As a mage, if you are taking damage you have a problem. Alchemists have golems to fix this problem, while Archmages have movement speed gear and buffs. Necromancers have disposable pets and resistance, defense, and armor upgrades, most of which improve at below 0 hp. The problem is, even with gear and a high-Constitution race, the "below hp" regime is generally less than half of their hp. Playing with a "the first 2/3 of my hp are disposable" mentality is liable to give you a dead character.

Enter the Hiemal shield. As an always-on sustain that substantially improves a necromancer's hit points, the shield makes incidents like "Oops, that wyrmic can do 300 damage with a breath attack" into embarrassing mishaps instead of new character generation.

“Sounds great. Why is it love/hate?"

Love, because the Hiemal shield is iconic - it is recognizably and unquestionably a necromancer talent.

Hate, because… try benchmarking shields. AMs get 2000+ hp shields. The Disruption shield turns your mana into hp, and the Temporal shield heals you. The Hiemal shield is about 1/4 of that, and it just unsustains. You can damage nearby monsters when it happens, but that doesn't help you survive in nearly as direct a fashion as healing.

And the cost of the Hiemal shield is absolutely not cheap. This thing eats souls. Hiemal shield takes 1 soul and 30 mana to sustain — no problem — but eats another soul if it takes even 1 hp of damage and has to refresh. Slip on a rock? That’ll be 1 soul please. Unlike the Stormshield rune, which lets damage below a threshold through and only takes big hits for you, the Hiemal shield takes damage from any attack. Not only that, but when you combine other shields with it — like shield runes — it STILL counts as being damaged and eats a soul afterwards.

This game hard but I love it even though I get slapped silly, i love it i love the pain i love to hurt

Feelings are weird..

..here I am.. sitting and resetting my Account for the 5th or maybe even 6th time,
you know..THIS TIME it'll be different.
But will it really?
I always reset, start anew, play for a couple days and then I just..stop
And I don't really know why.
Am I truly just lazy? Am I not motivated enough? Don't I have any discipline?
Is it really necessary to even think that deep into it?
no, of course not and yet those questions still linger within my mind
seeking an answer that'll satisfy my ever thinking brain..

But for real man, I really need to get into this damn game. this time for real (I hope)
like dude it's a friggin good game godamn and I'm to busy being weird about it
I don't even know why I always feel the need to reset everything after I haven't played for months,
but hey, maybe some of you can relate to that, it would really help me feel less stupid.

Anyways, I thank you for reading my post and have a nice day!
Maybe we'll see each other on Maj'Eyal (or rather the general chat)

I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.

Hello Everyone!

I love this game. I've been playing for a little while now. I wanted to get more involved in the community to make it more fun for myself. This game is very challenging, I love having to figure things out. Being so new I kind of have to. I'm playing a Ogre Reaver right now. I haven't unlocked many classes yet and have only been able to get to level 22 in Normal Adventure Mode. I'm not very good at video games in general but I still have fun. I'm keeping notes now about what works for my character, what doesn't, what places to avoid at what levels and other things to hopefully break through to level 25 which I did on a Bulwark a while ago. I have't beat Dreadfall yet but I'm getting close.

What's surprising about this game is the lack of guides. I can't find a lot of "basic/beginner" guides to how to play classes. I'm starting to realize now that might be because they can vary greatly depending on how you decide to build them.

The Reaver I played last got up to 22 and I duel wield with heavy armor. I know that's not great (the heavy armor on a Reaver) but they are so squishy. I found I have to dump a lot of Class Points into Contitution just to not be one/two shotted when I get passed level 10. It's rough. I like the play style of melee and do a lot of damage with Acid Strike + Overkill and like the focus on melee and diseases. I'm so bad at games I'm not sure what to ask for advice but I feel like I shouldn't be dumping so many points into constitution as a Reaver but I die so quickly if I just put them in Magic and Strength.

This is the link to the character sheet of my last character. https://te4.org/characters/232710/tome/336cfccc-3f53-4e18-ba96-c52e50dc766a

I'm looking forward to being more involved with the players and community cheers!

HI

After years of effort trying to figure out the right way to get a character built which would survive the efforts to get off Maj'Eyal, I have finally gone East. No hacks, no looking at blog posts. Just playing an absurd amount of ToME until it finally happened. Getting the extra 50 strength was the breakthrough I needed.

I am starting as a rogue because I don't want to be killed by traps and also want to have the ability to swiftly dispatch enemies that pose a real threat. I am in Trollmire(?) forest running around in stealth and throwing daggers, feeling over powered.

I like the game a lot, so I donated and purchased all 3 DLC's. The contents only seem to apply for new characters, so I will make another rogue with more customized looks this time. I am only level 2 now, so it doesn't feel like a waste to start new to enjoy all the added contents.

Edit: I did not expect this blog post to show up on the main page. I thought it was going to be something like my personal journal which no one will read. For any visitors new to the game, I want to clarify that rogue class is not over powered. My first halfling rogue ended up dying in the same area while fighting a skeleton magus.

Killed bunch of slimes at the forest`s entrance, then found a huge nest of snakes - fortunately I was prepared for that battle. The shielding skills were very helpful. I was tasked by the vilagers to kill the Lone Wolf. He seemed strong but not against someone like me...a folk who`s always prepared.

Killed bunch of slimes at the forest`s entrance, then found a huge nest of snakes - fortunately I was prepared for that battle. The shielding skills were very helpful. I was tasked by the vilagers to kill the Lone Wolf. He seemed strong but not against someone like me...a folk who`s always prepared.