Life Regen a Viable Strategy? Other questions too.

[magic]

Hello, I'm fairly new to roguelikes and pretty new to TOME, although if you
consider (or have ever played) "Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals" the 100 level dungeon in
that game is VERY roguelike, and I have played that for years (so I'm not a total n00b).

Anyway I have played a good bit of TOME so far, having had about 3 LvL 20 characters, but I've
never left the main continent (I always die to simply running into a very strong enemy and being
just outclassed, although I made it through Hope Graveyard on my first attempt at like lvl 12 or something! I honestly didn't even know it was that much of a deathtrap until the 2nd Time I went
in @ like lvl 18 and died to a lvl 40 that popped out of a box).

I pretty much always play Dwarven Bulwarks, my logic being that it's just got a lot of synergy
going for it with STR & Constitution being it's "main stats". I actually usually focus on CON
as much as I can in the early game, so I can quickly max that generic skill that gives 15%
damage reduction (or resist all, honestly I will be using a lot of terms wrong here I would bet).

Anyway I'm on a Lvl 20 Bulwark right now, and basically I have accumulated a lot of life
regen through max fast metabolism and items with regen on them. I'm basically wondering if I should keep hunting life regen, the idea being that I become almost invincible because of my high resists
along with me just gaining mad life every turn.

So there's that question.

The next question is: If I artificially raise my CON to 59 to get that Thick Skin skill, and then
I take off those items lowering my CON to below what it would take to put a point in that skill...
What Happens? Did I cheat the system and I have the skill? Or does it take that skill away from me.

Also tell me what you think of my plan for hope graveyard this playthrough:
I'm gonna activate my rod of recall and let it go down to like 6 turns before it warps me. Then I will open the Graves, and if a super mon pops out, hopefully I can run for 6 turns without dieing and warp out. (You can cancle the recall by clicking it's icon on the right where it shows active skills & buffs).

Sounds pretty safe to me.

I will finish up this post with this: I used a category point to raise Shield Defense to 1.50.
Sounds horrible right? Well it turns out that shield defense has the skill "Shield Expertise"
Which raises the offense and defense of ALL shield skills, including every skill in "Shield Offense".
Raising the multiplier on "Shield Expertise" did indeed raise the damage on every skill in shield
Offense. I think the above actually makes this less horrible than doing something like putting a point
into shield offense or something, or raising warcries to 1.50.

That's not a question, but thoughts would be appreciated. BTW I always play in Normal Roguelike mode. And will do so until I "beat it" if that can even be done. Normal kills me quite enough thank you. Oh yeah and I don't mind any "class spoilers" (stuff I may not know about dwarves & bulwarks), But if you could avoid Plot & or lore based spoilers that'd be nice. I don't know who the last boss is, if there is one, or where he is. I shouldn't know about the far east but alas I do.

Thanks (in advance I guess!)

[Galax, the Trashman]

Anyway I'm on a Lvl 20 Bulwark right now, and basically I have accumulated a lot of life
regen through max fast metabolism and items with regen on them. I'm basically wondering if I should keep hunting life regen, the idea being that I become almost invincible because of my high resists
along with me just gaining mad life every turn.

Items that give you life regen are pretty nifty, but if you really want to make a constant healing build, you should keep on the look out for items that increase your healing mod (at 200% and/or more you're pretty much set for life)

The next question is: If I artificially raise my CON to 59 to get that Thick Skin skill, and then
I take off those items lowering my CON to below what it would take to put a point in that skill...
What Happens? Did I cheat the system and I have the skill? Or does it take that skill away from me.

You will retain the skill at that mastery. This works for every talent, prodigy and weapon, if you meet the requirements upon investing the point in said talent, same for equipping items.

Also tell me what you think of my plan for hope graveyard this playthrough:
I'm gonna activate my rod of recall and let it go down to like 6 turns before it warps me. Then I will open the Graves, and if a super mon pops out, hopefully I can run for 6 turns without dieing and warp out. (You can cancle the recall by clicking it's icon on the right where it shows active skills & buffs).

Sounds pretty safe to me.

I do believe that is the standard procedure that most players employ upon tackling that area, and vaults.

[magic]

Nice I kinda "re-invented the wheel" I guess on that rod thing.

Healing mod looked very good on the stat screen.

But unfortunately that very bulwark... Is dead.
Went into the volcano @ lvl 20. Died to the boss I think... Some Fire thing...
I got trapped in last stand. And didn't use my recall when I could...

I guess I gotta get used to spamming recall a lot.

Can anyone tell me a relatively easy class to beat the game with?
I hardly have anything unlocked. I think bulwarks are not "easy".

[Enzan]

Are you manually linebreaking?

[Galax, the Trashman]

Archer, if you can survive the tedious, annoying and boring early game. Finding/buying a good quiver and maxing Aim is the point when it starts getting better.

Summoner is pretty much the easiest class to win the game with. So much so that you can "fall asleep while driving", so to speak, which of course could result in death.

[DaltonRaccoon]

Regen as the only source of your survival doesn't work. you need real healing, you need real damage mitigation, and you need to avoid CC as much as possible.

That being said, regen can really HELP. If you're healing 15 HP/round (easy to accomplish for a tank) and an enemy beats on you for 20 rounds, you'll be 300 HP better off than if you didn't invest in regen at all. It's not enough to save you but it lessens the burden on your manually activated heals and gives you a slight, extra buffer.

[Delmuir]

The easiest class to beat the game with?

I think a Summoner is high on that list (although I regularly falter in the early 40's but usually because I'm a bit bored).

Given that you've taken a Bulwark that far, I might suggest combination like a Skeleton Sun Paladin… very strong.

Beyond that, I highly suggest unlocking the Ice and Wildfire trees when you can such that you can play a Wildfire or Cold/Aether mage. Both are very, very solid.

[magic]

I think I may very well try to do that wildfire mage thing.
I'm starting my first archmage ever, just BARELY beat that opening dungeon in space.
Obviously they are very squishy, but just maxing the first fireball attack alone seems to blow
through every dungeon I've taken it in.

The thing is it seems that mages will die without their damage shields very quickly.

I'm thinking of leaving Bulwarks because they just don't have enough tricks.
Also it seems the class is good at unimportant things, such as having high armor (which magic
pierces 100% I believe) and even my blessed 15% resist all falls to spellshock apparently.

I was looking at archmage skills and there's one that makes you go invisible
and it says it gives you 70% resist all while in that state.
Is that skill as good as it sounds? If I get enough mana regen to sustain it all the time,
that one skill sounds very very hot.

I kinda like "min/maxing" characters, which is why I liked High CON bulwarks. I've had over
900HP at like lvl 22 with them before, but something always gets em.
It sounds like this "wildfire" mage probably maxes damage from the fire element, which has
been literally blowing through dungeons for me thus far (just maxing fireball early).

I guess I'll go read up on archmages because I'm really liking one shotting everything I see.
Also I seem to lack half of the classes some of you mentioned... Do you unlock a lot of classes
in the 2nd part of the game?

If anyone has any thoughts on what skills are absolutely necessary to keep archmages
from dieing I'd love to hear 'em.

[Marson]

Wildfire mage is a BEAST.

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=42019

[DaltonRaccoon]

The reason a pure CON bulwark inevitably dies is because your damage output isn't good enough, so while you're standing there tickling a mage, it's going to keep shoving lightning bolts up your butt.

Bulwarks might be the 'tank' class but it doesn't mean their job is to sit there and just get beat on like a punching back. they're capable of extreme mobility and damage output. The tankiness is just their defense mechanism, kind of the polar opposite of the rogue defense mechanism of "Just don't be in range of an attack, period".

[Jurriaan]

If you're interested in a player with high regeneration, try a berserker.
The Bloodbath and Fast Metabolism skills combined with a few health regen items and you're sometimes at +60 life per turn.

[Razakai]

Wildfire mage does require the Wildfire unlock though, which a new player won't have. However, Aether archmage is very strong and fun once you get meta+aether rolling. Berserker is one of the strongest classes in the game if you abuse Unstoppable, and I personally think it's fun. Good damage, near-immunity to many status effects and the single best defensive talent in the game.

[Marson]

I've gotten something like 300hp/turn, every turn, with an Oozemancer. It's great on lower difficulties, but if you plan on playing up through the harder diffs, you might want to learn a different approach early: Don't get hit. You need damage prevention, not healing. 300hp is a drop in the bucket compared to what high rank/high diff monsters can dish out per turn, so healing is like putting a band-aid on an amputation. You'll eventually run out of limbs. I suggest reading some of the threads discussing CON. It's not as great as you would think. Mage's massive shields, Unstoppable, etc, are what get the job done.

It's still fun to play around with different approaches, and on Normal and mostly Nightmare you have that leeway.

[cctobias]

Oozemancer is certainly one of the easiest classes to win the game on, maybe the easiest.

But at the same time Staff/Light ranged Shadowblade was so easy on normal it was almost boring so I think its kind of academic. It was easy on NM too, but needed good game play early on.

Pretty much anything in the upper echelon is extremely easy for normal and often pretty easy on NM. On Insane an Oozemancer is still strong but some builds that wreck normal/NM don't translate to Insane.

That SB build though is very particular and not an obvious build for a new player, obviously you can follow the guide I wrote but the point is 9/10 people think of a shadowblade as exclusively melee and that method of making an easy playthrough is not common. A class like Oozemancer is basically easy on normal for almost everyone and its pretty likely most people picking up settle on something rather effective.

For defense that question changes after normal difficulty. On normal life regen can be very useful. On NM it still can be very useful but you absolutely need some kind of mitigation that will deal with large hits. Of course the more mitigation you have the more regen becomes good, but on NM some rares can do large damage very quickly, or have a lot of speed/slow such that the regen won't have much chance to tick.

20 life/turn is a significant boost to even a good regen infusion. Going for that in the extreme can be useful, however in the end you still need to account for the case where something can hit you for 400 one round and 400 the next with you have 600 hp even with 200 regen per round you are way to close to dying in that case. Even if they can only do that once every 20 turns, you need to survive those two turns. There are too many cases to cover and the relative advantages but on NM+ and even maybe normal you really need to protect against strong alpha strikes in some manner, but large life regen can be nice. In the end though, it is almost always the case, large raw life regen is a waste. Life regen (in any game) should be paired with mitigation as the two almost always multiply in effectiveness.

[magic]

Well thank you all for all of those replies.

I'll definitely be messing around with Archmages for a while. I did skim mex's guide, and all that really stuck (considering that I don't have wildfire yet) was that with Shalore class talent + that time talent you can hit 200% global speed if I am correct.

That sounds very good to me.

If anyone can enlighten me... I hear you can unlearn skills in towns.
How do you do that? Also... I don't know what scumming is.

Also I read in another thread something about "drowning every NPC" in the game...
Am I right in thinking that A: I CAN kill NPC's & B: They DO Drop stuff or at least give EXP?
I usually play games "Honorably" but when lvl 40 bone giants can pop out of boxes...
This game may require some special treatment.