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[Aoi]

What do most people consider early game? I consider the entire western continent (pre-return) to be early, with mid- being non-Pride eastern continent, and late/end to be the Prides/Peak.

I ended up clocking a Normal/Adventure win with a Ghoul Bulwark a while back that was centered around being to soak a ton of damage while slooooooowly whittling down with reflect damage and puking  constant puking. Undead enemies, and things that relied on ridiculous amounts of spike damage were the only things that could really cause problems, so I had to run away from them.

Currently, I'm really enjoying the Turtle addon... one of which is basically my above build, except turning it into a race.

[Darkmere]

I consider everything pre-Dreadfell as "early," Dreadfell to the east as "early-middle," east to return as "mid-late" and post-return as "late."

[Robsoie]

To plan your zone exploring, give a look to there :
http://te4.org/wiki/Zone

Usually i do the following order and so far it has worked good for the characters i won with :

- racial/class special starting dungeon (excepted the The Deep Bellow when you're dwarf that i keep for when i'm at least level 8 )
- Trollmire (if you have no racial/class starting dungeon and so get into Trollmire first, you should avoid the lair level you get access to after killing Trollmire boss, and get back when you'll have 2 more levels in order to minimize the risk)
- Norgos Lair (alternate Norgos lair is a bit more difficult with many shivgoroth that shoot cold at you)
- Heart of Gloom
- Derth's arena
- go to trigger the Lumberjack Village
- Ruins of Kor'Pul
- Scintillating Caves
- Rhaloren Camp
- by then you should be able to trigger Unknown Tunnel

That's all for the early game dungeons, then next tier

- Old Forest
- Maze (if alternate maze , the ones with the huge holes, do the before, alt Maze has more difficult monsters than regular Maze)
- Sandworm Lair
- Golem Graveyard
- Hidden Compound
- Daikara
- Ruined Halfling Complex (sometime i do this one 1st before Daikara)
- Lake of Nur (if i run into something too strong in there i go to next before coming back)
- Ruined Dungeon
- Tempest Peak

- Dreadfell
mid dreadfell, if you think you're not high enough level , you can go back into Daikara and if you have some temporal resistance, do the Temporal Rift.
if you have done Lake of Nur, if you still think a level may help (gaining a level -always- help) you can try some Farportal in your fortress.

For some races that are not too crippled in experience gain , you may reach level 24 before Dreadfell, and so trigger the Dark Crypt, now that's something that can be very hard depending on the room configuration (and how good or weak your class/race combo is), as it's an optional dungeon, i recommend to only do this one if you know your character race/class combo is strong, losing a few lives in Dark Crypt can be very easy

[Graven]

Honestly I love going into the Dark Crypt, and I'm yet to do it without a loss of at least one life. The odds of descending into a room packed with 70 XTREME Corrupt0rz are way too high. If you have religiously collected every piece of blight and acid resistance out there [does acid even help? I've no idea] - give it a shove.

You can get decent gear in there, but if it's gear you're after, and you're sure you're the meanest, baddest sonofabitch around, go do the elven crypts.

I've done them once pre-east, on a Shadow Blade, because hey, what is anyone going to do to a shadow blade? It was fun.

Other than that Robsoie's tier list is really nice, and it minimizes the risk of death. [Don't ever go in the Last Hope graveyard pre-east the undead that spawn are the grim black wind that envelops the last flickering candle of humanity's hope].

[Frumple]

Both acid and darkness are more or less the secondary major (ranged) damage sources in the crypts. You also get a bit of physical (stone missiles or whatever those are), lightning, and I think fire. Blight's definitely the big one, though.

Personally, I've dropped the place sans life-loss with 0 blight res (well, probably some resall by that point, but eh) before, several times. Mostly, it's just a matter of mobility (particularly if you're melee) and LoS control, and knowing what the right targets to kill first are (and being able to do so quickly, of course). It's pretty rough, especially if you get caught immediately at 24, but it's very doable.

... though I will say, re: Rob's list: I usually do the lake of Nur a lot earlier. Immediately when I hit the Old Forest (though I've taken to hitting the Maze immediately after the first tier junk, rather than doing OF first), trending toward level 14-16. There is no way in hell I could stand waiting until post Daikara for that storage chamber >_<

Plus, the earlier you get that over with, the earlier to start collecting farportal energy...

[Robsoie]

A nice summary of Dark Crypt
http://te4.org/blogs/burblulls/2011/05/crypt-kryl-feijan-and-you



The difficulty with Lake of Nur comes from your own luck in what the game will generate in the lake of nur dungeon, meeting luminous horrors too early is nearly a game over situation for a too early character.
It's a very big risk and the Weirdling Beast that guard your desired fortress is very strong if you're not strong enough to deal with what it can do.

Where i placed it in the list should minimize your risk (though it can be still very hard depending on what the game decided to generate there, a bit like in the alternate maze that can be of equal difficulty if you get dreaming and luminous horrors everywhere)

[Frumple]

A nice summary of Dark Crypt
http://te4.org/blogs/burblulls/2011/05/crypt-kryl-feijan-and-you

Movement infusion and that may have been survivable

There was at least two chokepoints in those first two rooms that might have been reachable with a decent-ish one, heh, and once you've cut things down to only one or two being able to hit you it becomes a lot more... possible. Mobility and LoS control! That is key, hoho.

Later E: Actually, with a bulwark specifically (... and I guess marauders and ABs too, these days?), rushing the weakest target to pull a instapop step-up rush might have done it, too, thinking on it. That's often a pretty good idea for a surrounded step-up user -- kill the furthest out/weakest to proc step-up, so you can dip out.

[Singularity125]

Comments inline, dungeons I've done are in red.

To plan your zone exploring, give a look to there :
http://te4.org/wiki/Zone

Usually i do the following order and so far it has worked good for the characters i won with :

- racial/class special starting dungeon (excepted the The Deep Bellow when you're dwarf that i keep for when i'm at least level 8 )
Oh, good, I was about to feel weird for not doing that yet. Since I'm level 12 though I probably should do that next.
- Trollmire (if you have no racial/class starting dungeon and so get into Trollmire first, you should avoid the lair level you get access to after killing Trollmire boss, and get back when you'll have 2 more levels in order to minimize the risk)
- Norgos Lair (alternate Norgos lair is a bit more difficult with many shivgoroth that shoot cold at you)
- Heart of Gloom
- Derth's arena
- go to trigger the Lumberjack Village
- Ruins of Kor'Pul
- Scintillating Caves
- Rhaloren Camp (I died here because of a vault. Haven't gone back yet. >.>)
- by then you should be able to trigger Unknown Tunnel

That's all for the early game dungeons, then next tier

- Old Forest
- Maze (if alternate maze , the ones with the huge holes, do the before, alt Maze has more difficult monsters than regular Maze)
- Sandworm Lair
- Golem Graveyard
- Hidden Compound - Spent all my gold trying to figure out the brawler thing
- Daikara
- Ruined Halfling Complex (sometime i do this one 1st before Daikara)
- Lake of Nur (if i run into something too strong in there i go to next before coming back)
- Ruined Dungeon
- Tempest Peak

- Dreadfell
mid dreadfell, if you think you're not high enough level , you can go back into Daikara and if you have some temporal resistance, do the Temporal Rift.
if you have done Lake of Nur, if you still think a level may help (gaining a level -always- help) you can try some Farportal in your fortress.

For some races that are not too crippled in experience gain , you may reach level 24 before Dreadfell, and so trigger the Dark Crypt, now that's something that can be very hard depending on the room configuration (and how good or weak your class/race combo is), as it's an optional dungeon, i recommend to only do this one if you know your character race/class combo is strong, losing a few lives in Dark Crypt can be very easy

Other than that Robsoie's tier list is really nice, and it minimizes the risk of death. [Don't ever go in the Last Hope graveyard pre-east the undead that spawn are the grim black wind that envelops the last flickering candle of humanity's hope].

I learned that one the hard way. I don't even know where some of these dungeons are, because I'm trying to play this one with a minimum of spoilers. It definitely looks like I've done some things out of order and made life harder for myself though. XD Ah well.

[Frumple]

Scit caves gets a lot easier with better healing and/or increased movespeed(/better mobility), just as a note. A 'zerker full up with that second tier combat veteran passive (the HP one) can pretty close to literally just walk through everything and nothin'll be able to hurt it fast enough for the damage to stick, just as an example. Admittedly that's like level 8 or something, but still. As a shaloren, though, I do pretty regularly (if probably not a majority of the time) just bugger off to another zone rather than run that as my first one. Definitely the most dangerous of the non-race specific (undead/yeek, in particular) starting zones.

Rhaloren camp... yeah. Do not open the vaults in there unless you really know what the blazes you're doing (especially the larger oval ones!) and you have some form of quick escape. Not if you really want to live, anyway. It's definitely got the nastiest vaults (on average, anyway) of any of the first tier dungeons. You'll occasionally get 30th level elite spellcasters in those ruddy things, and regularly get 20-30 level spellcasters, elite or not, which will happily wreck the face of most early game characters. Incredibly dangerous for most people, that early in the game.

Though, there's not really an "order", per se. I remember a fellow that pretty regularly just flat out did the Maze first, and the second tiers (barring daikara, anyway. It can seriously use more tools than a level 5-6 character is likely to have...) are usually pretty doable if you've got just the initial two dungeons (even one can often be enough) under your belt... just a lot harder. Still, experiment to see what you enjoy the most, should be your goal. Some folks don't bother doing all the first tier stuff, and that's fine.

[Aoi]

I hate the rhaloren camp. (It the elf thing next to the scintillating caves, right?) Those guys in there can spike really hard, and seem to scale to way higher levels than the other low level dungeons. I've lost Dreadfell-ready characters in there before.

[Frumple]

Unless it's been changed, it did occasionally get a bugged out 20+ level spawn, even outside the vaults. Could get nasty, especially if you weren't expecting it. S'generally a bit of a cinch, though.

As for the spiking, yeah, they can spike, but they can generally only do it once and actual damage throughput usually isn't very dangerous (and limited to the casters. The non-casters are chumps.). Often scary (which can make the player panic and do silly things), but rarely actually dangerous. Most of them have the stupid AI, though, so you can almost always just let them come to you and cut down the engagement to like 3 tiles and two turns, heh, if you need to. Line of sight/fire control will get you through it pretty easy, if you're not strong enough to mostly faceroll it, yet.

That said, it is usually the one I do last. Mostly because the other four are a lot closer to each other >_>

E: Ooh, though if you have a digger, do remember the mining trick for the boss. That wall in between the opening to the boss vault and the boss itself can be dug through. Saves a lot of time on approach.

You can do the same thing in kor'pul, actually~

[Graven]

Welp, 2 deaths pre-Dark Crypt. On a Corruptor. I am actually a bit drunk right now, but hell - this doesn't explain why a rare can instagib me with flurry in 1 turn at the first encounter, and do a total of 40 damage to my shield in like 2 weeks the second time.

Really disliking the variance in damage output from rares in Tome. Gonna go League a bit, this shit is too hard for me right now.

What's a good general strategy for reavers, in the meantime? Just keep encounters to as few enemies as possible, and kill them as fast as possible? Because I seem to end up getting surrounded everytime despite my bests efforts.

Perhaps it's time I tried another Arcane Blade.

Or another antimagic class, because god knows I haven't gotten enough free rides to victory as it is.

[Frumple]

Use corridors/chokepoints, murder everything? Reavers are melee monsters in the early game, especially with the corrupted strength change a while back.

... and the mid game. And the late game. Kinda' squishy, but squishy matters less when everything is dead.

As for keeping encounters to as few enemies as possible and killing them as fast as possible. That's not a reaver strategy, Grav. That's an everything strategy Which is to say yes, you should be doing that on a reaver. And a 'zerker, archmage, solipsist, doomed, slime-dude... everything. All of the classes.

More than that, there's a few guides running around the t4 forums/wiki/etc., iirc. Should be able to get some more nuanced ideas out of that. The reavers I run tend to just faceroll (mostly by bumping and corrupted strength procs to the face) everything up 'till the east, which is when I get bored and play another character >_>

[Elephant Parade]

Posting to watch.

[Graven]

Man, Frumple, you and your reasonable advice and cautious playstyle  I want to run into the middle of great fights and AOE stuff to death, dammit [but please not as boring as Cursed oh god please never again].

In other news, rolled a reaver, died once to a Oozemancer rare, got a randart Stralite waraxe with 50-70 damage from the maze.

I'm still going to die in a second, but it's pretty amusing so far.