Tales of Maj'Eyal

[Lhynn]

Thats strange, im lvl 29 and beating the shit out of lvl 49 stuff.

 

[UglyBastard]

Are you beating lvl49 trash or bosses/elite?

The trash is easily dispatchable if you are careful (most of the time). I remember opening a greater vault and encountering my first "worm that walks" (obv. 20lvl higher and elite). He just fuckin wrecked me because I casually didn't check my debuffs and I had one on me that brutally dismembers my hero and spawns worms from the bloody remains (5 turn cooldown, better dispell this shit). Oops.

Another time I casually strolled the Ruined Dungeon at lvl17 to encounter a friendly lvl45 "Blood Lich" around the next corner (not even behind a door). He rooted me, set all my skills on cooldown and 2shotted me (I was bulwark). I can recommend the experience, very humbling.

 

[Lhynn]

Right now lvl 33, and yeah i meant elite and bosses (i actually meant entire dungeons).

Ive had only one close call, opened a door and found a lvl 90 multi colored dragon boss, almost got oneshotted. Put unstopabble on and ran like a little girl. Got an achievement for that!

I cannot stress enough how much your saves matter.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The problem with saves is that

A: They follow a diminishing returns system like most stats so getting them higher than the highest enemies' power stats is nigh impossible,

B: Even if your save is way past the enemy's power stat, you can still fail the fucking saving throw for no real reason at all. Because if anything says balance, it's being perma-confused by a bunch of enemies that have a 5% chance to confuse you.

Anyways, I look forward to your deathpost about a rare monster that nearly oneshots you and then kills you by dispelling Unstoppable.

 

[Lhynn]

When its hairy i actually take my time reading their talents, so i should be ok, but yeah, the game throws a lot of curve balls at you.

 

[Lhynn]

RIP Ephraim, lvl 34 higher human berseker, after an epic fight against 7 luminous horrors, a blade horror, a headless horror a nightmare horror and several (around 25) mooks and other elites (16 more), he died because of exhaustion (no hp, no stamina, everything on cooldown) against a single easy to kill mook that happened to lag behind.

No regrets, and never forget

 

[baturinsky]

Resistances to certain debuffs are considered to be more reliable than saves, because they scale flat all the way to 100%.
Also, you should have several debuff removers.

 

[UglyBastard]

RIP Ephraim, lvl 34 higher human berseker, after an epic fight against 7 luminous horrors, a blade horror, a headless horror a nightmare horror and several (around 25) mooks and other elites (16 more), he died because of exhaustion (no hp, no stamina, everything on cooldown) against a single easy to kill mook that happened to lag behind.

No regrets, and never forget

RIP

Sounds like it was a pretty nasty greater Vault.

 

[Lhynn]

RIP

Sounds like it was a pretty nasty greater Vault.

Nastiest thing ive seen, im surprised i even made it past the nightmare horror, that dude creates clones of me, and was really really though. luckily a pussy that kept running away and gave me seeral free hits, im going to max fearless cleave this run, underrated skil, as you can always use a single move/attack AoE.
Still, this is just normal, people are beating this game on madness.

 

[Renegen]

Very few are beating the game on madness, only the most broken and best planned strategies work. Nightmare alone is hard enough

Btw, the vault is an argument for Track/Wizard Eye. Wizard Eye can see inside Vaults and it's invaluable, while Track just overall protects you against unexpected things. The game IS out to get you, it's pretty crazy.

On the subject of having ways to survive, that's why the best boots is usually considered to be Wanderer's Rest. They have a "jump" on them that's 100% accurate, and items work when you're disabled so they are the most reliable way to get out of trouble. Personally I've gotten too used to playing yeeks, it's my little secret and I'll show that they're OP!

 

[baturinsky]

Still, this is just normal, people are beating this game on madness.

Vault lists only 12 Madness victories. 8 not counting Adventurers.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I would imagine a lot of those are from really unbalanced characters too, like back when you could basically one shot anything in the game by using Nightmare + Dreamscape on it (all the images it spawned would have a full duration nightmare as they spawned, but didn't have the buff to sleep resistance so you could hit them with it again after it wore off.)

The rest are probably players who neurotically scout ahead with precognition type spells and always fight 1 enemy at a time, or killed things without ever being in LoS by using summons.

 

[Lhynn]

Yeah, game is out to get you, and i love it. Its how it should be.
Only part i felt was kind of lame was the room with the lvl 90 multi colored dragon, What was the point of that?

 

[baturinsky]

I would imagine a lot of those are from really unbalanced characters too, like back when you could basically one shot anything in the game by using Nightmare + Dreamscape on it (all the images it spawned would have a full duration nightmare as they spawned, but didn't have the buff to sleep resistance so you could hit them with it again after it wore off.)

The rest are probably players who neurotically scout ahead with precognition type spells and always fight 1 enemy at a time, or killed things without ever being in LoS by using summons.

Most of them are Berserkers and Marauders with 5/5 Unstoppable. Also, 2 Wildfire Archmages and a Sun Paladin with Second Life.

 

[Renegen]

The overleveled dragons don't have any point to them, they just give you an achivement.

I'm kind of butthurt about some of these madness runs, one such guy made a forum post about how the Shadowblade clone was OP BROKEN PLZ NERF because you could use it for 7 turns to kill stuff while you were out of harm's way. He didn't listen to all of the criticisms of the spell that it's very resource intensive and doesn't work well on bosses, but whatever.

Of course his Shadowblade died eventually but not before the clone spell got nerfed to uselessness (it now dies instantly when out of sight, if it is in line of sight you just watch your main character get beat up for 7 turns...).

 

[Lhynn]

Gotta be a mistake, im in normal difficulty and my sun paladin has trouble beating lvl 2 mooks fromt the first dungeon. Not to mention the boss once you finish it.

 

[Renegen]

The Yeek start is incredibly hard, it's one of the reasons people don't play them.

 

[Lhynn]

Wouldnt call it hard, just like i wouldnt call hammering my toe hard. Its just shitty, you are statistically outnumbered and without tactical options, just pray for decent hits, and right now im actually forcing close the game just to redo the fight with the boss. Without having to recreate the character.

 

[Snufkin]

New two classes are quite fun to play. Doombringer is very powerful, while Demonologist gets long time to develop.

 

[Lhynn]

Ill get the dlc once i finish the game at least once.

Best way to win that boss fight as a paladin is to get another reg healing infusion, it provides enough lasting power to beat him and level up to 5-6. After that the game opens up like it usually does.

I love the fact that the dungeon you get teleported to is random.

 

[baturinsky]

Do you even have to kill Naga boss? I think you have to nuke teleporter, and then you can just run away from the boss.

 

[Lhynn]

Nagas have nasty ranged attacks, but no, you dont really need to beat the boss right away, its just better if you do, you can use some sort of infusion or item to get away.

 

[UglyBastard]

Anyone knows how to access the Ashes of Uhr'Rok content?

Already cleared the orc prides and still no sign of anything new.

 

[Renegen]

I believe the only content is when you start as the new classes, you periodically get thrown back into Uhr'Rok over the campaign.

 

[TripJack]

Got my first win. Summoners are OP.

Here's some thoughts on the game, mostly copypasta from a post I made elsewhere:
+Lots of classes and races to try out. Trying out new classes and race combos is the best thing about the game
+At first I hated the idea of a cooldown system in a roguelike. If I wanted cooldowns I would play shitty WoW am I rite? But after playing the game I've grown to like it. On top of managing your normal ability resource (stamina, mana, equilibrium, whatever) you also have to plan around the fact that your abilities take turns (sometimes a lot of turns) to become available again. Adds depth to the gameplay
+By the midgame you have a good variety of abilities from your talents & items, plenty of options to choose from in combat
+No Nethack-style gotcha deaths, always a plus
+Passable graphics & music for a RL

-Danger level of most enemies is fairly low. Compare to Crawl where enemies are generally less numerous but more dangerous. Too much of the combat in ToME feels like trash combat, even for classes that aren't summoner-level strong... The trashiness is toned down a bit in the lategame, and the occasional enemy-packed vaults throughout the game usually offer a good challenge. Upping the difficulty level could alleviate this issue but doing so would probably exacerbate the next problem
-Randomly generated uniques. Most of my deaths in ToME come from these. Unlike actual Boss enemies, these assholes more often than not are just buffed trash enemies. Sometimes however the RNG decides to dump some absurdly strong unique on your head and you are dead before you even know what happened. Even if you carefully inspect everything, it can be difficult to tell just how dangerous a unique is until you fight them for a few turns.
-The game is too long IMO. The early game is lame. Even if you skip optional zones (which would leave the player underpowered and could make the endgame too difficult for weaker char types) there are still a lot of dungeon floors to clear in ToME... Despite my desire to try more classes and races I won't be replaying ToME anytime soon due to this. The Crawl style of a relatively short core game and a whole optional 'extended' game on top of that for players seeking extra glory is more to my liking. And due to this & the problem of random uber-uniques, I will never, ever, ever be playing ToME on roguelike mode.
-Extension of previous problem - for a game this long the enemy variety is much too low. Enemies you first meet very early in the game will continue to reappear until the very end. I was disappointed to see nothing new even in the end dungeon. More orcs & demons that I've been fighting for half the game, more undead that I have been seeing since level 5, more snakes, more drakes, more bone golems, yay... FFS, give me some ancient liches, some orbs of fire, some killer klowns!
-Wands, scrolls, potions... Although you will have a large number of abilities available to you by the midgame in ToME and I like that darkgod tried to do something new by removing consumables entirely, I find I miss the added variety and resource management aspect that consumables add to Crawl and most other RLs

-/+Unlock system. I'm still not sure if this actually adds to or detracts from the game. It is easy to circumvent for people that really hate it so it's not really an issue either way.
-/+Adding bits of findable lore fluff was a neat idea, but the lore of ToME didn't do much for me. All fairly generic really

It's got problems but I do like ToME. I think it is a great choice for anyone looking to play their first roguelike. Everything in the game is fairly transparent, and game mechanics should be decently familiar to anyone who has played an RPG before...


tl;dr Crawl is still king