I recently started playing ToME and it's awesome stuff, one of the best games I've played. Thanks for this great game :)
I thought I'd write some feedback in hopes it's helpful, and I'd like to see the game get even better. I'm not sure if this is the right subforum though. But here goes:
General stuff:
1. Random bosses, eww. Ok, this is well known and somewhat fixed in b39 I hear, but still. Getting oneshot by an archer boss isn't fun.
2. Shops. Again, seems to be a topic often talked about. Anyway, they're annoying, as it's best play to avoid shopping as far as possible due to the shop scaling. And new players don't get any info on when the shops restock.
3. Stun and confusion immunities, and the status conditions. Those two immunities are way, way too necessary, and having to gear up for them is not fun. This is especially annoying in the early game, as you'll always want to be aiming for 100%, and early game stuff has less of this than the later ones. So most of the cool loot end up being trash if it has no immunities. Then later on the loot distribution is a bit wonky anyway, and artifacts offering huge immunities fall from every corner. Imo the status conditions are way too dangerous, and the fact that immunities don't scale leads to boring early game gearing. I mean, it's fine if they're as dangerous as they are, as long as the solution isn't stacking immunities on every character (except maybe dwarves, the only race who may care about saving throws).
4. Saving throws seem useless. They're not reliable against stuff that matters, and not worth building for against the rest. I could be wrong though.
5. Tedious early game. Mostly everything up to and often including Daikara gets tedious after seeing it tens of times. It's practically required to complete most of the dungeons, because immunity gear. Also, the new bosses that spawn after returning from Far East don't seem to spawn if the earlier bosses havent' been killed. Not sure about this. Anyway, the game is too predictable. If random bosses weren't so horrible they might help somewhat, and random dungeons in general. Also some encouragement / prohibition against doing everything early. Don't really know about this though, as the early game is fun for the first x times :)
6. Traps, awful, I hear they'll be looked at and that's good. No traps - addon is necessary atm.
7. Runes/infusions. They don't feel balanced. Teleportation rune is way too good get out of jail free card (except when it kills you). And the difference between getting a good shield rune or two is huge. On the other hand, why would I ever want to use heat beam or poison spit? Imo teleportation rune could use either a small delay, or a huge cooldown (enough that boss can track you down and the rune is still on cooldown). Then anti-magic would get more play too.
8. Two-handers are good for berserkers and mindslayer's mental grip, not much more.
9. The quests can be annoying. Track down the hermit every game, remember to visit arena or lose 2 free generics.. also, certain two quests basically require the player not be a melee character.
10. Animals in west map. They're not a threat to any character, don't give anything useful, but cause unnecessary loading.
11. Glove stats would be nice to see without an addon, at least when playing a brawler.
12. Escort quests. Missing on Arcane Eye, Providence or such is really annoying when it's caused by an AoE. The escortees just love AoE damage and seek out every cloud. Not to mention every enemy too, but that's probably fine. Anyway, Daikara escorts are sad, between stone throwers, lightning and the occassional wretch acid cloud.
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There's more, but that's from top of my head.
Corruptor
More specifically, I love the corruptor class, but I want to complain about it too:
13. Most of the dot talents are useless. Bone-stuff also. And hexes other than Pacification, curses other than Vulnerability. The way I see it, there's more or less one optimal talent build, as follows:
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Everything Blood. Dark Ritual. Drain. Soul Rot. Vimsense. Pacification Hex, Curse of Vulnerability, both mostly because not much else to get. All of those 5/5. Then some one-point wonders and stuff for later game.15. Why would I want to use Darkfire? It does crappy damage, and at higher ranks it harms myself in almost all cases. Burning myself a bit is fine and thematic if there's a payoff, but really, most of the time it's a wasted turn. I also did the mistake of unlocking Bone on my latest character and regret it. Bone spear is kinds of useful when everything else is on cooldown. Corruptor has 4 good direct damage spells that scale with crit, blight damage buff from Blood Fury and otherwise, and Vimsense. The others don't, they're bad spells with often bad base damages too.
16. Nothing much to use generics on, combined with dire need for additional rune/infusion slots (caused by lack of shield/escape outside of those). b39 seems to give Torment - category, but at the moment that seems bad too (the Vim buff would actually be worth the points, heal prevent is one point, Overkill is bad, useless and redundant, Blood Vengeance may or may not be useful. I really hope these will change..).
17. Flame of Urh'Rok and/or Fearscape are good and cool skills, but only usable after lvl 35 or so due to high Vim sustain cost. Corruptor is always sustaining 80 Vim worth of skills already, and Fearscape really needs the immunity from being a demon. So that's 240 Vim worth of sustain. At 35 with Bloodcasting it's possible to take advantage of Fearscape (or even without, as a temporary escape). The level requirements should really reflect this, if nothing else. Better yet would be access to these skills earlier (which the new generic tree seems to grant, kind of), as a build option.
18. Willpower doesn't give Corruptors anything useful. They have no Vim problems with 0 points in Willpower, and besides the bonus from Willpower isn't much good against bosses anyway. Cunning is the point dump, along with some strength. Finding a good massive armor and being able to use it effectively is actually cool for a caster. Anyway, the description could be changed as it's misleading.
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Heh, there's a wall of text. I hope it's any good. In any case, despite the above, the game is good. Many of those aren't too bad, and may even be intentional. Still, the game could always be better. I'd especially like to see less dead skills on many classes.
(unfortunately not registered on server). Rather, I always spend extra point on blood. For blood spray it gives range 11, and 85% disease catching, and greater damage. It wipes out whole rooms very easily. It also of course improves the other blood talents, which are the strongest.