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[Robsoie]

Yes, i found during that run that the disease tree was really great for when facing more than an enemy, but it's where i found the lack of vim return even more annoying, as you need to drain for a while to get back your vim into shape after using the diseases, explode and spread them more.
I really think the removal of the vim cost by turn of the skill (i forgot the name) that allow to increase the vim return for each kills would make it much less painfull and fiddling to manage that ressource.

The lack of mobility was the major reason i tried it with Ghoul, the leap even if not attacking is a fantastic skill to move where you want and need in 1 turn.
It's basically the low quality version of the much more amazing Giant Leap prodigy (that go further and can even hit very hard on radius)

I found too that a shield is extremely helpfull in giving Reaver the resilience a melee character needs too, while waiting for Bone Shield to get some levels.

[Frumple]

... shield? Like... offhand shield? Or shield rune? Because if, like. Kit shield. You have lost the entirety of your mind. Reavers dual wield one-handers. Always. Forever. Shortstaves are acceptable substitutes. But shields? You've gone off into coocoo land.

Shield. On a reaver. No wonder you were having trouble Reaver defense is offense. Its resilience is making everything else too dead to attack. And I guess bone shield and acid blood. BUT MOSTLY MURDER

Does corrupted strength even proc if you're only wearing one weapon?

Shield rune is fine, though. Probably even good.

[Robsoie]

Rune based shield i meant (undead comes with one), sorry for being unclear, a hand shield would defeat the purpose of many of the Reaver skills and would lower the damage output so much that the poor bugger would not stand a chance against some monsters he -needs- to kill fast.

A rune based shield is more than good on a ghoul reaver, as it improves immensely the poor early game reaver survivability, especially ghouls that can't pillar dance easily with the majority of the monsters being faster than them

[Satarus]

The disease tree works well if you have some Vim on Crit from a bloodlich or similar (blighted?) ego item.  I actually considered Telos Staff prodigy because it comes with a guaranteed Bloodlich ego.  The only problem with diseases I ran into was sticking the diseases to high level bosses.

[Robsoie]

Anyone has experience with Sun Paladins ?

I'm currently running a Thalore Sun Paladin, i'm not experienced in the class, but so far out of the Thalore problem to get experiences , that lead me to be a bit back in the leveling rush, the character is doing rather fine.

The 1st quest (starting in the East actually) got me into serious trouble as my character was level 1 and every naga there was level 4, fortunately "tree dancing" and the searing light that deals continuous damage on the location it stays in helped me to go through and ended in the West.

While my character does not deal as much damage as i would hope, it can take a huge beating and still get going thanks to my shield rune and skill, and the healings so i guess so far it counterbalance the damage output not being that good.

Now about the east, i'm wondering as i see that there are achievement for beating the game without ever going to the west, how is that possible ?
Just curious , before going on my quest and so ending in the west, i left the Gate of Morning and went to the nearby unremarkable cave (the one you come from when landing in the East) , and saw that all enemies were at rather high level (and very likely able to one shot my beginning character).

As i imagine all the East dungeons would be like that, how is it then possible to go and complete the game with a Sun Paladin or Anorithil (that both start in the East) without getting to the West to build him up ?

[Darkmere]

My last Sun Paladin died on High Peak. Looking back, he needed more points in rush and I should have focused on magic more than strength. I played him coming from a bulwark, and they aren't exactly "bulwarks with spells."

There is one trick that can be useful if you have a spare cat point. For the Wild-gift harmony tree: Healing Nexus from that combos very well with Bathe in Light.... all the healing you would be doing to everyone around you instead goes to you, so you get a bigger heal when you're surrounded.

Celestial: Sun is absolutely irredeemable garbage except for the flare blinding. Note on mine that some of those spells are doing 40 damage with 85 mag. Get the blind and close the tree.

Other than that, I'd say focus on Light and physical damage boosts/resistance penetration and be sure to get some kind of mobility because they have very little by default. The damage will be a little low, but I've heard if you luck into a shortstaff and take staff mastery your spells hit quite a bit harder and you get pew pew staff channeling bolts, too.

(and to answer my own question from earlier, no you can't specifically buy shortstaves from the randart merchant)

Re: never going west: Orc patrols. You follow the sunwall patrols around and fight weak orc patrols to level. As far as I know that's the way to do it. It sounds like the worst possible way to play the game, to me, so I won't be trying that. Ever.

[kcwong]

I went back and forth between the tower and other places... went to fight the storm mage, but ended up getting killed once. 4 lives left. Then I looked back and realized I had a pair of gauntlets that can remove up to 3 spell debuff.

Now I'm at level 8 of the tower... game told me I'm a bit behind (or just right?) on level, so I went back to my home first. Found some very nice artifacts along the way, including:
Titanic (that's +320 block)
Blood-Letter
Quiver of the Sun
Moon
Star
Spellblaze
Dagger of the Past
The Untouchable
Wanderer's Rest

This tower is like a treasure trove...

[Robsoie]

Thanks Darkmere, i'll keep away from the useless Sun tree then.

I sometimes wonder why some classes have trees with so many really weak/useless trees that none will then waste points into considering there are trees that with skills so much better than you simply can't afford to waste those points into the useless ones, unless you're trying to increase your own challenge by crippling your character

[Frumple]

@ Never There and Back Again: Had I to guess... I'd say memory editor >_> Or exploration mode, I guess, but cheatin's cheatin', official infinite lives or no

I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about it, really. It would require some pretty incredible shenanigans -- not only do you have to survive those first few bits (even the patrols have a minimum level way beyond a starting character, iirc.*), you also have to take on high peak with something like less than half the XP and loot chances you'd normally get.

It would seem that four people have managed it, somehow, though. So it's either possible or they cheated. How... well, the winner list for those two classes is fairly small larger than I thought. Let's scan...

... actually, I've now gone through the latest year's worth of non-dwarf/undead/yeek celestials, and whoever managed it innit in that lot. Someone else can look. I stopped at "DO YOU SEE THAT ENEMY OVE" the cornac sunpa, if said someone else wants to take up the quest to find Never There and Back Again.

*Actually, I can check... hahaha, oh yeah. Well, okay, there seems the possibility of generating, say, 10th level orc warriors! Good for you. Its friends are in the twenties and over. Good luck with that~

[Robsoie]

Even after doing the starting quest with the nagas , at most you would be level 3 or 4 depending on the amount of XP malus/bonus you have (as you would need to kill their boss to get more levels , and killing her can only happens in the West)

Then i'm not sure how it is even possible to take on Orc patrols, they're already a big problem for some classes , especially when you run into several of the orc spellcasters that will all focus fire on you.

So i guess if there's no some form of cheating involving or some special game mechanics i have no idea about, i can't see how it reasonnably possible without an insane amount of luck.

And to be honest if i had that insane amount of luck in the game, i would just stop playing there and go play at the lottery instead of wasting such insane luck on ToME4

@kcwong , what level are you , and what race/class are you using to get at that point of the game ?

[Darkmere]

Thanks Darkmere, i'll keep away from the useless Sun tree then.

I sometimes wonder why some classes have trees with so many really weak/useless trees that none will then waste points into considering there are trees that with skills so much better than you simply can't afford to waste those points into the useless ones, unless you're trying to increase your own challenge by crippling your character

I think in this particular case Celestial: Sun is balanced specifically for Anorithils, who end the game with 100% crit and want lots of fast, cheap spells to autocrit and proc the disco bolts, and they would go for lots of +light and +dark damage mods. It just doesn't line up for Sun Pallies because spellpower plate is rare and you need to be in melee.

But I completely agree with you on other such nonsense like 2-handed weapon fighting on bulwarks or the melee cunning tree for archers. They're filler at best and newbie traps at worst, especially compared to stuff like Stone Wardens (3 build options), Mindslayers (2 very distinct ones), Archmages (like a dozen builds or something), or Doomed (basically no options that I could see? lots of high-investment skills in two or three trees).

Re: east leveling... I'm completely at a loss. Both celestial classes have a slow, fragile start anyway. I can't imagine going up against level 20 corruptors at level 4 and being able to move, let alone kill 5-10 in an ambush map. I suspect there's some kind of chicanery or exploration mode involved. I did try to look up the global stats on steam even though that's a bad metric... but it won't even load them for me. At least the weird ones like making Myssil/Urkis/The Master drop the rod of recall seem rough, but possible.

[Robsoie]

You're right, i looked at my old Anorithil that won and noticed i had put 5/5 in all my Sun skills and just remember how i used them a lot too to provide my character with energy for the other big spells.

Anorithil in the endgame are impressive ranged machines of destruction, not only by your offensive spells that crits, but because of all your sustain ones that shoot multiples spells by turns (Corona and Hymn of Moonlight) makes yourself into some "gatling gun of magic"

I remember how much pain i was dealing to some bosses and their support with that

All of those requiring energy, that the Sun spells provide.

Now for the Sun Paladin, you have many other skills that will save you from melee fights, probably a reason the Sun tree is left behind for them, simply because you don't have enough skills point to put in them due to you having to give priority to what will keep you alive.

[Frumple]

... that said, two or three points into the first tier sun talent will let a sunpa pretty easily walk the first tier dungeons with that talent alone, and a decent-ish chunk of the not!daikara second tier ones, too. Push comes to shove, you can talent shuffle so as to put the points into something more late-game useful, but early on it makes things a fair bit easier.

[Darkmere]

(I'm totally taking notes from your Anorithil, I'm terrible at them). Now that you mention it, I do remember something else... the Celestial: Combat Sun Paladin tree does passable melee damage and *consumes* light energy. The Sun tree and Light generic tree generate them, so you can use Sun spells as positive generators and keep the heal/shield from Light in reserve for defensive uses. That may be why I left a point into the fire damage beam, just to have more light generators while the rest was on cooldown.

I think next time I find a Telos' Top Half I'm shoving it in the vault and seeing how big of a difference it makes. With boosts from that and the Summertide Vial you might get those numbers in better shape.

[Graven]

So, win or lose, my current Arcane Blade is the most fun I've had with Tome in ages - it's both reasonably difficult [since I'm so damn squishy] and amusing as hell [I've one-shot more bosses than not]. However that's coming to its end, since there's only two more prides and the Slime Tunnels left.

I probably could do another character, but not more, since I'm finding Tome's rigid classes [while immensely fun in themselves] less entertaining in the long run than Crawl's fluid system.

What I would like, is to do massive single hits. What class would be best for this? I'd rather not play Corruptor if possible, Vim is a horrible resource. I noticed one Shadowblade with the Overpowered achievement, but he apparently focused on +shadow damage, spell power, using a one-handed staff and Shadowstrike, and I'm not that good at Tome theory to replicate this.