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[Frumple]

I think the general rebuttal (determine its appropriateness or not yourself) is that if you've hit 13, well... you've probably got track by now, or a similar equivalent. T4 moves a lot faster than most roguelikes, but if you're serious about survival you're still going to be doing the "move nowhere without having cast detect monsters" thing, especially in more dangerous areas. Mitigation and avoidance are still very much things you can do, once you're aware of the means of doing so and can start planning around it. Hell, even a sun infusion or illumination source (staff, talent) would have had a good chance of preventing that... mind sear only has a range of 7, lighting the place up from further than that isn't too terribly difficult by that point, and once you see it you can inspect and decide if it's worth the risk.

Though that does sound like you might have gone deeper than you should have. Weakest thing I can think of that might be doing that kind and sort of damage would be a dream horror and if you ran into one of those at 13, well... you were taking risks, and it bit you. Unless you mean the critter was level 13, in which case it does sound like something odd was going on.

[Robsoie]

Enemy oozemancers are perfectly able to one shot your character too (their own acid damage + nature/acid damage of their spawns all in the same turn).

Sometime there's indeed nothing much you can do, hitting autoexplore, and your character moving automatically in a corner and you get shot before you can manually do anything, and when this shot disable all your escape options, the yasd potential increase then a very lot.

I would really completely hate playing ToME4 in roguelike mode, at least the adventure mode and the lives you gain through leveling are helping to lower the amount of frustration generated by those unavoidable death.

And still in adventure mode you will get many death anyways on normal difficulty, in nightmare and more it must be hilarious

[Robsoie]

While i think about it : when you're in need of some money or fortress energy , try to transmogrify all the gems you don't use, they're worth really a lot of money and energy, enough so you can get some things earlier than you would if you only used the money from the transmogrified items.

[Frumple]

Oh... yeah. Especially if you're an alchie that's been diligent about that extracting, heh. As an alch, I'm almost always able to immediately activate the farportal when I hit the fortress, due simply to the pile of useless gems I t.mog on arrival (well, on attunement, anyway). Even with non-alchs, I usually keep all my gems until they can be converted into fortress energy, and then mog 'em all at once, instead of selling them off earlier. Gotta' get that money rollin' in, and it's not like anyone uses very many gems to begin with. Even alchies don't need too many, really.

[Darkmere]

Thirded. I usually don't find much worth buying in the early game that's expensive And that I can't live without enough to make me sell off gems. It's usually lightning resist gear, torque of psychoport if applicable, and water breathing something for convenience, and the odd infusion upgrade. All those can be covered with just gear sales (that transmog chest is a godsend... it really, really is), and gems let me bind my rod of recall immediately to my storage for specific resist gear and prodigy stat-boosters. I don't tend to do farportals that much.... though I probably should. The energy isn't going towards anything else...

Do you guys do farportals religiously? Early game or late? Is it worth the risks?

[Robsoie]

Usually i go to the farportal when i'm going against a nasty boss and see that i'm relatively near a levelup (by example the Master in Dreadfell) , as in that game 1 more level can mean a huge difference in survival against a specific oppenent you're having trouble to deal with, as you can benefit from another offensive skill, unlock one that will improve your survival etc...

But out of to help getting a level, i usually avoid Farportal , until i completed the game in which case it can be fun (and good to get some achievements and secret lore related to what you can find there)

[Frumple]

Farportals are a risk. It's basically as simple as that. I do them when I'm performing particularly well with that character or I don't mind losing it. Of course, since I usually don't mind losing characters, I do them pretty often, ha. Occasionally I'll do them when I'm somewhere in between those two extremes and about to hit a particularly nasty area of the game (before dreadfell ambush, etc.) on the off chance I'll both survive and luck into one of those ridiculous random artifacts that occasionally crop up.

But again, farportals are a risk. Everything that can bite you in the hindquarters with normal dungeons can do so in the farportal twice over. Those bosses are not limited in chassis and always have at least two classes, which is to say you're rolling the RNG that it's not going to generate something like a dream horror oozemancer/something equally vicious. At least the reaver/AB loop got closed, but there's still plenty of combos that can just about flat delete you.

Though things are a lot nicer nowadays. We're no longer at the stage that "immobile" jellies will chase you across the map (with a 0 cd dimension step, ferex) and grind you into paste. Improvement!

All in all, though, I'd recommend doing a lot of them before settling in to a standard farportal usage pattern. Find one's own comfort zone, et al.

[Robsoie]

After a really hard (and several death) beginning, my Yeek Alchemist is surprisingly alive and powerful

The experience bonus is really felt too (and it helped a lot for improving my bombs and golem powers earlier than usual), so much that after doing all the optional dungeons and the armory+briargh ones my yeek coming back from the east is level 41 already !

I'm still not really confident in his survivability despite i got nice constitution going, as Yeeks still show their lower health, i got so many time at 100 health left after a battle despite healing, resistances and etc... it will still prove hard to overcome what's ahead, hopefully once i get enough +5 all stats gem, with the crafty hands prodigy i should then be able to get 15 more constitution, though for a Yeek it does not give much health, but it's still something that will be helpfull (as it will give +15 to all other stats).

And i really like my acid bombs, when used is confined space, against enemies that do not have specific acid resistance and it crits


I wish it would do that much damage everytime but those were special favorable conditions.

[Robsoie]

My yeek managed to survive and fight Tannen and his drolem, i was happy because i knew that by defeating both and getting the loot i would unlock the poison spitting drolem for alchemists.

And after bombing them and my golem deathray-ing them into oblivion, the unlock appeared !


... donators only. Damn.
oh well, at least my golem can still death ray superdemons for the kicks.

[Robsoie]

To my own surprise, my Yeek Alchemist after a horrible early game up to Dreadfell with many deaths  just won !
Managing to get my spell crits to more than 90% with several +crits items (and using some gems to imbue
to get even more +crits) helped a very lot in generating some really great damage , and the meteor prodigy that trigger on criticals (though 15 turns cooldown) was really awesome.
To add more fun the Fiery Chocker, that has 10% of chance to cast Volcano was brillant.

It was fun until that end, but what wasn't fun at all and in fact it's terrible design for yeek characters is what follow that Sanctum battle.

In the past i won with a Yeek Summoner , my only winner yeek so far (thanks to how strong summoner are, it helped get around the weak yeek health) and faced with the 2 choices, i decided to enslave the world for "the way" by having the character dying for it, problem is that then you can't play anymore, no farportal, no unfinished buisness.
But that was only 1 of the 2 choices for a winner yeek, so that was ok to get that end as you're basically warned by the choice that does not hide that you're going to die.

What is not ok is the other choice i decided to make, as i have some more fun to do with that character in post-endgame, basically the choice is that you refuse to enslave the world for "the way".

But "the way" still wants to force you do so, and because that silly evil thing is stronger than you apparently, the only thing you can do is asking that sun paladin, that fought on your side in the sanctum, to kill you, something she does gladly.


Yeah, so whatever the choice you do in the climatic battle outcome, your character is dead, you will not be able then to benefit from all the nice items he gathered in High Peak and in the Sanctum to make some fun farportal, or to try to defeat the overpowered Atamathon or even try to destroy that bullcheater of Linanill in Angolwen, or even get another superitem from the merchant that end being a weak one just for the laugh.

So yeek are character that have it really hard, and in the end they're the only character that prevent you to play post-endgame ?  i'm sorry, but that was really stupid,

[Graven]

Yeah Yeeks get a bit shafted in the ending. No idea why - even if I never do anything with my winning characters after the win, I like the thought that they're alive somewhere out there. It's kind of "well I won and my time isn't exactly wasted" - a pretty dumb but pleasantly harmless thing after a win.

In other news, my Archmage is just about to fight the Master. Damn was exploring Dreadfell scary. My damage was horrible until I got 5/5 Wildfire and afterwards dared to bump my fire AOE spells a bit. Still died twice, but that's somewhat par for the course. Haven't explored the Dark Crypt, so of course everything can still come crashing down, but at least I can clear those undead rooms in Dreadfell with great satisfaction.

I also got the Light tree from an escort, so I have two shields to juggle, which also helps. God help me if anything gets to stay in melee range, though. Archmages are squishy. I also hate the whole "check every corner with Arcane Eye for monsters" since I find it a really bad design choice, so I don't do it unless I'm sure there is something scary behind the next door, or in areas with nasty stuff. If I were a bit more diligent with it, perhaps I wouldn't have died the second time [and the first was to the Chronotwins, and I find going there less and less worthwhile with every next character].

Here's to hopefully making it to the East with an Archmage!

edit : HOOOLY BALLS I just got the "That was close" achievement. You know, the one for killing an enemy with only 1 hp remaining. Problem is, I still have a cloak that lets me die at -50 so god damn. It was a Dreadlord or whatever those ugly invisible things that summon lesser ugly invisible things. I forgot that they can turn your sustains off, and smashed him with a Fireflash at point blank range.

I also didn't even kill the ambush. I had just equipped a new staff, so no +20% fire damage, my sustains were still turned off so I wasted 3 turns turning them on, and my teleport didn't bring me in a decent position to Stone Wall myself. So embarassing.

[Robsoie]

With some race/class combo the dreads found in Dreadfell are really nasty, especially with the presence of a dreadmaster that summon more of them.

I wonder if the penalty to damage that apply to players turning invisible is not forgotten to be applied to those monsters, they hit incredibly hard while being invisible and for classes that do not have any high damage aoe spells , they're a big challenge increased by their numbers  (when a Dreadmaster is around).

[Frumple]

Yeah, I'm roughly 80% certain the stuff that's passively invisible (i.e., not using a talent. Mostly the Gs, iirc.) get no penalties for it. Consider them to have a sort of built-in super-invisibility, I guess.

[Graven]

Archmage trip report :

Dear Diary, today I died 3 times in the Dark Crypt. Because I am bad at pattern recognition. Even when the pattern is "Those 4 level 45 elite elven guards deleted you in one turn in melee. Resurrect and go stand next to them again Y/N?"

I also got to the east, but I only have one life remaining, and I don't really feel that comfortable with my character. Finally I do decent damage, since I found a randart staff with +36% fire damage, and with Wildfire and such I can at least clear stuff pretty fast. Single target damage is bad, prodigies are bad - went for Unbreakable Will, since I had nothing else worth going for.

If I die in the Vor Armoury I'll probably give up on this character, since I'm sort of tired of losing so much time to only die 4/5ths of the game completed.

At least I'm sort of starting to realise some of the mistakes I'm making and kind of try to avoid them in future situations.

Playing a mage in DCSS is still a lot more fun [except for Paradox Mage, that shit's wack]. I guess it's mostly because the spells feel more impactful and there aren't stupid LoS shenanigans, and a turn doesn't take 5 seconds and I don't have to constantly monitor 7 sustains.

[Robsoie]

Remember that Dark Crypt is completely optional, don't feel forced to enter in it if you think your character is too squishy, losing many lives on it is not worth it.