Newbness: Death is a constant companion

[Valdus]

Allow me to begin with, love the game, think it is stunning (having an Old English feel) and believe it has and will go far.

I started ToME4 a few days ago, played rogue-likes to not a lot of success for the past few months. My character lifespan on both the game and the tutorial is about 5-10 minutes. Snakes, thieves, all prevent me from further fun.

Am I not getting something?

[edge2054]

Possibly.

Are you using your regeneration infusion frequently?

Otherwise I'd have to know what class/race you're playing to have a better idea.

[Valdus]

I have been trying the tutorial, the race given, and in the game I have been drawn to a human archer.

[phantomglider]

Snakes and thieves both have high defense, which makes them hard to hit with attacks. You can put stat points into Dexterity and generic talent points into Combat Accuracy to boost your accuracy. If you're playing an Alchemist, Channel Staff and Throw Bomb both ignore defense.

Other than that, make sure to fight in hallways or other chokepoints, use your regen infusion a few turns before it's a complete emergency, and use your wild infusion to remove poison and lower damage taken for a few turns. Snakes also move quickly and a bit erratically, so they are hard to run away from and hard to hit with projectiles, which makes chokepoints even more important.

You might want to try Higher instead of Cornac, since the Higher racial is really useful for low-level survival.

[Grey]

Can you post links to online character sheets for your deadies? Will help us disseminate what's going wrong for you.

[bricks]

Snakes have enhanced speed, and the poison can do some work. Also, like said, they're also hard to hit as melee unless you put points in combat accuracy. In areas with snakes, try to find a choke point so you don't get surrounded and take a bunch of attacks in a single turn.

[donkatsu]

Unlike in most games, I think spellcasters in ToME are actually simpler than fighters. You don't have to worry about accuracy, armor, the Evasion skill, invisibility/stealth, plus stamina management is harder than most others. You just pump spellpower andn blast stuff and that's basically it. I'd say if you're having trouble, try a spellcaster. You only start with only one unlocked, the alchemist, but they're quite good.

[areacode212]

My first character was a Human (Higher) Berserker, and I had a fairly easy time--I played that for a bunch of games before trying out other race/class combinations, so I'd recommend that as a starting class just to learn the basic gameplay and the game mechanics. Just hit things a lot, use Stunning Blow, make sure you use your Regeneration talent regularly (the built-in human one works great at the beginning).