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 :)

I was doing pretty well. Level 21! Archmage Dwarf (who would have thunk it?) Pretty decent equipment Level 5 spells, Decent Magic/Con/Will and not terrible Str/Cun either (from items)... The 4 sections of maze, 6 out of 7 escorts all done.

.
Note to self: NEVER do the crypt quest again. Ever. It is pure suicide. Well I managed to probability travel through the sublevels easily enough killing corruption mages then popping out of the rooms and healing/resting in safe places then doing it again. But boy did they almost get me a couple times anyway.

Thankfully that strategy worked enough for me to find the stairs and head down. Managed to get through a bunch of levels.

At the bottom I faced the four (p) acolytes. Thankfully two start off semi hidden by a wall so they can't just blast me to cinders as soon as I enter. However they do managed to kill me before I can kill one. I have 4 lives left. I eventually kill 2 but the demon shows up and after that it is all over. at 900+ hp each acolyte alone was a match for me. 4x + a U is ridiculous. The count down gives almost no time to deal 4k damage within. Needless to say I left another ghost down there along with all the others gathering dust from other players who probably also said to themselves "never again."

Sure glad I didn't even try the Master. Being screwed by Ungodly highlevel Undead would probably have been too much for me.

I did lose one life in the maze (starting zone) before beating it, 1 in the Sandwurm Lair and 2x in the fortress.
I managed to complete an escort quest on level 7 of Daikara AND defeated the (D) boss. This time no scary out of depth monster was around to steal my loot and I found an egg of some interest. Sadly the (S) spiders it summoned were about as useful as bears. :/

Conclusions: It is clear to me that unless I know the strategy for these levels for the character type I am playing I stand no chance at all. The game starts off fairly easy to play once one gets a handle on the changes and the keys etc. But then it rapidly scales off the map. At over 600hp (and 400mp base) I couldn't deal with the end game of the crypt at all. I shudder to think what the areas of the game are like that I have yet to see.

I am imagining to be able to traverse to the east (and survive there) you either need superb luck or the skills of a roguelike diety. Sad really because despite my earlier discouragement I was really enjoying this character and had hopes to develop it to a high level at some point.

I ran into this when I first started, quickly left and never bothered with it again after triggering a few of the monster summons. I decided to check it out again with my current character. I am completely and utterly confused by the "puzzle" aspect of this dungeon and I don't consider myself a neophyte with puzzles (30years of designing and running aD&D/rpg campaigns = some familiarity with puzzles.)

The lines of the poem make no sense. Reordering the lines does not make them clearer. I managed to somehow have one of the "orbs?" turn on instead of throwing mobs at me. But since there is nothing remarkable about that room I have to assume it is just random. Unfortunately going back and touching each of the other "orbs?" does not produce any different results.

So I guess I am stuck on this. :/

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=24031

Any help would be nice.

Chronomancy development has picked back up. Still busy with the family life though so I can't promise when it'll be done but I have managed to get a couple of talent trees done over the last two days.

Also have a working outline of what I want to do that's up to date so the direction is all there.

Maybe beta 20? No promises but we can hope :)

I am playing a shadowblade, and enjoying it a lot, but I am wondering if you guys get heavy armor or not. Is there good/great armor in the light categories out there?

Decided to try another Shalore Archmage and I am finding some of the talents to be really bad. Displacement shield for instance is complete waste of a slot it seems. It has a huge cooldown time, lasts only one shot no matter how small and is consistently a wasted turn.

More when I encounter them.

This new release of my Gervais tiles mod is compliant with beta 18 and includes most the monsters tiles. Here is the progress state so far:

- Monsters: 80% (encounters, horrors, some xorn and uniques are not done)
- Objects: 90% (nothing more since last release)
- Terrain and other stuff not done

Please let me know if you find some mistake or have some ideas about tiles.

Howto install:
Unzip the file and extract the "data" folder to your "t-engine4-windows-1.0.0beta18\game\modules\tome" folder.

Beware that some regular files will be deleted and replaced. If you want to come back to the previous state of Tome4 beta18, install Tome4 beta18 back in the same directory.

Download:
http://www.elderlore.com/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=5

Fighting the Worm boss at the bottom of the sand pit on an alchemist.
Golem disinterested in joining in, so had to manually request it did something.
5 turns later it hits the boss, or so i assume, as I was blinded by this stage.

I set the room on fire, but ultimately die.
Choose to resurrect, and come back to life on -28/250 life.
A sandworm then hits me for 34 and I have a final death.

Personally, the idea of resurrecting at a negative life would be great if it meant I'd managed to become a Lich Alchemist and my Golem but the first of a horde of minions to do my beck and call.

Hopefully this time the Mighty Girdle doesn't appear the first time I go to town when I'm on very low $$. Very handy item.

Outside of this above mishap, had a very successful run.
First troll boss (Bill) killed at lvl 3 without dying.
Dark Crypt was then comfortably run straight after before I could get back to town to offload loot.
4 escorts all successful.

This time I'd taken the sand pit too casually, as I'd last run it quickly and easily without dying.
Now I understand how perilous it can be with collapsing tunnels and how often one can be blinded without the resists I had last time.
Time to give it all another go.

Atrophy, with golem Petrify.
Attempt 1: lvl 23, died to a monster zerg instant spawn.
Attempt 2: lvl 14, died to negative life resurrect bug on sandworm boss.