So, I've played a few rogues now.

I am amazed. They start out so weak and fragile, but they eventually become steamrollers of silent death. I'm finding that the traps I preferred early on are beginning to be outstripped by my combat ability. About time, I say.

And don't get me wrong; the traps are still vastly useful. They grant me access to damage types I wouldn't otherwise have, allow me some powerful AoE damage effects, are wonderful for area denial, and are great for setting up stuns for flurry/backstab combos.

As I just mentioned, one of my favorite tactics is flurry + backstab. I only put 2 points in backstab, because I have more than 100% crit if I pop Luck of the Little folk before I flurry. It's a sick combo. But I find that only the first strike of flurry crits out of stealth, so I am wondering what a good single-hit attack would be for use with shadowstrike.

So I've just discovered this game. And I love it.

I come from a NetHack background, and discovered this game after looking into some roguelike-friendly libraries. I fell in love almost immediately. I really like the intuitive cooldown system, and the thing about this game I like perhaps most of all is its lack of consumable items in general; especially potions and scrolls.

Runes and infusions are slick, versatile, and make for some surprisingly deep strategy. So far I've only played the Fighter and Archmage classes at any length; I'm delighted by how different they play and how unique their challenges are.

Anyway, I'm still a huge noob, but I'm sure I'll have something more interesting to say in the future. Right now I'm trying to decide how to balance my Archmage's stats — he's been one-shotted a few times, and I'm concerned that this might become a theme. Melee critters aren't an issue; it's the spellcasters. I wonder if I should pump con or use one of the shields available..?

As promised here comes T-Engine4 and ToME4 beta19 ! See http://te4.org/

This release is huge. I mean HUGE.

Two new classes, one new race, party system, gfx niceness, you name it, it's in there!

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

Release highlights:

• Many fixes
• Many UI improvements
• New class: Mindslayer, a psionic class that erects mental shields and dive into battle, swinging a balde with his hands and one with his mind
• New class: Temporal Warden, protect and use the timestream, use both archery and melee attacks, create temporal distortions and even travel back to the past!
• New race: Yeek, a puny looking race, with a big mind. Yeeks are natively powerful psionics, united in a global psionic network. They have their own starting area
• Party system: Sometimes during your adventures you can meet new party members, or start with them, or summon them. It can be used to either fully control them or give them order
• Reworked Alchemist class: Taking fully advantage of the party system the alchemist golem has grown in power and usefulness
• Many graphical improvements, 64x64 mode, new tileset (not by default yet as it is not complete)
• Better AI: bosses and elites now have a much betetr AI that will analyze their current options and needs and act accordingly
• Most sentient creatures are smart enough to use infusions or runes, so now they have them
• New zones to discover: halfling ruins, the island of Rel, the temporal rift
• Changed the economy: shopswont buy your filthy stuff, they are only interrested in gems and artifacts, but buy them at a much higher share
• Rewrote most of the OpenGL code, it should be faster now
• And many more, come and play !

Expanded changelist:

• Added pockets of air bubbles on the flooded level of the lake of Nur. Beware, they will not last forever
• Renamed the 6th old forest note
• Added an achievement for owning the "house"
• Going up from level 2 to 1 of the lake of Nur works correctly
• Archmage unlocked schools have the correct mastery value
• Cyst Burst & Epidemic only replicate diseases on hostiles
• Tooltip over simple terrain is now of the correct size to show the full name
• Hotkey display now shows the page number
• Can't teleport inside the fortress
• Switched the font used by 16x16 map modes
• Sustained talents that are on cooldown show as such in the use talent dialog
• Fix Nova
• Arcane Eye is now usable in the right click map menu
• The sandworm queen will not always appear in the first room
• Sand tunnels are now correctly strengethed by passing sandworm tunnelers
• Grgglck the Devouring Darkness will now invoke tentacles every few turns, not at random
• Encumberance column on item lists is now showing the total for the stack
• With smooth movements on npcs will not appear to "jump" when they enter visual range and stealth npcs should work correctly
• Sling talents correctly show that they do take a turn to use
• Each reason of death is recorded in the online charsheet
• Glyph of Repulsion has the correct requirements
• Golem starting equipment is identified
• Equipment/Inventory dialog now shows item stats using the classic tooltip
• Made tooltips much faster, moving the mouse over the hotkeys list should not lag anymore
• Tooltips now internaly use tstrings, you can pass a tstring to Tooltip:set()
• Disruption Shield ratio tweaked somewhat, cooldown added
• Displacement Shield absorption hugely increased to be in line with runes
• Time Shield absorption hugely increased to be in line with runes
• Switched position of Time Shield and Time Prison
• Fixed Displacement Shield to not dro prematurely
• Killing your own escort is worth a few points of experience
• Phase Door range starts smaller
• When Phase Door fizzles you get a random blink instead of nothing
• Shuffled Temporal talents around
• Resurrecting now ensure the player has enuogh energy to act first
• Fixed a golemancy bug when no ammo is present
• The Shadow Clone of the player has some less life
• Add a "party" code framework, allowing you to have multiple creatures in a party and assume direct control of one of them (and switch at will)
• Summon Control is now a passive that allows summons to be part of the party, increases dureation and reduces damage taken
• Default keybinds: F1-F8 for quick select of party members; ctrl+tab for popup
• Clicking on the creature "portrait" in the left side pane will transfer control
• Stop resting/running when dead
• Added ActorTalents:getTalentCooldown()
• Party control can be switched by right clicking on the creature on the map too
• Quests are now always done for the main character of the party
• Blinding Speed does not take a turn to activate anymore
• Mark of the Spellblaze now has a way back from level 2
• Pressing the stay command while targetting will return target to the caster
• Sindar ego renamed to Thaloren
• Congeal Time correctly reduces speed
• Talents that do not take a turn to use are not affected by confusion effects
• Bear tiles
• Arcane Combat will project beaming attacks as far as possible without hitting friendlies
• Crypt of Kryl-Feijan quest will not succeed wrongly
• Meditation provides the correct amount of equilibrium
• Changed default binding for hotkey 11 from ) to -
• Flare talent does not use two turns
• Updated tutorial texts
• Kill message is now displayed in bold
• New mouse cursor
• Map:setViewport lost its multidisplay parameter (it was useless). That was the one before the last
• Overhauled the graphic mode selection (settings are reset), you can now select tiles & size independantly. Added a 64x64 mode
• New tileset started by Shockbolt, looks the best in 64x64
• Characters start with a pickaxe in the infinite dungeon
• Water breathing is not permanent now
• Increased bloated horrors minimun level
• Changed the maximun range/sight for players & NPCs from 20 to 10, thus reducing the offscreen rays of deaths, increasing tactical value and allowing for bigger tiles
• Fix Inferno tooltip
• Move Actor:attr(), Actor:addTemporaryValue(), Actor:removeTemporaryValue() and Actor:onTemporaryValueChange() to Entity
• Fixed duplicate uniques
• Talents learned with escorts are correctly set to 0.7 mastery
• Eliminated dead-end doors in the Roomer generator
• Map smooth scrolling
• Summoners now get 1dex/0con and Wyrmics 0dex/1con
• Archmages now also get a portal on the worldmap to Angolwen
• Overhauled all Alchemist golemency talents. Golem is now fully controllable (using the party commands). When the golem levels up it gains stat & talent points that you must spend on it to learn golem specific talents.
• Added luadocs for core.* functions
• Party members that can not be fully controlled may still sometimes be given orders. Selecting them will popup the order dialog
• Escorts are now part of the party, they can be ordered to wait for a (short) while and to indicate the portal direction.
• Right clicking on party memebr on the map will allow to give orders when possible
• Fix objects not recharging (I think)
• Swallow now performs a melee attack (doing nature damage), if it succeeds the swallow check is made, if it was killed by the attack it is swallowed automatically
• Halved Swallow cooldown
• "forest_clearing" room generator will floodfill to ensure are are no 1x1 spots insolated from the map
• Nerfed Blood Fury and Curse of Vulnerability
• Sandworm tunnelers now do not travel in diagonal, and do not always take the shortest route
• Renamed difficulties again: Discovery/Aventure/Roguelike/Insane
• Updated most egos, added many (and many greater ones)
• Prevent a bug when using easy/normal mode resurrects in some corner cases
• Shield Pummel's first attack is now also affected by shield expertise
• Do not de-activate equilibrium talents on levelup
• Changed Feed Shadows to a passive talent that increases attack, damage and gives hate back to the player when a shadow kills.
• Replaced Punishments' Cursed Ground with Infectious Thought (an attack that can spread to other nearby targets)
• Changed Punishments' Agony to ramp up damage over 5 turns (no longer based on proximity to caster).
• Reduced hate cost of Deflection
• Increased duration of a summoned shadow from 100 to 500
• Increased Willful Strike and Blast damage
• Fixed problems with shadows and feed effects not disappearing after leaving the level.
• Main menu will not consume ressources if background anim is disabled
• Randarts are now created by combining egos + random powers
• Physical talents are disabled if no correct weapon is used
• Faerlhing get more mana
• Stealth now takes no turns to use
• Stealth now also teaches a new talent "automatic stealth", as long as it is active the player will auto-enter stealth when conditions are good
• Textzone now correctly cuts text based on font style
• Reduce the level at which runes of shielding start appearing
• Updated Alchemists description to better fit the class
• Bext change ever: bumping walls does not consume turns
• Reduce most creatures (both NPC & players) damage done by about 25% - reducing oneshooting factor which aint quite fun
• Improve the effect of stats on physical/magical/mental saves (and denote them correctly on tooltips)
• Constitution bonus to life reduced a bit but it now also provides global damage reduction%
• Added Combat:combatTalentStatDamage()
• New campaign: The Arena. Fight on the sandy grounds of the arena to prove your worth. Defeat your own previous champions! Unlock available in Derth. (thanks to Hetdegon!)
• Stores will now refuse to buy your filthy items, probably still covered in blood!
• Stores now buy only shiny gems are unique items, but they do so at a much better share.
• Price of gems increased tenfolds
• Increased the price of bill's tree trunk & the staff of kor
• Upped the minimun level for the cryp of kryl-feijan
• Fix FOV to not loop/crash over borders (fixes Quake)
• Adventure mode only gets 7 lifes instead of 11
• core.fov.calc_*() now take the map size(w, h) as third and fourth parameters
• Nicer looking UI
• Gave specific colors to grushnak orcs
• Evasion talent does not require stamina anymore
• Rush cooldown now reduces with talent level
• New tactic AI. It will be used by elites and bosses mostly. It asserts the current situation, determines needs and capabilities and uses them accordingly
• The sentient creatures of Maj'Eyal have created a loby to counter the players. They demand to have access to random runes and infusions. Their demand has been fulfilled!
• Most bosses and elites now use the new tactical AI
• Most bosses now have their share of infusions/runes (depending on the boss)
• Game ends when all controllable party members are dead. (But not all are allowed to switch zones, dont get your hopes too high)
• Removed Packing talent tree
• Water stairs do not provide air anymore
• Moon and Star (the artifacts) are now a pair and will provide additional bonus when used together
• New artifacts!
• Tweaked some Alchemist talent costs
• Object requirements are currently colorized again
• Controlled phase door rune is now subject to fizzle when blinking out of LOS, like the spell
• Talents that can not be used will only grey out after the cooldown has elpased
• Left click on an hostile target can now be bound to a talent (archers get it bound to Shoot by default)
• Alchemist Protection tooltip now reflects the fact that it does protect the golem too
• Channel Staff now ignores friendlies (it will pass over them harmlessly)
• Clicking on the minimap now makes the character run to this spot
• Updated Maj'Eyal and the Far East map to be more "meaty"
• Repulsion has a slightly greater knockback distance and will also daze any targets affected
• Fix Shadow Blast damage
• Optimized OpenGL drawing code: use vertex arrays instead of immediate mode; removed some useless calls; remvoed debug code from shaders
• Reworked how the minimap works, Entities now can have a setupMinimapInfo() method that is called by the map code. If you use a special map update code, have a look at Map:updateGrid to make your code up to date
• New race: Yeeks - look out for some new ruins on the map
• New starting zones for the Yeeks
• The Rod of Recall is now dropped by the first boss killed
• Archery talents now give a correct range
• Sandworm tunneler should finaly strengthen existing tunnels
• Actor:setEffect() now rounds its duration *UP*
• Archery now correctly uses attack bonus from ammo
• ESP will not make the out of LOS display "flicker"
• Weather effects: A few zones now get clouds, sand storms, ... moving over them
• New class: Mindslayers. The yeek's frontline figthers, mindslayers are powerful psionics that use their powers to enhance their melee abilities. They can psionicaly wield a second weapon and erect powerful auras. *beware this class is not easy to play*
• Inventory window now displays a currently equiped compare tooltip if available
• Nerf flurry somewhat
• New class: Temporal Warden. Protect and manipulate the timeline. Instantly switch between ranged and melee combat. Time travel (to the past!)

Have fun!

They'll be here very, very shortly. They don't play like any other class in ToME, so I decided to highlight some of their oddities and point players in the right direction. Some things to note:

1) Talent info texts refer to 'energy' while the resource bar on the left side of the screen says 'psi.' It's all the same stuff.

2) You're never going to have much energy. It goes up by one per character level and one per point of willpower.

3) Energy doesn't regenerate naturally. You have to absorb it through damage shields or various other means.

4) Mindslayers are all about sustains, though it's not as simple as just turning them all on. You'll never have enough energy to do that.

5) Many key abilities are triggered by turning sustains *off*.

6) Telekinetically wielding a weapon requires a special talent that mindslayers start the game knowing. Use that instead of the 'w' command. Use 'w' for wielding weapons in your actual flesh and blood hands.

7) Mindslayers are perfectly happy wielding two-handers, one-handers with shields, bows, or slings in their flesh and blood hands. Don't feel confined to a single weapon type. However, you can only telekinetically wield a single melee weapon, so it's usually best to make that one a two-hander.

8) ToME still gets a little confused when you try to equip a shield while telekinetically wielding something. For now, just remove the telekinetically-wielded weapon, equip the shield, then re-equip the weapon. Sorry!

9) The entire Focus tree is designed around telekinetically wielding gemstones instead of melee weapons. Try it out if you want to play a mindslayer like a caster.

10) Mindslayer abilities scale powerfully with stats and talent points. If some talent doesn't look worth investing in, check again later.

11) The Conduit talent interacts in a complicated fashion with the various aura talents. If you're wondering why an aura isn't cooling down, it's because you've got it tied up in Conduit.

12) The shield and aura talents are exceptional tools for absorbing and dealing damage spikes. And, of course, managing damage spikes is how one wins.

I started an Archmage in svn and was doing just fine thank you, until I got to Bill the Bloody Troll and he had a regen infusion! Thank you very much, Darkgod.

Between the big damned troll rushing on me when I would phase away and having to use my own meagre regen and manasurge I just didn't have the DPS to do in bloody Bill.

Made an archmage.

Escorted a warrior at trollmire 4. Chose +2 strength. Trollmire 5 lost my escort. At least i managed to kill bill (no pun intended) with some kiting. Wow, he bumped me from level 3 to level 7!

Died stubboringly to skeleton mages at Korpul level 2.

Created a rogue - got bored fast. Created an archmage - this time died in disbelief to Bill. Next time i'll wait for level 4 and teleport.

Archmage again. Escorted an alchemist in Trollmire 2. Tough choice. I'd love Stone Touch but it costs 80 mana! Imbue item requires gems and who knows if i'll find any? Channel Staff seems nice but what if i find a nice shield? Bah, +2 to magic it is.

Just noticed i only have 35 mana - seems like the RNG screwed me during character generation. Nope, it turns out it's from sustaining arcane power level 5.

Rescued a warrior at Korpul level 2 for 2 strength. Level 3, another warrior, another 2 points of Strength.

At Korpul 3 a skeleton warrior resisted freeze, stuned me and proceeded to whack me till i was dead. Totally forgot about tidal wave. Remapped keys.

Too scared to visit level 5. Died to a trap while running away from the shade. Bah, i should have stayed put, tidal wave worked fine on him - dunno why Strike didn't. Level 11 now.

Old Forest 2 - noticed that when my mana got too low my sustained spells disappeared. Old forest 3 killed a bazillion wolves. Old forest 4: yet another warrior escort. My strength is as high as my willpower now.

Apparently i had the Skin of Many unidentified in my inventory for some time now. Didn't prevent a Naga Myrmidon from killing me at old forest level 6.

Killed Treeroot. Dropped Penitence but i alrady had Kor's Fall (bought it for a measly 5 gold!)

Sunk a bunch of points to get Nature's Call. I haven't seen it hit an enemy yet. Oh well, i'm still learning.

Calling it a night before the storm quest. Next day - i'll park this archamge and start another one since i'm not happy with the way i distributed talent points - i should have picked one of the seer's talents instead!

I keep getting warrior escort quests - this time Trollmire 3 - for +2 strength. I realized that by impatiently sinking all my points to Flame in order to get it to become a beam i am now level 4 without teleport. So i'll have to wait a bit more before i face Bill.

Hit level 5 just after descending the stairs to Trollmire 5. Got Teleport, Freeze and Manathrust. I hope i won't die to Bill this time. I didn't. He dropped the Burninator. It packs a punch but it wastes a turn. Might be useful to clear honey tree clumps in the old forst. There's a vault over here but i'll visit the town first, i'm going to be careful this time, a little backtracking won't hurt. While diving back to finish the vault i found a bright dwarven lamp.

I noticed that my spells mana cost keeps increasing. And now there's this message "Lucinda's spells looks more powerful". Do they scale by use? By some stat?

Went to Last Hope, bought Martial Training, dumped all my remaining points to constitution and got level 1 Health. Went from 163 to 268 hitpoints. Going back to Korpul, I found a hidden trap door but i won't pursue the quest.

Found a summertide Phial but my dwarven lamp is brighter. Found an orange bow that had "Damage on hit(melee) : 5 poison" o_0

Note to self : tidal wave hurts escorted allies! It does turn The Shade visible though. The anorithil finally died after walking into 2 red traps. Oh well at least i got to level 11. Found a thief in Old Forest 4. Got another Trap Disarm. Found a +22% nature resist at Old Forest 4. That'll be handy against the dungeon boss.

He went down fast. I'm doing the maze now but i'm starting to have too many unique items. I'm dropping Bill's trunk at trollmire 1. Put 2 points in Strength and got heavy armour talent, just in case.

This is the end of my extended weekend, maybe i'll be able to play some more next week. All in all, a great experience.

I think Ruu was the first rogue I ever got past level 10. The first one who ever got to use the nightshade trap. Quite nice. Good chunk of nature damage, and stun too! She's also the first one who ever survived to actually use Flurry. In retrospect, I probably should have sent her through the Maze before tackling Korpul. *sigh*

I've just checked character vaults... Every alchemist have 5\5 bombs throwing but almost nobody has Invoke Golem and other powers.
In my opinion, golem is a main Alchemist's force - you can freely send him to enemies and strike them, stun them, heal golem then summon golem back or recreate without fear of fail - because your main character is standing on the stairs in safety. I've got only to level 24 so far - maybe things will change later.

Even more - on the insane difficulty golem-driver seems to be easiest character to play - golem has elite rank and I think he has no penalties to damage taken.

This was Sirracco's idea but I figuring out to actually do the effect ended up taking a lot longer then anticipated. The idea was to pull power from other time lines. As much as I love Sirracco's initial idea of casting a spell, cloning the player and the bolt to reload the level, then doing it all over again, it sounded like a lot to implement. So I ended up going with a next spell cast inflicts X more damage route (I know, a bit boring but hey).

So at first I tried to use something like Martyr except having the spell hit the target again rather then hitting yourself. I ran into an infinite loop here and after a failed attempt to fix it decided to scrap that idea.

Second idea was to have this be a stacking buff that broke on cast. So the first turn you get a big bonus to damage and if you don't use it right away you can stack more damage on top of it, though in much smaller percentages. After five turns of this you'd lose the gathered damage if you hadn't used it. Casting a spell at any time would also end the effect.

So I created a time out effect and the activate/deactivate for my new timed effect and I started testing. The power on the tooltip updated as I wanted it to but the power on the character sheet never went up. At which point I realized that activate happens once (on activate) and whatever number it pulls at that time is the number it will have.

Next I tried putting the damage buff in the time out effect itself (time out effects happen everytime the timer ticks down) which led to the character ending up with +1000% damage. It was putting the value on everytime as I wanted but wasn't clearing the old values out.

After wracking my brain for awhile I remembered that on merge effects work for damage so they could probably work for this (I'd used them for stuff like damage over time effects but never anything else). I looked over a few on merge effects, specifically bloodlust and the berserker strength one (bloodrage?) then went to work modifying bloodrage for my stacking damage effect.

Here's how everything came together and the guts of what a self stacking timed effect needs.

Activate - This is your base value you want to happen the first turn.
Deactivate - To remove the effect completely at the end.
Time Out - This is your trigger for reapplying the timed effect (we're applying the exact same timed effect so our merge code can merge them.) Put whatever value you want to add or remove as the power.
On Merge - Here you need to remove the old timed effect and make sure your new timed effect gets the correct duration and updated power before it gets applied.

The rest of the talent was pretty easy once I got that out of the way so I won't go into it. I'm sure anyone that needs to deactivate a talent when another talent is used can search for stealth or lightning speed and figure it out ;)

I'm pretty happy with the end result and may update my speed control tree now that I know how to do this. A slow that starts off big but loses power every turn could be fun as would a speed effect that gave you a big boost but lost power each turn.