ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I finally picked up Embers, and I'm making my way through Roguelike/Normal on my first character, an Orc Sawbutcher. From all accounts, Sawbutchers are a little OP (even post-nerf) and Embers is easy. But I've been having a rough time with this one. (Link.)

In particular, I found the Sunwall Observatory bosses quite a challenge, and I had a hard time dealing with Aeryn. It was hard for me to land enough damage to keep her from healing all the way back up (and re-activating her second life sustain) while I rested, and in the end she almost ate through my remaining 200 HP and die at -450 in one blow. I've also run into a few nearly game-ending Worms that Walk, plus nearly getting splattered underneath the Eruan ruins. Things also got pretty dicey tunneling underneath the Sunwall. I believe I ran in a decent order, going mostly by the zone levels listed on the wiki.

I know I haven't picked my Prodigy yet... kind of forgot about it until just now. And also I probably shouldn't have maxed out Steam Power but I thought it scaled my talents better than it did. Those points should probably be in Blacksmith and tinkers. Oh well. Either way, it doesn't seem enough to make as big a difference as I've been seeing between the difficulty I'm having and the ease people report on the forums.

Could anyone give me some pointers?

To address your points:

Aeryn is just tough in general, though the furnace tree will help by giving you extra damage and res pen. It can also give you flat damage reduction (although that does dissipate fairly quickly in battle) and a physical effect cleanse. It's definitely worth picking up.

Steam power is rather useful with good tinkers, which you don't have. Saw projector (or fatal attractor if you don't have that) would work better on your gloves, and acid grooves would be much better on your gloves. Your belt slot should almost always be fungal web (you might have it already, it doesn't show up in the vault). Headlamp is probably better than mental stimulator for a helmet tinker, because a headlamp basically obsoletes combat accuracy. You should also consider building a pain suppressor salve.

By contrast, compact steam tank is nearly worthless. Battle machinery is rather underwhelming on normal, because anything that lasts more than 2 turns will have stun resistance and generally take a lot more damage from your saws. By contrast, tempest of metal and overheat saws are rather good, because tempest is how you avoid damage (on top of grinding shield, which you've maxed already), and overheat saws stacking can do a lot of damage to bosses, especially with the bonuses from furnace.

Note that all of this is on normal, where offense is generally more useful than defense. If you later want to pump up the difficulty, you will need to change your build to be more defensive.

The lack of Furnace is a big deal. Molten Metal, when combined with Grinding Shield and Tempest of Metal, is Sawbutcher's main defense. Plus a large offensive boost thanks for the phys/fire damage/pen talent.