ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I just felt compelled to sing the praise of movement infusions.

In my Insane/Roeguelike run as a short staff Ogre Sun Paladin, after clearing out most of the Vor Armoury (not the room of death), I am about to pillage the vault when a Unique Radiant Horror jumps out at me. Apart from over 9k HP, over 40% resist all except darkness, and of course damage affinity for light and fire (remember, I am a Sun Paladin :-/), he can silence, and has several psionic talents, including two shields from the Psionic/Absorption tree (one of which absorbs darkness damage), and an extra weapon in the psionic slot. He can also teleport to me, and what is much worse, teleport me to him. So I try to replace my short staff by an axe, and to take off all my sustains that do light damage (including the chant that gives me huge saves), but all it does is make me much more vulnerable. I simply can't cause him any damage whatsoever.

Well, what to do? I do need at least the Blood-Runed Athame. It turned out that my inscription load-out was perfect for the situation. Rotating the Path of the Sun, a movement infusion, a controlled phase door, the mental wild to get rid of silencing, and Writ Large to keep up with all this rotation, I managed to keep dancing around him all over the Armoury, until I not only picked up the Athame, but cleared out almost the entire vault, killing some riff-raff at the back of it on the way, while this horror kept on my heels all the time.

Now I am at the exit, looking forward to rummaging through my loot. I don't think I am ever coming back here again in this run. Well, maybe after winning and killing Athamaton, although that would just be a noble way to die. So probably not even then.

Now on to my first Insane/RL win...

Sweet. Was that the only unique you had to run around, or did you just skip areas entirely if you found a bad one earlier?

P.S. Make sure when you use Path of the Sun you sing the chorus of "Walking on Sunshine", preferably out loud.

dukereg wrote:Sweet. Was that the only unique you had to run around, or did you just skip areas entirely if you found a bad one earlier?

This was indeed the first monster that I didn't kill in this run. Since then, running away has become routine, because of the orc patrols. Got ambushed by them twice, and both times a carefully choreographed run for the exit, reaching it with second life already on cooldown, with only a little bit of HP left, hitting Relentless Pursuit to get rid of the 15 debuffs to be able to go through the exit, has been literally the only way to survive. Clearing the first pride now - the dream of an insane/roguelike win continues.

dukereg wrote: P.S. Make sure when you use Path of the Sun you sing the chorus of "Walking on Sunshine", preferably out loud.

Oh, I like that!

This is the problem I have when playing insane, I am too cocky and never skip anything, sometimes I just burn like 3 lives trying to kill some randboss

Well, I don't like leaving unfinished business behind, so I came back after clearing the prides and killed the bugger. Also cleared the room of death. It's crazy what a tank this sun Paladin is. The overpowered wyrms were typically going down to 4 button clicks. On Insane. Same goes for every guardian in the slime tunnels (the Fearscape chap took a bit longer, but a Sun Palas defences are such that I was pretty happy standing in his Fearscape and chipping away at him as long as it took). I still remember my complicated dance through the self-dug tunnel system, throwing bombs from out of LOS for dozens of turns with my Archmage on Normal difficulty. Crazy!

Now on to the peak!

I had trouble surviving on normal, so I'm curious how you're that tank and deal that much damage.

This was the reason I was so happy to find Elemental Fury early during my last Sun Paladin playthrough. Luminous Horrors are jerks.

dukereg wrote:I had trouble surviving on normal, so I'm curious how you're that tank and deal that much damage.

I might actually post a brief recap once I get through the game (this would be my first insane win). Watch this space.