My first thought: this game needs DCSS autoexplore.

Skeleton mage hits Evaine for 11.71 fire damage.
Evaine hits skeleton mage for 42.56 physical damage.
Evaine killed skeleton mage!
Skeleton mage hits Evaine for 11.71 fire damage.
Skeleton mage killed Evaine!
You resurrect!

Sure, I resurrected, but what a waste of a life! I'm pretty sure enemies should stop attacking once they're dead!

http://te4.org/characters/1819/tome/2a3053d4-1d07-11e0-b589-001cc000edf0

The second character to reach Far East, and the first to do it while playing with online profiles (the other one, plays on a net-disconnected computer). The big unlocked for this profile (unlocked ghoul, antrohil, geomancy, sun paladin, doomed).

Dwarf fighters in general feel like its too easy. In the beggining couple of levels there were literally no challenges.

Did not do the home fortress due to no stairs in the walkable range, and no waterbreath equipment. Other than that, in mainstream dungeons there was nothing that even posed any threath (granted - i did not do the elven ruins / crypt / mark of spellblaze).

First moment of truth came with a greater vault within Master's domain. 3 deaths in row, and all due to... having many lives available and general easy feeling of the game. "Aww c'mon, i can do it, by just rushing, if I loose a life or two, nothing would happen."

Lesson 1: if you have extra lifes, use them wisely.

Master himself went down like a sack of bananas.

Also nothing worth noting about Iron Throne passage.

After such an easy-going start, Far East came as a surprise. Especially orc patrols. The same patrols that my other character (archmage) uses as handy snack for exp, obliterated this dwarf warrior. 2 or 3 deaths to the first one.

Lesson 2: it IS important to put more than 1 point into rush
OR
Lesson 3: if you want for Aura of Silence to save your butt, do put more than 1 point in it. Otherwise you will get ranged to death from just outside of its radius.

Then went some unlocking spree.

Dark crypt - 1 death due to unlucky trap while being flanked by wall-passing blood mages.

Lesson 4: if you're surrounded by blood mages, try to remember all your tactical options (e.g. sand breath would have saved the day here)

The Shade itself was an incredibly dense and immensely funny fight. Went for a long time, and I think I made it only because Shade wasted a turn from time to time trying to turn on Burrow.

The Spider Cave - felt like a pillow fight, only i was using lightsaber. Did not even notice the end boss. I was just casually walking among spiders, one of them darkens the surrounding, i kill it, and then whoops, i raise a level and some stairs appear.

Prides.
Since the other character already knew Vor, i decided to try some other Pride as first one now. Say the one in the north-west. Two rooms before it - orc patrol. This time mages went down like ripe plums, and then I went down like another ripe plum 3 times in row.

Lesson 5: orc berserkers, including elite ones, are the same colour as your run-of-the-mill popcorn orcs.

Finally got into the G-something pride. First room - a surprise. Double so. First the graphics - I love the feel of that pride. Second - the welcoming party. The room was FILLED with orcs of all kinds, including several wyrmics, cryomacers, and elite zerkers. And I was exactly in the middle of it.
Phase shift, enter the narrow tunnel, kill them one by one, ROAR a victory cry, oh there's that one last orc who just came around the corner. Oops it rushes at as and slows us down a bit, allowing for some double hits to get in. Lets regen for a bit to be on the safe side...
And then a final death by 2HP.

Conclusion - orc zerkers and elite zerkers SHOULD be differentiated visually.

For those of you who do not hang around in the IRC room (Server: irc.rizon.net , Chatroom: #tome), there are some screenshots for you from Beta 19.

Beta 19 will feature a 64x64 mode play, so because of this it may be a while before B19 is released, for there is a lot of graphics, and that all needs to be generated.

Also consider these screenshots are saved in the TMP folder here on te4.org, so they may dissappear any time, some others are saved on slashware, so even less of a clue when they'll be gone.

Well after several weeks I managed a win with a mere 2 deaths both in the final fight. I came close to death so many times during the game that if I had died it would have been just a matter of a few points difference. Many defensive abilities + some luck and occasionally good tactics (or at least not stupid as heck tactics) helped.

The final fight was insane. Earlier, I read something on the forums or here, about doing the orbs at the 4 corners but I didn't quite understand how to work it (There is no real reference in game that I could find and the journal notes were not helpful) so I just went with as defensive a posture as I could muster (Barrier, Providence, Circle of Warding and Sanctity + various heal spells. Totality was very helpful here.) Slowly, I weakened the sorcerers with AoE spells and DOT effects. An enemy DOT finished off one of the bosses for me. (Thanks mr fire U guy.)

Sadly the Sun Paladin died fairly quickly but she accounted for a good amount of damage off one of them. The other was fairly hard to kill and the monsters summoned from the portals were painful but no where near as much as the two bosses. 7500 hps! ouch. The most annoying thing was the mimicry effect, where I cast something and had it cast right back at me.

I think this particular character took me 4 days? to play from beginning to end. I know there is much more to do (spellblaze, elven ruins, one of the eastern quests I didn't complete (Important News?).

This is the first win in any TOME for me so perhaps it isn't quite as hard as it used to be, but for me that is a good thing. I know there are plenty of purists who deem multilife wins to be worthless but it was a challenge for me. I expect my next character to die miserably a lot before I learn how to use it's abilities.

After a few false starts, like trying to compile with the MinGW/SDL1.3 setup which I already had installed, I got a clean compile and successful create of a new character with the sources from svn.

I started fresh with a clean MinGW install and followed the instructions in the wiki.
What a concept!

How to get source from svn.
How to build dev environment and compile sources.

- Add particles to everything (coded just not added)
- Sound check
- Clean up the Matter and Gravity trees (add more physical damage to matter, ditch crushing weight and add a cone nuke, add a graviton shield spell that deals knockback when hit, nerf gravity spikes aoe a bit, make quantuum spike the top of the matter tree and make it an instakill, do calcify)
- Lower the cooldown on Echoes from the Past (it's to high now to work as designed which is to give Paradox Mages an interesting nuke)
- Figure out how I want to do Gather the Threads (maybe a stacking buff that breaks on cast like lightning speed or stealth)
- Finish up the Energy tree (Recharge, Energy Redirection, and Entropy)
- Finish up the Paradox tree (possibly add a barrage spell to this tree, figure out how I want to clone the player, possibly combine paradox mastery and paradox shield to make room for barrage, add Redux)
- Add some damage to Entropic Shield and rename it Entropic Field

And I think that's it. Not as much to do as I thought. Energy is half done and Paradox has a few easier effects so it shouldn't be to bad.

Guess I forgot..
- Give them a test run or two ;)

Mindslayers are the first subclass of the Psionic class. They don't control minds or read thoughts or cloud vision or sow confusion. They don't sense danger or see the future or will changes to reality. In fact, they can barely even manage to apply any forces outside of their immediate reach.

Hey! What kind of psionic is this, anyway?

They're the kind that uses their thoughts to pick up a twenty pound greatmaul without even touching it. And then, without moving a muscle, they use it to murder anybody who looks at them funny.

But what if they want to murder somebody else at the same time, you ask? Well, that's why they have hands! With a little assistance from judiciously applied mental forces, mindslayers can quite easily heft whatever weapons they want and do their blood-letting the old fashioned way, too.

That's stuff you get for free. It's not even in a talent tree. So what else can they do? I'll talk more about it later, but here are some highlights:

-Set people on fire with their brains
-Electrocute people with their brains
-Reshape weapons and armor
-Run and jump like a Yoda-trained olympian
-Erect mental shields to absorb damage and energy
-Project energy through melee-range auras
-Leech energy from surroundings and foes
-Enhance all of the above using gemstones as psionic foci

Hopefully we'll see them in beta 19!

Title pretty much says it all. Saw that orc boss with his 3000+ hp and went holy crap! Lightning speed to get between a couple archers (archers im finding hurt alot and get double hits >.<) and then death dance to take them out, sand and then flame breath to soften them all up. Then wail on the boss with Death blow/ Ice claw. Seriously one of the hardest fights Flameborn has been in.

Dekar was a very cool Wyrmic, but now he is dead. That makes me quite sad as he went further than anyone before him. He got killed because I thought I had the situation under control until he got stunned. :[

http://te4.org/characters/2038/tome/4d263778-1fdb-11e0-8d9d-001cc000edf0

At least I can finally make a new char with the new options he unlocked.