ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

After failing hard with Cursed ("let's blindside in the crowd and die") and Alchemist ("who needs escape skills? let's just waste 30 points on bombs and their passives..."), I went back to my first and only love: Oozemancers!

My first thought was to make the most perfect and powerful build, with Oozing Blades and Eyal's Fury, but in the end I chose to have fun and try something else:

I decided to rely less on nature-related skills for damage, to play with Moss instead of Oozing blades, and to put some point in Harmony.

Why?

Here are a few things I discovered while playing (I may be totally wrong, so let's pray that Mex, Bpat and all the gods forgive me):

• It's freakin' hard to find good Mindstars with nature damage and penetration bonus. You will find a lot with acid bonus, but few with nature. Honestly, it's depressing.
• Some skills doing nature damage (e.g. Poisonous Spores) love to fail and do little damage. Maxed Poisonous Spores, when it works, only does as much as a few spits from your oozes...
• Oozing blade's category is awesome. But – even if Reclaim is worse than Oozebeam (that range 7 is just infuriating!) – with Acid Fire and Eyal's Wrath, I think that Eyal's fury category offer a little more overall.
• Oozemancer has a lot of precasting abilities: Leaves Tide, Reabsorb, Evasion... and Acid Fire and Eyal's Wrath fit nicely in it. It helps you get ready before the shit hits the fan.
• Last but not least, I used to love Call of the Ooze and to bump-attack when my skills where on cooldown. But after testing it on the fortress dummies, I concluded that it might be better to use these turns repositioning and spreading mucus instead of doing little damage.

Again, I only have a few hundreds hours of game experience, so take all this with a grain of salt.

So, here is the build I'm using:

(I'll update it and maybe make a guide out of it if/when I win Insane)

CLASS TALENTS

Wild-gift / Slime
Slime Spit: 3/5 (Average. You rely on it more because you lack Ooze Beam. The 30% slow combo well with Grasping Moss)
Poisonous Spores: 3/5 (Underwhelming. 3 pts for better AoE. Use has a filler in your rotations)
Acidic Skin: 1/5
Slime Roots: 4/5 (Lifesaver. I don't know why some people don't like it. Pick is when going East)

Wild-gift / Mucus
Mucus: 5/5 (I usually wait a little then put 1 pt in it every ~5 levels)
Acid Splash: 5/5 (Could be 4/5 without losing AoE. But awesome and puts mucus everywhere)
Living Mucus: 5/5 (Max it only when you already maxed Acid Splash and Mucus. Gives you an army of Oozes!)
Oozewalk: 2/5 (2 pts early to be safe. Cleans debuffs, takes less than a turn, and combo with Acid Splash.)

Wild-gift / Ooze
Mitosis: 5/5 (Max it as the game goes on)
Reabsorb: 3/5 (1/5 early. Awesome precast. With Mitosis, it turns your Oozemancer into a tank. Maybe 5/5 end game.)
Call of the Ooze: 1/5 (I used to love it but you can't choose where the Oozes spawn, so it's a little unreliable.)
Indiscernible Anatomy: 5/5 (Godly, would be even godlier if it protected against stuns)

Wild-gift / Moss
Grasping Moss: 4/5 (Life saver. The range is nice, it's instant, it slows, and it often pins enemies. Better than expected)
Nourishing Moss: 1/5 (I put 1 pt here to barely survive a fight, but it's not that great)
Slippery Moss: 4/5 (I expect it to work as well as grasping moss. But I haven't tried it yet... So I really can't tell)
Hallucinogenic Moss: 0/5 (or 4/5 if better than Slippery Moss... I have to test it.)

Wild-gift / Eyal's fury
Reclaim: 3/5 (I hate this skill! But you can't really do without because you don't have Oozebeam)
Nature's Defiance: 1/5
Acidfire: 5/5 (Awesome. Does acid damage with a good AoE. The debuff is nice too)
Eyal's Wrath: 5/5 (Nice damage. Makes a good precast. But drains very few resources.)


GENERIC TALENTS

Race / Halfling
Luck of the Little Folk: 1/5
Duck and Dodge: 1/5 (Pure awesomeness in conjuction with Leaves tide)
Militant Mind: 1/5
Indomitable: 1/5 (Stuns will kill you, Indomitable may save you. I wish I had more points to put there...)

--

Wild-gift / Fungus
Wild Growth: 4/5 (Almost worth another Inscription)
Fungal Growth: 1/5
Ancestral Life: 1/5 (Could be more than 1/5 but we don't have enough points)
Sudden Growth: 1/5 (Nice heal even with 1 pt)

Cunning / Survival
Heightened Senses: 1/5
Charm Mastery: 1/5 (Maybe more points here if I find a thief to escort... But Oozemancers are antimagic so no Wall of Stones or the likes for us :'( )
Piercing Sight: 1/5
Evasion: 0/5 (As long as you can go back to a town and if you don't have dodge boots, you can "put&remove" your last generic points here to use the skill)

Wild-gift / Mindstar mastery
Psiblades: 1/5 (At the beginning, "put&remove" your spare generic points here, you may have to bump attack some NPCs)
Thorn Grab: 1/5
Leaves Tide: 5/5
Nature's Equilibrium: 1/5 (I hate this skill. It's like it can heal you or not, and you have to melee. Can be used on your oozes, so 1/5)

Technique / Combat training
Thick Skin: 5/5
Armour Training: 3/5
Combat Accuracy: 0/5
Weapons Mastery: 0/5
Dagger Mastery: 0/5

Wild-gift / Call of the wild
Meditation: 1/5
Nature's Touch: 1/5 (Can get you to full life with enough heal mod)
Earth's Eyes: 1/5 (A skill I love to hate. It shows you the map layout, but not the enemies! Worse, it makes your brain think the rooms are empty. Get Track asap.)
Nature's Balance: 4/5 (Almost takes care of your main issue: waiting for your skills' cooldowns)

Wild-gift / Antimagic
Resolve: 2/5 (Underwhelming... but I guess it's something)
Aura of Silence: 1/5 (3/5 would be great. But we don't have enough points)
Antimagic Shield: 2/5 (Enough to take care of small DoTs, not that great either)
Mana Clash: 5/5 (On Nightmare, it helped me against Elandar. I have yet to try on Insane)

Wild-gift / Harmony
Waters of life: 1/5
Elemental harmony: 1/5
One with nature: 1/5
Healing nexus: 4/5 (Against some NPCs, I felt it was hard to outdamage their healing. That's why I tried hard to make it fit in my build... I hope it helps).

How is it going so far?

My first impressions are that Insane isn't as difficult as I expected.

So, I ended up playing recklessly and I lost my 2 or 3 first characters to Auto-Explore (I decided to restart after their first death).

Then, I lost one more because I lacked mobility and stun protection. Then I started again and I traded my healing infusion for a movement one.

Right now, I'm lvl 15 with no death. But I had several close calls. Basically, I got stuck several times, surrounded in small corridors, with no escape solution and no way to out-heal the damage I received. I survived with less than 20hp at least 3 times. So I must have done something wrong.

Well... I think I should have spent my first category point to get one more inscription instead of unlocking Eyal's Fury at lvl 10. I could have used the extra class points on more utility skills (Slime Roots?) instead of Reclaim. I should also stop using Earth's eyes... Everytime I see empty rooms my brain think they really are empty :'(. I hope I can get Track asap if possible (but even if I have the addons I'll try not to mess with the escorts too much...).

I'll play more tonight when I'm back from work and see how it goes.

I'll have to start again because my game bugged.

Here is what happened:

I was level 42 and went back to kill Urkis. He fearscaped me. I killed him in fearscape but the game bugged. I was stuck in fearscape and I had to ask a GM (Sheila) to get me out of there.

The problem is that even after Sheila's help, my quest wasn't validated and my game kept crashing everytime it tried to save. I guess it's because Urkis died in fearscape and not on the correct map...

Anyway, I had no choice but to use developer mod to spawn Urkis and kill him again. I knew that would invalidate my game, but I didn't really mind at that point as long as I could play till the end and try to win insane.

So, I went on, I farmed several farportals and looted tons of great items. I reached lvl 50 and thought... Ok let's put the best items I dropped in the vault.

That's when it hit me: my game was invalidated so I couldn't put anything in the vault!

Damn.

I was kinda put down. Moreover, some of the choices I made for my build didn't really pay off.

That why I decided to start again.


TL/DR: I invalidated my game trying to solve a bug. I'm stupid and I have to start again.

Poisonous Spores: 3/5 (Underwhelming. 3 pts for better AoE. Use has a filler in your rotations)

I think Poisonous Spores is better than you write. Not beccause of damage, but beccause of the random poison. 3/4 are great for insane+.
Spydric poison: Unable to move.
Numbing poison: Reduced damage.
Crippling poison: % chance of talent failure.
(Insidious poison: Decrease heal received).


Mana Clash:
Excellent on insane, like you suspect. Again, not really for the damage.
But in a few turns, you render thoses ViM/Mana users useless.
It's an "out of fearscape" cards too.

The thing I'm not sure to understand about your build

I decided to rely less on nature-related skills for damage

Oozemancer do nature or acid based damage.

From my point of view, you have to take "Oozing blade" and/or "Corrosive blade", just for the %Nature/Acid resist ignore.
Even with it, I've met some unkillable foes in the "Palace of Fumes" & after in the orc Campaign...

GL btw !

I've found Insane Oozemancer to be difficult at the beginning and at the very end (died more times than I can count on my fingers to the last boss of ORC campaign...) . In between... It's quite strong

Thanks for your input.

Yes, the poison is great and I probably underrated it. I just felt that the poison didn't proc when I really needed it.

As for acid/nature damage, we are both wrong

Sure enough, I always find more and better acid-boosting items than nature-boosting ones. But even while focusing as much as possible on acid, a full rotation (including all acid skills) does 78% nature damage and only 22% acid damage... So if you focus on nature-boosting items, 90%+ damage should come from nature damage.

Therefore, taking Corrosive Blade isn't worth it.

Just try on enemies or training dummy.

For example (and considering its name) Acid Splash should do more acid damage than nature damage... But if you test it, it's the other way around. On dummy with 80% resists, Acid Splash does 2k acid damage and 14k nature damage (with mucus 5/5, but without living ooze). In fact, most of the damage comes for the mucus it spreads on the floor!

I think the first 10 lvls are so easy I could cry. Just up mucus/acid splash/living ooze and you are good to go. Honestly, I just splash mucus everywhere and run away. Everything dies.

I usually die at tier 2 dungeons, around lvl 15 when I get overconfident and forget to learn (or use) movement infusions. Basically I get stunned. I have no escape. And I die.

After that... It's smooth sailing to lvl50. I just feed myself a few items from vault, farm everything as many times as possible (including farportals) and take every HP-items I can get. I kill slowly, but I never die.

I'll do more testing and play one more Insane Oozemancer wednesday evening.

Cheers

But even while focusing as much as possible on acid, a full rotation (including all acid skills) does 78% nature damage and only 22% acid damage...

Really interesting.

I confess I've never did Dummy testing...
I'l do it next time.

(I tried to access Dummy now with a new Oozemancer. Entered Sher'tul fortress @level14 . Only to discover that I have a level 29 randboss + unique waiting next to the stairs... So i'll come back in a few levels).

Just a quick head's up.

I won Insane with the updated build I used.

At first, I thought it would be hard, so I fed myself all my best vault items I had and reached 1500hp+ at lvl 35. And then I steamrolled the whole game.

In fact, that was too easy :'(

So, to make it fun, I put a few restrictions on myself:
-Play only with Auto-Explore/Auto-Use
-Use no melee/bump attack at all
-Play only with 4 infusions instead of 5.

Conclusion:
- I cleaned Vor Armory on Auto-Use, including the Vault without dying!
- I died once to random mobs because the auto-use got stuck/bugged... and my character took damage for at least 30 turns without healing itself :'(
- I died 2 times in a row against a lvl 92 unique Runed Bone Giant with 13 different sustains... so I started wearing Spellhunt Remnants and changed the auto-use skills order
- I killed the final boss on Auto-Use and won the game!!! (Though I manually healed the NPC twice to save her)
- After winning, I went to kill the big Golem. He had a reflect shield... and my character killed himself by using many skills on the shield, lol, kinda dumb but that's Auto-Use for you I guess! So, I took my 5 infusion and I played manually to kill it. That took dozens of turns but I was never really put in danger.

Now I'm starting madness with a slightly improved build.

I only did the first 2 dungeons, and it's quite easy up to now... but I guess it's going to get harder as the game progresses.

Anyway, if anyone is interested I can write a guide for my Madness Oozemancer.

Just tell me. Cheers!

Write a guide after you win, not before, cheers

I just want to know if that would be appreciated. I played more madness offline on my laptop and up to now (around lvl 20) it's not that hard. It's just that I can't "Auto-Use" skills anymore, I have to pay attention, right click mobs, precast and use skills to reach further than LoS with AoE, run away to spread mucus... and that takes a lot of time.

Therefore:
- I can write a "Insane winner" guide now and update it if/when I also win Madness ;
- Or I can wait to win Madness before writing any guide ;
- Or, if nobody is interested, I can write no guide at all.

Just let me know

Write it now. I'd be interested in seeing it evolve as you progress though madness.

I am interested in your progress too, as IIRC Oozemancer has not currently won Madness.

I think the thing you are looking for is called "Let's Play" instead of "Guide" if you just make it up as you go.

I would recommend going 1/3-5/0/0 in Antimagic tree. Silence is simply broken if you can beat opponents mental save, antimagic shield is bad on classes that rely on equilibrium and mana clash is too weak to bother. Resolve doesnt stack so you dont even realize the damage reduction it gives. Basically whole tree except Silence is trash. This is my opinion only though so no need to get mad if you disagree with me. Cheers.

I had done the most difficult on my last run... and had a chance to win in madness. But I got one-shot because of my own carelessness.

I was so disappointed I left the game for more than one year.

Anyway... I'll probably give it a few more tries. Let's see if I can do it.

With Tinkers the damage on bump is much better, and with that +Pes/Superpower Call of the Ooze is your single most damaging attack. Definitely worth it, though obviously not for everyone/build.

I played through Madness on Exploration, I hit 6 deaths after going after the Prides and gave up. Oozemancer IME just runs out of damage, even with lots of +gear, and this was on a build that used Fungal Blood to launch a monster spam of your big-ticket attacks at the opening of combat (and ran dual Crystal Edge + Alchemist’s Helper).

I’d also say that Antimagic Shield is an important leg of Oozemancer’s durability, and that between Mucus and Nature’s Defiance it’s not like EQ control is a pressing concern in the way it is for classes that have to rely on Meditation.

Again, I only have a few hundreds hours of game experience, so take all this with a grain of salt.

I'm dead