Managed to grab my first win with a Cornac Berserker, played on Normal Roguelike.
I died stupidly in the final battle (could've teleported away or something) but I had both the Blood of Life and the Ring of the Dead in reserve
My character was probably sub-optimal in many ways, and I'd appreciate any tips/criticisms, but I managed to pull it through without too much difficulty.
Any ideas on what to do with my character now? Or on what to play next?
Congrats on the first win! It always feels great. And roguelike no less! I still play on adventurer.
If I were you, I'd use this character as your 'bank' toon, saving all your special items on him and using the item vault to send them to new characters.
Some suggestions for higher level difficulties:
1. First prodigy you took was I Can Carry The World - not necessary. Take Flexible Combat next time and get gloves of warmaking. When they trigger cripple, they attack again. So you get 60% chance of second hit with FC and then 20% of the 60% will hit a third time
2. Your sheet shows no resist penetration. That's fine for normal, but needs to be higher as you go up difficulty levels. On insane/madness it needs to be close to 100%
3. Accuracy of 64 is not high enough for higher difficulties. Perfect strike scales amazingly and I'd always max that to 5/5. you don't need speel shield or unending frenzy imo, so shift from there.
4. APR of 37 is likewise too low for such. Aim for 60+ if you can. Most equipment can boost APR.
5. Stamina is too low and WIL too. Boost stats like WIL with gear
6. Survival tree is better at 3/5/3/0 - that would give you an extra 9 generics, which you could put in an escort tree, like Celestial Light. Or pick a race like ogre to get racials. drop an infusion (regeneration is the weakest of the 5 you have).
Berserkers probably shouldn't put too many points in Combat Veteran since Bloodbath provides a much better version of both Quick Recovery and Fast Metabolism in 1 talent and will pretty much perpetually be active since berserkers have high crit rates anyway. Spell Shield doesn't do too much because of the way saves are scaled - that 58 spell save it claims to be giving you is actually much lower in reality, and you'd be better off using status clearing infusions/runes/tinkers. Unending frenzy is similar to Quick Recovery in that its function is pretty much covered by Bloodbath, and berserkers should already be rolling in stamina regen thanks to Relentless Fury, Bloodbath, and Battle Shout+Second Wind.
Getting 5/5 in both relentless fury and blinding speed will greatly increase your damage output. They both boost movement and attack speed, so it'll be easier to both kill enemies and move in between targets with rush on cooldown. Combine that with cripple (another excellent talent for both damage and utility) and you can easily begin attacking 4-5 times for your target's one action.
You're not going to need Backstab at 5/5 since you'll already have enough crit chance between Berserker Rage, mortal terror, and maxing cunning.
For Combat Techniques, try going 5/1/3-5/5, since blinding speed and perfect strikes are both very good instant buffs to precast before a fight. Precise strikes is kinda meh since you'll get all its benefits elsewhere anyways and it lowers your attack speed, which isn't always great.
In conditioning, I'd recommend going 1/5/X since vitality's regen will get overshadowed by high-level bloodbath and its scaling with talent points isn't that great. Daunting Presence is also kinda lackluster but an okay place to put extra points.
Also, I'd recommend taking a race other than cornac since their extra category point doesn't benefit berserkers that much. Thalore is always a strong choice, though if you've got Ogres they're probably the best race to use overall because all of their racials synergize with berserker - having 6 superpowered inscriptions that also cooldown faster with Writ Large and as you crit is immensely powerful.
On prodigies: Pain Enhancement System is, surprisingly, not all that great for any class that uses strength-based weapons since it doesn't provide the bonus to strength as well, so it won't boost your damage output much, if at all. I Can Carry the World is also not exactly great for berserker, since though the strength boost is kinda nice you don't care about fatigue and carrying capacity will never be a problem on a strength-focused class. I'd certainly recommend Flexible Combat as the best damage-boosting prodigy for Berserker, with something like Draconic Body/Will or Legacy of the Naloren to follow it at 42.
Congrats on the win, though, and best of luck with your future ToME expeditions!
Yeah, I realize that a lot of my skilling choices were sub-par, but most of that had to do with running out of places to put my points in the later levels. I had both combat veteran and conditiioning at 1/5/0/0 for the vast majority if the game, for example, and only filled them up later on; same thing with survival.
In hindsight, you're probably right that I would've been better on putting more points in combat techniques. Thanks for the tips!
As for the generic situation, you could have bought a tree from an escort instead of spending a cat point on warcries but never using it. Also, you somehow only encountered 7 escorts out of 9.
Yep, escorts in certain circumstances (i heard something with close area and doors stuff; but once i get portal to escort in vault in kor'pul) doesn't appear at first zone enter. Although they can appear when you re-enter zone.
