Cause of Death: Playing while n00b

[Lyoncet]

(Sorry if this double-posts; I tried posting this and then waited 45 minutes but it didn't show up, so I'm re-posting.)

Hey guys! I just started playing ToME last week, and it's been a total blast. I'm a light-to-moderate Roguelike player (real Roguelikes, none of these platformer shenanigans!), so I eased in pretty quickly. Compared to something like adom, ToME is mercifully... merciful.

So I rolled a few characters, liked my Thalore Archer a lot, and decided to concentrate on him to learn some of the ropes. I looked at a few dungeon tier lists and cleared out all the tier-1 dungeons, the Lumberjack village, the arena, and the secret tunnels, without a problem. I geared up with an excellent quiver and a decent bow and moved on. I saw that the next stop was The Maze, which separates out the complete noobs from the maybe-a-tiny-glimmer-of-hope noobs.

I cleared out a good chunk of the first floor, including some rares. Then I found a rare Minotaur. I sized him hp, checked out his description and stats, and then plunked him with a Pinning Shot. He hit me with Decrepitude Disease, which was hitting for 18. It also dazed me, but I either recovered almost immediately or resisted it entirely; the log doesn't make it clear.

I hit him with a buffed Steady Shot from my gloves, which crit and took him down to half health, and in return took a Soul Rot for 107 and 18 more from the disease. That's a good amount of damage, but I had a couple +health items plus my Thalore HP modifier, so I was sitting at 346.

Then...

"Layakira the minotaur casts Blood Grasp.
Layakira the minotaur drains life from Illwyn!
Layakira the minotaur receives 41 healing from Illwyn!
Layakira the minotaur's Blood Grasp hits Illwyn for 75 blight damage.
Decrepitude disease from Layakira the minotaur hits Illwyn for 15 blight damage.
Layakira the minotaur casts Drain.
Saving game...
Layakira the minotaur's Drain hits Illwyn for 75 blight damage.
Illwyn the level 12 thalore archer was plagued to death by Layakira the minotaur on level 1 of The Maze.
Layakira the minotaur's Drain killed Illwyn!"

Notice that everything from the Soul Rot (that precedes the log) to the killing Drain happened without me being able to do anything. So without me being able to react, he cast Soul Rot, cast Blood Grasp, and cast Drain, while the Decrepitude Disease also ticked. I feel like if I'd have had a chance to do anything I would have been fine, and I can't for the life of me figure out just what happened that kept me from reacting. I don't think he was acting especially quickly, because the disease ticked normally in-between his actions. And my action speed was 100%.

Can anyone help a total noob out? What happened? Also, what could I look out for next time to make sure it doesn't happen again?

Here's the character dump: http://te4.org/characters/138385/tome/7 ... d984797348. It doesn't show him as dead, but his save isn't there any longer so he seems pretty dead to me.

Also, as long as I'm posting the character dump, if there's anything that stands out as a horrible idea on my character sheet, I'd be happy to hear your advice/criticism.

Thanks for reading, and see you around!

[Jurriaan]

I see two regeneration infusions. You could try to activate one before shooting such a rare - during a fight you don't have time.

[stinkstink]

Can anyone help a total noob out? What happened? Also, what could I look out for next time to make sure it doesn't happen again?

Did they have Flame of Urh'Rok sustained? That increases global speed, which can allow them to get two turns to your one on occasion.

[magic]

All I can say is that apparently I've been very lucky going into the maze straight after the first dungeon. I guess my only other advice is to try a bunch of different classes, Just play them n00bly (I.e.. Just be prepared to die... Welcome it)

Playing as a human cornac (to me) has proven enlightening since they lvl faster letting you experiment with builds quicker.

I honestly haven't tried an archer yet though (since I've spent most of my time tanking as a dwarven bulwark) but I hear they are strong.

I guess my only real advice is (as a guy with about 27 deaths so far, many of them lvl 20's)
This game will just throw overpowered enemies at you basically randomly, like impossibly unstoppable enemies (for your lvl), this makes some form of escape pretty much the most important thing in the game. Luckly the "Rod of Recall" can be canceled, meaning you can play it safe by activating it before you start a tough fight (or open a vault or chest), I usually let mine tick down to 4 or 6, that way if I lose half or more of my life in one hit, or get multiple statuses, hopefully my regen infusion can carry me for 6 turns and I'm gone.

Truth be told the only time I really die is when I don't do this.
At the end of the day, I think I've learned that this game requires a pretty balanced approach to win. Meaning my style of play is not ideal (I like maxing one thing and getting godly at it), I'm pretty sure a well balanced character is a must in any race or class.

As far as your particular death is concerned, to possibly coin a phrase: You got TOME'd.

[cctobias]

Its a speed differential of some sort.

Either you got slowed, or he got speeded up or both.

A large number of "inta-gibs" are not actually one shots, rather they are an attack that slows like cripple and you get two or three things coming at you before could have used an active defense you normally would have.

A really high cripple could slow something down by like 65%, not sure if something on normal would do that, but I have done it with strong character builds before.

[DaltonRaccoon]

A stun could have done it too. Stun reduces move speed by 50%, so if you try to take a step while stunned, your enemies will get to take two actions immediately. That would mean you take two ticks from a DOT and two shots from a mage, basically instant death.

They could have been hasted, as the other players have mentioned.

Very few monsters in this game will kill you in a single shot but if you don't have status clears or escapes lined up in case you are stunned/slowed then you will die.

[Lyoncet]

Hmm, based on the feedback and the combat log, I'm going to assume he was hasted. I didn't see mention of any slows or stun so that seems like the most likely culprit. (Plus I didn't try to move so that rules out reduced movement speed statuses.) This is something I would have noticed if I'd done a closer inspection of the creature, correct?

Thanks for the speedy and thorough feedback! I'll know to keep an eye out for that next time. Although having breezed to level 10 as a Stone Warden I'm probably getting dangerously close to feeling overconfident in my durability.

[cctobias]

Hmm, based on the feedback and the combat log, I'm going to assume he was hasted. I didn't see mention of any slows or stun so that seems like the most likely culprit. (Plus I didn't try to move so that rules out reduced movement speed statuses.) This is something I would have noticed if I'd done a closer inspection of the creature, correct?

Thanks for the speedy and thorough feedback! I'll know to keep an eye out for that next time. Although having breezed to level 10 as a Stone Warden I'm probably getting dangerously close to feeling overconfident in my durability.

You need to be careful with this mentality because you can often breeze through most things, including many rares and uniques and then suddenly some particular sort of rare/unique will suddenly do tons more to you than you suspected it.

This will become more true on NM where you think you are super strong, start using auto explore because you don't see why anything would cause you much issue and then get "corner gibbed" and don't see any reason why. This can be especially true for builds that use active defenses of some sort. I have literally died after an auto-explore corner gib and went back and utterly destroyed the thing that got me by preshielding.

You can be one shotted on Insane and Madness but that is more of a consequence of the Talent inflation those difficulties have. Having a talent at level 25 can make a lot of assumptions seen in NM- go out the window. You can get really hard by a skirmisher on Insane+, you can run into Alchemist with range 16 on throw bomb. These difficulties are fundamentally and purposely unfair though.

However it is possible to get "one-shotted" with poor defense even on normal, for example a full flurry from an assassin in stealth can simply kill you. Not that is is uncounterable, just having high armor (say 100) can stop this, but with low mitagation and them stealthed that is 6 crits with enhanced multiplier in one talent. You generally only see this sort of thing with orc assassins/grand master assassins later on in the east. But it is possible for an orc on High Peak towards end of game to do 800 or so damage in one talent, under the exact right conditions. If you are relying on shielding, and you get caught without one, even with say 85% life at level 50 you could get killed in one talent if you missed picking up on a stealthed guy, since sometimes even with good stealth sight they will blink out of view and back into view. You can get hit but a "one shot" by soemthing you didn't think was there after something else took down your shield even you felt you had plenty of life left. That isn't to say there were not a number of mistake made in that scenario, like kill the assassin as soon as you see him and be shielded when you try, but the point is its possible to get WTFBBQd and not really have seen what happened. This is one reason I think people should play through on adventure or exploration be roguelike. Sometimes the log is not that helpful and going back to see what's actually is there is far far more helpful.

[Lyoncet]

Oh, for sure. I'm trying to keep in mind the "laziness kills" attitude that adom drilled into me. ToME seems a lot more forgiving than the older roguelikes, but not actually less likely to WTFPWN you if you get cocky.

[cctobias]

Oh, for sure. I'm trying to keep in mind the "laziness kills" attitude that adom drilled into me. ToME seems a lot more forgiving than the older roguelikes, but not actually less likely to WTFPWN you if you get cocky.

See this is the problem right there, you still think its more forgiving than ADOM. Never forget the game hates you. Even if it reminds you less often. Its not more forgiving, its just more sneaky about when its going to kill you, by lulling you into a false sense of security.

Sure its not going to slowly grind you down or try to kill you at every step. But that is because its sneaky not nice.

[Lyoncet]

I think we're probably disagreeing mostly on definition. ToME won't kill you because you misidentified a shrine or walked down the stairs with a full pack, but it's not less hazardous to cocky playing. I'd call that more forgiving but not less challenging, maybe, although yes the words I chose weren't particularly clear. Either way I think it's mostly down to semantics.

[DaltonRaccoon]

You tried to retrieve an item from your backpack while carrying a gorgon head. You weren't wearing gloves. Do you want your possessions identified?

[cctobias]

I think we're probably disagreeing mostly on definition. ToME won't kill you because you misidentified a shrine or walked down the stairs with a full pack, but it's not less hazardous to cocky playing. I'd call that more forgiving but not less challenging, maybe, although yes the words I chose weren't particularly clear. Either way I think it's mostly down to semantics.

No its not about semantics or about challenge or hardness or any of that.

Rather is an epistemoligical point and it the consquences of human nature in that regard.

In ADOM you KNOW when the game its trying to kill you. The answer to that is "pretty much always".

In TOME you do not KNOW when the is trying to kill you. Even worse the answer, on normal and NM, is really something more like usually not.

ADOM requires far more care than TOME for each action (excluding madness) but you get conditioned into the routine of checking everything because its all trying to kill you all the time (bit of hyperbole but w/e).

In TOME you can easily become conditioned in quite to the opposite, this evenutally gets people killed. Does that make the game harder or easier? I don't actually care, I think those classifications are kind of pointless myself.

ADOM may have sneaky ways of killing you, but its quite honest about the fact that it is trying to kill you. TOME actually is the reverse most of its ways of killing you are quite honest and straightforward, but it can be really sneaky about when something truly dangerous will pop up and pad it with tons of stuff that is not that threatening.

In the end, when we boil it down to likelyhoods, more people are likely to survive extreme but counterable danger when under constant threat than they are randomly placed rare encounters with lethal but still counterable danger.

In the end there are ways to reliably, to some degree, survive in both games. Whether or not people actually wind up doing them is as much a matter of psychology than anything else. Is this more forgiving? On adventure it probably is, on roguelike though dead is dead.

To put it another way when scientists have studied rats they have run a study where one set of rats where fed food on a regular schedule with a button to press to obtain food and another set had a random mechanism in place
for this button to reward with food. The regularly scheduled rats would hit the button in a regular and stable manner, the random set kept hitting the the button over and over and over like crazy neurotics.

Not a perfect analogy but if you line up the lack of threat = food you can see how players can get conditioned into rushing around pushing their direction buttons over and over gaining positive reinforcement each time they one shot an easy monster .