BDay 28Jan in Beta19

the start was unexpectedly difficult.
Rushed to get an Icy Skin and never looked back. first level trippled my armor.
Aiming for anti magic
Labrinth was a sleepy way to level up. nothing could penetrate my armor. But they did die from hitting it.
After antimagic I maxxed my resolve against it
Looking for something more difficult founf the hafling ruins.
That was fun, found all the notes.
Then there was an eternal bone giant in a locked room and we couldnt kill each other.
Ice claw was the major attack at this stage but he was immune.
Saved the Yeek but asked about how lonely he was, so I didnt to know it was an unlock.
went dragon hunting, but that was scarry.
Saved some lumberjacks.
Bekame a berzerker but using knives
Rescued a singer whe taught me the Hymn of preservence.
Went back to the eternal bone giant and killed him twice, used up all my wands, ran away again.
Went back to hunting drakes, found a portal an jumped in.
Cleared out the area of time elementals.
waited...
Ran around clockwise...
Checked the forums...
Ran around anticlockwise then found the mam exit.
The rest of this quest was really fun and a little challenging.
Found out that the portal was not the end of the drake dungeon, going back.

Decided that I dont deserve an unmarked grave this time and began an obituary. This one...

level 18, wondering if i can take a snapshot of my charachter sheet.
Plenty of armor, enough to make me arrogant and get killed.
practically no damage output, espissialy when fighting cold drakes... again
4th journey to level 4 of Daikia, meybe I will find that there is a level 5?
Also found out today that the reason shops will not buy from me is patch 19, I thought it was because they were racist towards skelletons.
Also starting to lag out again like Anoikis did in Dreadfell.

Yay the boss was on the next level, pity he died on a mountain and I cannot reach the loot
YTay, 6 pickaxes in my backpack to chose from.

Hmm, seems I still have not killed the bos in Daikia. the stone dude must have been a bonus. Herre we go again, for the 5th time. Gave up again, this time due to lag.

actually that is getting past 3 seconds per keystroke, time for a different game I think.

Not entirely sure why, but all bosses were a minimum of 7 levels higher than me throughout my shadowblade. Tore apart everyone right up until the woodling, which was level 20 to my level 12, barely managed to take him out, then went into lake of Nur, was challenging but nothing ridiculous. Got to sher'tul, and promptly got beaten into a pulp by an unstoppable weirdling. ah well, i'm used to getting pulped by roguelikes. off to try another character

The new party system is great for alchemists who rely on their golems for brute strength, but it can be annoying when you switch control over to the servant and the AI throws a bomb at the wrong time. It would be wonderful if you could make a list of talents to either be allowed or banned from use by the AI.

Got Penitence at Maze 5. Looks like a big upgrade from my ash staff of power.

Killed the minotaur and got to level 16. Fallen asleep onthe keyboard. Lost an escort quest to the Treant Boss and a bazillion of snakes. And a honey tree hiden behind the path's turn.

Finished the apprentice mage quest. Got a 8% fire magic ring. What a ripoff - what about the portal to angolwen? Doing the Tempest quest at level 19. Died to Urkis. Twice. He's followed me back to the respawn point, died thrice. Respawned with -98 life. Looks like i'm dying here. Teleported away, died a 4th to some out of screen elemental. Regeneration is still 11 turns away from refreshing and now teleport is unavailable too.

Sunk 5 points to flameshock hoping he'll get stunned. He did. Killed him, got to level 21. Now i know what flameshock is for - not the silly damage, for the stun duration. Dumped even more points in constitution and got Health to level 3. He dropped Eden's Guile. I guess i can kill what's left in this dungeon for experience. There's a big vault that smells of yet another death for me here. I'll leave it for last. Everything went well.

I'm still afraid of the sandworm lair so i'll try the underwater level first. found frost treads onthe way down. I can't decide whether it's better than ededn's guile. Bah, i don't have enough dexterity anyway.

Note: old forest level vaults seem to be safe. Died at lake of Nur 3 confused by unseen horrors offscreen and poisoned by a black mamba. found the entrance to sher'tul, killed the weirdling beast without any difficulty. There's some text and i don't really understand what's going on, the quest log says i have a butler now.

Oh, the storing room automatically stacks things, nice. I wonder what those two teleport runes do. I'll take the bottom one first. OK, both of them lead to the same place, weird. sorted my stuff out. Gotta find that other place, instead of the worm lair. Found an entrance to some elven ruins but my past experience with elves warns me to stay away from those. Same deal with the entrance to a ruined dungeon. Found daikara, it was to the east. Found a ring of the war master at level 3. I'm actually going to wear it, that's a lot of stats.

New version's out, rerolling. This time i grinded to level 4 before going to Trollmire 3 in order to get Manathrust, Flameshock, Freeze and Chain Lightning. And teleport, of course. Remapping keys.

Level 5 putting one point to manathrust one point to flameshock. Almost died to a vault of honey trees. Successfully escorted an alchemist. I STILL can't decide between +2 magic, imbue and stone touch. Meh, i'll go imbue this time - basically the way i see it a gem in a body armor = +1 to all stats = better than +2 to magic only. Stone touch... some other time.

Died to Bill. I had better luck (and more mana) the second time. He dropped Eden's Guile. Since i'm level 8 now, i'll pump manathrust to level 3 and dumpthe rest to flameshock. I'll try the maze before Kor'Pul this time. Oh, new tileset. Hard for the eyes.

Found a Vargh Redemption at Maze 3. Maze 5 Eel Armor. Died to the Minotaur. Looks like the Bosses are a bit harder in this version. Lol, he's using Wild AND Regeneration. No wonder i run out of mana without killing him. Ok, time to put those Unique Items and their abilities to good use. Nope, still dead. Screw this, i'm going back to the world map, it's impossible for me to kill him at the moment.

Went to the old forest. There's some fog or something, i'm having a hard time seeing the field. The game is hard on my eyes atm.

Also i think i messed up skill allocation once again - i maxed flameshock too early, that's why i don't have dps atm - i should have went for flame. Maybe i'll stop doing cornac mages and try some of the other races too.

Nah, after 5 minutes playing a Higher i find that one extra teleport slot beats their racial ability.

Found a paladin escort quest - once again i'm at a loss concerning which reward to choose. I don't want to end up with +2 strength again. Chose chant of Fortitude - maybe it'll help me resist stun effects.

The fog effect really makes it impossible to see where monsters are in the old forest. Died to an extra (on-screen but invisible due to the fog) luminous horror while escorting a suicidal alchemist. A pity, i wanted to try stone touch this time. Henceforth i'll just browse the net while waiting for the fog effects to clear. Wrathroot dropped Frost Treads. guess i gotta dump some points into dex.

Continued to the underground lake. No problem, i've done this before, hit the orb of recall the moment i enter the water, do a couple of random teleports until i map the place to find the door. Why it's even easier now, there's air bubbles! Why don't i hit the R button to rest just one turn to wait for the manasurge timer to reach zero and replenish my mana for another phase door?

Little did i know the air bubble had deplated the previous turn. I rested myself to death. I am VERY bitter. Calling this a night.

Well it's been a long long time coming and I've learned a lot getting here so I'm very happy to say that the Paradox Mage talent trees are completed.

Now that's not to say that the class is done. Because of the number of new talents and the nature of the resource I need to get some playtime in with them to test the numbers, make sure that the class is balanced, and most of all to ensure that they're fun to play.

So... mostly finished? That's pretty safe to say. I still need to run through all the talent descriptions, particles, and sound effects. Give it all a once over to make sure I didn't leave anything out. Plus we still need an unlock. But the class is playable and I hope will add a lot to the game once it's all polished up and released.

I'd like to share some of my favorite talents with you though as a teaser of sorts.

Paradox Clone - You summon your future self to fight alongside you for a few turns. (Note that this is a full player clone complete with tactical AI. Probably one of the toughest summons in the game. It also has a really cool side effect but I don't want to get to spoiley.)

See the Threads - Darkgod did all the coding on this one and came up with the idea. Sweet spell that lets you exist in three different timelines for the next few turns and then pick the outcome you like the best.

Precognition - My idea, DGs code. This spell is the reason I've decided to remove the vision and detect type effects from the chronomancy tree. This is your vision, this is your detect. You cast this and get to act for a few turns, see what's in a vault, fight a monster you've never encountered to gauge it's abilities, or whatever you want to do in that time (even learn a talent to test it out before really having to learn it). When the buff wears off the game reloads you back to where you cast it as though nothing happened. But you, the player, gets to keep all the knowledge you've acquired.

Lots of other neat stuff too but those are my favorite three.

Alas, poor Damzel, we hardly knew ye! Felled in her prime by the wicked Blood Elves who reside deep beneath the earth, have infravision and do wicked amounts of damage. One you could handle, two in a pinch, three... dicey, but possible, but ten? And then as you descended, another ten more?

The gods did ask too much. Perhaps you should have not been so eager to rush down trap doors...

First I played a Shadowblade because I like dualwielding.
When I unlocked the Reaver I was delighted to see the dual wielding of any 2 one handed weapons.
This was again surpassed by the Mindslayer, who can dual wield 2 large weapons or tripple wield one weapon of each size.

After I found a flaming voratun greatsword with ~lvl 15 in the maze I switched to tripple wield, putting a dagger with ice damage and light damage on hit in one hand to freeze my enemies, a dagger with slime damage to slow everyone who opposes me in the other hand, and wielding the voratun greatsword with my mind.
This build is supported by conduit, which adds flat damage to each of my 3 attacks as well as weapon reshaping.

Im level 22 at the moment with no bigger problems thanks to my powerful shields that allow me to adapt to my enemies on the fly, the large damage output with my normal attacks and the debuffing potential of my daggers.
The only real downside is the focus on melee combat that I try to compensate with the Augmented Mobility tree at the moment. And that the chat gets pretty much flooded with damage messages.

At the start of the second dungeon I found "Bills Tree trunk" and gave it to my golem. wow that packs a punch, he was 2 hitting everything until I started facing vampires.
Found the staff then lots of elves started attacking me, they seem to be in another league. But now it is time to try a skeleton.

So I just got further than any of my previous characters, this time with a Fighter. I was really excited because I finished the anti-magic quest and was beginning to get some of those skills, and I just defeated The Master and unlocked Yeeks.. I was level 28 and was starting to feel very confident about things.

Then I found some random crypt, entered, and got my ass handed to me summarily. I wouldn't have been too perturbed by it — these things happen, after all — but there was no entrance to it, so 'resurrecting' just sent me to my death over and over again. If you're going to give the player lives, I say make them mean something. This was pretty frustrating.

Ah, well. *rolls another character* ;)