ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

And now it takes over 1 million turns to get back to normal level with Spacetime Tuning.

The bug: When the paradox is very high, auto cast can cause paradox raising at the pace of thousands per second.

What happened: So it's my first time reaching the high peak boss battle. When my Paradox Mage finally died, the paradox level is very very high and I have a spell fail rate of 50%~100% (can't remember exactly). I pressed R to take a rest and noticed that my paradox is rising very rapidly instead of lowering. I had no idea what happened so I stopped resting but the paradox continued to rise. I could not walk or perform any other action. It took me a while to notice that the combat log is repetiting the message "Failed to cast Energy Decomposition" and figured out that it was caused by auto casting Energy Decomposition when no enemy is visible AND a spell failure rate close to or at 100%. I disabled the the auto cast option for the spell and the paradox level stopped raising, at which moment it's already over 1 million. So now it takes me over 1 million turns to get it back to normal level, which I assume will be about 2 hours on my machine at the current pace.

The suggestions:
1. Disable auto casting when paradox level is very high.
2. Cap paradox when the spell fail rate reaches 100% or lower.
3. Maybe buff Spacetime Tuning to more than 1 paradox per turn.

I'd suggest to change nothing here - this is how it's supposed to be.

Maybe autocast of the Static History (lowers paradox) will decrease the time needed to get paradox to the zero.

Also maybe ignore failure or ignore paradox-on-failure for Sustains, since the whole point of putting those on auto-cast is convenience rather than actually being tactically interesting.

Basically, the auto-cast for Sustains is a UI work around, and now that work-around has bitten someone in the ass.

anp wrote:I'd suggest to change nothing here - this is how it's supposed to be.

Maybe autocast of the Static History (lowers paradox) will decrease the time needed to get paradox to the zero.

I'm sorry but how's that supposed to be? Punishing the player for putting a Sustain on auto cast? If I didn't figure out what caused the issue quickly enough and disabled the auto cast, the character would be completely unplayable, essentially killing it permanantly. A bug (or a design issue) that cause a player's character unplayable is one that should be taken seriously IMHO.

This is not a bug, I can see reasons for arguing against this possibility from a gameplay/design perspective but everythign that has happened here is working step by step as each of the mechanics is intended to function. Amassing millions of paradox over a period in this fashion is simply a result of lack of player forsight. As always autocast options should be used with a degree of caution.

Elkan wrote:This is not a bug, I can see reasons for arguing against this possibility from a gameplay/design perspective but everythign that has happened here is working step by step as each of the mechanics is intended to function. Amassing millions of paradox over a period in this fashion is simply a result of lack of player forsight. As always autocast options should be used with a degree of caution.

My experience is simply the result of the following combination:

1. Set Energy Decomposition on auto cast.
2. Died when the paradox level is high.

Which part is my fault and makes me deserve what I've got? I can't see why you think it's by design that the game punish the player in this way. Of course you verterans know the game well and know where the traps are and how to avoid them, but does it mean that nothing needs to be changed and any unlucky new players should just suck it up?

Lol, what?

How does the fact that paradox can raise to such an absurd numbers that it takes hours to remove is somehow a desirable state of affairs? How does acquiring millions of paradox somehow adds interesting decisions or tactics to the game? How is it desirable to force a player to just press "5" for the next few hours?

Also consider this: there is (or at least was) a nasty bug that causes monster to inflict absurd amounts of damage (like 6000 points on normal) when their paradox reached absurd numbers. So maybe there simply should be a cap for paradox at a high level? I mean, does it really matter if your paradox is one or two million?

Please note that I haven't had the opportunity to replicate this bug but since no one is actually denying that this is happening I have no reason not to believe the OP.

Also what Doctornull said.