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[Frumple]

Trolls were intended for their own campaign, actually. No clue if there's still intent beyond the orc one, but a number of them (including spider-critters, trolls, dwarves, naga, sher'tul, think one or two others) were planned at one point.

Specifically, pirate islander trolls*. More than that was not said, but that was DG's intent at one point in the past.

*Several of them had lines like this, actually, though them and the (desert steampunk) orcs are the only two I recall.

[Darkmere]

I was curious how you fit in anti-magic and finer energy.... but you didn't take fungus. I'm going to try a more caster-ish setup and see how it works with psiblades later on.


Re: campaigns and new stuff: The only things I've heard mentioned *lately* are the orc DLC thing, and DG told one of the big modders over there to ignore celestials, psionics, and afflicted because he (DG) was making new classes for those metas. Who knows? lunar archers? psibowmen? ... another afflicted class I won't play?

[Frumple]

Haven't taken fungus yet. I'm currently sitting on a cat point. Not sure if it'll go into fungus or an inscription (or psi-fighting for more wil->str or finer energy for more doomkit). Probably hold off doing anything with it until I hit high peak or L50, whichever comes first. Hopefully by then I'll have picked up enough kit for stat juggling to make even more numbers of finer energy redundant. Already jacking stuff up about a tier and a half in terms of damage* (/armor), might be able to get it up to two tiers and change.

... probably going to pick up Carry the World for the second prodigy, too. +40 str = +20 mindpower >_>

And better melee attacks too, I guess.

*Well, base damage, anyway. Still, it's pretty great to basically turn dwarven-steel into voratun and voratun into solidified pain.

[kcwong]

I made it to the other continent without much trouble... the level design included bottlenecks that made sure of my victory.

Now I'm level 30 and are about to choose a prodigy... I'm looking at 4 of them right now...

Fungal Blood - Stock up on another healing power while running my other inscriptions? Sounds very attractive since I'm a tank. But the power will fade and the amount healed doesn't seem a lot.
Never Stop Running - If there are enough space, I could use this to get myself into a nice position even when surprised.
Steamroller - Rushing all around the battlefield... but I don't seem to have the DPS to kill a lot of things in two turns, since I'm running Shield Wall a lot.
Spine of the World - Status defense is good right? Though I do have pretty good resists on most of them already.

I can pump some more points into strength and get I can Carry the World or Irresistible Sun... but those two doesn't seem very powerful.


Edit:

... wow, those orc patrols are ridiculous. Can't outrun them, and my character simply can't last long enough to kill them all (dps way too low, I screwed up the build I think). Two lives left, two classes unlocked, I think I will set this character aside for now. No point to waste all those artifacts I got which can be transferred to other characters :p

http://te4.org/characters/110744/tome/43400623-459d-4d90-b114-ff1c117cfc76

[Robsoie]

You should have taken Irresistible Sun, it's extremely awesome for melee characters, even despite the nerf.

[Darkmere]

Ah, bulwarks. My first love... in ToME at least.

Here's my Anti-magic Bulwark winner.

Assault in the shield offense tree is one of the game's best killers. Paired with riposte (for 2 turns of counterattack) and Eternal guard (for blocking every melee attack over 2 turns), it's almost unstoppable.  I like to disarm melee, or stun casters, to make them feebly punch my shield block, then assault for massive damage, then use Step Up to run to the next target and repeat. If you pair all that with Giant Leap you can just jump over the melee meatwalls and kill the squishy but lethal casters immediately in every fight. As much as I love Irresistable Sun, bulwarks don't need it as much as sun pallies do. It's still a very solid choice, though.

[Graven]

I got irresistible sun on my Berserker, it was pretty fun. Would definitely recommend if you like Being a Sun and Doing Damage.

In other news, why fix what isn't broken, therefore I started another Archmage.

Currently sitting at level 10 with no skillpoints spent, wondering whether to go Storm, Stone or Ice.

I've tried Storm, and it was pretty fun, problem is that while essentially all Archmage builds are DoT builds, storm is the dottest and with the least direct damage, and that just isn't acceptable.

Stone seems the other major alternative to wildfire judging by people's wins, but I toyed with Stone spells on my Arcane Blade, and none of them seem that engaging, and screw aiming Earthen Missiles 3 times every time I want to fight a dude.

Cold is the dark horse, I've never tried it and apparantly neither has the world, judging by the character vault. I checked out the spells, and honestly not much stuck. Guess you have decent AoE CC with that aoe freeze spell? And you can deal some AoE with that shatter spell? But apart from that, I'm not sure.

Any thoughts on non-wildfire AM builds?

[Frumple]

I tried storm once, many, many versions ago. Back when it was a distinct class.

After a while, everything and its hatchling* either resisted or was outright immune to daze, which basically neutered half the build's offensive capabilities. Wasn't very fun. Do believe it's better these days, but the class is still fundamentally centered around a single status effect. The issues with that are kinda' obvious.

Cold's got basically the same issue, except worse, because even without it most of its spells are less damaging than a storm centered build. I hear good things about shivogoroth form, but...

You might be better off going a cold leaning minion-less necromancer.

Wildfire's imba 'cause it's DG's lovechild*, and stone's good enough. Haven't tried arcane but I hear good things about it. Storm and uttercold are just kinda' meh.

*Mild hyperbole, but not by too much.

[Robsoie]

I got a run with an Archmage i decided to build as purely a tempest (air and storm trees) some time ago.

For a while he was dealing death everywhere once he got the sustains of both tree .

Then i found the Staff of Destruction, the very good staff that has 10% of chance to inflict impending doom on anything you hit with a spell.
Looked like a combination of awesome with my good tempest.

Unfortunately i noticed i was getting on myself Impending Doom a lot from then, along with the hurricane effect (the one that hit you with exploding lightning for a dozen of turns) too

After losing a bit of lives due to hurricane+impending doom hitting me (as archmages do not have high health, the effect is really disastrous) , my character was soon dead.

At first i thought it was a phenomenal streak of bad luck that the game generated maybe 50% of the monsters able to cast impending doom and hurricane on me.
But then after some discussion on the board, it appeared that one of the very good sustain that automatically shoot people in a radius with lightning and hurricane death in fact can (and so will) hit yourself if you're close to the target.

And when it happens, the 10% impending doom of the Staff of Destruction can then apply .. on you, similarly to the Hurricane effect that comes from you.

So if you go Tempest be sure to NEVER use the Staff of Destruction, and get as high Lightning resist as possible for you (and possibly as high Magic save as possible) to counter the hurricane effect.

[Frumple]

Spoiler: Really, game? Really? (click to show/hide)

And yes. That was it.

I'm never going to see that bloody femur ;_;

[Graven]

I've gotten the Femur on my Wyrmic win, was pretty nice if it's any consolation

I decided to go with Earth/Stone, probably should've gone Aether.

Unlocked Stone and Temporal at level 10, time shield is amazing. Damage from Pulverising Auger is nice, got a staff with +23% Physical Damage [tier 3 from one of the chests] so yay me, I guess. Cooldowns are a bit long-ish, but I suppose that gets better with Body of Stone. Still not really enthusiastic at my primary strategy against powerful enemies being rooting myself and plinking like a demented turret.

Still died once, to the god damn Sandworm Queen who I guess managed to shoot off all her attack spells and Devour me while I was wandering around in the dark tunnels with my stupid Void Star [2 light radius is a bastard].

Seems decent so far, spells that push people away are always a joy - make me feel really powerful for some reason. Man, if only Gravity paradox mage was better, I'd never play anything else. Would like to get my hands on Wraps of Stone, somehow.

Might have to play Corruptor for my primitive "big numbers" urge, which is a shame, really. Vim is ugh. Also maybe I don't want to be a vile force of darkness throwing my blood at people, game. Maybe I just want to purge the entire world with lightning, how about that? Or show those pathetic Oozemancers the true power of nature via impaling their worthless bodies with gigantic spires of rock?

[Earth should totally have a spell that knocks people back and Pins them if they hit terrain - Impale people all day erryday]

[Robsoie]

I was running a Ghoul Berserker, curious to see how far health could be pushed (Ghoul have the best health gain by level and Berserker having the best health gain class) .

But i never ceased to forget my escape options (and i had a few, teleport, ghoul leap and even a leap from artifact boots) regularly and died too many times from that lack of attention (or even forgetting to use that nice retch), too focused on the "take that damn monster !" pain dealing business .
 
It was rather incredible how fast that much health can go away if you don't pay attention to it when playing berserkers.

Now i'm running a skeleton archimage to see if i can finally get a decent damage dealing archimage running instead of my past failure one.
Already lost 2 lives again to stupid situations that each time involved the shield rune (that i set to automatically activate when an enemy is spotted) that didn't activate at all despite the autoexplore was stopping due to an enemy.

Most of the time the activation when there's an enemy spotted will work.
But for some reason i don't understand, sometime it will activate automatically only the turn -after- when it has spotted the enemy, meaning that if you're confident in the game to have activated as it should your shield, you'll cast a spell (and the enemy will shoot at you too with his spells/skills/etcand then next turn you have taken tons of damage to your low health (as a mage) , and your shield ... activate ... or not if you've been insta killed by the damage

Could have been understandable if there was a bad effect on the character or a rune saturation, but it was not the case in both situations.

I reported this a couple of versions ago as it's not the 1st time i observed this oddity, but as it's still there in 1.1.5 i guess that's not going to change anytime.

So the best advice is to never trust the game to automatically activate a rune when it should, always check if it has really done it before taking any further action, because losing a character due to that is simply not fun. As said most of the time it will activate as it should, but sometime it will only activate on the next turn (for some character i played it was half of the time), and it's in those situation that it's easy to lose characters that completely rely on their shieldings to survive

[Frumple]

Yeeaaah... pretty much the only thing I set to auto is sustains I want to keep on. Actives, of any sort at all... no. Anything that would be vital in a combat situation (such as those shields), nuu.

Shields up at first sight of enemy sounds like a good way to get killed, anyway. Kicks on at the first sight of hatchling, five turns later it kicks off having soaked up no damage and the drake/wyrm steps around the corner. Splat

[Robsoie]

A few steps back is usually enough to get your shield cooldown back online if you run into such situation and do not have a 2nd shield/rune reflection. Served me well everytime there were wyrms hidden behind their drakes .

My skeleton archmage is still alive (well, as much as an undead can be ), i lost a life this time not due to my shield not automatically activating (as i now continuously check) but because overpowered rare had been generated.

It was in the alternative lake of nur (water levels instead of water then ruins without water), it was a rare/unique entranched horror (the regular ones have been burning very well from my strong spell).
Not knowing what to expect, i activated on top of my rune shield my bone shield (skeleton racial) to cover everything.
As bone shield takes a turn to activate, the rare shot me, and ... no more shield and no more bone shield, instead of listening to cowardice and save my character life by teleporting (entranched horror never move) , i decided to give a try to burning that thing with my strong spell before teleporting away, so i could play an attrition game, burning it, retreating, coming back, then burning it again etc...

A bit like you do with the Master if you character is really too weak to stand in a long fight with him.

But while i indeed burned the thing, it shot me again in the same turn and ... Eidolon loading.

Wow, 1st turn it destroyed -both- bone shield+damage shield, and 2nd turn, it destroyed the whole character health (near 600 thanks to many +health items as archmage are very low on health without them).
Looking at the log it appeared that the thing was a Solipsist dealing insane psi damage.

Fortunately it was in a corned of the level, far from the stairs down, so i could go back and just run to those stairs to burn easily the fortress entrance boss and get in it.

Some time later, i went to Dreadfell and managed to defeat the Master, i had to use the attrition tactic as my mana was running low a bit too fast in comparison to his health and resurrection.
I really wonder if the Wildfire sustain supposed to nearly drop enemies fire res by 50% is really working as before as i didn't noticed any real difference between having it on , maxed, and having it off , especially against the enemies that had no visible fire res.
Before for such enemy with no fire res, their fire res would get into negative as expected and they would really take huge damage, but it does not seem to happen now, unless it's some really bad luck in the damage rolls.

Anyways, in my victory against Dreadfell, i found this really good item , a nice alternative to the Black Robe actually, even if it's less strong in Spellpower, it has nice +stats

[Graven]

Yeah, probably should've bailed as soon as it took your shields. I'm honestly having a lot of problem with that myself, admittedly, so I can't really judge

Stone Archmage report : great single-target and AoE damage, great fun, 10/10 would recommend, 4 deaths so far [clearing Dreadfell] worst of which was getting pulled into my own Earthen Missiles by a rare. Debating on restarting, will probably do that if I die one more time pre-return to the west, kind of want to continue for now though since restarting feels like cheating. Will keep on getting Temporal ASAP on any future Archmages, a 700 point shield [with Aegis] at level 20 is absurd.

Going to roll a melee to go alongside the Archmage. Since I've almost won with my Arcane Blade, I want to try a different melee, since everything even remotely similar - rogue, shadowblade, marauder etc - will feel pretty impotent in comparison. My choices are Cursed [really strong and dull as heck] and Sword-and-board Wyrmic [awesome and manly and quite handsome if I do say so myself]. Not really sure what's considered "hip" with Wyrmics nowadays - I just hope they fixed the breaths, since I remember the frost one running on Spellpower rather than mindpower waaay back for some reason.

Definitely gonna go with Cornac again - life's too short for experience penalties.