Temporal Warden character guide

[Frumple]

Should I just skip vaults until later?

This.

To quote myself from a different forum:

Any tips for infinite dungeon mode?

Don't. Open. The Goddamn. Vaults.

Then you're pretty much peachy until the stair guardians start coming in, at which point it's basically just a really long farportal with sporadic bosses. Really, that's my best advice without knowing more in particular about your builds and/or playstyle. Just. Don't open the vaults. Until you're at least in your, like, twenties or thirties.

Anyone that opens an ID vault before that point is implicitly stating their willingness to reroll their character. Infinite dungeon vaults do not, at all, play fair. They do not have sanity checks on them. They will spawn OoD creatures you cannot escape from. Those creatures will be carrying tier five equipment that they won't drop on death. This will happen on ID (2). You will die. You will die repeatedly. Do not. Open. The vaults.

[Parcae2]

Well, some classes can open vaults much earlier than that. Necros can pretty much open any vault they come across.

In general, as I said before, your most powerful tool for dealing with vaults is Teleport, so classes that get Teleport at level 4 are at a distinct advantage there.

[Frumple]

Heh. Yeah, there's a lot that can make it safer but... frankly, I've been bloody one-shot by critters coming out of those vaults in the early game. On easier, which translates into 30+% overkill on anything else, heh. With con-focused, high HP combos. S'only so much you can do when the opening round from outside your LoS is a 2-300 damage instapop.

I see those vaults as potentially helpful, at times, but fundamentally when you open them, you're putting your head into the RNG's hands more than just about anything else you can do in the ID. Teleport only does so much when something with a global speed boost/movement infusion/etc. that's 30+ levels above you (and possibly elite and/or rare and/or equipped with voratun weapons) comes out of the shadows and stuns you, locking said teleport down (assuming you survive the hit at all ).

So yeah, when I run ID I've just stopped messing with vaults until I have a good 300+ effective HP at minimum and, preferably, something like a psychoport torque. There's nasty things hiding in those vaults. For someone unused to the ID or T4 in general, I'd imagine "avoid the vaults" is likely one of the best life-extending decisions they can make

[Mewtarthio]

Yeah, that's pretty much the best idea. If you're an Archmage or a Cornac Shadowblade, you can scout them with Arcane Eye and escape them with Teleport, but other than that, it's a very bad idea. And even Archmages need to be really careful.

[supermini]

I opened every vault with an archmage in the ID (except on level 1), and got to floor 89. As soon as you get a teleport rune/skill, vaults are ok to open, in my opinion. If you don't open them, there's hardly any chance to get decent gear in the ID.

[Xanoxt]

Hi, I just started playing ToME on steam, and recently unlocked Time Warden. So far I have quite a hard time, while following this guide (my previous characters were Alchemist, Summoner, Archmage and whatnot, and they were much easier at the start. With TW I always die somewhere around level 8-10, and most likely place to die for some reason is the crystal Shalore dungeon. Perhaps it is due to luck, but after several runs it is most likely that starting TW doesn't get the amount of options that other classes have.

My build is something like this:

@ level 8, Shalore TW:

Dex maxed at 35 (32), con 15 (12), Mag 17 (13), Wil 25 (13) which is quite nice from the items, Cun 16 (10)

Talents are as follows:

Archery bows: 3/1/1/-
Speed control: 1/-/-/-
Temporal combat: 1/1/-/-
Spacetime folding: 2/1/-/-
I have 3 floating char points that usually are in dual techniques 1/1 for now, but I have no idea where to put rest of them.

Generics:
Shalore 1/?/-/-
Combat training: Accuracy 3
Spacetime weaving: 2/1


A lot of the time, I just kill stuff with the bow, and if they come too close switch to a nice axe+Unerring Scalpel combo (which is quite nice, I must say!), but I have quite a bit of trouble with bosses.

From my previous experience I clear Thalore start dungeon, trollmire, Lumberjack village, then go to scintilating caves, but usually die there.

I am going wrong somewhere. Should I invest in Chronomancy or something?

[breadsmith]

It may be your zone selection. In addition to what you have already done, many people also do the Derth arena, as well as Korpul and Heart of Gloom before Scint. Caves. If you want to do the Warden the easy way, then just play like an archer, then use the D. Step spell to back off and shoot more arrows.