Guaranteed death starting a Rogue?

[Shiptoaster]

Been playing this game for the last week on Easier to get used to the mechanics and figure things out. Yesterday I switched over to playing on Normal mode and, well, after about ten to fifteen Rogue runs I've come to accept that, unless I have an incredibly lucky run, I will have at least one death early on and will never reach 20. It's kind of frustrating.

Do people often run away from certain mobs? Is a stealth Rogue at all viable? Should I be dying this often? Do all runs rely on luck, especially early?

[Red]

Do people run? Yes, god yes. Being able to and knowing when to run is vital to winning ToME. If you never run away, you're playing like an inexperienced player and will die frequently. Don't worry-we all died a lot early on, and none of us were smart to start.

Is stealth viable? Indeed it is. Not so much on Madness, but on Normal? Hell yeah. Check out the various guides for some advice.

Should you be dying this often? If you're an experienced player with a dozen wins on Madness, no, that means you're being dumb. As a new player who's still getting the hang of it? Yup. Dying is how you learn, and by the time you know enough to win you'll have enough dead to haunt an entire city.

Do all runs rely on luck? On Normal mode, no. Enemies are easy enough on Normal that you can win it every time unless a truly ridiculous run of bad luck occurs. On higher dificulties, luck becomes neccessarry, but for where you are, it isn't.

Finally, if you're playing on Roguelike, switch to Adventurer until you get better. The leniency provided by the extra lives will go miles towards getting you a higher level character and learning better.

[cttw]

Just this weekend I was trying to get a dwarf rogue started, and I think it took me about 10 attempts. One of them was particularly unlucky as I spawned with Norgan completelly surrounded by orcs, was immediately blinded and the infusion removed the other effect, so never even saw what finished me.

But I did manage to get one going: http://te4.org/characters/7470/tome/597 ... 27a3b0be0e

It's looking pretty good. I started investing all points on stealth at level 9, and investing in cunning, and by level 20 or so I was getting some good runs of keeping stealth during combat. Still many, many sightings.

On lvl 30 I got windblade prodigy and that has resolved a lot of the problems that remained. I went to the Last Hope graveyard at level 22, had to run. Went again at 28 or so after dreadfell and had to run again. Only finished the last eternal bone giant after getting the prodigy, and then celia was quickly trounced. But just so you know, even after you get it going and are pretty strong, there is still running away involved.

[donkatsu]

There's no luck involved in Normal unless you're playing a dwarf, yeek, or undead.

I just started up a Shalore Rogue and got to level 10 with no deaths. I ran away once against a level 29 elder vampire but probably didn't have to. If you can describe your deaths maybe someone can help, or you can just experiment more on your own to learn what you're doing wrong.

[Davion Fuxa]

Rogues (and to some extent Shadowblades) can probably expect a difficult start when beginning a run. It is highly likely that even and experienced player will face some difficulty in getting their character off the ground. If you are a new player, I wouldn't be surprised if you were having several runs going awry with an early death.

[Doctornull]

Do people often run away from certain mobs?

Yes. Sometimes to position better, sometimes just to get away and never return. Dreaming Horrors are like that for me: run away, don't look back.

Is a stealth Rogue at all viable?

Yes, but not until you get Shadowstrike and much more so after you get Unseen Actions over 2/5 or so.

Should I be dying this often?

Yes, DarkGod likes it when you die often.

Do all runs rely on luck, especially early?

Somewhat. On Normal you ought to be able to work around whatever the random number generator throws at you, but knowing how can take some practice.

[dukereg]

It took me 50 weeks from my first character's death to my first winner on Normal. There's a lot to learn. That includes when to avoid fights and when to escape the fights you are in.

Avoidance: I bet every player who has beat Normal difficulty could tell you exactly in what order they would do early game zones. They could tell you under what circumstances they would open chests and vaults. They could tell you what sort of early game enemies they would run away from on sight. They mostly learnt all this the hard way.

Escape: You have to be able to escape and reposition in as many ways as you practically can. You have to make sure that you can remove/avoid debuffs so that enemies can't stop you using those escapes. You sometimes have to debuff the enemies so they can't catch you when you escape. You rarely have to kill the enemy right now. Duck around a corner so only one enemy can see you, 'port away, run like the wind until they lose you, run up the stairs you came down to heal, whatever keeps you alive long enough to regenerate resources and reset cooldowns.

PS Are you sure you want to be a rogue? Bulwark is a much better class for people like me who are not good at running from fights. You'll still die if you never run, but nowhere near as much.

[Red]

Other good beginner classes include Alcehmist (Golem helps out, nice and simple gameplay while still being powerful) or Summoner (all the mearshields). If you're set on a melee class, though, Bulwark or Zerker is probably your best choice.

[Groggeneral]

Advice from one newbie to another (I haven't completed the game yet either):
If you come to the conclusion that a lot of positioning, running away and all that is hard for you, consider another class for your first win. I'm not any good with rogue classes or the archer for a similar reason (I also dislike relying on stealth and agility as a means to survival). Other classes play much more straight forward. Berserkers can take quite a punch and just hack through everything without repositioning very often - they usually have the HP, armor and skills to do so compared to a rogue. They feel way less squishy.
Other choice: Alchemists or archmages (they can be unlocked quite early): Stand in the distance and throw your spells at the enemies. Done.
Bottomline: Give some other classes a go and see if you like their way of fighting better. Classes are very diverse in ToMe

Other general tips:
- Check out some guides for the class you want to play. I find that most guides are far from perfect, but they give you plenty of insight on how the character can be played and what others find particulary helpful for playing with that class.
- before you invest even one skill or stat point, look at the discription of all the skills and take your time understanding what you could develop your class towards. Consider what skills would work together very well and how they would work with your playstyle.
- Here is a good guide on which order dungeons can be visited for better survival: http://te4.org/wiki/Goon_Zone_Order_Progression.
- Take death as part of the experience in ToMe. I got my first archmage to 37 a few days ago (my ~ 11th run so far, my third archmage run) and he still died. What's important is, that you learn as much as you can from the times you die and make sure that it won't happen again with your next character. Don't do the same mistakes 50 times again. On normal, almost all deaths are preventable by playing clever or can be explained because one missed something out.
-- Examples: If you die because you get clobbed by 6 enemies at the same time, don't stand in the open. Use pathways as a chokehold. If you die because Prox the Mighty has too many trolls in his company, learn to split them up (kill some, phase door away and heal up for example) or save him for a later time. - If a certain boss in Daikara kills you with his elemental attacks, getting equipment with the right elemental resistances for the fight might just save your life. Please tell us on how you die, I bet people can give you more practical advice then and learn something for themselves too

[slyscorpion]

Been playing this game for the last week on Easier to get used to the mechanics and figure things out. Yesterday I switched over to playing on Normal mode and, well, after about ten to fifteen Rogue runs I've come to accept that, unless I have an incredibly lucky run, I will have at least one death early on and will never reach 20. It's kind of frustrating.

Do people often run away from certain mobs? Is a stealth Rogue at all viable? Should I be dying this often? Do all runs rely on luck, especially early?

It's not running away, it's tactical repositioning

Yes, people do run away from certain mobs as some of them can REALLy pack a punch in the early levels.

What you need to ensure is that you have as many ways of being able to reposition yourself as possible. A single teleport rune is not going to cut it as you can be stunned and not be able to use it. Always make sure you have as many GTFO buttons as possible. This means look for equipment that lets you disengage such as boots like Wanderer's Rest where you can leap over enemies or psychoportation torques as a back up teleport in case you can't use your rune. There are also necklaces that let you teleport but they tend to put other items on a long cool down.

Try playing different races. For example, Ghouls may be slow as all hell BUT they have a rather nice leap ability that you can use to quickly get away from something. Couple an ability like that with Wanderer's Rest or any other item that lets you move across many tiles at once and you can avoid getting splattered.

Also, make sure to kill any casters first ESPECIALLY those thrice-damned Skeleton Mages. Seriously, those guys are painful even when you get to the Prides, especially the Pride full of Orc Necromancers.

Abuse line of sight. See a caster in the distance and you can't get to him quickly? Make him come to you and then Flurry him dead.

Light radius helps a LOT especially in dungeons like Sandworm Lair or Kor'Pul. Why? Because a lot of early rares, for me anyways, have been skirmishers or archers and it SUCKS dying to something that you can't see due to only having a 2 light radius. Make sure you save any lantern with the word "bright" in its name and any other items that confirm light radius. You'd be amazed how much easier the game becomes once you have a +4 or better light radius.

It would help to know how you keep dying so we can advise on how to not die