ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, I've been looking at AB recently. Seems to me that dual wield is the way to go, but I was thinking that I might be better off going with an offhand mindstar. Seems to me that we really just want the second hand to trigger stuff, so I might be better off with the extra effects, like life regen and the like. Plus, I'll already be stacking cunning, and I could stack will, get extra stamina and mana, and that would take care of the 'stars. Running daggers I'd have to spash dex. I haven't run many AB's though, so someone who is more experianced could let me know what they think

Wouldn't be entirely terrible. Other side of the equation is all the good magic-boosting offhanders are daggers. You mindpower/crit doesn't really do anything for you, and while the mindstar effects can be pretty alright, you'd generally much rather have some higher damage (you get a nice hefty boost from arcane destruction, probably, even with the offhand penalty) and better magic-related stuff (especially spellpower). You get that via daggers, in a dagger/mindstar comparison.

Problem with daggers nowadays is needing the dex for 'em and no longer having much in the way of dex scaling talents.

I'd say give it a shot, see how it ends up. I'd be surprised if you'd rather be offhanding a mindstar instead of lifedrinker or a crystalline voratun dagger or somethin', but maybe it'll turn out alright anyway.

Arcane blades can't get mindstar mastery, so it is never worth it to use mindstars as an arcane blade. Your offhand is still doing damage and having it do close to 0 is not helpful. You are also forced to increase willpower, which is not something you are going to be terribly inclined to raise, considering you already have to put so much into strength, cunning, magic, and constitution. Dexterity is more useful than willpower as a stat to put extra points into simply because it makes it more likely for you to hit things.

The best thing you can do is keep an eye out for a magic-scaling dagger. There's quite a few of them out there.

You actually can get mindstar mastery, and there's even an AB in the vault with the dreaming tree.

Of course, it's a tad convoluted to do so (untrain your spells, overwrite your rune so that you have effectively 0 spells learned thus meaning you can betray escorts) but there is a way!

In the long run there's some seriously good AB daggers regardless (spellblaze shard and life drinker come to mind) so I can't imagine it'd be worth it, but hey, why not.

Judecca wrote:You actually can get mindstar mastery, and there's even an AB in the vault with the dreaming tree.

Of course, it's a tad convoluted to do so (untrain your spells, overwrite your rune so that you have effectively 0 spells learned thus meaning you can betray escorts) but there is a way!

Can you really do that? I thought that as long as you have a mana bar then you could not betray someone to zigur.

Judecca wrote: In the long run there's some seriously good AB daggers regardless (spellblaze shard and life drinker come to mind) so I can't imagine it'd be worth it, but hey, why not.

I wonder how a spell using Arcane blade would do. Willpower gives mana, mindblade damage and accuracy. Cunning gives Critical chance, weapon damage and spellpower.

This would free up quite a few points from strength and dexterity that could go into constitution and magic. The magic and cunning would give you a pretty strong Arcane Destruction skill and later on Arcane Might prodigy would give you a bit more extra damage.

With all the extra spellpower flameshock and earthquake should be quite effective. With Arcane Reconstruction and Anorithil healing you should be able to create a pretty strong shield every 6-7? rounds.

I think I will have to try this...

The antimagic check for escort quest is "has_arcane_knowledge" is set in learnTalent (Actor.lua:2957) So if you have a is_spell talent then you will not be able to betray escorts.

unlearnTalent (Actor.lua:3084) seems to remove it I have no idea where the "nb" parameter comes from but if it is zero then you might be able to pass the betrayal check.

Btw, Shatur (Zigurant town) is hidden if you have a manapool which Arcane Blade always have.

Sorry for the triple post.

I can now verify that it is possible.

I finally got an Arcane Blade winner. I did put a point into Willpower so I could dual-wield a waraxe/mindstar in the first ten levels, but ultimately I pumped neither Dex nor Will.

I think the real problems with mindstars are:
A. There's no good mindstar egos for an Arcane Blade.
B. Dual-wielding isn't so much about the weapon damage anyway, at least how I built it. The Arcane Combat and Arcane Destruction effects do much more damage.

Daggers crit. This is a very good thing, because it procs Arcane Destruction. In the mid-game, Arcane Destruction is going to be a huge fraction of your damage. The damage effect on Arcane Destruction does not scale terribly high with spellpower (went from ~100 first unlocked to ~188 on win), which makes it very important when first unlocked but progressively less so over time. In the end game, Arcane Combat can really deliver the damage.

I agree with you. Mindstar Blades lends itself to a completely different kind of playstyle.

The upside with mindstars are:

• You only need Willpower and Cunning. This allows you to pump Constitution earlier.
• Since Willpower increases the mindstars accuracy you can ignore the Combat Accuracy for a while.
• Your high Willpower means you can easily run around with all your sustains while still having a lot of mana. This means you can pretend to be a Mage if you feel like. DarkGod fixed the "trying to cast cooling down spells" bug
• You always do full damage with your offhand. This increases means that you have a effective damage increase of 50% in your offhand when you compare it to daggers.
• Mindstars eventually gets more then 100% damage increase from stats. Tier 1 - 3 mindstars are weak but tier 4 - 5 are actually quite good. With a tier 5 + the Arcane Might prodigy you will be doing 85% Willpower + 51% Cunning + 50% magic damage.
• Mindstars can pretty much ignore enemy armour

In the endgame your base critchance should be around 38% (60 cunning = 18%, Arcane Feed = 16%, Alchemist reward = 4%). Add a few % from equipment and you tend to end up at around 45% critchance. Late game daggers tends to have around 10 - 18% critchance so you loses about a quarter of your critchances but if you manage to hit your enemy with Dirty Fighting or if Backstabs procs you are guaranteed critical hits anyway since Backstab gives 60% critchance on stunned targets. And you can always go with a Shalore for the extra 10% critchance.

Since most of your damage will be from your damage spells you want to have the mana to use them (Willpower), mana to keep all your sustains up (Willpower), the spellpower to raise their damage (Magic and Cunning) and a high Cunning to make sure Arcane Combat procs as often as possibly.

I have a Arcane Blade with the Tricks of the Trade prodigy (gives Stealth as a class tree and Scoundrel with laceration as a generic tree unlocked) that seems to work really well. It does mean that you need to sacrifice the Merchant but Stealth and the extra damage almost seems worth it.

I should probably confess that I usually check the tome log file for where the first escort will appear and then savescum a alchemist.

In the end game, Arcane Combat can really deliver the damage.

Great, now I wonder how a Yeek weaponless Arcane Blade (50% attack speed of some gloves + 15 global speed increase from Yeek racial) would work. Add a amulet with attack speed increase and a Arcane Blade might be able to pump out 3+ spells each round.

Lets see, gloves damage scale is 40% Strength, 40% Dexterity and 40% Cunning. +11 Strenght, Dexterity and Cunning from Inner Power... My hit damage will be completly worthless...

I think I have a new strange build to test And I won't even have to do a initial savescum to get this going. I think I will name him "Gatling Guy"

Some time ago gloves were changed to use 1.0 attack speed on non-brawlers as far as I know.

I have a Arcane Blade with the Tricks of the Trade prodigy (gives Stealth as a class tree and Scoundrel with laceration as a generic tree unlocked) that seems to work really well. It does mean that you need to sacrifice the Merchant but Stealth and the extra damage almost seems worth it.

Tricks of the Trade shouldn't grant Stealth, though. That's something DarkGod is against(universal class trees through skills), and that I specifically tested and didn't have happen. The description also says it unlocks the tree, not that it grants it(which it does specify with Scoundrel).

If you got that through Tricks, it is a bug of some kind. It's meant to only improve the tree(if you have it and it is unlocked) or unlock it(if you have it, but it is locked). I don't know what kind, right now, either-just checked to be sure, and I only got Scoundrel from testing it on a random Paradox Mage.

I think if you want to pretend to be a mage you should pick up a staff and maybe staff combat. I think your spellpower is going to real low when you dual-wield mindstars and don't pump Magic.

SageAcrin wrote:Tricks of the Trade shouldn't grant Stealth, though. That's something DarkGod is against(universal class trees through skills), and that I specifically tested and didn't have happen. The description also says it unlocks the tree, not that it grants it(which it does specify with Scoundrel).

Well that prodigy just got 400% less appealing. I'd figured that it was breaking the rules on account of being a prodigy. So, I guess it's meant for, what, Shadowblades and maybe Shaloren Rogues?

Dwindlehop wrote:I think if you want to pretend to be a mage you should pick up a staff and maybe staff combat. I think your spellpower is going to real low when you dual-wield mindstars and don't pump Magic.

Obviously you should hold the top half of Telos's Staff in one hand and a mindstar in the other.

Archmages and Anorithil, for the Invisibility end of it, as well. (And there's nothing wrong with it for any Rogue, not just Shalore. Ask any Rogue player how good + to Stealth category is.)

It's meant to be really strong for a few specific builds, not massive spread power. If it was really good on every build, then it would be overcentralizing.

Though, thinking on it, maybe it should have unlocked/leveled (but not granted) Poisons as well, for more Rogue power and Marauder appeal. Regardless, that's not a terrible sized niche-less classes than that commonly run shields, for instance.