Insane mode difficulty questions

[Alpharat]

Do many people play insane mode? Looking through the character dumps on the website it looks like only 1 person has a level 50 character in insane mode... and only a handful of people have finished the more difficult insane difficulty achievements?

I've been trying it out and haven't gotten past level 10 myself. I've been playing rogue class mostly so that may or may not be part of it. I'd say about 50% of my rogues don't make it past level 2. When I started that number was closer to 95%. However still less than 10% of my characters make it past level 5. I'm always trapping and being a cheap bastard and then something goes wrong and BAM YASD. I'm forced to run around in circles for forever being a cheap bastard abusing traps instead of using my usual crit/stun builds. I know it gets easier later on due to scaling and I like the challenge, I'm just wondering why hardly anybody plays it. Does it get impossible later on?

I realize ToME is an absurdly difficult game (at least compared to what people *call* games on the market) and that on Roguelike difficulty you can always be one dragon nest away from death anyways. I just want to know if its better to play insane difficulty with 90%+ new character fatality rates with the knowledge that eventually all the dice will come up right and I'll beat it, or if I should just hack away at Roguelike difficulty knowing pretty much all my characters can make it to 20+ easily. Maybe I should be playing cheaper race/class combinations? I'm just partial to rogues for non-mechanical reasons.

[Grey]

I don't think anyone has given it significant trials. The level 50 character you mention is likely a test character of DarkGod's, not a real achievement.

Perhaps we should have a group challenge game where everyone tries a randomly generated char on Insane mode? :)

[greycat]

Some of us are quite sufficiently challenged by Roguelike (Hardcore) (Normal) mode, without needing additional difficulty thrown at us.

[TheRani]

I generally have trouble making rogues live in any mode.

[Alpharat]

Roguelike difficulty is pretty challenging. Especially for rogues. Ironic eh, that "rogue" is difficult in a "roguelike". Most people would've quit around their 25th death. I'm just joking that I have a whole pile of halfling corpses in the Trollmire.

[Susramanian]

Insane difficulty level will be much more interesting in beta 21. (Changes are in the works, but they will not be ready in time for b20).

Among other things, monster egos are being implemented for insane mode. An orc berserker is trouble, but a time-travelling orc berserker of animated steel is a whole different matter. Playing insane, you should spend much of your time simply being grateful for making it out of any given level alive.

[Massimiliano Marangio]

a time-travelling orc berserker of animated steel

Hasta la vista, baby.