General Discussion

I was wondering if anyone else played this amazing Roguelike. If you haven't you totally should! It is easily one of the best Roguelikes I have ever played. There's a free version on the website (Which is: http://te4.org/ ), you do get some extra donator features for donating or buying the game off of steam but those are all extra stuff and not needed to get the full Roguelike experience.

So if you do play ToME is there anything you'd like to share here? Your craziest survival story/moment? How many achievements do you have out of the 1306 that there are? The time when you realized some of the weird stuff in this game? Just sharing your great characters? That one time Dark God turned you into a bunny for the lols? The lore about the mages, antimagic, and the orcs? How far you've gotten? What addons you are using/recommend? Favorite race/class?
Heck I don't care what you share I just wanna talk about ToME because that game is awesome and needs to be talked about more.

As for me I actually haven't gotten too far yet. My favorite class is Bulwark so far, because I like being defensive, but I also like a lot of the other classes as well. I've only gotten to level 30 though, and I barely stepped into the other continent (The "East" I believe?) before a group of 3 luminous Horrors bursted me down... I hate luminous Horrors...
As for addons I actually use a bit, mainly infinite 500 and the Draconian race addon, because dragons/dragon people, I hope I don't need to explain more than that since we are talking on this website of all websites.
One of the weirdest stuff I realized in the game, and this is from a developer telling me this in the online chat, if something puts a DoT on you, such as poison, that lasts for say 5 turns, if you stun him during that 5 turns so that his attacks will only be doing 50% damage the DoT poison will also only be doing 50% damage, And if you kill him with a -50% dmg effect on him the DoT will have that -50% dmg effect until it wares off. Like that makes no sense at all, but can potentially be really helpful. O_o
I haven't actually tried out the classes that were buffed by the 1.2 patch yet, but I really should at some point, I have heard some crazy stuff about them now.

Oh, someone else actually plays this game!

I play normal/adventure mode, and I play shadowblades. Basically only shalore shadowblades. xD Because I love the idea of being a hit-and-run, stabby rogue with shadow and light magic from the magical race that brought about the apocalypse, and also because I can't be bothered to learn another playstyle. It's extra fun if you have get track and shadowstep - use track to figure out where your enemies are, shadowstep and hit them for massive darkness damage (you can go through walls with shadowstep), feel like the god of stealthy assassins. With controlled phase door and teleport, you turn into a stealthy, hit-and-run assassin.

Also fun - as a shadowblade, you have a shielding rune and access to one other shield spell. And if you get a Celestial/Light escort...you could basically end up with three shields and be the tankiest rogue ever.

Gotten to Dreadfort once, so I'm not as far as you. :C But agreed on luminous horrors being horrible

And I love the game lore, especially the Pale King. And the hobbit queen and her king.

@Siriothrax I've never played a Shadowblade before, probably because I don't really like the rogue in this game for actually being a rogue (stealth), but I love his traps and how you can basically have an endless loop of pain for the enemies if you set them up right.
I switch classes often because, just due to how unique and interesting some of the classes are in this game, there are many classes which you may find out that you like despite not liking classes like that in other RPGs or Roguelikes, especially the later classes that you can unlock when you get to the Far East.

I was about to say: "Out of curiosity do you side with the Zigur or the Mages more often." but since Shadowblade is part mage I don't think you are even allowed to side with the Zigur. XP

And yes, the Dreadfort boss is the real test as to whether or not your character is good or bad. He is such a freaking jerk. Have you beat him yet? If you haven't, here's a little tip: Be prepared to rage AFTER you beat him... you will see why eventually... let's just say Darkgod was being a super jerk when designing that dungeon.

Did you ever get to do much with the stealth mechanic? I hear stealth is supposed to be pretty good, but I haven't really gotten that far yet since stealth seems to take so many category points. x.x

Haha, nope, no siding with the Zigur for me. They go stabby stab and navigating the early game world map is so not fun with all those zigurs around. I think phase door/teleport and the free spells from the escort (premonition, celestial/light, precognition) are just so darn useful. But I hear Zigur escorts get cool stuff too? Which do you side with?

No, I haven't reached the Master yet (though I love his notes, omg, and the poetry!) - I almost got to the same level as him, once, though. My character who got closest died to a 3000 HP sandworm elite that one-shotted me. Or: how I learned to be careful when opening chests. xD

Any tips for the Master?

@Siriothrax I can give you 2 giant big tips for the Master, but they are also kind of spoilers, the other tips I can give you is that he is a Necromancer that will summon an army of skeletons on the open spaces around him, so it is best to make sure he is in an enclosed area rather than an open one, because if all spaces around him are open he will summon 8 undead, which can either be archers, melee, ghouls, basically any type of undead is possible. (Stronger ones are rarer however.), but if he has only 2 open spaces around him he can only summon 2 undead. (I think... it's been a good while since I fought him.) He attacks primarily via spells and he is completely immune to blind and highly resists stuns. He also puts up shields to absorb the damage you are doing. Since he is a spell caster you can attempt to drain him of mana or put silence on him and he will be unable to perform spells until he gets back that mana (He has a talent that lets him use talents without costing resources for a while though, so he may still cast a few stuff even out of mana.) or until the silence wears off. (One of the big advantages to siding with the Zigur, Anti-Magic stuff.) He also has many sustained abilities that buff up his stats massively, but he will deactivate them if you drain his mana enough.

As for which side I side with, usually I side with the mages since they have a special ring shop that isn't available anywhere else and also, while the Zigur talents can be really useful you they will also be incredibly annoying since you can't use any arcane runes or items (and by arcane I mean items that have the words "Powered by: Magical forces" on them.) which can really hurt you in the long run. So typically it's better to side with the mages unless you really know what you are doing with the Zigur trees. In the end though it depends what character/class I'm playing at the time to determine who I side with.

Also yeah, Precognition is great for seeing if a chest is worth it to open or not since you can see what is inside of it then "turn back time" essentially, just make sure you cast the spell before you open the chest.

The Zigur can choose to sacrifice the more Arcane based escorts for different stat raises (They usually get Will/Dex/Cunning instead of Magic/*Other stat*) and different skills to choose from. Really it just depends on how you want to build your character if choosing to Betray to the Zigur will be worth it or not.

Also no I never really did anything with Stealth, like I said I mainly liked Rogue for the traps not so much for the stealth.

Also did you ever do the quest with the Assassin Lord and the Merchant and if you did, did you end up siding with the Assassin Lord? Because if you didn't you really should since you unlock stuff for rouge characters which I believe the Shadowblade can use but I'm not 100% sure on that, I know the default rogue can use it at least.

Also, by the way, this was the character that I got the farthest with, the first character to set foot in the Far East. Hilariously enough he was also one of my first characters and I had no real idea how to build him so I just made him as tanky as possible. Which while pretty freaking awesome meant that fights typically lasted forever. ( http://te4.org/characters/102689/tome/227c451f-dfb9-4f09-b5fe-0b1431ecd762 ) As you can see he died to freaking Luminous horrors, that's why I hate those things so much. >_> At least he got a 'cheevo before he died! He somehow even beat Poosh! I can prove it because he has the heart of Poosh in his inventory, I also have the award in his awards section. I have no idea how he won, but he did, especially since he was level 16 at the time and Poosh is level 40. O_o (He was that level because the trophy shows his level at the moment when you mouse over it.)

I'm okay with spoilers. ;) I ended up spoiling myself for the whole lore, and I've got a pretty good idea of the plot.

Wow...the Master sounds like a nightmare. That "highly resist" stun sounds particularly nasty, and spelllcaster-tank is exactly the kind of character glass cannon shadowblades are not meant for. xD Thanks for the tips, though!

Ohh, good point. I know I've seen people say that betraying the escorts to Zigur is better, but magical items are nice.

I've sided with both of them before. Alas, I don't think the shadowblade can use the poison stuff (and anyway, points are spread thin enough as it is...). So I lean toward saving the merchant these days.

Wow, you had some nice items on that character! *drools over your daggers* And so tanky and full of resistances. xD I'm a bit surprised the luminous horrors were able to take him down, it was the light damage, I take it?

Here's my best, mostly due to some luck with escorts. The plan with this character (and every character since) was to kill things before they can touch me, but the premonition, The Untouchable, and the fact I actually put points into con made her pretty tanky for a shadowblade. http://te4.org/characters/115690/tome/37500270-65e1-4f54-8f5d-a562f22443ce

Also, whoa, werebeast is an actual class? O_O

@Siriothrax yeah, the light damage hurt him bad, in his resistances you can see he actually had a -8% resistance to light damage, even though he had an extra 15% resist all on it, that won't save him since resistances are multiplicative anyway and I have no idea how ToME calculates a negative resistance * resist all. (Freaking Grinyfang betrayed me...) Oh yeah, if you are wondering exactly how is his health at -361, it's because Bulwarks have a skill that allows them to survive a certain amount of damage despite their hp reaching the negatives. (Shield Defense > Last stand, I had it maxed.) You can actually betray escorts to the Zigur but still join the mages! You just have to make sure you betray the escorts BEFORE you join the mages. You can do the same with Zigur. (At least I'm pretty sure that's the case.) As for your character, you should never actually put points into Con unless (This was something I didn't know at the time of making the Bulwark.) it's for skills. Dex actually scales much better with survivability, for the most part. This is mainly due to how little Con actually raises your max HP... well actually I think it has been changed, with my Archmage that I'm playing in the back ground, it seems his hp increases by 4 points each con rather than by like .50 for each point instead. So yeah I guess it is on par with Dex now, but it used to be Dex > Con for survivability in the long run mainly due to how stuff scaled. Now for the Master stuff, just so you know his stun resistance is exactly at 70% *Spoilers* the BIGGEST tip I can give you for the Master fight... is that he is a Necromancer and he has the "Lich" Necromancer skill (Or whatever it's called, haven't actually unlocked Necro myself yet. XP) but this means that when you kill him, or get him to 0 life he actually RESURRECTS ON THE SPOT and he is even more powerful than he once was I believe. However even after you kill him THEN, be sure to rest up and let all of your bars refill. Once you try to leave the area with the rod you will instead spawn outside of the tower with about 20 Orcs, one of them being a rare, and if you refuse to give up the staff they will try to kill you. (I'm not sure if you can even avoid having to fight them, been a while since I've seen that scene.) What makes this even worse is that it's a very open area and there is NO spots where you can funnel them to attack you 1 at a time AND a LOT of them are archers. Thankfully Darkgod was at least slightly merciful making the Orcs slightly under leveled compared to the average level at that point, but only slightly... Yeah, that spot in the game is basically where the game stops playing nice and just wants you flat out dead. Oh, and nah, Werebeast isn't an actual class. I got an addon (Werebeast + Druid... [Verdant class pack] always thought it was weird that there was no Druid class in the game, it would work so well with the equilibrium stuff.) You can see the addons I use with my most recent characters and looking under their Addon stuff in the top most upper left menu. (By the way, you think Shadowblades have enough skills to worry about in terms of skills, then prepare to revel in fear at THE ARCHMAGE'S skill trees! [img]http://i.imgur.com/NvSsU8z.jpg[/img] and I don't even have all of the skill trees unlocked yet! I think I'm still missing 2, I at least know I'm missing 1, which is wildfire! (Which by the way, is like impossible to unlock, you have to do, and I quote, "Unlocked Archmage class and did over one million fire damage (with any item/talent/class)." Like seriously, and I'm pretty sure that's in 1 strike, that's not like all fire damage over the game. I suppose I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it's in one strike.))