ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I am curious why all my characters eventually get the "This character may have been played while not online." tag?

I only play on-line while logged into the te4 server, though I am playing through Steam. I just played for a few hours where I never even closed the game or went to the main screen, and sure enough the "This character may have been played while not online." tag is showing up.

Is there even a way to play off-line?

Does this just happen? Or is there a trick to not getting this.

I tried using the Steam cloud saves, and that didn't seem to matter. Eventually it happened.

I managed to get one character to level 27 without it happening, but then "poof" there was the tag. And soon I died.

I don't know why it bugs me, but it does... anyway, if anyone has any experience with this then let me know.

Thanks.

Its just a warning that there was a connection issue at some point and the data there might not be up to date.

I thought it was some sort of anti scum saving measure.

I don't see the point of a warning that there was a connection error, other than to give notice that you used an earlier save rather than playing roguelike.