So I thought after accepting the alchemist's quest that I'd check out the river encircling the town... well, I made it toward the northeastern side, and found that I was drowning, and didn't have enough air to make it back to dry land! So much for my character's questing...

This should probably be on the forums but it's now blocked at work. I think the spam auto-added it to the blocked sites :-(

Anyway, so this is really a concern and idea in one:

• Update the screenshots to that of the latest version of the game (cause the current lot is really old), and separate game versions, so one could see graphical progression, or at least a break

• Create a functionality to upload screendumps via the game.
  • It could be done as text and can be re-rendered on the website with "cached" images after those were loaded. Particle information might be sent too, and it could all be re-rendered on the web?
  • Or just make it .jpg :-)
• Create a web functionality to upload screenshots for "trusted" users.
• Screenshots should include game version and module being played.
• Screenshots of Bugs should be marked as screenshots of bugs. So as not to display them as "advertisement" for the game.
  • Bug screenshots could have the functionality to circle/arrow the area that indicates the bug.

This is sorta like a day in the life but is more of a backgound for Gladoc, the first deathknight. over the course of the story I will probaly bucher some history but hopefully not to much Preface/intro
  I guess it has been a long 26 centuries, full of pain, suffering and sacrifice.  By all the Shertul I never thought I would be around this long.  When I was growing up I was wondering if I was going to see the next full moon let alone my next birthday.  Now the idea of a few orcs posing any threat to me is just Laughable.  I, Gladoc, Death’s right hand man and one of the most powerful beings in this world.  I can count the number of people who pose a threat to me alone on one hand.  But back then I was Gladoc the farmhand incapable of fending off an even a lone wolf let alone an orc.  I was born in 7463 of the age of Allure – right before the famous spell blaze that has shaped the world.  And the spell blaze shaped me just as much.  It was the spell blaze that allowed me to become one of the greatest beings after the Shertul.   Like anything good I have paid the price for all of this power.  Friends have died around me and countless enemies have before me.  During the spell hunt I opposed those who try to extend their life beyond normal means and now I am just that.
Chapter 1: the beginnings of survival 
 During the first two decades of my life orcs where everywhere even though the war was around 50 years old.  You would think that after 50 years one side would lose but the humans stilled clung to victory.  At this point in the war there was no unified command to speak of.  Sure there was some lord with a few hundred troops under his command but that was about it.  The only thing that prevented them from winning was that the orcs had no leadership to speak of.  If Garkul had been around at this time there would be only orcs and trolls in the world.  
 I was born among some human farmers and was raised in the village of Erobrad until I was about 8.  The village had no defense besides the 30 or so farmer militia men.  It was pure luck that Erobrad had survived as long as it did.  While the town militia could fend off about 5 orcs without too much trouble.  But there where bands of orcs numbering in the 30-70 range that could have wiped out the village with no trouble.  You see two orcs could beat 3 human soldiers barely.  Those same orcs could take out 3-4 militia men if they were trying.  The orcs were just so much stronger than us and much better equipped and trained. Sure the orcs couldn’t make well-crafted weapons very well but that does matter when it is swung with enough force to cut a human in half.  The only thing that we had on our side was organization. This allowed us to survive from small bands of orcs that marauded the country side. 
 When I was eight Erobrad was destroyed,  completely destroyed.  One of the larger bands of orcs had located the town and decided it would be fun to loot it for that day’s entertainment.  I think there was 45 orcs in that band.  With the manpower at our disposal there was no way we could hold out. We would have better luck stopping a sword blow with our bare hands then stopping that attack.  To make matters worse they were able to surprise us.  They had  a few orcs capable of quietly eliminating the sentries the town had posted.  Then the rest of them came through the town with torches ready to burn everything.  When this happened I was at the town well drawing some water to make soup.  The adults told us if we heard orcs to find the nearest spot to hide in and hide until we saw another human.  Well I headed that advice and jumped into the nearest possible spot I could hide in: the well.  The town well was only about 20 feet until the water level.  After the drop I was able to cling to the walls and stay silent while listening to the town being butchered above me.  Hiding in the well did have one drawback though and that was the fact that the orcs dumped corpses down the well to poison the water.  The first corpse dropped was almost enough to startle me into giving away my position.  I lost track of the number of corpses they tossed down but it was enough to bury the water. 
 So here I am scared to death, wet and buried in corpses.  Sadly I was not strong enough to push aside any of the bodies trapping me in the well.  After two days of being trapped I began to lose conscious and was near death.    What happened next was pure luck.  Soldiers came to the town.  Even better was the fact that they needed the well.  So when they started pulling corpses up they found me.  The soldier who pulled me out of the well and stuck some bread down my mouth was Fioril, one of the younger soldiers in the company.  After I ate and drank a bit I was brought to the leader of the company: captain Murcyn.  I was given a simple decision – go with them as a cooks assistant or be abandoned in the wilds.                                      
 

Logged in but no unlocks appear from previous versions. Is this a new "feature"?

I starting playing ToME4 a week ago. And I was quite surprised that there was no food clock (or any other type of "timers") forcing me to move onward. It's an interesting change of pace from the other roguelikes I've played.

Anyway, after choosing the "roguelike" setting I rolled a dwarf berserker, because dwarves are awesome! ;-)

I did try a fighter, but realized that I didn't care much for a defensive style. My 1st dwarf berserker (Fafnir) died due to overconfidence against a bunch of cold drake hatchlings.

I rolled another dwarf berserker (same name) and played a little more carefully. For the most part, the game was easy. I unlocked a bunch of classes for just killing things.

I tried to upload my dwarf, but it seems that only characters created while online get uploaded. Everything else got uploaded though.

Most notable moments (1st area): Fighting "The Master" (didn't know about his special ability), and the ambush (I'm surprised that my dwarf managed to survive that encounter, let alone kill them all!).

I made it to the 2nd area and immediately started hating those annoying patrols and all those casters!

I actually came close to dying once in the new place, when fighting several casters at once. Otherwise, the 2nd area wasn't much harder than the 1st.

After finishing all the quests and killing every boss I could find I reached level 50. I decided it was time to end the game, so I went to the final dungeon.

The final dungeon was exhausting...I think it should be a bit shorter. When I reached the top floor I skipped the boss, because I wanted to finish the game already. That was my 1st mistake. The 2nd (and last) mistake? Going into the final battle unprepared.

I got brutally murdered, because I thought my dwarf was practically invincible. Oh well, it wasn't bad for my 3rd character!

Thanks to DarkGod for making a great game! :-)

Derth arena is locked out after they are attacked, which is usually after maj eyal and you are at least level 10; Talk to the relaxing man. After this the mountains, and forest by the lake southwest of derth are marvelous to go through, followed by the ruined dungeon.
The portable chest in the lake through the old forest is excellent for money and carrying things. Get the key before swimming down into the lake.
Daikara should be done after the western beach if you want its timeless content fastest, although the sand takes travel tools to safely go through.
The halfling ruins will help you focus if passed perfectly. The elvish ruins start more difficultly but have a less steep curve. The spellblaze is a perfectly honest name with a trap at the end.
The ultimate challenge on this trip comes after the final ruins.

Usually, playing a fighter is just not my style. Hack, slash, more hack, more slash, and someone dies. Well, this is not the case with the fighter here, as I was happy to find out yesterday.
Yes, it does include a lot of h&s. Aside of that, you also have crowd control abilities. On these first levels these are abilities that can stun or knockback. Both of these can be very handy if you find yourself cornered and attacked by several monsters at once. (Ever seen four or more 'h' monsters speeding up and running towards you, when you are standing in the middle of a huge room? It is frightening.)

My choice of skills included the following (and I try to keep spoilers low here):
Shield pummel: Can stun the enemy and offers decent damage.
Repulse: Knocks back and dazes your attackers (the ones that stand next to you). It won't work if someone or something is behind the monster though, so the usage is somewhat limited.
Rush: Very useful for ranged attackers (archers and mages both), partly because you move there in an instant, but the daze effect is also very handy.
Riposte: Attacking enemies for free is always a good idea. Especially when you are surrounded.
Overpower: An effective attack with an additional chance of knockback. Very useful.

So I've just unlocked the summoner yesterday, and decided to give it a go. As my previous experiences with Tome4 were only limited to getting a warrior up to lvl 11, I'd say I had no idea how hard it will be.. but I was able to survive the first 6 levels, and kill the boss in the first dungeon. This post is just a very simple strategy guide for those early levels for others who would like to try this class.

Level 1: Run!
The first rule of survival is simple: summon and run. Your main goal here is to get some weapon, which can be accomplished in two ways: one is to find a suitable weapon (it helps if you raise your str to 11), the other one is to collect enough useless stuff to sell them and buy one in the shop. For this, you need to explore the wilderness, but - because your are pretty squishy yet - the best possible tactic is to stay close to the entrance and flee if needed.
If you learn the turtle - which is a very good idea to do, btw - you can try to hold back single monsters. Summon it, wait until the monster starts to attack it, then run away a few steps. When the turtle disappears, summon your ranged pet a few steps away from the monster, and move again. Then the same with your wolf, next to the monster. You can repeat this until the monster dies or until your equilibrium prevents you from summoning. In that case (and the same for several monsters coming towards you at once) run to the entrance and leave the area.

Level 1-3: Deal damage
After you found at least one decent weapon, you can change your tactics. First of all, improve your ranged pet, so it will deal decent damage, and maybe also your turtle, so it will stay for a longer period of time. Now you can team with your pet: You can tank for your ranged pet, you can work together with your melee pet or you can deal damage while your turtle holds back the enemy. The damage you can deal together is now enough to kill a group of enemies - if they come one after another. Never stay in the open, always get to some corridor where you and your pet can hit, but there is space only for one enemy. A useful tip here: if you don't see any space where you can summon your pet, try to summon it on top the monster. If there is an open space next to it, your pet will appear there, even if it is behind the monster or outside of your LoS.

Level 3: Kill the troll
Now you should be able to kill that first boss. It helps if your cunning is 20+, but not required. Probably the easiest way is to run around and use your turtle to hinder it and your ranged pet to damage it.

All in all, the first levels of the summoners are not easy, but doable with a little patience. On the other hand, it's good fun, I really enjoyed it, and I suspect that the summoner can become really powerful after some levelling.

Alchemists are great to play; Dancing with and blasting my foes alongside my intelligent and loyal companion who holds its own with its' pair of weapons is on par with the best and my favorite styles of combat in the game. Although there are a few quality of life issues that I can't log in to forums, so I'll leave them here.

The alchemist infusion sustains will delete all the remaining fire damage when their staff is fire typed and they use channel staff, the supercharge golem is a full heal resurrection instead of the designed partial percent, and the second golem magic talent looks like it needs to be a sustain or have a duration listed.

As promised here comes T-Engine4 and ToME4 beta25 ! See http://te4.org/

Don't forget to help ToME by with donations( http://te4.org/donate ) !

Release highlights:

• Various important fixes and updates
• Balances tweaks
• New Thaloren starting zones, along with their own city
• Starting zones reduced to 3 levels, next tier zones to 5 levels

Expanded changelist:

• Ring of blood orb wont take your money if you killed the blood master
• User chat notification upon death
• Unlocks made while offline are now also available while online
• Merged Heavy & Massive armour trainings into a single talent (that goes to 10 like the weapon ones). At level 1 it allows heavy gloves/helms/boots, at level 2 heavy armours, at level 3 shields and at level 4 massive armours. Classes start with enough levels to wear their starting gear
• Aura of Silence description shows the radius
• Silence correctly prevents usage of runes
• Using timetravel spells will not break the ingame chat
• Sotrming the city quest is now more obviously presented on the worldmap
• Armour changed again, it is back to a flat damage reduction
• New stat: armour hardiness, it's base 30% and can be increased with Armour Training. It represents how much of a blow is affected by armour
• Fixed Slime Roots
• Fixed dual weapon training and corrupted strength
• Achievements list now colors in green achievements got by your current character
• Reduced the length of all starting zones to 3 levels and the next zone tier (daikara, maze, ...) to 5
• Antimagic quest now grants Antimagic achievement
• Removed all lava floors from the wyrm room in vor armoury
• Spectators wont decay in the ring of blood
• Fixed long load times when loading a populated level
• Fix crash on big maps
• Rod of Recall / Teleport: Angolwen cooldown adjusted to 400
• Bill is no longer the boss of the trollmire, he has been replaced by Prox, an other troll, which hits not nearly as hard
• Bill has now got his own special level, whose access must be found. And he is now nastier
• The slave combatant has the correct number of infusions
• Dreadmasters now correctly summon dreads
• Defensive throw should now take place after counter attacks
• Reorganized and rebalanced the age manipulation tree
• Removed stat increasing effects from an anomaly
• Wormhole is now instant cast
• Cut sustain cost of Door to the Past in half
• Lowered cost of relentless strikes
• Striking stance now increases accuracy instead of critical power
• Rushing strike stun duration reduced
• Roundhouse kick damage reduced (a bit)
• Spacetime tuning now has a cap on how high it can raise your paradox
• Shattering Impact can only trigger once per turn
• Put much-needed door in the bandit fortress
• Added some non-lava floors to one of the demon nest vaults
• Added dialog to the alchemists to inform the player that they're not the only one working on these ingredients
• Made squid ink more visible
• Changed elixir of stoneskin on-drink message so it makes more sense for skeletons
• Equilibrium and Paradox sustains only check for failure on activation
• Fixed loot generation in vault to be more diverse
• Fix wraithform cost
• Tactical display is now handled by entities (actors) display callback (no change for modules, except they can customize it as needed)
• Added lifebars to tactical display mode
• Melinda got tiles!
• Various fixes
• Daikara rift can not spawn on the previous/next level changers
• Random worldmap encounters can not happen at birth
• Atamathon is now displayed on all tiles settings
• Actor list display wont show the player anymore
• Kill Bill achievement is possible even with the new troll boss (the last lore note drops from him but not on death). Still, quite hard to pull off!
• Bosses will be marked as purple on the minimap
• New starting zones for the Thaloren: The main thaloren camp, Shatur; the lair of norgos; the heart of the gloom
• Timeless wont produce negative timed effects
• Fix Aim to work as advertised
• Fixes sand tunnels in briagh lair
• Fixes the terrain cloning issue with Rune of the Rift and Time Skip.
• Also adjusted wormhole entrance range.

Have fun!