ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm new to roguelike games, having discovered this game about two weeks ago, and am currently playing as an arcane blade. I've managed to get to characters to level 17 but no further, usually dying in Daikara when all the giant dudes start beating on me.

One thing I've read about is earthen missiles, and how they're the arcane blade's master weapon, but I have no idea how to unlock them. Can anyone enlighten me? I also read that in order to use them, I need to learn and unlearn fire skills, replacing them with whatever tree gives me earthen missiles when it shows up. From what I hear, I need to continue to take points out and put them in in the fire skills? Can anyone enlighten me on this one as well?

One other thing - I'm new to the genre, didn't play any D&D or fantasy stuff as a kid, and half the things I read here might as well be in Japanese for all they mean to me. I know it will all make sense soon, but in the interim, feel free to use nice short sentences and pretend you're talking to a three-year-old!

Thanks in advance!

Earthen Missiles is in the Spell/Stone category, which is obtained from defeating a boss which is frequently found in Daikara. Don't worry about it, it will just happen by itself.

As for the need to learn and unlearn fire skills, that is just min-maxing points spent. You don't need to do that, especially if you don't know why you are doing it.

you can only unlearn 4 last points you spent.
so if the fire wasn't within that limit, the points are there permanently.
arcane combat has a chance to trigger a spell.
but its not a chance for each of them, its a chance for one of them. so if you have more than one learned, that makes it more inconsistent without making it any stronger.
in fact, if you put 5 in one of them and 1 in the other, that one is actually making you way weaker.

Ok, thanks everyone. So to unlearn skills (talents?), does that mean every time I level up, the first thing I do is remove the points in fire, add the new point to the new talent I want to learn and then put the remaining points back in fire?

Can this only be done in towns? From memory the game says I can only unlearn talents in a town. Does this mean every time I level up I need to leave the dungeon/forest etc I'm in and head to a town before levelling up my character and then heading back to the dungeon/forest etc to resume besting my foe?

Thanks in advance!

yes, you used to be able to unlearn anywhere, but now you can only do that in towns in the current version, making a pure arcane archmage rather difficult to make, since you need an offensive spell, but arcane category doesn't have one at the very start.
if you play pure vanilla that is.

Yes, the "juggling" of talent points in town can be annoying for certain classes like Arcane Blade. It's the optimal way to do it if you plan to use Earthen Missiles instead of Flame or Lightning though.

AzfromOz wrote:Ok, thanks everyone. So to unlearn skills (talents?), does that mean every time I level up, the first thing I do is remove the points in fire, add the new point to the new talent I want to learn and then put the remaining points back in fire?

Can this only be done in towns? From memory the game says I can only unlearn talents in a town. Does this mean every time I level up I need to leave the dungeon/forest etc I'm in and head to a town before levelling up my character and then heading back to the dungeon/forest etc to resume besting my foe?

Thanks in advance!

Yes, once you have the Stone tree that is the optimal min/max way to play. Make sure the last 4 points you spend are in Flame, and each time you level up, before you allocate skills take them out and put the 4 back in. That means once you hit 10 and unlock Stone, you can remove all of your Flame points to level Stone and Earthen Missiles instead. This is optimal as Stone gets you +50% resistance penetration and EM hits very, very hard.
Due to how Arcane Combat works, it's not advised to split points between Flame/Lightning/Earthen Missiles. Just pick the one.

Thank you, that makes prefect sense. Do you usually wait until you've cleared a dungeon/level and then head out to a town to level up before returning and resuming where you left off? Or do you just get the hell out of there and level up as quickly as possible? Either way, do monsters etc response while you're away?

Thanks!

if you leave the lvl, all loot will be gone, unless its in a vault
if you are trying to re-spec, then you have to be careful, and most likely wait until the lvl is finished, and then head to town to re-spec before going to the next lvl.
but if you don't have any "temporary points", then you just lvl as you go.

unless you have mods. then in both cases you lvl as you go.