I picked up Embers of Rage almost the instant they were released, and after two mishappen Nightmare attempts (I forgot to switch the difficulty) I started an Orc Sawbutcher on Normal / Adventure. I will not go into story details here for spoilers sake, but let's just say that once a Sawbutcher starts rolling, he's almost unstoppable. Take a second steam tank, so you can keep all of your sustains on, max them out, and unleash mayhem just walking through the crowds. I barely ever needed more than bump attacks in the endgame, even against rares and most bosses.
I almost neglected the new Tinker talents, except for Smith, but even that allowed me to create some really nice items. +10 to all attributes? Sure! +28% damage vs. Horrors, Demons and Undead? Why not! And that's just a very, very small example, how can tinkers enhance your character. There's definitely more to them then I just discovered.
As new talents and prodigies go, just check my build if you wish. The synergies between Orc racials, the Blacksmith general skills and Sawbutcher class talents are powerful as hell. But I must mention the first prodigy I took, the Pain Enhancement System, which grants an increase to all primary attributes on a melee crit. The increase is 40% of Strength value. With that in, all my primary stats grew to 140+ in the middle of combat, even those I never put a single point into (Magic and Willpower). Cunning ended up at 235 and Strength at 280.
There's also a great deal of new artifacts to be found. For me in this game, the award goes to the steamsaw called Grinder, thanks to its Blindside-the-attacker on being hit. At one time, I entered a vault, which was a rather large room filled with high-end monsters (and I was already at level 50). One of the monsters confused me, so I started jumping around erraticaly, with this Blindside and the sustains taking care of everything. I cleared the whole main room of the vault before I even recovered from the confusion. Glorious.
It may be a little discouraging to know that while in ToME itself I had to wait for my first win for some two years of on-and-off playing, the Embers of Rage were beaten in less than 24 hours. But there's plenty of secrets yet to uncover for me in this new campaign. I find the story nice, and the new talent options as well (the next thing I will probably try is a Sawbutcher in the regular campaign).
So, all in all, Embers are a voratun coin well spent. Darkgod, if you are reading this, hear my great thanks (and don't pull out that nerf hammer too soon!
)The character is here for anyone interested.