[1.6.6.] The Untouchable ghoul Paradox Mage against Madness

[Tradewind_Rider]

U Can’t Touch This

I, Introduction

Playing on madness is like playing a different game, it is more like to playing chess against a cheating chess software.
You do not play it for winning, because most of the times you will die miserably.
In the last ~8-9 months I only had 3 wins totally (all 3 with adventurers) and I do not count how many deaths I have (mostly with non-adventurers). Maybe 100 or less or more? I really do not count it.
Several of this deaths happened after I put like 20 – 40 hours of gameplay into a run.
So, you will learn to play very slowly and very carefully.

This guide is a modified and improved version of my former guide

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=50483

and describes an incredibly strong build, mainly for madness play.
To get familiar with Tether mechanics, you find information in my former guide.

NOTE: the build itself is very strong, but it does not eliminates the human factor. You have to be very familiar with madness playing to be successful, and due to the RNG factor, success is still not guaranteed.
You can see from the videos below, I was close to death some times.

For those who did not read my former guide, I will give here a


Brief Summary of Tether Tactic

So, what it offers?

a, automatic 560 AoE damage to enemies per turn (with 100 spellpower & 300 paradox, just the skill itself)

With gear & crit, 2 Tethers can easily deal a ~1300-1800 automatic AoE damage per turn at end-game at both locations.
In a longer fight you can set up more tethers, you can teleport more & more times per turn, so this damage will increase & increase if a fight is longer & longer. This is incredibly good in madness, where mid- to late-game the fights are usually long and several of them are very long. The longer the fight is, the more automatic damage you can deal.


b, automatic 2 x AoE Random Warp (pin, stun, blind, confuse) to enemies per turn at both locations

If you set up your later tethers well, you can apply more & more Random Warp per turn on your enemies. So, the longer the fight is, the more automatic debuff you can apply on your enemies.
Automatic Random Warp is an essential thing in madness. On paper this is not a damage reduction, but during the play a significant part of your enemies cannot actually hit you or damage you. All of your enemies around you will be constantly Stunned and/or pinned and/or confused and/or blinded. This is an invaluable damage reduction!


c, continuous Out of Phase (capped resists & detrimental effect duration reduction)

Capped resists are always welcome and the effect duration reduction has a synergy with Dimensional Shift. Due to reduced duration, Dimensional Shift is more likely to clear an effect in 1-2 trigger.


d, automatic 2 x detrimental effect clear per turn

Again, if the fight is longer this will also trigger more & more times. In madness, your enemies will overwhelm you with detrimental effects. Sometimes you can have 10-20 negative effect on you. A free, automatic effect clearing is also essential. Without a continuous and reliable effect clearing you will die.

And for this, you just have to set up your tethers at the start of the fight and recast a new tether at every ~8-10 turns later.


So, how do you set this up?

1, cast Time Stop to gain energy
2, use Ghoulish Leap to leap into position (where probably all or most of the enemies are within 2 tiles from you, so within Tether & Phase Pulse range)
3, cast Redux
4, cast Spatial Tether and tether yourself down
5, cast Dimensional Step and teleport away for minimum 7 tiles into a safe or safer position
6, cast Spatial Tether again and tether yourself down there too

Because your tethers are minimum 7 tiles away, both has 100% chance to trigger at each turn. That means, you will teleport twice per turn and the former mentioned effects will happen (damage, random warp, …) Later, when your Dimensional Step & Tether is not on cooldown, you can teleport into a third location and tether yourself there too… so on…
Of course, this is automatically happens at every turn, so you can act anything else as normal, like casting Attenuate, Temporal Bolt, so on…

Before you learn Redux, you can use Spatial Tether with Wormhole. You just need to tether yourself and set up your wormhole exit under or next to an enemy. This also works through walls. You just have to step inside every turn into your wormhole and you will be immediately teleported back to your tether (what is next to your wormholes entrance). The enemies on the other side will take damage and debuffs from every step you take.


II, Damage handling in madness

II/a, Why a ghoul?

I reached the Orc Prides with my cornac tether-paradox mage, but due to the crazy amount of damage intake at that point I failed.
So, I had to think, check the code and test again to make a better build for madness.
After checking the code for the damage reduction system I also tested it in-game and had the conclusion, the order of damage reduction functions trigger is:

Damage projection:

1., Premonition (just gives Resistance by damage type, what will trigger later)
2., Wards
3., callbackOnTakeDamageBeforeResists talents
4., Affinity healing calculation
5., Resistances by entity type
6., Resistances by damage type
7., Psionic Shields
8., Blocking from Shields
9., Forge Shield
10., Abyssal Shield
11., Antimagic Shield
12., Flat damage reduction
13., Roll With It prodigy
14., Reduction against unseen attackers
15., Gloom-Sanctuary
16., Predator-Mark Prey
17., Flat damage cap
18., CallbackOnTakeDamage talents (Stormshield -> Webs of Fate -> Energy Decomposition)
19., Absolute Resistance

OnTakeHit:

20., Invulnerability (Time Prison)
21., Cancel damage chance
22., Phase Shift
23., Retribution Shield (Sun Paladin)
24., Incoming damage reduction (Snipe)
25., Mitosis
26., Displacement Shield
27., Time Shield
28., Damage Shield
29., Force of Will-Deflection
30., Ice Cube Damage Absorption
31., Solipsism-Dismissal
32., Resonance Field
33., If Cauterize triggered and we are invulnerable, damage value goes here into the effect
34., Solipsism damage to psi is calculated here
35., Clone on hit (e.g. Ooze enemies)
36., Solipsism psi damage is applied here
37., Second Life
38., Eldritch Stone
39., Stone Link
40., CallbackOnHitTalents (Reality Smearing)
41., Unstoppable


On madness, a 3-6000 damage instance late game is not so rare I have experienced 10000 damage instance in High Peak too!

damage.png (33.22 KiB) Viewed 35353 times

And this can happen every turn when you fight with enemies at the Prides or at High Peak!
So, capped resistances with high damage shields won’t save you for sure.

But what can save you is: Flat damage cap (and ghoul resilience is this).

If your character has 1419 maximum life (ghoul paradox mage level 50), that means:

a, ghoul resilience (1419 x 0.5)-> maximum 710 damage instance
b, webs of fate (710 x 0.67)-> maximum 476 damage instance
c, energy decomposition (476 - 66) -> maximum 410 damage instance
d, reality smearing (410 x 0.7) -> maximum 287 damage instance

You cannot take higher damage instance into your life than 287 if your webs of fate is up!

Notice that: your ghoul resilience, your webs of fate and energy decomposition also affects your shields (displacement, time and damage).
So, your damage shields are also way powerful, because you cannot take higher damage instance into your damage shields than 410.


II/b, Why Untouchable

I found The Untouchable in the Ruined Halfling Complex and it is just a tier 3 artifact, and it’s not rare at all (it has a rarity of just 200).
It has a unique property of giving you a damage shield EVERY TURN, if you take damage directly to your life, if the damage (so total damage not just 1 damage instance) was higher than 20% of your maximum life. (Calculated from the difference between your life
from last turn and this turn)

NOTE 1: every turn, so it has NO COOLDOWN
NOTE 2: It not gives you the shield immediately after taking damage. You will just get the shield once every turn, when it acts

So, we have a very effective damage reduction system so far that is described in the II/a part. We cannot take a damage instance higher than 287 damage to our life if our maximum life is 1419.

287 is the 20.22% of 1419.

So we cannot take a higher damage instance into our life than 20.22 % of our max life.
And The Untouchable will trigger every time when we take damage into our life more than 20% of our maximum life.
PERFECT!!!

If we just take 1 damage instance of infinite, which will be just 287.
Then The Untouchable will give us a damage shield of 287 x 1.3 = 373 shield power.
As I mentioned before we also cannot take a higher damage instance to our shields than 410.
So, the Untouchable is just making us TWO TIMES tougher.

If we taking more damage instances, so higher total damage, then the damage shield will be also way stronger. I got 1000-1800 shields also during my run from The Untouchable.

It is very important to take Cauterize because of multiple damage instances.
With stormshields, damage shields and the former mentioned reduction system we can take ~10-15 infinite high damage instances too each turn, but this is MADNESS. Sometimes we will take more than 15 high damage instances per turn, when there are multiply enemies. We have to take Cauterize.

So, we are very tough now, but we are losing life.
We should heal also continuously, no?
Yes!


II/c, Healings

We will have our continuous healings from 2 sources: Attenuate & Bloodcaller.

Bloodcaller is an artifact that is accessible to everyone. Not a very rare artifact, you do not need luck to have that.

From Attenuate, we will have a primer healing and secondary healing due to Bloodcaller.
The primer healing can be a 200 – 300 (or a bit more) healing per turn, this is the beneficial effect.
The secondary healing can be a 20 – 70 (or more) heal per turn if we stacked a bit Attenuate on the enemies and have some extra healing mod.

And also we have other damage sources, not just Attenuate.
Mainly Spatial Tethers and Attenuate will do the damage to enemies.
Tethers can hit on late game „relatively hard” that means, we can get a ~1000 net damage from them.
Note, this triggers multiple times and has an incredibly good area of effect.
I received like 100 - 125 heal per turn through Bloodcaller & Tethers in the final fight against the Sorcerers.
And Tethers dealing damage automatically at each turn, you do not have to do anything.

Also, count on a big heal from Echoes from the Past… that will reset your life to maximum.

So, with Tethers, Attenuate & Bloodcaller we can heal like 300 – 600 per turn, continuously.
We just have to deal damage continuously, but that is what we doing with Tethers & Attenuate.

NOTE: look for damage affinities in gear. Because of how effectively we reduce damage, it is a very good source of healing.


III, Stats

Magic & Willpower first. The 2 has equal importance.
Afterwards go for Cunning for extra mindpower & crit chance.


IV, Talents and other ghoulish things

Playing as a ghoul is a CURSE at the first part of the game, really.
You will just experience the main disadvantage the 80% global speed, and you won’t really notice the flat damage cap, because your resilience will just trigger very few times. Enemy damage is not so high here, but we choose ghoul because of the last part of the game.
You can learn Retch to eliminate the speed nerf, but it’s not necessary.
Basically it’s a bit harder to reach level 25 with a ghoul than with a cornac, but it’s still doable.
However ghouls also offer us some more benefits:

Poison resistance 80% -> okay, it’s nice to have
Bleed resistance 100% -> also nice to have
Fear resistance 100% -> fear is very rare, but it’s nice to have
Stun/Freeze resistance 50% -> okay, this is what we looking for!

Due to if we are freezed, we CAN NOT TELEPORT, freezing is just ruins our whole strategy.
We can get a 94% freeze resist just from being a ghoul & a level 3 Matter Weaving.
With a Bloodstone imbued jewelry we can reach easily 154 %, and then we just need another 46% from another source.
So, with a ghoul it’s easy to cap your freeze resist.
I mean CAPPING = minimum 200% !!!


Talents:

My final talent sheet is:

talents.png (201.87 KiB) Viewed 35353 times

UPDATE: in 1.7, you will need 5 points in Time Stop and 5 points in Wormhole for the same breakpoints


As a ghoul we have not so much points as a cornac, so I totally skipped Gravity tree. It’s not important for us now.

Also, I did not unlock Timeline Threading, it’s also not necessary to have.

I did not unlock Stasis, but instead went for another inscription.
This is because we will have continuous damage shields through The Untouchable.

Note, unlock Stasis & going for a 1,5,0,0 is also a viable option, but I prefer more if my defenses are paradox-independent. Time Shield is strong, but in many cases our paradox will be super high (due to Reality Smearing) and that means we can only cast spells when we have Hidden Resources on (33% of the time).
Nothing is worse if you really need a defense up immediately and you have Time Shield not on cooldown, but your paradox is ~ 1000 …
So, I went with 4 defensive inscriptions instead.

At level 10, we have to unlock Flux.
At level 20, Energy and at level 34 Spellbinding.
We will need high spellpower against The Master (~102 spellsave),
and we need to Extend our Tethers as fast as we can.

a, Important skills to get from level 1 – 11:

Spatial Tether lvl 4, Wormhole level 4
1,1,1,0 in Matter
1,1,1,0 in Timetravel
2 points in Precognition
some points in Dimensional Shift

b, Important skills to get from level 11 – 20:

1,2,4,1 in Flux
get 2 points in Disintegration
get 3 & 3 points in Temporal Reprieve & Echoes from the Past
get Time Stop
Phase Pulse level 4

c, Important skills to get from level 20 – 30:

get Redux level 4 the sooner you can
get Entropy min. level 2
get Time Stop level 4

d, Important skills to get from level 30 – :

Dimensional Step level 4 for swapping
Temporal Reprieve level 5
get Spellbinding:
bind Attenuate to Empower
bind Spatial Tether to Extension
bind Webs of Fate to Matrix
and after Redux & Entropy start building up Fate Weaving tree


V, Prodigies

We have to choose Hidden Resource at level 25 with a paradox mage.
We have to choose Cauterize at level 42.
There is no other choice for madness.


VI, Gear

At first stage, go for Out of Phase. With 2-3 pieces you can easily cap it (40%).
This will really help you to survive at the early & mid-stages of the game.

This build is not focusing on spell-cooldown reduction at all. However I could use a total 30%, I just did not used it.
I found my 60% freeze resist amulet better than Zemekkys’.
For the most of the game I used a double undeterred shoe. It was just so better than a spellbinding. For endgame I used the Aetherwalk.

[ NOTE: Do not try to abuse the Aetherwalk & Wormhole combo in madness with a movement infusion (if you are not a ghoul) in madness! Against late game enemies the damage is totally low and Wyrmic enemies will have 2000 – 3400 % movement speed, so you will be just dead at no time.
Wormhole + movement infusion is just good if you use it under Time Stop to debuff enemies with Phase Pulse. ]

Also, instead of a quickening pickaxe, I used a mindblast torque.
Silencing your big 3 nemesis (Archmage, Corruptor, Cultist of Entropy) is an effective way to eliminate them fast.

So, look always for good mindblast torques and helms with Circle of Sanctity.

Look for temporal damage penetration, magic, willpower, spellpower, spellsurge.

Look for Stun/Freeze immunity mainly and Silence immunity also.

Look for healing mod.

Look for damage affinities, because it’s very strong with this build!
You cannot just be invulnerable, but can heal like thousands from Affinity.
Imagine an 8000 lightning damage instance. You will take just 287 damage from it, but you will heal 1600 if you have a 20% damage affinity.

I managed to get the Windborn Azurite, but unfortunately I had no Glowing Core …
I killed at least 4 Searing Horrors in this run, but still 0…

If you found The Untouchable, extra damage shield power items are also good.

Because Spatial Tether damage trigger is a spell that you cast, look for on-hit-spell items. The Crystle's Astral Bindings is an incredibly strong early game gloves for a paradox mage. I still used it when I was at the Prides.

New imbued staffs are also very effective on this build, but good ones are incredibly rare, and you want good temporal damage penetration that Rod of Sarrilon gives you.

NOTE: if you manage to get a Suncloak imbued staff somehow...
In this case you should also use spell cooldown reduction items. I am not writing about this further, because finding a Suncloak imbued staff is very very rare, so it’s very specific and situational.
(Also, it’s just way too OP)


Fixed Artifacts:

a, The Untouchable: I already described it. If you find it, use it. It’s end-game BiS.

b, Umbraphage: This lantern is also end-game BiS and also just a tier 3 artifact!
It gives us 20% darkness damage affinity AND it totally eliminates the darkness that the Dúathedlens casts. In late game, it needs 2 turns for that (due to the crazy darkness power the demons have), but it’s a key element for this build. It is a life saver, because we need line of sight for Dimensional Step!

c, Rod of Sarrilon: As for any paradox mage build, this staff is awesome. You can find a better random staff of course, but I really like everything in this staff. The -1 cooldown for Attenuate is just very good, it increases the damage output and healing output significantly.

d, Aetherwalk: Not really necessary, but it adds a good improvement for our damage. Like 20-40%, so it’s very good. Only bad thing is you will barely have both good temporal and arcane damage penetration. The extra Phase Door is also very nice to have! If you find it, use it if you do not need undeterred shoe to have the 200% freeze immunity.

e, Bloodcaller: Easy to get and it helps us a lot. I explained it before. Get it and use it.

f, Windborn Azurite, Glowing Core & Goedalath Rock: Damage affinities are welcome and extra healing mod also.


VII, Inscriptions

You want very good defensive inscriptions.
Basically buy the best shielding runes at first. At the early game those are better than Stormshields. Later buy and use also Stormshield runes.
From early to mid-game a Biting Gale rune and a good Blink can be also useful.
I used 2 Shielding & 2 Stormshield at the end and just switched 1 Shielding to the Dissipation just before the Sorcerers.


VIII, Tips for special teleport areas

a, Vaults

You cannot teleport into vaults, but you can teleport in vaults. So immediately when you opened the door, cast Time Stop and jump inside with Ghoulish Leap.
Cast Redux, Tether, Dimensional Step, Tether like usual and you can fight there as normal.

Just be aware: enemies can knockback you for 15-20 tiles!
If you have your Tethers, but you are knocked back to outside from the vault, then all of your Tethers are useless, because you cannot teleport to any of your Tethers!

b, Sher’Tul Fortress and Bloodcaller boss

In these areas you cannot teleport. Therefore I suggest to kill the Weirdling Beast only when you came back from the Far East and killed the Corrupted Sandwyrm. (so, when you are way stronger than these enemies)

NOTE: However you cannot teleport, your Tethers will trigger the AoE damage if you are far enough from them. So you can still use the Tethers to deal damage.

c, Charred Scar

This area was really enjoyable and fun!
Before doing this, I was a bit worried how will I do it actually. So, I checked the code of Charred Scar.
The tiles there have a parameter “no_teleport_south = true”.
That means for teleports:

if game.level.data.no_teleport_south and y + dist > self.y then
y = self.y - math.ceil(dist)
end

So, every y-coordinate in a teleport that would go to south, will be reflected back to north instead.

So, I just run through the whole area first with Ghoulish Leaps & normal walk and BANISHED every enemy!
Banish teleports enemies randomly, with a minimum range.
Due to the fact, the east-west direction is very short here, usually random teleports will find a valid target more in the south or in the north.
But every teleport that would go to south it will go to north instead… Perfect! Every enemy will be teleported to north.

NOTE: After completing the quest (around half-time), I came back here and killed every enemy. You can set up Tethers here also, but just with a Horizontal placement (with same y-coordinates).


IX, Tips against Archmages, Corruptors, Cultists

These classes can end your run, if you do not treat them seriously and do not negate them.
Most of the times you will stun/confuse/blind enemies but the sooner or later you will experience the real power of a level 45 Disperse Magic, Corrupted Negation or Switch.
Disperse Magic and Corrupted Negation will deactivate/remove 10-13 of your sustains/effects.
Switch will „just” reduce the duration of all of your beneficial effects by 9-11. (so you can easily lose your Tether Effect)

What you can do is using a Mindblast Torque / Helm with Circle of Sanctity to silence them. You can extend silence with Seal Fate, so it’s a very effective strategy, but you have to act first, before they use these skills.

If you lost your Tether effect, you can go into Temporal Reprieve and cast Tether there on yourself. If there are still Tethers in the normal map and you have the beneficial effect on you when you arrive back from the Reprieve, then all the remaining Tethers will function well.
This is because if you lose your beneficial effect, the Tether map effect is not instantly removed (again I guess the missing onTickEnd function). So you can cast also Time Stop & recast another Tether too, not just Temporal Reprieve.

If you lost your Tether map actors also, and cannot go into the Reprieve or cast Time Stop (while your Tether, Redux and Dimensional Step is not on cooldown) then you have to retreat somewhere and just play for time. You can dig a hole, go there and cast a Materialize Barrier to gain 4-5 more turns. Meanwhile you can cast Energy Absorption on yourself too, because you want your Tether and Dimensional Step useable, while in this situation you do not care about other skills.

If you want to prevent the annoying effect of atropy, you should also apply entropy on a Cultist immediately.


X, Escorts

Escorts die in madness at no time. So, do not count on them. This build is totally independent from escorts. I usually manage to do 1-2 escorts only on my runs. You should worry about your (un)life and you do not have the luxury of caring about a dumb escort.


XI, Bug Reports

There was 2 from myself at Dreadfell level 6. The other me was not a Temporal Clone, and it blocked movement. Also, it did not act anything and enemies totally ignored it too. Every time I moved it looked like it wanted to merge with my character. I guess some anomaly caused this bug.

An Arcane Eye casted by an enemy in Rak’Shor pride stayed there for infinite long.

At Grushnak Pride level 3 when I entered into the 2nd vault, the „generating level” went crazy and I guess the game freezed. Force quitting solved the problem, I got my last save that was just made when I changed level from the former vault, so fortunately I did not lose anything.

In the final fight, in some tiles there were a: Radiance aura, multiply acid AoE, multiply Bathe in Light and also Glacial Vapour. (so many many map effects at the same time)
This resulted in the Glacial Vapour’s visual effect remained on those tiles after the fight, but there was no damage.


XII, Playthrough

Basically, you should start every fight with:
Time Stop, Leap into position, Redux, Tether, Dimensional Step away for ~7 tiles, Tether again.

In rotation, you should cast Attenuate, Energy Absorption and Temporal Bolt.
Cast Echoes when it will be effective, recast your Tethers when needed.
But everything is in my videos, you can check there how I fought.

NOTE: Extra cooldown reduction from Energy Absorption & Temporal Bolt is very important, because you can get effects that increases your cooldowns or halving your cooling downs. You want access to your Tether, Dimensional Step, … as fast as possible.

I give here my order of playthrough, but you can modify this if you wish:

1, Starting Zone, Trollmire, Lumberjack Village, Derth Arena, Norgos Lair:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkHHW4nbt9o

2, Scintillating Caves (Alternate), Ruins of Kor’Pul:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmNFBgQOmBs

3, Heart of the Gloom, Rhaloren Camp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G92m4cUV-Ug

4, Sandworm Lair:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T75Ly-PiFgw

5, Derth Elementals, Lost Merchant, Old Forest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txHnOskRwZw

6, Maze (Alternate):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHwBBgFgDAU

7, Daikara, Slavers Compound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5r_FMGrutk

8, Ruined Halfling Complex:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z07LkAzq8VQ

9, Old Conclave Vault:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSsyv2j6Tf8

10, Dreadfell, levels 1-7, with vaults:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS02iM6ylpQ

11, Dreadfell levels 8-9, Master, Ukruk, Tempest Peak, Celia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfR_5-tGpB8

12, Spellblaze, Zigur, Temporal Rift, Ruined Dungeon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKQ4MBEMuRg

13, Reknor, Unremarkable Cave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GnOEUD1AeM

14, Vor Armoury, Briagh’s Lair:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvtokoCObco

15, Backup Guardians, Scourged Pits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Jv_e8VAF0

16, Tannen’s Quest, Lake of Nur, Aluin the Fallen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_7KB7QnTWQ

17, Ardhungol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIhuZqz4T74

18, Rak’Shor Pride:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWydJ1RJcwQ

19, Valley of the Moon quest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KHsBTft_R8

20, Gorbat Pride:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ0PZJiOtk8

21, Vor Pride with Fearscape Platform:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7YNvG-EKYM

22, Shadow Crypt, Flooded Cave, Temple of Creation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN8PxKzdK44

23, Erúan, Charred Scar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx4jle6MtWM

24, Massok, Elven Ruins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTaPe2Q3YOY

25, Grushnak Pride:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQKryKdDp8

26, Slime Tunnels, Occult Egress:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cKQT0lrKPk

27, High Peak, levels 1 - 5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1AdqwbPnHs

28, High Peak, levels 6 – 10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2qJCUr6DL0

29, Final fight, Entropy, Atamathon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjuH1PpCI6c


If someone is interested in my characters’ end-game stats, in the 29. final video:

From 58:17 to 58:45 there is the talent sheet.
From 58:46 to 59:40 there are all my equipped gear
From 59:52 to 59:57 there is the GENERAL sheet of my character.
From 59:59 to 1:00:05 there is the ATTACK sheet of my character.
From 1:00:08 to 1:00:15 there is the DEFENSE sheet of my character.


So, this is it. This is my play in a nutshell:

summary.png (42.29 KiB) Viewed 35353 times

The guide is already too long, I cannot tell most of the things in details. If something is not clear from the video-playthrough or you have any questions about the build/strategy just ask.

Again, I would like to thank for all the people in the Discord channel who answered my questions.
Also in the addons thread about coding. Understanding the math, the mechanics and the ability to search and understand most of the things in the code was crucial.


EDIT:

I added a brief summary about tether tactic in the introduction section for those who did not read my former guide

I added a detail at the end of the guide about where my end-game character sheets can be found in the final video

[1.6.7.] patch has no changes for this build

Updated for [1.7.2.]

[whitelion]

Very cool build and nice guide, well written and easy to read. Congrats on beating madness with a non-adventurer class. You mentioned that you can only really cast spells when Hidden Resources is up because you'll have super high paradox most of the time due to Reality Smearing which makes sense. What do you do on your other turns? Sure you can Temporal Reprieve sometimes, but that has a fixed cooldown of 40 so I imagine you can't do it all the time.

[tabs]

Too bad that you're playing offline(?) and your character isn't in the vault. I'd have liked to take a look.

Also, what is a "radiance" type cloak?

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi! Thanks

I mentioned, "many times" my paradox was super high, and these many times means "only" the really tough fights,
when I took crazy total damage to my life continously. (so, many times the 287 or less)

If you watch just the last video about the fight with the sorcerers, the entropy and the atamathon, you can see
my paradox is not high against the Entropy, but it is against the sorcerers and against the atamathon.

Against the Entropy it also went down even below 300 sometimes, so I "overreduced" it with Induce Anomaly.
This is becasue the Entropy couldn't deal significant damage to me.
The super high paradox is of course happening at the Orc Prides and when I fought against some
crazy uniques/randbosses.

Unfortunately Reality Smearing (the paradox conversion) is stacking exactly the same way as Attenuate does,
so if you take more and more damage to your life while you still have the effect, then the paradox DoT will be also higher and higher.
That's why Temporal Reprieve is very useful, because usually you are not taking damage there.
But there are some cases when you arrive to the Reprieve with 1000 paradox (when Hidden Resources is up),
so you will go back also with like 700-750 paradox (still full or close to full failure).


When my paradox was super high, I recast my Tether under Hidden Resurces. (Dimensional Step to a clear tile then Tether)
Due to paradox modifier affects the duration of Tethers + I used Extension on them, I got a 16 turn duration Spatial Tether
effect with super high paradox. That means, I could maintain my chain-of-tethers with just 1 new recast at every 15-16 turns
(so once per Hidden Resources actiation).
Ofc, then I cast everything under Hidden Resources that is important: Seal Fate, Webs of Fate, Entropy if needed, Reprieve if needed,
Attenuate, so on...

On NON-Hidden Resources turns I am just simply pressed "5".
I am also pressed wait several times during fights.
Wait is a tactical choice, if you cannot cast anything that is useful in the situation.
Becasue Tethers deal damage automatically, clears effects from you automatically, apply debuff on enemies
automatically, this character is capable of winning many fights even with skipping most of the turns.



On the 29. final video, you can check every sheet of my character.

From 58:17 to 58:45 you can see the talent sheet.

From 58:46 to 59:40 you can see all my equipped gear

From 59:52 to 59:57 you can see the GENERAL sheet of my character.

From 59:59 to 1:00:05 you can see the ATTACK sheet of my character.

From 1:00:08 to 1:00:15 you can see the DEFENSE sheet of my character.

But you can see these sheets many times during all my videos too.


I also did not understand the orange Radiance with ego too.
Then I asked after it at the Discord channel.
People said that it is some kind of a bug when you are at the Scourged Pits or in other Tentacle Type areas,
you can get Fixed Artifacts with ego or egos from those areas.
Funny enough I also found the normal Radiance too.
The orange Radiance was an okay cloak but I used to get better usually on my runs.
It had some magic, willpower, spellpower and 10% temporal damage penetration.
But in madness, I usually get something better (~30% penetration, 20-30% temporal damage, 50 spellpower ...)
Not this time.

[tabs]

Hey, hi! Thanks
On the 29. final video, you can check every sheet of my character.

From 58:17 to 58:45 you can see the talent sheet.

From 58:46 to 59:40 you can see all my equipped gear

From 59:52 to 59:57 you can see the GENERAL sheet of my character.

From 59:59 to 1:00:05 you can see the ATTACK sheet of my character.

From 1:00:08 to 1:00:15 you can see the DEFENSE sheet of my character.

But you can see these sheets many times during all my videos too.


I also did not understand the orange Radiance with ego too.
Then I asked after it at the Discord channel.
People said that it is some kind of a bug when you are at the Scourged Pits or in other Tentacle Type areas,
you can get Fixed Artifacts with ego or egos from those areas.
Funny enough I also found the normal Radiance too.
The orange Radiance was an okay cloak but I used to get better usually on my runs.
It had some magic, willpower, spellpower and 10% temporal damage penetration.
But in madness, I usually get something better (~30% penetration, 20-30% temporal damage, 50 spellpower ...)
Not this time.

Ah, gotcha. Maybe link those as timestamps in the video descriptions?

That stuff with fixedarts getting egos is really interesting. A corner case that only appears reliably in the extreme scaling conditions of madness?

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

If I remember well, a guy showed me an orange fixedart gauntlet with egos,
and I am sure the guy is not playing on madness.

So, I think this bug is independent from difficulty, maybe just very rare
mainly because it can only trigger in Tetacle-Zones.
Then if you are in a Tentacle-Zone, a Fixedart has to trigger in the Zone (RNG %).
And if a fixedart triggered in the Zone then this bug has to trigger too (RNG %).

[btonasse]

Hi! Thank you for your very comprehensive bug report.
Unfortunately, the resilience flat cap applying after shields is contrary to the vision of the developers (see : https://git.net-core.org/tome/t-engine4 ... 5b48d770fa ), and not how it has worked for several major versions including 1.5 where shields, webs and decomposition would all be applied first, leaving only smearing to cap your damage taken at 1/3rd of max life and making Untouchable useless. It seems to have been changed silently.
It's nice that you've brought this to peoples' attention to this, since no one would ever play a ghoul otherwise; though sadly for you this makes your run about as relevant as the 65000 distortion bolt crit mult double dipper solipsist.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

First of all, you should define what shields are you speaking?
If you see my list of damage reduction functions, you can see:

1, Wards
2, Iceblock
3, Affinity healing calculates heal here
4, Resistances
5, Psionic Shields
6, Block
7, Flat damage reduction
8, Flat damage cap
9, Stormshield
10, Webs of Fate
11, Energy Decomposition
12, Absolute Resistance
13, Displacement Shield
14, Time Shield
15, Damage Shield
16, Reality Smearing
17, Affinity healing is done here


So, Flat Damage Cap is triggering AFTER PSIONIC SHIELDS
And Flat Damage Cap is triggering AFTER SHIELDS (so, after BLOCK)

But Flat Damage Cap triggers BEFORE DAMAGE SHIELDS.

Which one are you speaking?

Your link is a 6 years old link, and the title just says: "Flat damage cap% is now applied after shields"
And this is totally correct, flat damage cap is applied after both PSIONIC SHIELDS and after SHIELDS (block).

damage2.png (186.81 KiB) Viewed 34962 times

This image is from the combat log from the fight against the Atamathon. You can see this in the video too.

What you can see here, when the Atamathon damages me, I took:

1., 7644 RESILIENCE Damage (so, Ghoul resilience blocked this much)

2., 234 WEBS OF FATE Damage (so, Webs of Fate negated this much)

3., 75 DISSIPATED Damage (so, Energy Decomposition negated this much)

4., 120 CONVERTED Damage (so, Reality Smearing negated this much and converted into paradox)

5., 281 PHYSICAL Damage (so, I took totally 281 damage into my life as physical damage from this damage instance)

The other few really low damage instances are from a proc.

So, you can see: Ghoul Resilience took 7644 damage
It is absolutely triggers before Webs of Fate, and Reality Smearing, becasue
Webs of Fate just negated 234 damage and Reality Smearing just negated 120 damage.

damage4.png (45.43 KiB) Viewed 34962 times

This next image is from also 1.6.6., during testing the damage reduction.
As you can see when the Orc Mage-Hunter hits me, I took:

1., 2130 Resilience Damage (so again, Ghoul Resilience negated this much)

2., 235 Webs of Fate damage

3., 74 Dissipated damage

4., 400 to TIME (so, my Time Shield took 400 damage only)

5., And 0 PHYSICAL damage from that damage insctance

So here I did not take any damage into my life. Yo can see, Reality Smearing did not trigger at all.
Again, Ghoul Resilience negated 2130 damage and the other reductors just negated very small amount
compared to Ghoul Resilience.

As you can see, my Ghoul Resilience negated 2130 damage and my Time Shield negated 400 damage
while I did not take any damage to my life from that damage instance.

Ghoul Resilience is triggering before Time Shield.

Also, before Damage Shields, becasue Time Shield is triggering before damage shields.

damage5.png (53.09 KiB) Viewed 34962 times

This image is also from testing, but now I did not have Time Shield, just a weak, 130 power Damage Shield.

As you can see, Ghoul Resilience again negated the most, I took:

1., 587 Resilience Damage

2., 235 Webs of Fate damage

3., 74 Dissipated damage

4., 130 ABSORBED Damage (that was my Damage Shield, and it was not enough strong)

5., 81 Converted Damage (so, now Reality Smearing triggers, becasue my damage shield did not negated all the damage)

6. And I took 189 PHYSICAL Damage into my life from that damage instance.


So, the damage reduction order is exactly functioning in the order I described.
You can see the Combat Log during your fights and you can see the same there.


The Webs of Fate 235 damage is exactly the 33% of the 50% of my life.
50% of my life is 710.
235 is the 33% of 710. (so, just 475 damage left)
Then Energy Decomposition negated 74 damage (475 - 74 = 401 damage remained)
Then my damage shield took 130 damage (401 - 130 = 271 damage remained)
Then Reality Smearing triggered and converted the 30% of the damage (271 x 0.3 = 81 converted damage)
So, just 271 - 81 = 190 damage remained that I took as Phyiscial damage into my life.

The +1/-1 is coming from mathematical rounding.


The order is:

1. Ghoul Resilience

2. Webs of Fate

3. Energy Decomposition

4. Damage Shields (Displacement -> Time -> Damage shield)

5. Reality Smearing



Also, you wrote this too:

"leaving only smearing to cap your damage taken at 1/3rd of max life and making Untouchable useless."

I have to tell you, Reality Smearing is NOT GIVING a DAMAGE CAP.
Reality Smearing is negating the 30% of the damage from a damage instance.
It is not connected to your maximum life at all, it is not a flat damage cap at all.

For example, you have a maximum life of 1500 and you have Reality Smearing sustained.
And then you take a damage instance of 6000.
Reality Smearing will negate the 30% of it, so it will negate 1800 damage and convert it to paradox.
Then you will take the remaining 4200 damage and you will DIE.


I hope you have a better understanding about the damage reducing mechanics now.
If not, just ask and I will gladly help.

[btonasse]

Hey, hi!

First of all, you should define what shields are you speaking?
If you see my list of damage reduction functions, you can see:

1, Wards
2, Iceblock
3, Affinity healing calculates heal here
4, Resistances
5, Psionic Shields
6, Block
7, Flat damage reduction
8, Flat damage cap
9, Stormshield
10, Webs of Fate
11, Energy Decomposition
12, Absolute Resistance
13, Displacement Shield
14, Time Shield
15, Damage Shield
16, Reality Smearing
17, Affinity healing is done here


So, Flat Damage Cap is triggering AFTER PSIONIC SHIELDS
And Flat Damage Cap is triggering AFTER SHIELDS (so, after BLOCK)

But Flat Damage Cap triggers BEFORE DAMAGE SHIELDS.

Which one are you speaking?

Your link is a 6 years old link, and the title just says: "Flat damage cap% is now applied after shields"
And this is totally correct, flat damage cap is applied after both PSIONIC SHIELDS and after SHIELDS (block).

Here's the order of everything relevant to such a character in 1.5:
1. Wards
2. Affinity is calculated
3. Resistances
4. Flat DR
5. Webs of Fate and Energy Decomposition happen in the same step
6. Time Shield
7. Damage Shield
8. Flat damage cap
9. Reality Smearing
10. Affinity healing is recieved
This is consistent with jenx's code diving results - http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=47993

You're correct that it works that way in 1.6. The cap was moved to the end of the projector instead of the end of takeHit for some nebulous reason and it could have been an incidental effect caused by any of the hundreds of commits. It has to be unintended since it extends all the degeneracy with die at and resilience (the only reason why anyone would seriously play ghoul) to degeneracy with all damage shields for obvious reasons and who would want that?

Also, you wrote this too:

"leaving only smearing to cap your damage taken at 1/3rd of max life and making Untouchable useless."

I have to tell you, Reality Smearing is NOT GIVING a DAMAGE CAP.
Reality Smearing is negating the 30% of the damage from a damage instance.
It is not connected to your maximum life at all, it is not a flat damage cap at all.

For example, you have a maximum life of 1500 and you have Reality Smearing sustained.
And then you take a damage instance of 6000.
Reality Smearing will negate the 30% of it, so it will negate 1800 damage and convert it to paradox.
Then you will take the remaining 4200 damage and you will DIE.


I hope you have a better understanding about the damage reducing mechanics now.
If not, just ask and I will gladly help.

I was just saying that Smearing was the only ability on the list that worked after the flat damage cap back then.

Moderator note: This post has been edited to remove personal attacks.

[Tradewind_Rider]

Hey, hi!

Thank you for your more detailed and better worded point of view. Now I understood better what you want to say. I will reply for the different topics that you mentioned. Excuse me because my answer will be a bit long, but detailed.

I don't know, probably the damage shields that are actually relevant to the character you posted?

Here's the order of everything relevant to such a character in 1.5:

A, First Topic:

First of all, if you check the title of this guide, you can see:

[1.6.6.] …

So, to make it clear, this guide is a 1.6.6. guide.
I never mentioned 1.4. or 1.5. or any other patches in my guide.

So, you confused me.
I have to ask, why are you talking about 1.5 mechanics and why are you linking a 6 years old link about the damage reduction mechanics?
This a 1.6.6. guide.

As you should know, the game is changing with every new patch, with every new version.

The ghoul remake was made when 1.6 came out.
Here is the link:

https://te4.org/blogs/darkgod/2019/10/n ... n-released

You can see in the details: “- Revise Ghouls”

1.6 came out at 24.10.2019. You can see the date below the title.
So, this mechanic change was made almost 4 months ago, and was not made silently as you said.
Also this was made by will, a developer did this, so this was not a “nebulous reason”.

I chatted with him at the Discord channel about the new ghoul changes, so I know for sure he made it by will.
I advise you to join to the Discord channel, you can ask there any questions and the developers are also present there, so you can ask directly them. You can get reliable and fresh new information about the game. It will really help you!


The only reason I can see that you are talking about 1.5 mechanics in a 1.6.6. guide is: you are still playing with 1.5. too.

That is okay, no problem with it. So:


------- THIS IS JUST FOR ToME 1.5 AND JUST FOR YOU -------

So, okay then look a little bit closer your questions about 1.5 damage reduction mechanics, maybe it can help you in your 1.5 play:

So, you are saying in 1.5 the order of triggering was different, it was (I just use the ones that I used):

1, Affinity heal calculation
2, Resistances
3, Webs of Fate
4, Energy Decomposition

(You are saying WoF & ED are triggering at the same time, but that is IMPOSSIBLE, everything is triggering in a direct order. But I will investigate now just very high damage instances so the order is almost irrelevant now due to Energy Decomposition is just negating a small amount of damage)

5, Damage Shields (Displacement -> Time -> Damage)
6, Flat Damage Cap
7, Reality Smearing
8, And after damage, Affinity Heal


So, what should you be aware:

The Differences:


2, Resistances:

NOTE 1: This build is teleporting continuously, so you have Out of Phase continuously!
(-> capped all resistances)

NOTE 2: Also, in 1.5. Out of Phase did not have a cap on Activation, just on Merge.
So by continuously manually deactivate the effect before every teleport, you can have a 100% Out of Phase all the time.
This was very strong because this means you always have 70% resist all, very high defense AND YOU ARE IMMUNE TO ALL DETRIMENTAL EFFECT!!!

You can have a 100% detrimental effect duration reduction continuously that makes you immune to ALL EFFECT, because the duration is set to 0, so the effect is not applied on you at all.


3, Webs of Fate:

Webs of Fate is dealing significantly higher damage to enemies, so you still want it bind into Matrix like I did in 1.6.6.

In 1.6.6. Webs of Fate is just dealing ~235 damage against all enemies, because it is triggering after Ghoul Resilience.
But in 1.5 , you can basically KILL ENEMIES with Webs of Fate.
For example you take a 10 000 damage instance, Webs of Fate will deal 3300 damage to the enemy, not just 235! This is significant.
Meanwhile you still have a flat damage cap that will trigger later, so you still cannot be one-shotted, you are still very tough.
So, Webs of Fate is much much better offensively in 1.5!


4, Energy Decomposition:

Just significant against smaller damage instances, but you take many many smaller damage instance in madness, so still worth to take it. Many times x small effect is significant.


5, Then Damage Shields:

Damage Shields are less significant against very high damage instances in 1.5, yes. But they are very good against smaller damage instances.

NOTE: you are not just taking 8000 & 10 000 damage instances in madness.
You are continuously taking also smaller but many damage instances too.
A 12 x 200 damage instance attack is also dangerous!
So, Damage Shields (& The Untouchable) are far from useless in 1.5 madness.
They are also triggering after resistances and after Webs of Fate & Decomposition, yo you still have good synergies for them.


6, Flat Damage Cap (ghoul resilience):

NOTE 1: In 1.5, you did not have an extra 100 life bonus for madness, your life total at level 50 will be just 1319.
So, that means you cannot take a higher damage instance than 660 from this point.


7, Reality Smearing:

So, just this triggers after Ghoul Resilience.
That means you can just take 660 x 0.7 = a 462 damage instance maximum into your life.
(With the former mentioned 1319 life total)

That means, if you use only a “- 68 die_at” gear then you can take totally 3 infinite high damage instance without dying (or without Cauterize triggering)
(462 x 3 = 1386 damage, 1319 max life – 1386 damage = -67 life)

So, you said: ghoul was bad in 1.5 madness.

It seems, if you are not a ghoul, you will die instantly (or cauterize will trigger instantly) if you take a very high damage instance.
Taking a very high (6 – 10 000 damage) damage instance is very likely in 1.5 madness mid-late game.

Meanwhile if you are a ghoul, you can take 3 infinite high damage instances and you are still alive or Cauterize still did not trigger!


Non-ghoul: can take 0 very high (or infinite) damage instance without dying

Ghoul: can take 3 very high (or infinite) damage instance without dying


So, I can see a significant difference between 0 & 3 !
For me: 3 is significantly better than 0!
What do you think? Is 3 significantly better than 0?

So, ghoul was very tough in 1.5 too! Resilience is also saving you from dying very effectively, especially in madness.
In 1.5 damage was significantly higher than in 1.6!


The difference between 1.5 & 1.6.6. is this:

In 1.6.6. you can take 5 very (or infinite) high damage instances with a little “–die_at” (you cannot take higher damage instance than ~20.22% of your max life) without dying (or Cauterize proc).

So, ghoul resilience is just better in 1.6.6. It was also incredibly good in madness in 1.5.


Another NOTE:

You mentioned Reality Smearing.

If you are familiar with Reality Smearing, then you should know, you should avoid very high damage instances into your life with a Paradox Mage, because of the way how Reality Smearing converts the negated damage into paradox.

So, if you are a non-ghoul, and taking a high damage into your life, let’s say: 1500 damage directly.
That means, Reality Smearing will convert 450 damage into paradox, and you just take 1050 damage into your life, so you will survive!

But you will receive 450 paradox in the next 3 turns! And this effect is merging exactly the same way as Attenuate does. So, if you take some damage in the next 1-2 turns too, you will easily have an extra 600-700 paradox increase in 2-3 turns. And this will very likely kill you. You cannot have Hidden Resources always on (even not with a Shalore… Timeless has a 50 turn cooldown).

Meanwhile, if you are a ghoul, you cannot take a higher damage instance into your life than 660.
That means, Reality Smearing will negate maximum 660 x 0.3 = 198 damage and convert it into paradox.

Again:

Non-ghoul: can gain infinite paradox from damage through Reality Smearing.
(or let’s say just 600 if you have ~1400 max life and taking a 2000 damage, so you still survive)

Ghoul: can only gain 198 paradox due to Reality Smearing.

Again, I see a significant difference between 600 & 198.


So, with Ghoul Resilience, your paradox management was also way better in 1.5.


I hope this helps you in your 1.5 play.

-------THE 1.5 PART IS FINISHED HERE -----



B, Second Topic:

I noticed this before:
Several players have a full misconception about what is the purpose of the ToME Vault.

Several players think, using the Vault means = a legit win.
From what you wrote, I guess you also believe this.
(ofc, I am not sure about your “beliefs”, but I really heard this from many players so far)

The Vault is for showing your character to other people, but it does not prevent any kind of cheating.

This forum and recorded video-playthrough is also a good tool/forum for showing your characters, so this forum has the same purpose what the Vault has.

If you think, using the Vault is proving anything about “validity” or “legit win”, then you are mistaken.

Let’s see some LEGIT MADNESS WINNERS from the Vault, okay?

First LEGIT MADNESS WINNER is here:
https://te4.org/characters/7700/tome/b1 ... 63d5e9466a

This character is an Ogre Sun Paladin LEGIT MADNESS WINNER in 1.5.10.
As you can see, the player did not use any addons, except the legit dlcs.

Please, explain me:
a, How can the character have 5000 in all his stats?
b, 100 000 max mana?
c, 10 000 000 max life?
d, Stamina, Life Regen, Speeds, Armor Penetration of 1 million, crazy damage bonuses ?
e, 19 000 spellpower?
f, 5 points in every talent he has & HAVING ALL PRODIGIES?


Okay, next one is here:
https://te4.org/characters/83555/tome/f ... ec9f67315b

Halfling Skirmisher LEGIT MADNESS WINNER in 1.6.0.
Again, no extra addons, just the official dlcs.

I have many questions here too:
a, How can he have 5 points in all of his talents
b, How can he have 133% all resists in 1.6 ? The cap is 70%!
c, How can he have 900% all damage penetration?
So on …

Next few characters that I would like to understand:

Higher Arcane Blade LEGIT MADNESS WINNER in 1.5.10:
https://te4.org/characters/126463/tome/ ... 0a06ef7245

No extra addons, just the dlcs and the stats, talents, prodigies are again crazy.

Ogre Cultist of Entropy LEGIT MADNESS WINNER in 1.5.10.:
https://te4.org/characters/189310/tome/ ... 3e84c6d5d8
Same questions.

Dwarf Writhing One LEGIT MADNESS WINNER in 1.5.10.:
https://te4.org/characters/7700/tome/06 ... 4d91ea1044
Same questions.

Does these characters seem “legit” to you?
Do not misunderstood me, I do not care about other players cheating or not.
It's their business. I just like to demonstrate you, the Vault is not validate a legit win at all.


And now, just 1 example from the many many really interesting LEGIT MADNESS WINNERS:

Shalore Temporal Warden LEGIT MADNESS WINNER in 1.5.5.:
https://te4.org/characters/150226/tome/ ... 3e6fcf35a7

As you can see, the player also did not used any extra addon, just the dlcs.
But what is more interesting: everything looks totally normal in the character sheet!

The player also wrote a topic here in the forum about his LEGIT TW MADNESS WIN:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=48784


If you read the comments of OTHER EXPERIENCED ONLINE PLAYERS, you can read they did not believe this was a legit win, without cheating.

You can read, OTHER ONLINE PLAYERS wrote if there is no video-proof, then this is just a meme.

So, not I am not believing the "legitimacy" of the Vault, but OTHER EXPERIENCED ONLINE PLAYERS do not believe the legitimacy of the Vault.

We can go into the very questionable details in this build/run if you would like to.


These are just examples! I found many more interesting characters in the Vault so far.

And OTHER ONLINE PLAYERS do not believe these, you can read it in the comments.
Not me.
I am just using other experiened online players' comments as references.


So my opinion about the Vault is this:

1, The Vault is a very good tool/forum for players to show their characters to other players.
But using the Vault is not preventing anyone to cheat during play as he/she just wish.

2, This forum is minimum as good tool/forum to show your build/character for other players as the Vault.
But this forum IS BETTER for me for this purpose, because I can write a complete guide here, with lot of details, advices, tips and explanation.
Also in this forum you can link video-playthrough too.
So, this forum is way better for me, because it has more options than the Vault.

Also, I do not care about using the Vault, because:
a, it does not prove anything about legit win
b, this forum is just way better for giving information about your character and play.
c, I do not care about online playing and competitive playing. I play for FUN

As you see in the comments of the thread of the Temporal Warden, OTHER EXPERIENCED ONLINE PLAYERS asked about VIDEO PROOF from the game.
I searched the internet many times for at least 1 madness playthrough video with a “normal class” (so non-adventurer, non-possessor).
And my result was 0 !

So, I could easily send back a question to you about the Vault:
If there are legit madness winner people out there, who won madness without cheating, then why they did not make any video recording about their gameplay? (normal class & showing everything including combat log)
At least just from the Final Fight?
Can you show me some please (with showing the character sheets & showing the combat log like I did)? I really did not find any.

If I would be a player who beats madness, I would definitely make videos from my whole playthrough!
(Oooops, I just did it!)

I understand you do not want to watch all my videos from this run, because it was 57 hours totally, but the fact is : YOU CAN IF YOU WISH.
And you can see the “progression” that you mentioned. Second by second, minute by minute.


Just watch my last, final video. You can see every sheet of my character (talents, general, attack and defense) and I am watching the combat log many times during the fights.
You can see my sheets from 58:17 to 1:00:15 in the final video.


For me: video proof with showing everything is a better proof than the Vault.
The Vault is not a proof at all. Vault is just for showing your build for others.

And as I said before, I do not care about how online players cheating who are using the Vault.
I don’t care, it’s not my business. If they cheating, then they cheating.
I am playing for fun and I am having fun.

You can convince me about the Vault is a proof of non-cheating, but then please answer all of my questions that I asked before.
And I have many more questions about many more build/run even with seemingly okay stats.
We will go deeply into several "legit madness winner build".
Every answer has to be logical and detailed to be REPRODUCIBLE.

I think it would be a waste of time, but if you really want it we can do that.

For me, videos are also better because then the play is REPRODUCIBLE.
Any player can try my build and watch what exactly I have done.
If you have any interest in science or in a scientific field, then you know: the biggest PROOF for something is REPRODUCIBILITY.

So, if you do not believe that, with this build 1.6.6. madness can be done, then the very best thing you can do is: TRY IT !
If you stuck somewhere, just watch my video from that part of the gameplay or ask anything from me here in the forum.


Oh, and I not wrote this guide because of “glory” that you mention.
There is no glory.

I am a casual player who like playing the game and very likes Paradox Mage.
In the Discord channel I used to read, usually players do not like Paradox Mage much, because they find it boring (too strong for insane).

This Spatial Tether build is a very unique and a very FUN build too, not just very strong.
Blinking & teleporting through the whole game is FUN for me.
I wrote this guide for people who wants to try this build to give them a FUN PLAY EXPERIENCE.


So it was long, but I hope you have your answers.

[Frumple]

Yeah... just to chime a bit re: vault, last time I fiddled with it a memory editor can latch on to the game's current health/etc. stats just fine, and without invalidating the save. It's been a few versions since I messed with anything like that (and then mostly because I just didn't want to deal with hopping in and out of dev mode and don't particularly care about the vault stuff), but I'd be surprised if it had changed on that front (and frankly shouldn't, devs have better things to do with their time than implement particularly robust cheat tracking in a single player game).

In other words, even a perfectly legitimate looking vault character could be cheating wildly with basically infinite health or mana or whatever and there'd just be... no indication of it in what the vault records beyond maybe the last bits of the log. They're nice things but don't put too much weight on them if you're worried about that sort of thing for whatever odd reason you have.

[ZyZ]

Guy explained in details why his build works and how to reproduce his run and yet some people are not satisfied :/

Anyway, congratulation Tradewind_Rider !

ps. you can boost your passive defence even more with insta cast resonance field (50% but you have to replace all runes with injectors first) and up to 50% from vim shield from masochism (patrol quest required to enable vim resource)

[Tradewind_Rider]

Thank you ZyZ!

I will check the things that you mentioned.

[Mankeli]

First of all, GJ on finding out about the ghoul resilience (well flat dam cap in general) change! The shitstorm known as "1.6" was raging so wildly that apparently they didn't even bother to include it in the patch notes. On discord I could find one non-specific and short mention of this by a dev. GG. I'm glad the patch notes include many things that are almost as impactful such as "Shoes of Moving Quickly now have a player doll tile" But kudos to you on finding this out.

Second of all, I don't even understand wtf is going on this thread anymore but apparently uploading tome 4 videos to youtube makes you a scientist now? Well, as a fellow scientist let me introduce you to some FACTS I've gathered:

1) The OP has promoted the use of item vault before
2) The OP has promoted savescumming before
3) The OP has admittedly used item vault before
4) The OP has admittedly savescummed before
5) The OP savescums on one of the very videos provided as evidence although the reason for this very much appears to be glitch on the game without any gains to be made via that save scumming other than rescuing the save.
6) The OP has said some outlandish things like how he gets 40 % spell CD reduction items and can reach 90 % spell CD red _from gear alone_ before
7) The OP gets wildly angry when confronted by two persons on why they didn't upload their character in the online character vault
8 ) Uploading a character to the character vault literally takes like under 30s or however fast you can start the game and load your character and it has barely any lagging effect while playing except maybe when the servers are down and the game tries to constantly re-connect.
9) The OP has a youtube channel only dedicated to them playing on tome 4 on madness, constantly posts screenshots on their run, posts guides about the build they use.
10) The OP claims that they only play for their own personal enjoyment and doesn't care about the recognition of others.

Let us consider the following example: I'm a scientist that is writing a paper on particle physics. Let's say that I've said before that plagiarising other ppl's work is great and that any kind of pursue for objectivity is a useless goal in research. I refuse to give my paper to be peer reviewed and instead get wildly mad about ppl asking about peer reviewing it. I make claims of how particles have some properties that no one else has ever observed before without providing any proof of these properties. I claim that I don't want any recognition or fame and just wrote the paper for fun but I spam small snippets of my paper via any medium of communication possible. As a fellow person of science you would be sceptical too.

Thirdly, no the character vault doesn't guarantee that the character in question didn't use editor/savescum/whatever but as a person of science you should understand you can't deduce from the aforementioned fact that the character vault is of no use in deciding whether a run is legit or not. If you know what you are doing you can still notice all kinds of suspect things even when stats/gear etc seem completely normal. So making a character look like a non-cheater in the vault really isn't as simple as just editing your stats back to normal or whatever. Even if we were to accept that your plays on any given video are legit and the game is non-edited all it proves is that you you can play for 2 hours without dying with X amount of save scumming in between.

Lastly, some concluding thoughts. Do I think a ghoul PM can win 1.6 madness without vault/save scumming/cheating? Yes I do but that's probably solely because of the questionable change in where flat damage cap gets calculated now. However, just because something is plausible it doesn't mean it has actually happened. But that's a topic for some other post.

[tabs]

Madness really brings out the toxicity in the community, it seems.