For those that haven't been following the development thread I've decided to ditch the Infinite Traveler for now and roll the dual-wielding into an archer/dual-wield rangerish class.

The old Temporal Warden idea (more of a traditional Arcane Blade) is still on the back burner too but the name Temporal Warden will belong to this ranged/dual-wield hybrid.

To facilitate this I coded a new tree, Temporal Archery that has some neat archery effects and a +movement speed talent called celerity that lets you swap weapons without spending a turn. Also revamped the Temporal Combat tree a bit to supply some Strength and Magic through talent points so that they won't be so stat hungry(two separate talents that give a percent of Will to these two stats while sustained).

Been playing around with this class to test balance and what not and most of all... to make sure it's fun and interesting to play.

I also got some anomalies coded though they're not yet implemented (going to need DGs help with that part). Maybe the Temporal Warden will be ready for b19, we'll have to see :)

Tags say it all. I've recently been hooked in the game and I'm going to try this experiment.

Finally, after grisly deaths in the sand by Rogues and Archmages and a couple of Cursed, a Dwarf Fighter named Urist (of course) has conquered the sandhole. Next stop, probably the Old Forest again to scum for regen or healing infusions before attempting the Daikara. I want something with 300 or more points and a relatively short cooldown. A "brawler's" or a "titan's" would be ideal.

I also want to replace that Sun infusion with a phase door or a teleport rune. Now that Urist has completed the Antimagic quest and unlocked those skills, it should be OK, right? Oh, well, I'm going to find out.

Where do we report bugs?

Worked on cleaning some stuff up today so that the chronomancy talents will use the talent format that all the spells are moving too. Also moved Damage Smearing into the Temporal Combat tree and replaced it with Swap in the Weaving tree (swap will let you switch places with another actor).

Wrote the Infinite Traveler description up and have it's talent trees pretty much set.

Coded Borrowed Time, originally I wanted this to give you two actions then stun you after those two actions are finished but handing out energy or lots of global speed broke the timed effects. So instead Borrowed Time will greatly increase your global speed (1000%) for a few turns then stun you for a few turns.

I still need to do Temporal Double (a beefier shadow simulacrum) and Temporal Wake (a beam that inflicts random status effects) for the Threading tree and Time Skip (removes an actor from the game for a few turns) for the Time Travel tree. I'm not sure yet on how I'll do Time Skip (the turns need to be counted somehow so the timed effect will have to be on an entity other then the target).

That'll leave Premonition, See the Threads, and Revision. Then the class will be finished enough to playtest (anomalies aside).

I crerated my first character before I logged into the te4 site and the character's profile is not on the system. I don't want to start again as the character is already lvl10.

Is there any way to upload a character who was created offline?

I finally read that I needed to created an online profile at the te4.org site instead of in the game module. Unfortunately, it didn't upload Snik 4, my best still-living offline character so far, so I'm starting a new one.

Meet Snik 5, halfling rogue. She, like the previous four Sniks was inspired by Burb Lulls' Eden, but not going for the no-stores challenge just yet.

I've been playing this game for two weeks now, and both to test out this my-blog thing and because I just can't seem to keep shut anymore, I'll post some random thoughts about the game this far.

First off, my Gaming History. First roguelike I really got into was ADOM. Have beat that a number of times, played it many more and lurk around the forums there. I also played angband/vanilla, beat 2-3 times. And I beat "old" ToME. (Not void, though). Tried nethack, got a potential winner going but lost interest.

I also have played MUD a fair bit (DURIS, Land of Bloodlust), but stopped about 5 years ago. Time invested and no save-whenever-feature didn't mix with married life. Oh yeah, I also played Diablo II a lot...tried out hardcore mode there as well.

So. Te4. It is a bit of a love-hate relationship. I love to play it, so therefore I hate that I play so much, because I've less time to do other (real-life) stuff. Hopefully this will improve and the game become a bit more dull once I learn all there is.

I love way the game progresses. For the first time, I feel like I am living in the story, that I complete missions (with appropriate end-of-level-bosses from my old 90's arcade games) to advance, and not just grinding. Other of the roguelikes I've listed, the main goal is to "improve so that you are strong enough to win". Here it is more "you will improve as you progress". Bonus exp and items from bosses is probably the reason why this is so. Simple, but brilliant. You _could_ grind if you need something particular or just a bit more exp, you _could_ skip certain areas and bosses and still progress, so the freedom is still here.

I love the "regular" items. You have 3 kinds of 2-handers, 3 kinds of melee weapon (not too sure what difference they have), some exotic weapons (havent bothered much with them) and "daggers". Metal and leather armors. And then 5 levels of metal/leather they can be built out of. And that is great. Its very intuitive to understand how good an item will be, no need to remember 50 different types (just different by name) of gear. And then different enchantments to spice things up, of course.

I love the skill advancement system. Better than old ToME (and Diablo II) because you are not totally screwed if you choose wrong skills to invest in. Gain 4 levels and you can suddenly be master of _something_ new.

I love how the skill work. It would seem that someone responsible have played Diablo II as well. Reason I love this is just as much that my _enemies_ have to use skills too. No "double breath - death" from a single enemy, because IT will have a cooldown to struggle with as well.

On the topic of enemies, I love them. Far too many games have too many kinds of enemies, to the point of boredom. I mean, read silmarillion and lord of the rings again. How many different kinds of enemies are there? 15? (orc warrior, orc scout/archer, uruk-hai, troll (mabye two different kinds), snow giant, evil man, mumak, warg, crebain, "undead", ringwraith (dread?), dragon, balrog/maia) So instead of making 325 different kind of foes (leads to a lot of lacklustre names and descriptions and abilities on foe number 150+) you have orc warrior level 10 or mountain troll level 15. Great. Love that.

-More later, time ran out.

The boys slept at the same time today so I had a chance to finish up another talent tree.

Speed Control
Entropic Shield - Slows Projectiles and provides some physical resist.
Slow - Small radius ball that reduces targets global speed.
Haste - Increases the casters global speed for a short time.
Stop - Stuns targets near the caster in a radius of three (four at higher talent levels).

I've also been thinking more about Premonition and Deja Vu. Premonition I think would be cool if it created a savefile, let you goof around for a few turns, and then reloaded the savefile (regardless of what happens) or just reloads the savefile when you die. In other words, you get to see what's in the vault or gauge the abilities of a boss you've never seen before. Deja Vu I think should daze for a turn so you have to really pay attention to sense creatures :)

Not sure what I'll work on next. For anyone that's curious here's the development thread on the forums...

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=22592&start=15

Seems I always get:
Profile disabled(switching to development profile) due to no online profile active.

I have game open in one window with my active profile shown bottom left, and this site profile logged into the web site / blog.

Curious what I'm missing. It's a small novelty, but I'd love to see my toon appear just once on the updated characters list :)