went up the stairs, would you still have to kill him twice again?