ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello,

I have been playing Ogre Cursed and was planning to ogrewield a weapon with a shield and using Cleave sustain.
Turns out Cursed's talents that make an additional shield strike (Slash/Frenzy/Harrass Prey) do not proc cleave at all: neither the mainhand strike, nor the shield one. Attacks that only involve the mainhand strkes — normal attacks, Reckless Charge, talents granted by external sources like Champion's Will (but somehow not with Bill's Tree Trunk's Shattering Blow) — do proc cleave with the mainhand weapon.

I have been testing this in devmode, using Sher'Tul's training dummies, standing between them so that they would be on the W and NE of the player. Attached are screenshots of the in-game logs testing with items equipped:

• Iron battleaxe and iron shield and Iron battleaxe and iron dagger

• Champion's Will and iron shield (item talent only) and Bill's Tree Trunk and iron shield (item talent only)

And the game's logs from the beginning of this test.

Cleave has some....issues.

Functionally, it prevents Stalk from activating on a target, since attacking multiple targets resets the attack count. You can avoid this by disabling cleave, or just not having cleave hit any other targets, but it's kind of janky.

Most skills don't work, it seems to only work on things that count as basic attacks.

Hydra's Bite's additional attacks can trigger cleave if you use a skill, but the main hits won't activate cleave. Using Frenzy while surrounded still pretty much kills everything but with a lot less damage than advertised.

Ancient Tower wrote: ↑Wed Aug 20, 2025 5:33 am Functionally, it prevents Stalk from activating on a target, since attacking multiple targets resets the attack count. You can avoid this by disabling cleave, or just not having cleave hit any other targets, but it's kind of janky.

I've only noticed it on that playthrough, yeah. To be a bit more precise, it only leaves the attack-turn count on the last target struck, so in 1v2 scenario it's possible attack the other enemy first, so that the main one would be cleaved and stalked on the next turn. When it's more than 2 enemies though...
I still could've deal with this by having Repel active at the start of the combat and switching to Cleave once the stalk is on (if necessary), since these sustains are instant, but then again, it is janky solution.