ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Slim Shady the character sheet

I first tried several times with Nightmare mode and too many times got killed early so I decided to drop the difficulty down a notch and go with Normal Roguelike, my first ever roguelike attempt.

I had fallen in love with mindstars on my earlier Mindslayer run so I decided to utilize some of that awesomeness. Since mindstars do Willpower I thought I'd definitely go Antimagic and of course Fungus too.
I decided to pick Mindstar Mastery from the start to ease my way a bit in the beginning. Fungus I picked up at around 18 when I dealt with Urkis, right after I had gone AM on Zigur. I also did a bit of Combat Mastery (first armor training rather early but thick skin I added actually quite late, after 40 or so) and around level 40ish I added Mentalism just for the kicks. Psychometry kicked up my mind and physical power a bit.
That's what I did with my generics.
Finer Energy Manipulations had just one interesting skill for me and it was the reshape weapon thing. Went 3/5 in it rather soon and oh boy it packed a punch. I'm never going without it if I just have the chance to get it.

Class side I went with Absorption to get a telekinetic slot and some shields. I did the first physical shield up to 3/5 quite early and the second one to 1/5. At around 35 when I found a mindstar that gave me 0.2 mastery in it I went all the way and maxed the last skill since now I could get extra shield types at eefective level 6.0 without spending a category point.

Cursed side I picked Gloom and Rampage neither of which I actually dipped too deep. 1/5 on Gloom worked pretty nicely for a long time since my Mindpower was sky high and I knew I could beat any mindsaves on my opponents. Most of the time the enemies stood dumbfounded next to me while I whacked them.. that is when they didn't get one-shotted or even smited to death by my telekinetic weapon while I flew past them.

I also picked Thought-Forms that were actually rather helpful, the warrior one at 3/5 especially. The archer wouldn't do much as it just stood there most of the time not even firing at enemies. Other skills from the tree were added whenever I couldn't think of anything better. While the thought warriors never added much DPS they proved a nice distraction and a compass since they often detected enemies before I did so I just followed them when I didn't know where to go.

Solipsism was added for extra defense and I went 3/5 in all the skills rather fast eventually maxing them all. With my Solipsism psi shield, Absorption shields and Antimagic shield I don't think I got hit that many times so hard that HP would go down noticeably. Chained regen infusions with Fungus took care of smaller hits.

Stat point wise I maxed Wil right away followed by Cun after which I raised Dex enough to qualify for Dex prodigies after which I did Con and Str both a bit to put points in Thick Skin and Rampage tree.

For prodigies I chose Mental Tyranny which was golden. The second one was a bit of a thinker but I ended up with Windtouched Speed as I had extra speed from Crimson Robe and Solipsism, raising my global speed to 172%. Rampage boosted my speed even further.

With infusions I replaced my default Wild with Phys/Mag as my mental save was higher than the others and then picked two regen infusions to chain with Fungus. The chaining I did rather late, around 35 or so. Before that I activated it myself when needed. When I got Wyrm Bile I decided I could use another infusion slot so I eventually threw a heroism there. I actually used it twice, just as a precaution though since my HP was never near zero.
I ended the game with extra category point since I wasn't sure what I should do with it.

The early game was tough. After t1 dungeons I ran into a situation where I had fled 3 dungeons because of too powerful enemies, rares mostly. Think I did Halfling Complex at that point to return later with more power. My only near death experience was in Nur 3 where a rare Bloated Horror summoned shadows at me. Luckily I had Psychoport with me at the time so I managed to flee.. into 3 Luminous Horrors. My thought warrior had cooled down already so I summoned him and crept closer to the bad guys behind him so I could whack them. Eventually I got into melee range of the Bloated Horror and had my revenge. Weirdling Beast after that was a pushover. I never shut down my sustains. Think Wierdling was confused the whole time because of my Gloom that he didn't even try to heal.

Another fight worth mentioning was a High Peak stair guardian, a berserker/bulwark type Bone Giant. With shattering impact he kept throwing me to the walls and shield wall active took little damage himself. Dunno how he managed that, I might be mistaken, but that dude actually made me heal with Nature's Touch and Nature's Equilibrium on top of my running regeneration infusions, so I guess he could be considered a tough fight.

Overpowered wyrms at 43 were a pushover, though one of them fled and I couldn't fine him anywhere so I didn't get the achievement for it. I also didn't do my clone since I didn't think I needed anything from there. Darkgod only knows which one would have emerged victorious from that fight.
Melinda's Crypt that's often a challenging place I managed to postpone to when I returned from the east. Don't know if it helped any but when I came back from Dreadfell I rampaged before leaving the map to boost my speed on the world map. Crypt never appeared before I reached Reknor.

The final fight was really a disappointment. My usual tactic was to rush Elandar first. He took 7 bump attacks to finish. With my rampaging speed that makes something like 3 turns for him. Argoniel at least put up a little fight and lasted for 11 hits.
Since it was my first time on Roguelike I decided to go for Atamathon achievement too. He hit me noticeably one time which I healed with Nature's Equilibrium from Mindstar tree. Other than that it was just a few turns of bump attacks.

Since this has been the easiest run for me so far I thought I might go for ID next and see what it's like.

Congrats with the 1st roguelike win!

As far as I understood, you built a very solid character in the end. How do you find the gameplay of it? Was it fun? Because I just started bulkwark and find it very strong againt single target - just counterstrike and assault and about 600 damage at lvl 11. But the gameplay is so boring - just bump every mob several times, then bump another, then counter and keep bumping, no visual effects on the screen, no auras, no explosions, no minions, nothing..

After playing with some mages, I dont quite understand the benefit of melee - most mages have more effective life than melee characters due to shields or damage absorbtion of some kind. They have minions of various kinds to distract the enemies and do good enough damage. Mages have different auras and it looks cool on the screen. Mages have AOE spells and can kill many mobs at once while melee have to bump every single mob to death. I was always a big fan of melee but seems not anymore Seems like mages do everything better.

I actually enjoyed it rather much, though it might have been just because I've fallen in love with mindstars triple wielded. Early game was interesting and diverse but around lv 40 I had my act together and was mostly just bumping.

AoE wise I didn't have much to do, except a fire breath thing from Wyrmbreath at some point.
As for the effects I don't know there were any as I play with lowest effect settings.
If I understood your post correctly I don't think you'd enjoy thus build too much.

Rampaging was mighty fun though.

I just got 2 characters till lvl 50, one berserker and archmage (so pretty new to the game). While playing melee for the 1st time in this game it was pretty good, just running and smashing everything on the way. But when I tried archmage, the gameplay was much more diverse and fun - many more buttons to press, many more effects on the screen and whole rooms were cleared in 1-2 clicks.

I need to try your particular build and possibly I'd find it interesting and satisfying to play, but seems Darkgod loves mages much more than melees