ToME Autobattler

[sixteenmiles]

A while ago I came across this addon called Player AIoo: idle ToME on the workshop, and I wondered if it was possible to make a build that could complete the game from turn 1 all the way up to sealing the portal at the top of high peak using only this addon. In other words, never controlling your own character and letting the addon take full control. All you have to do is choose your talent trees/points, adjust gear/items, and periodically set skill priorities. Every now and then over the past few years when I come back to playing ToME, I would throw together an adventurer to try and do it, and usually it failed because this thing has no sense of self preservation. It will walk into the most dangerous places, it will refuse to use infusions, it will abandon the safety of chokepoints to wade into rooms of 20+ enemies. There are a lot of builds on these forums for a variety of classes, and so many of them claim that they are "practically unkillable", but give 99% of those builds to Player AIoo and it will find a way to kill them (trust me, I tried (I'm sure they work great in the hands of skilled players, but Player AIoo is more of a brute force, move forward, bump attack to victory kind of player).

Since I was sort of doing this as a challenge mode for myself, I decided on a few rules. If you choose to try this as a character building challenge you don't have to use the same rules as me. But this is what I was working with in my head:

Rules

• Only the Player AIoo addon can control the character. The only thing you are allowed to do is press your hotkey to activate Player AIoo at the start of each level, and when it gets stuck (which is every time it opens a door or picks up a yellow artifact).
• Exceptions to the above rule are: You can control your character freely on the world map and choose whatever zone you want to do in whatever order. You can control your character freely in towns to do quests and visit shops. You can control your character to perform actions that are essential to completing the game that the addon can't do by itself: for example, using the orb of many ways, hitting the switches in tannen's dungeon, hitting the switches in the prides, etc. You can control your character freely in the ONE level of tannen's dungeon that is underwater (because the addon gets stuck when it suffocates and you can't progress). You can use autoexplore and wait turn at appropriate times (being blinded).
• You have to open any chest, sack, vault, or vor armory danger room that the addon bumps into. If the addon doesn't bump into a chest, sack, or vault. Tough luck, you don't get it.
• You have to do every random encounter (hidden tunnels, dark crypt, godfeaster, etc.) as soon as it appears.

My Attempt

Shadows the Level 50 Cornac Adventurer

This wasn't a planned build. I didn't really think it through, and I kept changing my mind about what I was doing or just throwing points out randomly, but in terms of Player AIoo bump attack idiocy, it actually is practically unkillable. I probably threw about 100 attempts at this challenge before this one finally succeeded, so even on Normal I don't think this is an easy challenge simply because you have no control over what the addon does, and it will put you in situations where you will die. I will probably start trying to get it to brute force nightmare now, but I'm not sure if this build is exactly what would work. Some talent trees that I picked started to feel anti-synergistic.

Some notes and considerations from my (100s of) attempts:

• I never did sandworm lair. Not once. I assume it is automatic death. Most of the time I am antimagic so can't wear a belt of unlife. I don't even know how the addon handles that zone because I just didn't even try. Same deal for places like temple of creation and the underwater zone in the yeek starting area.
• You will fail every single escort. Sometimes you get lucky and the escort spawns right by the exit, and that's a great feeling. Probably don't try and use a build that relies on escorts in any way.
• You will fail every single timed mission. The addon tends to rest until full after every single fight (which is also why you fail most escort missions).
• I skipped the zone where you fight your clone. The addon can get stuck in a loop when it ends up fighting an enemy that you can't kill and that can't kill you. It just bump attacks for ever. Since you have to try and make an unkillable build, I figured it would just get stuck in a loop fighting the clone, and it's far enough into the game that I didn't really want to test it.
• Blind is the most annoying condition to deal with because the addon just stops doing anything and you have to just press wait turn until you can reactivate it.
• The addon will completely refuse to do anything if you drop below a certain percentage of health (I think it might be 60%). There's a certain threshold where it will pause, but you can reactivate it again, but I think 60% is the threshold where it will outright refuse to continue, which means if you're following the ruleset listed above, the run is essentially over if you ever drop below 60% life, since you can no longer activate the addon.
• You can right click your character and set "priorities" for certain skills, but this didn't seem to work very well as far as I could tell. There's nothing in the documentation that says this, but I started to feel like the addon actually uses skills in a priority order based on where they are positioned on the hotbar (1, then 2, then 3, then 4, etc.) I can't confirm this. Anyway, the point of this is that if you have your infusions in slots 1, 2, and 3 on your hotbar, the addon will actually use them!!! but if they are further down the hotbar, the addon rarely if ever uses them. So positioning infusions on your hotbar can help fend off the 60% health threshold softlock.
• If you have a teleport skill/infusion, you can get the addon to use it and I think that can make fights safer because the addon will continually teleport away and rest to heal, but I didn't really test this much at all because I figured the better strategy is to just never go below 60% life.

Interested if anyone else would try putting together a build for this challenge and see how it fares, or if anyone could push it up into NIghtmare. Thanks for reading.

[Zizzo]

Well, the author of that addon (or one of the addons in the associated fork tree, I think) apparently had some success with this build, based on bump attacking, stealth as a gap closer, and limiting the number of "buttons" available to the AI. Can't tell from the thread whether it would count as a winner under your rules.

[ooli]

I'm really glad you used my addon, and enjoyed it to the point of challenging yourself on its use.

I have a lot a stuff to say. But let start by the mechanics:

• the AI will stop if you lose 20% of your max life in one turn to the next. Then you can relaunch the addon with no problem; It is just a warning, that something dangerous can hurt you badly in 1 round

• The AI will stop as you stated under 60% life.. it is more nuanced, it will stop when you're at 80% health, if you see 7+ enemies, then 70% at 6+ enemies, down to 40% with only 1 enemy in sight. You wont be able to relaunch

• The AI will stop if you're Encumbered. You cant relaunch as long you're Encumbered(and cant move, it crash the game otherwise) . it happen mostly when under Disease reducing your STR

• The AI will stop after 500 turn whatever the reason. The 500 turn restart after a rest. It is just to prevent any infinite loop . And as you stated, it can activate if a fight is unwinnable, and you cant be killed either

• The AI is the one used by Enemy in the game. That mean, it is optimized try to kill one foe (the player) and is less adapted to fighting multiple enemies . But it is relatively smart, and take into account your resource

Now let's address your experience:

Shadows the Level 50 Cornac Adventurer

Congratulation on winning without controling the character. I would never think it was possible.
Your character have what I consider the best defense (Ooze, solipsism, Dwarf, Dark sustenance)
I'm baffled at the use of Bloodthirst lev 4 ability Unstoppable. I never used it really, and I wonder what is the benefit if you try to never go under 60% Health.
If I had to try your challenge, As Zizzo stated, I 'll probably try a Stealth character or even a perma-stealth character (Stealth, throwing knife, Sniper and adjusting the weight of talents to have 0 in actionable action, and 5+ on throwing knife), because Stealth is an incredible defense , especially in normal where very few enemies can see you.

Sandworm Lair

: You're right, even with a mean to breath in earth, you can be stuck into a collapsed tunnel with the AI. And it will be tedious to do it without controlling the character to move out of harm-way

You will fail every single escort

. There is an AI (the one from the golem) that can help with escort. It could be cool, If I can manage to make it to activate if you are with an escort. But I suspect the AI will sacrifice itself to protect the escort, which will cause other problem.

Blind is the most annoying condition

It is the only condition, where I coded every possible action possible available to get ride of Blind. And it still is annoying

You can right click your character and set "priorities" for certain skills

It should work. The exception are Free action (0turn), that the AI tend to use even when you put 0 in that weight. But if you put 10 weight in one action, and 0 in all the other it will only use that 1 action. So it work. Or put 10 in 2 action, it will only use those 2.

priority order based on where they are positioned on the hotbar (1, then 2, then 3, then 4, etc.)

This is really interesting. I never knew how the AI would chose one action over another, when they have a similar weight, may be the order in hotbar apply.

What I wanted to implement for a long time, and that would help your challenge is having the player decide at what health they want the AI to stop.
For you it would be never.
Unfortunately, I'm not a good coder enough (I always wished Darkgod, implemented some AI player in the game, as he implemented the auto target option, and all ease of life stuff, like auto-explore); Thus, I dont even know how to create a dialog box, so you can input a value for the stop of AI based on HP left. But if someone tell me how, I will implement it in a heartbeat.

If you see, other things I could add in the addon, I'm happy to hear your suggestion.