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[Frumple]

... elven ruins? If you actually mean the elven ruins and not the rhaloren camp, a level 8 character should probably not be anywhere near the elven ruins. That's a zone roughly on par with dreadfell and probably shouldn't be touched until you're in your twenties, at minimum. Upper teens at the very least. Actually, I don't think the ruins can generate vaults anyway, soo...

If you are talking the rhaloren camp and you had opened a vault... I kinda' doubt that mage was level six. Sincerely. Those vaults (vaults in general generate disproportionately leveled stuff! Bill is your warning, ha.) will happily and generally generate 20+ level critters, and the only elves that casts disease are stuff that doesn't generate in the camp naturally (so you'd be looking at stuff that's level 20 or so, minimum. It's an annoying, but known and apparently persistent issue with the camp.). It wouldn't have been level six, 'cause a rhaloren camp vault that's able to generate those guys will simply not generate something that low a level* 16 or 26 would have been more likely, and damage like that is normal at that point, especially for the latter. In any case, you open a vault, you take your risks. Most vaults don't play around, and can and will wreck you. Survival, especially low level, after opening a vault is not guaranteed and may simply be the end of you**. That's the trade off you make for out of depth level loot.

... anyway, if you're looking to survive diseases, a magical wild will get rid of them if you can't out heal/shield/etc. them. There's also a particular artifact (maybe more than one?) that can clear them out with an activation, if you're already wearing it.

Though yeah, ghoul diseases, specifically, are something different. They've got ridiculous durations. They've always had ridiculous durations, and for whatever ungodly reason DG and co. have decided to leave it like that despite the issue being brought up numerous times. It's one of the things to remember when facing a vault ghoul... or any ghoul, really, especially the ghasts or ghoulkings -- you don't want to let it into melee range unless you can survive a 20 turn disease. Fortunately, ranged diseases have a much shorter duration. It's only and specifically ghouls that get the ridiculous duration ones.

*In the normal course of things, anyway. There's a known and persistent bug with the camp where it'll occasionally to drop a 20+ level caster on you outside the vaults. Rare, but it happens. Stay on your toes in there.
**Especially if you don't have a ready means to get out of dodge. Opening vaults without a reliable escape method is the russian roulette of T4. Along with farportals, anyway.

[Tnx]

Yes sorry the Rhaloren camps.  It was the next one by the crystal caves so I decided to go there.  Lots of deaths there so now I'm strictly following Robsoie's order of dungeons guide.  Hm I was pretty sure he's level 6.  I've been savescumming and so I've left that mage alone for now.

[Robsoie]

Early games vaults are a huge gamble, as Frumple mentionned they can generate really out of depth enemies inside.

Only the Trollmire vaults are generally safe in that regards, i don't think i ever found ridiculous disproportions between my character status and the enemies present in Trollmire vaults.

Remember that you can leave vaults closed and come back only later when you have better level, it lower the risk a lot.

Only exception to the "come back later" being the undeads starting location, you can't come back later as the location is not anymore on the world map (never understood why), and considering you're between level 1 and 3 at most in the undead starting dungeon, it's very recommended to leave those vaults closed, unless you really got some powerfull class and got extremely lucky in that early dungeon items.

[BishopX]

Keep in mind that charms of cure disease/poison can be really handy early game. Don't be afraid to run away (or at least break LoS) and swap out  equipment.


I've got a question for the gruop. Is it worth unlocking the light tree as a skeletal AB? It would mean no 4th inscription slot, and incredibly tight generics. But the status cure and shield might be worth it.

[Robsoie]

I never tried that tree on a skeleton, but while the "Healing Light" works great (when i took it from escort), the "Bath in Light" (that can be take from an escort too) will actually damage instead of healing your skeleton.

[ChairmanPoo]

... I don't know if it's worth taking as a skeleton as your racial tree can fulfill many of the things the light tree does, but overall it's pretty good. Bathe in light sucks ass, but you get a nice healing spell, a nice shield spell, and a regeneration/negbuffremove spell, none of which eat up any resource. All in all it's a handy thing to keep.

[Graven]

Guys guys guys, I have a really important question.

Does "chance to cast level 1 Greater weapon focus" on gloves overwrite my own level 5 Greater weapon focus when it procs?

I have Dakthun's gauntlets, or whatever they're called, and Neira's Memory, and one of those is skipping town for a custom randart from the Merchant. And if it does overwrite, whelp the choice has never been easier.

[Robsoie]

I have no idea sorry, maybe ask on the ToME4 board on which there are people that are aware of the code and could answer.

Just got a streak of ridiculous death on an accidental zigur patrol.

First i went to Maze and unfortunately it was the alternate version, that is a lot harder than the normal one.
I managed to get to the alternate maze lovecraftian-boss that killed my Arcane Blade in 2 hits, i used Flurry, hurt it nicely (40% of health destroyed) while he hit me too for roughly 40% of my health too, then i decided to try to stun it, while he hit me in the same time... and the 60% of my remaining health went goodbye (despite wild infusion that reduce its damage).

Respawning out of Maze, i ran unfortunately on a Zigur patrol when going to the Sandworm dungeon.

When i spawned, there was 2 guys close, my arcane blade teleported away, and landed at roughly 8 tiles of the exit, really great.

I started to move toward the exit and ... died.
looking at the log, ... an oozemancer.

As i was at maybe 3 tiles from the exit i got back, moved and ... died.

Yeah, as a player Oozemancer are overpowered (as i didn't felt i was playing on Nightmare when i completed it with one, maybe they're balanced for Insane in fact), but as a NPC they're the same as players : overpowered , so ... ouch.

In front of my 2 stupid deaths, i even gave up on that character from annoyance.

[kcwong]

I started playing ToME recently because of this thread... adding yet another free game in front of my other paid games. Not for long though... for the three following days I found I played nothing but ToME. So I decided to donate £15.

After a few early deaths, I had a little success with a Cornac berserker (first death was at the hands of a pack of boulder throwers, then it's status casters); he made it to level 28 before using up all lives. Right now I have a Bulwark... no lives used and already got home sweet home.

I got some alternative versions last night... they are quite exciting! The maze where you have to jump down holes, and two giant sandworms instead of many tiny ones.

Some questions though:
1. How do you use the coins from donating? I can't find anything in the website/forum.
2. How to effectively deal with snow giant boulder throwers? Especially when they come in numbers, hiding behind other giants inside a narrow passage. My berserker could facetank the boss but three throwers destroyed him in just a few rounds.

[Frumple]

@ #2, get behind a corner and let them come to you, basically. If you can't get to them before they squish you (i.e. rush, movement infusion, etc.), then wait 'em out. They've got the stupid AI, so they'll follow you without thought once they've targeted you. With that, it's pretty easy to lure them so only one or two have line of fire on you at any one time and can be dealt with easily enough. S'also not a bad idea to approach them from whatever direction mitigates the knockback the most, that is, whichever side of them is closest to a wall.

[kcwong]

I nervously went into Daikara tonight... luckily I got the fire version. Only two boulder giants in separate places along the way. The final map had two of them together inside a big crowd, and they did almost kill me.

Luckily I found a suit of armor with less defense and armor, but gave me -5 cooldown to rush. With my rush already 5/5, a boost from war cries and inscriptions, that's enough for me to get a chance to charge at them, and killed them with my other one-hit-wonder talents.

I was lucky enough to not wake up the fire dragon during all that; with everything else down and a font of life available, the dragon was killed pretty easily.

Now to the tower that ended my berserker...

[Darkmere]

Dreadfell is serious business, best of luck to you. If you aren't anti-magic, grab a teleport rune. If you are anti-magic, get a psychoport torque. Use either (or both!) liberally.

**

My time warden is now a winner. I may not have 250 magic, but I acquired all the stats. All of them.

Between Timeless and Invigorate, Draconic Will outlasts its own lowered cooldown, so every fight started with 17 turns of complete status immunity. At Grushnak and High Peak, the game just decided to throw vaults at me, so after 6 or 7 of them I'm geared to the hilt.

Spoiler: This was a thing that happened (click to show/hide)

I didn't close any portals. I didn't even MOVE in the last battle, just unloaded half a quiver (15 arrows in about 5 turns), dead. One demon wandered up in time puke shadow on everything, but I ignored it and burnt the tank down, too. Aeryn was at 95% health when I won. This is by far my best character ever, but I won't be sacrificing him to Atamathon or anything. Onwards and upwards, eh?

I'm now terribly curious what I could have done with the +50% Mag mod to weapons from the Arcane Might prodigy. Maybe someday...

[Robsoie]

Good job on your time warden win ! i never could get any of them far myself.

Yesterday and a bit today i was running a Ghoul Reaver that was doing great until i found it simply too annoying to be fun, and scrapped the character.

I tried to like that Ghoul Reaver, really i tried, but i simply couldn't.
All of this because the vim management is simply annoying, you need to often use that low damaging "Drain" that give back ridiculously low amount of vim (only 20% of the drain damage) but still more vim back than simply killing things in melee or with a soul rot kill.

There's a sustain that can help to give you back more vim by kills, i took it with joy without reading the description -entirely-, and missed the extremely annoyingly part of that sustain : it cost a certain amount of vim by turn (odd for something supposed to give you more vim), so if you forgot to manually turn off that sustain after a kill and rest, see how your vim bar go down to 0 ...

And all those diseases that add a lot of fun when you start to get them having some more levels, their synergy and propagation. Well, they cost a lot of vim of course, but ... they don't give any vim back for a kill !

And that without mentionning an odd problem of the Bone Shield that half of the time took a frankly boring "forever" to wait/rest for its complete regen (the description when it's maxed of "1 more bone each 5 turns" was simply wrong half of the time, it wasn't rare i had to wait 30 or 40 turns for getting 1 of the bones regenerated, while the other half of the time it was working as the description said).

I didn't liked much the Hate management for Cursed and Doomed, but from my reaver run, vim is simply the most annoying and unfun thing.
If only that sustain wouldn't cost vim each turns, it would make getting more vim a lot less painfull.

[Frumple]

Drain should have been hitting pretty decently... iirc, a bit better than a non-crit soul rot, on average. I usually sink a few generics (2-3) into it early on, m'self. Further, you should be using it instead of bump attacks whenever possible (all corrupted strength, all the time!), so you've usually got a good excuse to use it, t'boot. If that and the normal murder isn't enough, a few points into willpower (iirc, it's +1 vim/kill every ten will) might not hurt, or picking up bloodcasting. Reavers... vim management definitely isn't the problem I've ever had with them. Their biggest issue is they're kinda' squishy and not the most mobile thing in the world. Made up for by all the melee. All of it. And I guess those disease things or... whatever... too.

Rest seems like you may have been running into bugs (the no-vim from disease kills, bone shield regen), at least some of which I could have sworn was fixed at some point... but vim regen has always been kinda' finicky. Might want to give it a bug report or two, see if it doesn't get fixed in the near-ish future. Buggers are definitely a lot less painful to keep vim up with than they used to be, ha. The wonder and glory of keeping hostile civilians around strictly so you could blood sac in relative safety... thankfully a glory of days gone past, hopefully never seen again.

[Darkmere]

I haven't played Reaver or Corruptor since I started playing again (so about a year ago, ish) but I found them both... sparsely skilled? There never seemed like enough to do to keep me interested, especially on corruptor. Doomed feels the same since your shadows take care of most threats for you (and gestures are just weird, mechanically) and Cursed just seemed like a poor imitation of a berserker. Vim and Hate decay always made me feel starved if I rested or autoexplored too long. I'll probably try them again, but likely not soon.

I don't have a character far enough or rich enough to check right now, does anyone know if you can specifically buy shortstaves from the randart merchant? I've heard good things about a staff-wielding sun pally, but I don't want to gamble on finding Telos' Top or something similar, because RNG.

Also, is there *any* valid reason to use Stone Vines on a stone warden? Seems like you can smash large groups on your own and the 50% move penalty is begging to be burst-killed by archers and bosses if you aren't flawless in disabling a tree you spent at least 8 points in...