ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I am going to give playing an Alchemist another go, hopefully having learned something from my previous 8 hours playing, and listening to you guys on this forum. I have asked a few questions here lately, and I want to compile the tips and hints I got.

I would ask that you read these, and tell me if I understand what I am saying, or if I misinterpreted something. If you have anything to add, please do, any help is very appreciated. I put a few questions I have in green, if you have any ideas of the answers, please share

Vaults

Vaults are very dangerous if not approached with caution, such as opening from a diagonal, and using Arcane Eye for a preview. Large sized vaults are best left till later, a few levels later at least. Small sized vaults can be opened after you clear that level, and have an escape plan. Acceptable escape plans include teleportation runes/charms and movement infusions. Good areas to SKIP vaults are: Dreadfell, Blighted Ruins, and High Peak.

Especially Dangerous Monsters

A few types of monsters that is best to ALWAYS avoid (if possible) are:

Horror (all flavors)
Elite or Random bosses from vaults
Naga myrmidon
(any others I should know about?)

Character Class/Generic Talent points

It is better to grow the trees outward BEFORE upward. Which is to say, especially before heading East, most all talents do not need to be leveled beyond 3. Best to get a new ability to help expand your options.

Especially good Generic Talent tree to look for: Celestial/Light (I'm not sure how to get this outside of luck though?)

Equipment

It is best to have multiple types of charm items, and switch them around as the situation warrants. Some tips: Totem that dispels darkness and detects creatures first, switch slot to a Ward Totem for protection after.

Having equipment/infusions that can clear (or prevent immunity of) status effects are a must. A Wild(physical, mental) infusion is the gold standard for this.

Equipment is not all about core attribute boosting. Think around the corner to when a shield or immunity will be the thing that saves you, since 10% increased damage will not.

(How do I know when MOAR spell power or magic points is overkill?)
(What are some pieces of Equipment you always hope you find, for any class?)

OK, That's the stuff I didn't know before, but hopefully learned this past 5 days. I skipped Alchemist specific stuff, since not everyone reading it could relate.
What do you feel should be added to these? or what do you feel is wrong?

places
-mark of the spell blaze, ancient elven ruins, and the crypt, are better to be avoided entirely, if you have trouble with vaults.
crypt especially, is known for being deadly.
-also, the bandits hideout is also better to be ignored, as it has some potential to kick your ass, if you don't know what to expect.
the thief boss is a shadow blade, and is surrounded by more bandits, some of whom are also shadow blades.
although, they wont attack you (applies to the last lvl only) unless you provoke them, which include declining his offer.

"Especially good Generic Talent tree to look for"
-not necessarily the who category (conditioning), as it requires con, but picking up vitality (first talent) helps a great deal.
as long as you can take a few hits, vitality will periodically (triggered at/below 50%hp, cd: 15) heal you up, which in the early lvl's can easily be as much as your max hp. through early it fall of slightly, it is still a decent heal that take no input on your part. it also weakens poisons i believe, but that's secondary.
also, there are other ways, but if you want to be sure, you can pick up a "track" from one of the escorts. helps with planning.

items
-torques of psionic shields, reduce ALL damage of certain types by a fixed values.
can't speak for nightmare and above, but a torque can easily neutralise a poison, disease, burn, or pretty much any DoT, as long as its or the right type.
-psychoportation has also saved me before... sand worm lair... i hate it sometimes.

rjs71053 wrote:A few types of monsters that is best to ALWAYS avoid (if possible) are:

Horror (all flavors)
Elite or Random bosses from vaults
Naga myrmidon

Don't just avoid enemies based on hearsay. Learn to deal with them instead; some will scare you off fighting them in future, but not many.

1. Instead of avoiding tiers or categories of enemies, learn which specific ones are dangerous.

There are plenty of these things you listed who pose little threat to you. You will come across them anyway outside of vaults, and you will cut through many of them like a knife through butter.

You need to learn which horrors are dangerous and which aren't. It can be quite specific e.g. Luminous horrors are less dangerous than Radiant horrors which look the same.

Same with elites. Elites that can be found in vaults include Skeleton Master Archers and Armoured Skeleton Warriors which you will run across in main zones fairly often and have to know how to deal with.

tl;dr Be cautious of any enemy type you haven't seen before until you have dealt with it to know it's weak, then just kill them without breaking stride from then on. You'll remember the hard ones from their name written in your death message.

2. The previous section does not apply if they have class levels (you can tell by the coloured borders). In this case, judge how dangerous they are by what talents they have. Any useless monster with the right combination of class talents can become deadly!

3. Unique zone bosses are very different to each other and other enemies. Learn what each is capable of. e.g. Maze has a boss which is hilariously weak, alternate Maze (with the floor holes) has a boss which is very dangerous.

rjs71053 wrote:(any others I should know about?)

All of these things are dangerous because you underestimate them:
snow giant boulder throwers, Elite skeleton types, elven blood mages/cultists, Worm that Walks(occasionally).

Reference the top 25 killers section on http://te4.org/game-statistics to see which enemies are most likely to kill you if you don't know what you're doing.

My dream is for this to be stickied on the front page of dumb questions... So here we go!

High peak vaults aren't really that dangerous as long as you killed Urkis first. You should probably mention that all vaults have a set layout that is mostly static. So you can learn which vaults contain what.

For advice against strong enemies, it helps to right click<Inspect creature. this will allow you to preview their talents which gives you an idea of their capabilities. This is especially helpful against rares and randbosses.

Strong enemies IMO: Patchwork trolls, groups of spell casters, particularly necromancers and corruptors, eternal bone Giants (very aptly named for some characters) and there are some random "extra" bosses.

Celestial/Light is very powerful, as already mentioned. Radon mentioned Vitality is good to pick up from a warrior escort. Precognition is good for scouting, premonition (seer escort) is a good defense for any non-antimagic user. Track is also a powerful scouting tool.

Don't forget to mention immunities from equipment. I personally enjoy 100% stun resist. Also, don't forget to mention the merchants T5 randarts and how they can be used to easily replace a bad item. Another pivotal equipment choice is item sets. In particular, mindstars. Mindstars that can form sets are incredibly powerful.

All powers (phys power, spellpower, mind power) have diminishing returns on them. The more you get, the more "raw" it takes to get one "actual" power. So, after awhile, you might be better off looking for defensive gear, crit based gear or % dam type gear instead of straight up spellpower gear for example.

Naga Myrmidons are only dangerous because they can rarely spawn on pre level 20 characters but they have a minimum level of 30.
Its the huge level difference that makes them dangerous, not that they are Naga Myrmidons. By the time you are of similar level you have no need to avoid at all costs.

Those monsters listed as ALWAYS best to avoid are not always best to avoid.

They are more of a "be extra careful with."

Micbran wrote:My dream is for this to be stickied on the front page of dumb questions... So here we go!

Your going to have to make one yourself . I know very little about this game, never got passed level 30. I was just consolidating what info people had given me these past few days and double checking.

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=45062
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=45063

One of the things that keeps coming up is memorizing which enemies will be OP, and which won't. I find that annoying and titillating at the same time. Guess there is nothing for it but to keep trying and dying.

You can just edit your main post to include the information we've given, y'know.

Micbran wrote: High peak vaults aren't really that dangerous as long as you killed Urkis first.

Methinks you meant Tempest Peak vaults.

Methinks you are correct. I get those confused way too often to be healthy.

rjs71053 wrote:One of the things that keeps coming up is memorizing which enemies will be OP, and which won't. I find that annoying and titillating at the same time. Guess there is nothing for it but to keep trying and dying.

You don't actually have to do this stuff. You can autopilot until you are in trouble, see what is making the particular enemy so dangerous and make a plan to recover/escape. Having status effect cures and escapes lets you learn organically up to a point.

On dangerous monsters:
If you can reasonably kill something that isn't in a vault you should kill it. It's better to have a hard fight now with a small chance of failure now than teleport into the fight while badly debuffed or mostly dead with everything on cooldown. If you're antimagic you might leave iffy enemies alive because psychoportation has less range than teleportation, but for anyone else it's worth it to lure them away from other enemies or into advantageous ground or cheese LoS to get an opening shot in or something so you can avoid a worse encounter later if you have any plausible way to win that isn't luck based.

And if there's something you can't kill you should usually go somewhere else and come back when you're stronger. Only if that isn't an option should you resort to avoiding something that could kill you if you encounter it again after a fight that goes wrong. Or just skip the level entirely. If you can leave through the forward/down exit without getting into another unwinnable fight and never come back that's a perfectly good solution.

Actually, I think I can be plainer.

A) If you think you can kill it, kill it so that you don't get killed by it while trying to escape or lure monster C.
B) If you know you can't kill it, leave the level (barring extreme situations like the guy kiting an unkillable radiant horror rare to get a quest item)
C) If you're not sure if you can kill it, kill everything else first. If there are two monsters or groups you aren't sure of either attempt to kill the less dangerous or leave the level.

Extra dangerous monsters:
Archers, especially master skeleton archers, with their massive spike damage.
Anything with Skirmisher talents for exactly the same reason.
Anything with Solopsist sleep talents.

Scout, scout, scout. A method of detection is critical, 2 are better. Changing tile size so that you can see more of the map is very helpful.

For many classes, using your level 10 category point for an inscription is a very good idea. Getting an extra Wild, or Heroism, or Shielding, or Movement isn't as exciting as a new talent but it will keep you alive.

Healing and passive life regeneration are not as useful as you think. Status effects will kill you, spike damage will kill you, getting worn down over time will probably not kill you.

Inflicting status effects on monsters is always good but check their status defenses first. Using Dirty Fighting on something with 80% stun/freeze resist isn't useful.

Regarding healing/defenses, I think there are two general strategies that work:
1. Have a high amount of armor/resists or other damage mitigation, and a way to quickly regain health (such as Regen infusion plus Wild-gift/Fungus). Having a large life pool also helps avoid one-shot deaths, although your defenses should generally preclude those from happening on Normal difficulty.
2. Have large damage shields or health pool, and either do enough damage to kill most threats in a few turns or have reliable escape tools to reset your life/shield if you can't kill the target fast enough.

Both strategies are totally viable and which is better will mainly depend on the class you pick.

If you can run away then you can't lose. If you can't run away then you are probably in trouble.