ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Are you tired of going from shop to shop, looking for optimal gear and infusions? Would you prefer to barely pay attention to your gear basically until the High Peak? Would you like to forgo a movement infusion and just plow into attacks?

Are you tired of complex chains of talents and hyper-specialization? Wouldn't you like to spread the talents around? Do you prefer bump-attacking haphazardly? Are you tired of tracking enemies? Are you tired of clearing status effects? Wouldn't you just like to run around like an absolute madman?

Are you interested in running foolishly at the Master, only to be surrounded by a Lord of Skulls, mages, and about 30 total enemies and... just be fine? Are you interested in dropping into the Cultish crypt, utterly unprepared, with poorly optimized gear including the very first armor and amulet you acquired, surround by corruptors and blood mages, completely forget you have antimagic talents and... just be fine? Would you like to be surrounded by enemies, continually blinded for 45 turns, confused, dazed, and slowed intermittently, and just mash buttons idiotically with no rhyme or reason and come out unscathed?

After all of the work, the precision, the patience, wouldn't it be nice to play like an idiot for a while, and actually win? Then this is the build for you. I promise, in the spirit of the build, it'll be low on details but it'll have everything you need.

Simply put, this build relies on a simple formula that I don't even vaguely understand but it seems to work. Here it is:

1. Thalore - why? I don't know... seems to work.

2. Doomed - a given

3. You'll need three escorts... betray to Zigur a Defiler and pick up the category Feedback. This will be your first unlock and the only escort you absolutely need. Pick up a thief and grab Misdirection. Save a Warrior and get Vitality. Why? Don't worry about it.

4. Antimagic - get it as soon as possible, probably around 15 on NM. Level lock Urkis immediately thereafter (visit the level and immediately leave to lock his level low) and come back around level 20 or so.

5. Pick up Adept prodigy at 25. Second prodigy? Whatevs. I went with the stupidest option possible and picked Elemental Surge, which does absolutely nothing.

6. Stats - Will, Cunning, and then Constitution, and finally dexterity

7. Gear - defense, life regen, mind power, and then whatever else you like. However, grab a totem or amulet or anything else that grants you a heal. Early on, they're very helpful. Also, use two mindstars! Finally, if you get Frost Treads, use them forever.

8. Talents - Pick up the first three talents in Shadows and max them promptly (the last one is useful but only if you want to play well so don't bother), then Force of Will (Deflection is the second talent, 2 points right away and max after level 30... the last talent, 3 points right away and max later), and then Punishments. That's all you need on the talent side.

9. Generics - get one of everything. Skip the Cursed aura (you don't need to be thinking that much for this build) but otherwise, spread the wealth. Put one point in everything that's unlocked.\

10. Other stuff - I pretty much picked every infusion that didn't look terrible and a ton of jewelry. It's light and you can figure out if it's good later on.

Unlock Feedback from the betrayed Defiler and go 1-3-1-1. The second skill is Resonance Field...set it to autocast when enemies are visible and adjacent.

Combat Training is the standard light armor and Thick Skin. Unlock Fungus and go at least 1-1-1-1 (not as good as it once was). Antimagic is 1-1-3-1

What else to do with your points? Whatever your want. Doesn't matter.

The hard part of this is always the beginning but once you get Antimagic combined with Deflection and Resonance Field, you are shockingly resilient. It is baffling how hard it will be for enemies to hurt you. I made it all the way to the East, including finishing the Oozemancer and the cultist crypt, without a scratch, completely suboptimal gear, and yet... I was good. The East wasn't much harder (you'll probably want a movement infusion here) but you'll want to upgrade your gear when doing the Prides but you won't have to pay much attention. Once the Prides are done, you'll maybe need to optimize a little bit but... you should be good.

What is the general offensive strategy? Bump attack mindlessly. Use Agony and Hateful Whisper on anything tough, and then Unseen Force if things get a little tense. That's it. Button mash your way to victory.

EDIT: Here is my one day winner, i.e., started and finished it today (11/15) just to see if I could reproduce it with a bit more precision. Took about five hours. It notes that I used the vault, which I did, but not for an item I used. I just stumbled across the monolith armor and I was out of room so I traded it for something I promptly trashed. I want to use that armor for a Cursed Ghoul and I'd never seen it before.

https://te4.org/characters/66225/tome/e ... 5b212d24e4

As you can tell, I had solid but unspectacular gear, save for a mindstar that gave me +79 mindpower. On this character I took a different second prodigy. All in all, this character only had one tough fight, against the Vor Pride boss. I absolutely tore through the rest. It's much faster if you pick up stun/freeze immunity because otherwise you'll spend an inordinate amount of time covered in an ice block, and other immunities. I still never got much pin resistance and that was pretty much my only weakness. It didn't matter because nothing could actually hurt me. This might very well be the tankiest character I've ever had, save for an Insane Necro and a pre-nerf Cursed.

The notable changes are that I did pick up a movement infusion and it was helpful. I also took Mindstar Mastery for Tide of Leaves, which I think I only used once or twice but it was nice to have. I also didn't get Vitality from a warrior escort and while it would have been nice to have, I survived just fine without it.

I am curious about the combination of the below talents. How they work together?
Antimagic combined with Deflection and Resonance Field,

I honestly don't know but don't forget about Gesture of Guarding. It's helpful as well, though again I'm not sure precisely how.

I took Feedback once on a lark and my character just proved hard to kill so I tried it again and it seems to work. I don't know what the mechanics are but it makes a notable difference. Once you get resonance field and use it frequently, you'll find yourself remarkably hard to kill.

This combo is actually disgustingly broken, add nightmare curse and you can basically afk kill everything while taking 0 damage. You can still die if you get one shot though, just walked into the room of death and got hit by 30 breath attacks instantly killing me. If I had 30 more hp I would have survived and killed them all though, the game was just so easy up till then that I didn't expect to get one shot.

Ha ha... I know the feeling. I just ran a Cursed and had the same experience. One stupid death.

Congrats. I hope you enjoyed this disgustingly broken build.

I think Resonance Field isn't just good because it essentially doubles your hp, but effectively also doubles all healing and regeneration. I'm trying a Wyrmic now with Fungus and Feedback and Antimagic, and he is also hard to kill. The Fungus tree was allready pretty good in my opinion, and is essentially double as effective with Resonance Field.

Holy hell this build is powerful! I went with Fears since I was inundated with category points and annihilated Atamathon and the Overpowered Multi-hued Wyrms. Other than them and the final bosses, I face-tanked most everything.

I also nearly died during the Zigur trial, but that was because when it warps you in, apparently your shadows get unsummoned(?).

TXK9 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 1:23 pm I also nearly died during the Zigur trial, but that was because when it warps you in, apparently your shadows get unsummoned(?).

Yeah I got wiped out at Zigur too. I think the shadows just didn't get warped inside along with you. On my second attempt I did the trial a few levels later and fared much better (though I was only playing on normal difficulty so it was less critical to get AM asap).

I finally got around to testing this build on Insane and... yeah, it holds up nicely. Glad everyone had fun with it.

I decided to go with a fairly dubious combination and went with Cursed Aura instead of anti-magic and a Doomelf (removed point from first racial an removed runes in order to betray the defiler escort). Conclusion? Yep, still works. It's not quite as good as it does require a bit more management and you have to actually pay attention a little bit but... I've done nothing to resist status effects and I'm blind half the time, constantly confused, and I'm doing well. I just got to the East and I'm crushing it.

I'll update this if it becomes a winner.

In this case, I have a healing infusion, picked up Advanced Shadowmancy and got Premonition from an escort... again, it's a super sloppily put together build and yet it just holds up really well. I still advise anti-magic but if you get lucky enough to pick up Feedback from a Defiler escort, you're in good shape.

Update: 1-shot by an ancient lich on floor 9 of Dreadfell... cleared all vaults and had been in no danger. Of course, I was carrying an extra cat point, 5 skill points, and two generics that I hadn't bothered to find a home for.

Ultimately, I played a REALLY dubious variant on the build and it failed. However, it does confirm for me that the classical version will work just fine, even on Insane. I made it to the East and cleared two prides before getting killed in Eruan, of all places, by wandering in a vault with the Searing Horror (or whatever it is). I'm not sure what killed me but I was basically bored as I didn't really like the Doomelf variant and so I deleted it upon death #2.