ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Quick question - is there a way to affect what demon you get, and/or what slot a new demon can be attached to ?

The main issue I have with Demonologist is that their core gimmick is strictly inferior in every way to Tinkers. Now, granted, Tinkers are in the "broken" tier. Still. As far as I can tell, to get the demon effect you want, you need to :
- get Demon Seed effect to stick on an enemy at least of the same level as your seeds (and that's the easy part),
- get a new demon instead of a level-up for one you already have,
- get the demon you want (which is random, and the more you go the more dilluted the pool of choices),
- AND hope it can be slotted to the equipment you want, knowing that duplicates are not only possible but likely.

Honestly, even considering that you can get a Demon Seed proc every few enemies, it seems to me that the chances of getting the exact combo of demon and body slot you want goes down the drain as the game goes on. Is there no way to affect what you get ? Tinkers are not only more powerful but VASTLY more convenient to implement. If at least every demon gave you every body slot option (subject to what slot you unlocked, of course) it would be noticeably easier to get the build you want. As it stands, I've been grinding my Demo for a couple hours straight and still can't get the demons I want for the slots I want. It's... Infuriating.

Any tip would be welcome. I really love that class but this aspect of it drives me nuts.

netphenix wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:41 am As far as I can tell, to get the demon effect you want, you need to :
- get Demon Seed effect to stick on an enemy at least of the same level as your seeds (and that's the easy part),

Wait, you can't infect an enemy with the demon seed effect if it's of a lower level than any seed in your possession? If so, that's a change and probably a bug -- last time I played with demon seeds (which was admittedly before the nerf that added Doom Concordant) the restriction was that when you extracted a seed it would be discarded if your new seed was the same kind/slot as a same-or-higher-level seed in your inventory.

Ok, I just went and looked at the code and played with demon seeds a bit. It is still the case that you can acquire, for example, a lvl8 ring-slot fire imp while you currently have a lvl12 mainhand-slot fire imp.

Two notable changes to demon seeds, that I saw, beyond what's in the talent descriptions:

• You can no longer have multiple copies of a given seed, so no more triple-wielding fire imps on your weapons.
• Applying the Demon Seed effect is now guaranteed; the check to see whether the seed "took hold" is made when the target dies. It used to be the case that this check was done when attempting to apply the effect; once it was applied you were guaranteed to pull a seed from the target (which would be discarded if it was the same-but-lower-level as another seed you had in your inventory).

The latter of the above means you get significantly fewer seeds, since you can no longer sandbag while waiting for a demon seed to lodge in an enemy. I could see this being really frustrating on Normal difficulty given how few higher-rank enemies I recall spawning on that difficulty setting.