ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Short guide for shield, you should already know the basics of arcane blade before you read this.

This guide is for skeleton , hafling is also a good choice but skeleton is a pretty bad race for just about everything else so i wanted to use it here.

Magical Combat: 5,5,5,1
Arcane combat : Very early 5/5 ... this is your bread and butter
Arcane cunning: 1 early max later (around lvl 30)
Arcane feed: 5/5 in your teens
Arcane destruction: 1/5 . You wont have the strength requirements (36) by lvl 12 so you will need to go to inner strength plus skeleton str plus items. You dont put a single point in str. Arcane destruction makes the game Much much easier until very late game so getting it is priority.

Spell/ Enhancenment 1,1,1,5 You are here for inner power. the mana and sta recharge are useful though.
Inner power: 2-3 Early You need it to boost all the stats you need and you need it pretty early. That means early points go mostly to magic until you are close to 36 .
Str for arcane destruction
dex for greater weapon focus
magic and cun for everything
wis for huge amount of sustains and for few spells and stamina.

Spell/stone 5,1,1,5
You max earthen misiles by lvl 10 or 11 (as soon as you can get it basicly) to do this you need to cheat points in/out of flame (youve been using it to get to lvl 10) remember max points to move around is 4, make sure those last 4 are the ones you put in flame...
Crystaline focus start putting points around lvl 30

Technique/Shield offense. Get it at 20
1,1,1,1
Shield Pummel. Ur 3rd attack in combat, low sta need, low cooldown (2 attacks)
Riposte... you can defend with your shield when all three skills are in cooldown
Overpower. Ur 2nd attack in combat . 3 attacks . Cooldown 8
Assault. AWESOME. 1 shield, 2 crits with weapon (if 1st hits). So even with low physical crit chance, this attack gives you 2 arcane destruction triggers. Abuse it against crowds. Cooldown 6

Technique/ Combat Technique 5,1,1,5
Rush: You need this desperatly , you need it so much that getting boots with rush is a must. You can kill anything provided you are adyacent... otherwise ... Early 1 point and dont wait to long to put 3/5. max it.
Blinding speed: endgame 5/5

Technique/ Battle Tactic . 5/5/0/0 Get it at 36
Greater weapon Focus. 5/5 between 36 and 40 You wont need this to kill mobs until high peak.
Step up: 5/5 at lvl 36. This is a game changer. Skeleton arcane blade has huge mobility issues this and 2 rush is all you need to solve most of your problems. Bye bye pesty casters

Generic skills

Technique/ combat training 5/3/5/1/0
Thick skin:5/5 Slowly put points , depending on items, you wont put many or any points in con
Armor training. 2/5 early for shield , 1 more optional for heavy armor. (depends on drops)
Combat acurracy 5/5 Slowly Max around 35
Weapons mastery: 1/5 I did that as a test. I didnt need it at all.

Cunning/Survival 0/0/1/0
Piercing sight 1/5 from thieves escorts.

Spell / Convergance 1/1/0/0
Phase door and teleport : Escape options

Spell/Aegis 1/1/1/1
Arcane Reconstruction: What you want is high spell crit so it can heal you for much much more.
Shielding: 1/5 ... diminishing returns means it aint so good.
Arcane Shield: 1/5 Heal and get a shield? Sure! And if the spell crits... even better
Aegis:1/5 you probably wont have enough mana with so many sustains, only late game.

Undead/Skeleton 5/5/5/5 Nice passives.
Skeleton: Early 2 -3 points to help you deal damage and with str requirements. Max much later
Bone armour: Awesome armour. 2 points early and max it further along
Resilient bones: I maxed this one around 30. Would like to hear opinions about its usefulness
Reassemble: Starts bad but has no diminishing returns, meaning you need to put points early if you want it to be useful, At least 2 points before 20. max before 30.

Escorts:
HEALING LIGHT: If you dont have this, you-re screwed. It is the best heal. No cost, 8 cooldown. can crit....

Alchemists quest: +2 talents, +2 gen talents,4%spellcrit,+4physical crit ,3dex and cun

Ok How to play it.
LVL 1/ 10 Skeleton has a huge xp cost. This means You need to do all low lvl dungeons before going against any boss. You can do trollmire 1,2,3 but wait for the boss until you get xp somewhere else and have a higher lvl. Trollmire boss around lvl8 is reasonable. Always do bosses on a higher lvl. The same for special treasure areas... wait to get a lvl or 2 more..

Lvl 11/20. Very very tricky Mobs will be smarter and tougher , you will still be very weak. Earthen misiles will kill almost anything... if they trigger. Get a shield. You need to get 1st inner power then Arcane destruction. Physical crit is very important because arcane destruction rules so its a priority it.

Lvl 20/30. You will shine. Shield techniques + high cun . Arcane combat is going to be fun. Abuse assault. Get a good shield rune or two. Get a good shield. Dont kill master until you are 28/29/30 . The orc ambush is really tough with no prot against blind. You will need a few runs at the portal to lvl up.

Lvl 30/36 Get a 2nd rush.
Lvl 36/40 Get Step up and GWF
Lvl 40/End Carefull with damage shields, you can die in one of your attacks with high keep bosses. (i did)

Notes: Finished my walkthrough. Killed Vor armory super dragons at lvl 39. Killed All high keep bosses lvls 42/45. Finished the game without closing portals lvl 45.

Prodigies: Flexible combat. Didnt pick a 2nd one.
Maxed Cun then mag, then dex, then in con. Should have put more points into con earlier for increase survivability and earlier thick skin.

Equipment: Life drinker (main weapon), lunar shield , Black robe, glory of the pride, ring warmaster , rush boots, dakthuns gauntlets, frozen shroud, fiery chocker, eldritch pearl.

Nice guide! I just have a few questions. Why don't you max Phase Door? I find it really helpful as a backup rush or escape but it needs to be controlled to be reliable. Also what Runes do you use as a Skeleton? I'm guessing Shielding, Heat Beam, and Frozen Spear are pretty good but there are lots of other cool options like Lightning and Phase Door (tons of resist all).

You are right, I should have maxed phase door.
RUnes: Shield , Shield, Teleport.
Why Heat beam and Frozen Spear?
The only Other option i thought about is controlled phase door. But at that time i already had a 2nd rush so i thought there was no need.

I really like Frozen Spear for confusion removal and heat beam for stun removal, they're kind of like the Undead's alternative to Wild infusions (although the higher cooldown is a bit annoying).

I've always found that targeted phase door and teleport are sidegrades that costs more points. Untargeted they don't fail and can put you out of LoS. Targeted they always seems to fail outside LoS.

Also, this seems less a guide than a build. It only describes one character to the point of telling what artifacts the player should use as if they're reliably available.

Atarlost wrote:Also, this seems less a guide than a build. It only describes one character to the point of telling what artifacts the player should use as if they're reliably available.

Once you decide shield and sword the rest is pretty straight foward. Even if you change the race, differences are small. But if you have any suggestions as to different ways to play shield&sword arcane blade im all ears. This is just a more or less maxed endgame version.

About items: the idea is since you cast spells with every attack items that % chance of spell trigger are an interesting option. It also has synergies with G.W.F.

Im not sure about the phase door thing. Arcane blade needs mobility and skeleton needs even more mobility so if controlled phase door puts you next to the mob it seems like a good idea.

Heh, was looking for this topic in Mages, until realised that Arcane Blade is considered a warrior for some reason.

Anyway, question. At which level, roughly, I should switch from beaming to bumping?

tylor wrote:Heh, was looking for this topic in Mages, until realised that Arcane Blade is considered a warrior for some reason.

Anyway, question. At which level, roughly, I should switch from beaming to bumping?

You basicly never beam. At lower lvls, mobs are weak enough to be killed with patience , shield runes, etc. So bumping from lvl 1 onwards.

Casting is usefull when you lack rush (or rush in cooldown) for example saving the kidnapped girl you have to kill 4 bloodmages quickly, and they run away. So rush, then cast, then cast, was the only way to do it in time... other than that, mostly (99%) bump.

sofocles wrote:

tylor wrote:Heh, was looking for this topic in Mages, until realised that Arcane Blade is considered a warrior for some reason.

Anyway, question. At which level, roughly, I should switch from beaming to bumping?

You basicly never beam. At lower lvls, mobs are weak enough to be killed with patience , shield runes, etc. So bumping from lvl 1 onwards.

Casting is usefull when you lack rush (or rush in cooldown) for example saving the kidnapped girl you have to kill 4 bloodmages quickly, and they run away. So rush, then cast, then cast, was the only way to do it in time... other than that, mostly (99%) bump.

i disagree with this. the point where you start to go bump should be the time you get 5/5 earthen missiles, level 14. before that, lightning (far better choice than flare for the beam, as flare doesn't beam until 5, which you won't allocate to be able to respec) is a very important tool for survival.

i agree with most of the things you point out in your guide. the skeleton build might be different, but with my dwarf, i maxed out most the aegis tree, and i think that's a very important use of generic talents, as well as phase door 5/5.

solid work on the guide.

From my experience, keeping enemies at long range gives huge advantage. So may be it could be worth to play AB as a fatter archmage until you max Con and Mag?

Having repeatedly - this up repeatedly in the second teir dungeons (incidentally the advice to do *all* the starting dungeons is currently working really surprisingly well) killin Bill as soon as possible is pretty much risk free, I'm level 6 by then (just from starter undead dungeon and trollmire), and pulling out of lighting and into fire for trollmire means trolls die really really fast, even bill can't take down both shields (might be a bad idea without skeleton though, since I do use that extra shield).

Any thoughts on grabbing staff specialization and a shortstaff for the build for late game?

Requia wrote:Any thoughts on grabbing staff specialization and a shortstaff for the build for late game?

I tried this, to answer my own question: I oneshotted Atmathon.