Skullbones, the serendipitous arcane blade

[bricks]

Character sheet

The adventure, so far:
Skullbones was my first foray into Arcane Blade since I started getting any good at ToME. I was curious how the Stone tree changed the class dynamic, so after growing bored of a Paradox Mage and a Necromancer, Skullbones was (re)born.

I've never had so much luck with random artifacts before. After a few rounds of stairdancing and a lucky phase door, I was able to escape the Unfinished Bone Giant and start clearing the rest of the level. I soon found a skeleton warrior wielding a randart greatsword, which served me well for many levels. Later I found three other randart 2-handed weapons, and more importantly, Relghell the stralite mail armour. High armour, decent defense, melee project, life and mana regen? Awesome.

I've had three deaths. The first was in the thieves' tunnels. After confronting the assassin lord, I quickly found that the Shadowblade were causing too many problems to fight in the open, and teleported away. I took one step and landed on a summoning trap; with all of my viable defensive options down, I could only take a few with me before I was pulled down. The other death was to the random boss snow giant chieftain who dropped Relghell. If I had been a little more conservative during the fight I think I could have taken him down without dying.

The third death was to the Master. Upon entering Dreadfell 9 I was almost immediately confronted. Surprisingly, the Master doesn't seem much harder, if at all. Trying to fight him on the stairs, however, was my downfall. Poor positioning meant I had to take hits from four or so mobs while fighting, which quickly ran down my defenses.

On my second attempt, I would get in a few hits by resting until the Master appeared, then rushing him and pulling out all the stops. Disarm was very nice here; I'd never really noticed how hard the Master hit. Once he summoned his circus of the undead, I teleported away. There was no reasonable way for me to fight through all the minions and survive the Master's attacks. It felt kind of cheap, but at least I wasn't stairdancing. After the battle I found that quick stralite greatsword of projection, which I've rather liked, and (I think) the Unflinching Eye. The Unflinching Eye and the Duathelden Heart are a really cool combo, although it's rather a shame that having 0 light radius doesn't stop enemies from spotting you (see my thread in the Spoilers forum). I just got to the Sunwall and am feeling that this character could do a lot, now that things have started to come together.

Were I to start again, I'd take the Aegis tree earlier, and neglect Stone at least until 20, if not 30. Another rune slot would have been nice. I should have expanded more into other talents, especially the defensive options, as I'm having no issues with damage. I was actually hitting the Master rather hard. Skeleton still feel like a solid choice for Arcane Blade, though Dwarf and Ghoul would be interesting choices, too.

The class:
Arcane blade is conceptually pretty cool, even though the idea of a magical warrior is nothing new. The "spell-on-melee" ability is very nice with 5/5 Flame, since it activates more or less often enough to keep the damage-over-time active. After previous experiences I decided to forego Air entirely, since casting Lightning via melee actually seemed like a damage penalty, unless you have good positioning and a nice roll on damage. Earthen Missiles is somewhat more advantageous since it always hits your melee target (unless you kill them, in which case they still project out as far as possible). Some way of controlling which spells are activated on melee would be very nice.

Stone is a really cool addition to the class. I actually took it at level 10 because I was exceptionally curious how well it worked. As I said, Earthen Missiles works pretty well. Body of Stone is one ability I think I could have pursued further; however, the physical resistance bonus scales poorly. Earthquake has been useful as a area-of-effect spell, but the long cooldown and high mana cost are issues. I haven't had 5/5 Crystalline Focus for long, but so far it seems to be fantastic. Since many enemies in the east have decent resist all, I think I'll start to see considerable returns on that investment.

Magical Combat and Enhancement both seem pretty good to me. I wish I had invested more points in these trees up to this point. While Arcane Combat is a core mechanic, the percent-to-hit scales so slowly that I've felt comfortable neglecting it. Arcane Dexterity and Arcane Feed have both also gotten the shaft; the former because up until recently I haven't been able to spare points for dexterity; the latter because I have found a good amount of mana regen equipment, and a single point is enough to make resting for mana recovery possible. I'd be happy with a change to Arcane Feed to make it more of an in-battle mana recovery option, and not just a way to make manasurge runes work. Frost Hands has been underwhelming as far as melee damage goes, though the freezing is enough to warrant keeping it sustained. The cold damage bonus is also 99% worthless. Inner Power seems like a straightforward means of handling the hybrid stat distribution.

Flameshock has been an invaluable means of containing fleeing enemies/ranged attackers. I haven't give many other of the abilities serious consideration; the Air tree seems geared much more towards traditional mages. The Fire tree's straightforward damage-over-time and area-of-effect skills complement Arcane Blade better.

Aegis, combined with Skeleton, has been nice, but not nearly so potent as a Skeleton Archmage. Add that to the fact that it is locked and that my Arcane Blade has benefitted most from hit-and-run tactics, and the Conveyance tree becomes a bit more appealing. Displacement Shield actually sounds like a perfect fit for Arcane Blades. I plan to unlock a new rune slot at 30, so it's questionable if I'll ever get a chance to try it out with this character.

Now, for the real problem I have with the class: the two-handed weapon scheme makes no sense. (Not that I'm the first to make this observation or subsequent suggestion.) Two-handed maiming is an OK tree, but it's not what makes two-handed weapons great. Since Berserkers and Wyrmics already dominate the "berserker" scene, I'd like Arcane Blades to have dual-wielding talents. Dual-wielding means more chance to cast spells on melee hit, plus the Magical Combat tree already scales with Dexterity. Access to an additional generic tree would be great; perhaps Aegis, since Shadowblades already get Phantasm and Conveyance. Aegis also has the most "warrior" feel to it. The cunning/survival tree feels more tacked on here than it does in nearly any other class; nothing about Arcane Blade strikes me as "cunning" or "survivalist," and there is hardly any opportunity to spend points on cunning. Plus, it's a fairly underwhelming tree. Staff Combat would be an interesting tree to add, too, though I feel Crystalline Focus makes plain 'ole melee very effective.

[Grey]

Arcane Blades do suffer a lot from having a hard choice on where to spend cat points. Extra runes (and infusions for non-undead) seem necessary, but the Aegis and Conveyance trees seem vital too, and Dirty Fighting if you want to make best use of dual fighting (which the class is better set for). On top of that both Stone and Combat Veteran are good trees for the class which start out locked, and then there's the option of buying things from escorts or side-quests or the ability to invest more in an existing tree (I always like to max Magical Combat). Some tough choices! It would be nice if they started with Aegis initially unlocked.

Arcane Combat is well worth maxing by the way. It goes over 50% when maxed (so 1 in 2 hits as opposed to the 1 in 4 you're getting currently).

[Aquillion]

The only issue with making them more duel-wielding focused is that it might start making them too similar to Temporal Wardens. Still, I'd be all for adding it as an option, at least.

[bricks]

Currently they feel a little like confused Wyrmics.

Arcane Combat has gotten the shaft so far since I was low on mana for a while and didn't have the class points to spare. I'm definitely going to start investing in it.

One thing I forgot to mention: Disarm is really, really great. When it lands, anyway. It's like a 90% damage debuff on enemies for a few turns.

[bricks]

Found the black robe, which was interesting. I wish I could figure out a good way to use it, but I'm already taking a lot of damage in melee. Took down Gnarg in no time, but the rest of the armoury is giving me some trouble. Too much teleporting and invisibility and orcs killing each other in the process of killing me. Bleh. Time to run back through my sustains and hope I don't forget anything.

Edit: Got hit by Flameshock after coming back. Yeah, that really needs to change. Didn't die, but damn. The foomancers seemed more like annoyances in 31; right now they feel like the real boss.

Edit2: Died AGAIN. Damnit, this is ridiculous. I would have picked up the loot and recalled away if I had known this was going to be a meatgrinder.

Edit3: Aaaand died a third time. I think this is my last free Eidolon resurrect. I'm too pissed right now to play any more. Maybe I'll figure out how to unzip .team files so I can give orc cryomancers -100 life regeneration. >< I know this is in part my fault for not investing in stun/freeze resist, but this room is so much worse than it had been.