ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

First of all if i posted this in a wrong place - i apologize. Please move this topic to appropriate section.
I'm pretty new to this game, have 100 hours clocked on Steam. I always play on normal difficulty adventure mode. i almost always play Cornac Berserker. And i always suck at some point. Please help me understand what i'm doing wrong.

1. How am i supposed to deal with magic? All my deaths except really stupid (like auto exploring Lake of Nur) were from magic. Be that thunder giants in Daikara, or mages at Charred Scar, or the last time i died almost instantly at Rak'Shor Pride. Some people say to stack resistances. I tried to stack (and prioritize above other stats) cold and lightning for Daikara once, got around 25% each and was wiped. Other people say that one should use corners. But damn mages can shoot you with their magics around the corner just fine. And those in Charred Scar just teleporting you or themselves around no matter how you're trying to hide. Should i really go Antimagic as a pure melee?

2. Does Arcane Disruptive forse on my equipment help with enemy magic users? Does it ruin their casting or something?

3. What prioritizing stats on my equipment should be? Should it be Armor>core stats(str, con, dex etc)>P.Power (or S.Power for spellcaster build)>resistances or maybe it should be HP>Armor>core stats?.. This part is very confusing.

4. What is better: purple, orange or unique gear? In general i mean. Also does tier of the item matter? I mean i found unique tier 1 Mighty Belt with HP+40, seems very good for berserker, should i keep it till the end? In other words: can it happen that you complete the game with tier 1-2 equipment just because of its good stats or you supposed to change to higher tier?

Also i have some general questions

5. When i hover over a core stat(str, con, dex etc) there is a tooltip "stat gives" but it almost always shows 0.0. I read that it is a bug but will it be fixed?

6. Talents and the balance seems changing bit by bit from update to update. Will there be some changes in 1.7.0? Talents changes? Armor rework maybe? I'm asking because

7. Some faqs seem a little outdated. For example one Berserker guide advices to get the Ogre and his ability to wield both two hander and a shield but i read talent description and it seems it was nerfed. Now i'm noob and may not understand its viability. So. How the guides actually relevant to 1.6.7 and to upcoming 1.7.0?

Last i post some screens of my wiped berserker at Rak'Shor Pride. Why, why he was killed so easily? I had such a cool equip and armor.. I'm sorry for the inconvenience but i don't know how to upload the dump and this dump actually wasn't uploaded to the server after lvl 37 due some connection issues it seems.
Finally i apologize for my bad english.
This game is wonderful i really want to understand it.

1) Not only for magic users but : don't fight multiple enemies at once. If an enemy can shoot around a corner (not common) just go a little further past the corner. They'll have to come to you and then you can deal with them. You can also dig to make the perfect terrain. Stacking resistance is meh, only do it if you're not giving up much in other things. And 25% in Daikara is definitely not "stacked", just one T1 green ring give 20+% ! You can go antimagic, there are pros and cons.

2) it does not

3) as a rule of thumb HP > Armor >>> rest. Rest would depend on what class you're playing, though everyone loves crit chance and crit mult, and their main power to apply status.

4) it will depend a lot but yellow/orange/pink >> purple > blue/green. Tier matter for lowest/highest values stuff can reach, but you compare the stats items give, not their tier. If a T1 has better stat than a T3 then use the T1, having a higher tier item does nothing.

5) it's not a bug. next time you level up, put a point in the stat and look at the numbers. it shows how much what you are currently investing gives. once you have validate the increase, it doesn't show anything.

6) yes, the game changes with every update, that's the reason there are updates :p Some class will see changes in 1.7, but there won't be any major change like 1.6 saw.

7) user made content is dependent on user to be updated. most people do not update (me the first). Look which version the guides say they're for, the older they are the more likely there are some inconsistencies with current patch.


i looked up your char in the vault : https://te4.org/characters/181584/tome/ ... 807a317fec
it's not updated to your last couple deaths apparently, but it gives a bit more info.

Talking equipment : that's a lot of pieces not doing much. now, this is normal and i'm out of touch with the loot you get but... your belt, tool, boots do basically nothing for exemple. A good thing is, you seem to prioritise armor though, good !
You have 2 great runes in your inventory : mirror image, a rune that just about everyone want to inscribe ASAP. It creates clones that taunt (irresistible) which means for as long as they stay alive, you shouldn't get each by non AoE things. And rune of dissipation, which is used to remove magical sustains from enemies. For example, you died in necro pride ? well, removing the necro aura make the necromancer a lot easier
You have NO status resistance. status are big killer, get some immunities.
Speaking of immunities, you should go to Angolwen and talk to the ring merchant and craft some rings with your gems. Easy stun resistance with quartz/bloodstone gems and possibility for a great ring.

Talking talents : if you're gonna play a cornac berserker, you should reaaaaally get a full tree from an escort and unlock it (chant, augmented mobility, scoundrel, ...). Actually, i see you saved some and took stats every time. A lot of the time, a talent will be better. For example there is 0 reason not to take disarm from a loremaster as a weapon class. Or lacerating strike from a thief if you're not taking the tree.
put at the very least 1 in adrenaline surge so you can use any talent you need to in a pinch. Zerk doesn't have stamina issue but 1 point just to be safe is a good idea especially considering how expensive Unstoppable is.
Which brings me to my next point. Unstoppable is a talent that reads "you literally cannot die for 3-7 turns". You decided to put exactly 0 points in it. This should be maxed ASAP. You have no talent more important than this one, again you CANNOT DIE WHILE IT'S ON.
You unlocked warcries and put just one point in it. Well that might be because you're level 34 but well. I'd advise not unlocking warcries anyway.
Combat veteran is a tree you should just go full 0 in. Every other talents will just do more.


There is probably more to be said, but i think the most important is covered ?
Oh, you are in prides, so you must have done the quest to go back west ? Then you should go talk to the merchant in Last Hope (assuming you saved him in the tunnels). He is North-East of the town and will craft (potentially) powerful gear for you.

Cathbald wrote:You have 2 great runes in your inventory : mirror image, a rune that just about everyone want to inscribe ASAP

That's because i thought that runes are something that mages use. They often scale with magic stat and i stopped giving them attention at all. It's my stupid mindset of pure builds. Have to change it i guess.

You have NO status resistance. status are big killer, get some immunities.

But i thought that Unflinching Resolve+Vitality+Berserker Rage will cover that /o\

Unstoppable is a talent that reads "you literally cannot die for 3-7 turn

But i thought that Heroism kinda covers that /o\ I mean i had 1600 HP, what could go wrong..
Also i had Daunting Presence and those Necromancers should have been busy pissing their pants, but well, you know what happened..

Then you should go talk to the merchant in Last Hope (assuming you saved him in the tunnels)

Ah! I knew that guy is kinda useful! It's just i killed him every run because i always somehow aggroed him. I guess i have to pay more attention to weapon's aoe secondary damage.

I stop for now and spare you from more of my pointless excuses:)
It seems i overestimated one things and underestimated the others. While not understanding some at all.
Thank you very much for putting your time to writing such thoughtful and thorough reply, i really appreciate it! It definitely helped me to clear many nuances and i will use every advice you gave on my next run:)

Alright
Seems i still don't understand this game. After a couple of bad runs i managed to build really good character..Or so i thought. I used all my talents on the last bosses and barely scratched them. If this char
https://te4.org/characters/181584/tome/ ... 043641f65e
wasn't able to do it then i don't know what am i supposed to do.
But hey, thanks for advices, i really enjoyed building my last char^^

Edit: Did some quick research. I guess i failed because i forgot about mages' sustains. Again. Damn. But i thought that i'm almost OP.

toad wrote:Alright
Seems i still don't understand this game. After a couple of bad runs i managed to build really good character..Or so i thought. I used all my talents on the last bosses and barely scratched them. If this char
https://te4.org/characters/181584/tome/ ... 043641f65e
wasn't able to do it then i don't know what am i supposed to do.
But hey, thanks for advices, i really enjoyed building my last char^^

Edit: Did some quick research. I guess i failed because i forgot about mages' sustains. Again. Damn. But i thought that i'm almost OP.

There's a fair amount of other issues than just sustains, I'll list them all in no particular order. Mind, while some of it may sound harsh I'm not trying to be mean I'm just noting the various things I noticed when I skimmed through the character page that popped as things you'd want to fix on a future character. Some of it might also be nitpicking due to my own bias(skill choices) so you can do you for that but some are just big issues.

• You only have 3 inscriptions and in most cases this is a big no no in this game, you should almost always aim for 4 and 5 if you don't have too many good trees to invest in. I'd say that's the case with zerker. Exceptions are classes like temporal mage that have so many good trees and so many tools they don't actually need the inscriptions.
  
  Speaking of inscriptions, your choice is somewhat questionable. Shield is good I guess since you have a good one, Teleport is extremely questionable(why not Blink if you want movement, or just a movement infusion) and healing is ok although I generally replace it with something. Dissipation is obviously something you wanted especially for this last fight and having a good Stormshield or a low cooldown magical debuff removal(shatter or wild) would have helped a lot too
  
  YOU DID NOT USE YOUR WYRM BILE AND AS SUCH ARE MISSING 1 CATEGORY POINT WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN THAT INSCRIPTION SLOT YOU NEEDED
  
  One of your prodigies is really not very good, Spine of the World, when you already have unflinching resolve, high phys save, several physical status immunities and so on. It especially doesn't do much in this last fight at all but even in general it probably didn't do a whole lot, not much more than having a wild physical or shatter inscription wouldn't have done in the rare cases you needed it(a lot of which would be dispelling annoying poisons which healing also does). You could have instead had Flex which adds a lot of damage or another defensive or something else, really anything probably would have been better.
  
  As for your build, first in terms of generic, getting chants was fine(although I prefer scoundrel for the additional damage and bleed synergy but that depends on escorts) but your points are really weird, why are you putting 4points into the last skill when all it does is increase light and fire damage, of which you do neither? This is 4points that do basically nothing at all for your character. Illuminate also has terrible scaling and going more than 1point is pretty pointless unless you can use the positive(which you can't since you're not a sun paladin/anorithil). These points could have been invested into getting 1pt in danger sense(which with high saves and daunting presences lets you further reduce the amount of debuffs that land on you) as well as increasing writ large to extend the duration further and get your inscriptions more often for longer. Also why did you stop at 3 for unflinching resolve when the 4th point removes slows and disarm, both of which are extremely debilitating status for a zerker. Granted spine of the world probably took care of some of them and you had almost capped disarm immunity but still it was just one point and it would have let you gear/spec differently.
  
  For class points, the big issue imo is you didn't put any points in execute, even though it's basically your highest damaging talent once enemies are low enough and it doesn't even take that much to make it that, especially if you're not crit capped since it always crits, on top of that it's great at killing smaller things since it resets its own cooldown and lowers 2 other cooldowns when you kill with it. Why did you invest so heavily in unending hunger, even though it's so bad? It only gives you stamina on kill, and not even a good amount. If you had stamina issues, Relentless Fury is a much better choice, even at 2points it's 5turns of 20% attackspeed while also regenerationg 35stamina per turn. Overall you also have too many things maxed, which leaves some important things not maxed/takent. Blinding Speed is especially glaring, it's a massive 47% global speed buff which lets you get many attacks off early in a fight to kill something quickly. If you had damage issues, then that's obviously a fairly big part of it.
  
  As for overall wtf, the biggest thing that jumped to me is, you have 60magic. Why? The only reason to go magic is to pick Arcane Might, to get a fair bit of damage out of this, but you didn't. The stat literally does nothing besides spellsave for you. You could have picked dex, gotten a lot of accuracy, which is converted into additional damage when your accuracy is higher than the enemy defense(each weapon type has different scaling, your maul is 0.2% per up to 20% more damage for example) as well as crit shrug to not die as easily and defense which in normal might actually be a relevant amount, not entirely sure. It seems you forgot you went magic when you picked spine?

Overall you made several large mistakes that impacted your character viability by a pretty noticeable amount. It would have been quite possible to kill the last bosses with a few fixes, the obvious of which you mentionned, using your dissipation rune to remove sustains, by using wyrm bile to get a cat point for it. Good luck for your next try ^^

First, you guys are fantastic! Thank you very much for another great and detailed reply!

Pyros wrote:while some of it may sound harsh I'm not trying to be mean

Hahaha i would prefer it this way. I'm from the era when people didn't make a big deal about being called dumb or whatever especially while given advice ))
Now let's my excuses begin

Teleport is extremely questionable(why not Blink if you want movement, or just a movement infusion)

I just thought it is safer to have teleport because it throws you away fery far. The Master with his undeads were my main concern. Ah and damn Worm That Walks. I hate it so much!

YOU DID NOT USE YOUR WYRM BILE AND AS SUCH ARE MISSING 1 CATEGORY POINT

B-BUT I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT IT DOES! The description was so creepy and i thought that nothing good will come out of it lol

One of your prodigies is really not very good, Spine of the World

Yes! I actually thought that i should choose Arcane Might but you see...i choose it because Berserker is melee and str and con and i have to choose that suits him from RP perspective...Dumb i know)) Next time i'll choose better)

As for your build, first in terms of generic, getting chants was fine(although I prefer scoundrel

Me too(( But on that run i had Mage over Mage over Mage for escorts. With occasional Cursed. So when i got Sun Pal in the end i thought "fine! at least i have spell resistances from chants"

As for overall wtf, the biggest thing that jumped to me is, you have 60magic. Why?

Hahaha it's simple actually, my STR and CON were capped already and i had chants so i thought it would be a genious idea to pump MAG. Same with some class points - i distributed them in the end.

gotten a lot of accuracy, which is converted into additional damage when your accuracy is higher than the enemy defense(each weapon type has different scaling, your maul is 0.2% per up to 20% more damage for example)

And i completely didn't know about it! Man, i thought that Acc here is just to be able to hit enemies and that i have enough for that purpose from Acc Training! Damn!

Also i must say that i was tricked by the learning curve i think. I mean i tore down all those mages and rares and bosses on the East without much problem. As if the game was telling me "you're doing great, your build is great". And then BAM - those two. After thirty hours i was just exhausted. My noobish thoughts - East should be a separate campaign. Or redone.

But forgive me my rant, i rested and as good as new! Time for a new char! Execution, Speed and more inscriptions this time ))
Thank you again!

I won!! Can't believe it! Yes, it's normal/adventure win but for me it's like Everest.
https://te4.org/characters/181584/tome/ ... 6c032288ba

Here are some words for those who may read it in the future. I don't pretend to be good in this game, still far from it.
But these points helped me to get from "i got to the last bosses somehow. And died" to "I most likely will be able to kill them again".

1. There are many good points made by guys above, read it, but if i were to choose one it would be

Talking equipment : that's a lot of pieces not doing much

Don't mindlessly stack primary stats. Armor is indeed good but if you have to sacrifice some points of it in exchange for several resistances or other worthy benefits then do it!

2. Artifacts rock! Yellow ones. Use them to greatly improve your build. They seem to be designed that way.
For example i totally forgot about resistance penetrations which seems to be a big thing now but my artifacts stacked them naturally.

3. Infusions and runes. Guides are indeed outdated. They still can give you the basic idea about I/R but the thing is there are many new ones.
Notably the guide advices to use Wild infusion which remove the effect of one type while Shatter affliction rune remove the effect of all three types and worked very well for me.

4. It was said many times but i repeat - always, always, always have a way to escape. No matter how reliable your build and gear are, you WILL get into trouble eventually.
Also many seem to prefer Movement infusion for this but i must notice that it is only good if you're in the open. If you are in the tight passage and surrounded then you're screwed. Teleportation rune worked for me in many cases. Yes, it can tp you into trouble, but if you already cleared the floor before going to boss, then it most likely will save you.
Anyways it is good idea to carry with you escape I/R of various types just in case. And quickly swap if needed. They are cheap after all.

5. Tiers. Wiki states that higher tier is not necesserily better than lower tier. Well, yes and no. You see, higher tier items give you better modifiers.
Read Ego(modifiers) section.
Example - if modifier states that it gives 10-30% fire res, it means that tier 1 will be with 10% and tier 5 with 30%.
In general it means that higher tier is better for stacking.
It may be obvious to some of you but i initially thought that 10-30% means that the game just randomly roll between 10 and 30 on any item^^

Thats not all of course, but i'm still about to know many more nuances about the game.
What to do with Inner Demons/Temporal clones for example. All my three deaths were because of them. It was like BAM - dead.

Thank you Cathbald and Pyros again, you helped me to get my first win!
Thank you DarkGod for making this sometimes frustrating but fantastic game!