Day three... ish... of Tales on Steam, and I've somehow managed to hit 21 on a Shalore archmage (Brother Badass!) on normal adventure. He died somewhere in the middle of Dreadfell to a certain acid-scarred dwarf who bore the same initials as my character. I have now resolved to play on exploration mode to learn a bit more about the game; the first thing I learned was that it's important to ensure you actually select exploration mode as opposed to adventure when you start out with the intention of playing an exploration mode character. Rest well, Explorio Cheatymage. Apparently, this is an easy mistake to make off the back of losing a beloved level 21 Archmage to a dwarf who spent an entire turn spewing up on the tower floor before striking the fatal blow. Easy for me, at least.

But hey, live and learn!

Uncle Whippy, Shalore archmage explorer extraordinaire, has now arrived to fill up the gaping holes in my knowledge of Eyal. At the time of writing, he has died more times than any other character so far (infinite lives, see) and not entirely because I was curious about how he'd fare against certain newly-encountered bosses. No, this time I seem to have gone about the early game in a way that's just different enough to throw off my expectations of what I was just becoming used to; Uncle Whippy was last seen tearing across the countryside trying to find a *nice* dungeon after having various pieces of himself handed back to him by a large red dragon somewhere in the Daikara. I could have sworn that volcano wasn't there last time I looked.

Onwards!

So close yet so far away is the feeling after my latest final death. The character this time around wad my Level 43 Dwarf Bulwark who met final death trying to topple his first arc pride. From what I gather that means I made it 4/5 though the base campaign! With only my second character no less!

His first death was due to drowning in the lake as no bubbles spawned close to the stairway you use to enter the ruins. So in short RNG screwed but that happens in rougelike.

The next one happened in Reknor to a rare troll who some how caused my encumbrance to spike, locking me in place, while several AOEs stacked doling over 600 damage in turn. When I died it happened so suddenly I wasn't sure how it happened a first. Not sure how I could have prevented it to be honest.

The next two happened when I tried taking on the dragon vault in Vor Armory. I was an idiot for opening it in the first place seeing as I just barely survived clearing out the armory in the first place despite having 60+ cold and fire resistance. That said, even at level 35 at the time, I still felt I could take those dragons if could fight them one at a time. I withdrew and planned to try again after a few orc prides fell.

Next was in Ruins of Tennin where I was crit spiked by six Undead. Again not much could have been done to stop it.

And the last two were the Necromancer pride. After looking over I figure they were due to me having relatively low blight resistance and as soon as I entered I got swarmed by 5 necromancer and a corrupter in a large room. Should have backed out and tried a different pride. Maybe grind farportal dungeons for a few levels.

Here is his character log if youwant to take a look: https://te4.org/characters/246275/tome/19ea4ba4-eff6-4bf3-8e45-df3266bf2667

In the end I feel I did far better than I should have given my world lack of experience but I am quite happy with how things went. I will say dwarf bulwarks or borderline overpowered in normal difficulty, especially if you have high HP regen.

During the course this play through I unlocked almost all the races in the default campaign with the exception of the ghoul and the Doom elf as well as majority of the classes. I still need to unlock psychic classes but that can come later.

My next class I'm thinking about is Alchemist and probably halfling when given how much they feature in the lore

who would've taught we could blog here

Does anyone else find this genre of games absolutely infuriating? I don't think I've ever gotten more mad at a game than when I lose a good character in TOME or DCSS, etc. In fact multiple times I've deleted TOME and DCSS right after losing a character loaded with good uniques/randarts, lol. Fuck these games man, even the worst League of Legends game I ever have makes me less mad.

I am now a kind of subscriber!

You can blog illegible, you can.

after playing this game for who knows how long, finally won (normal roguelike) for the first time on a gimmicky anorithil named MOONBEAM!

this is my only roguelike win ever in any of the main roguelikes after playing those for years too (ADOM, soupcrawl)

heck yeah

post-game: took out atamathon using an awakened staff opener without much difficulty but got swiped left by linaniil. rip.

... sometimes makes want to die. On the inside, you know?

I've started to play ToME and I've got no idea what I'm doing. I'm using experience from other RPG's to build characters. I notice I need to run away more often. I don't understand everything that is going on. Or how to build a character for the long run.

I am playing on normal difficulty. Have died plenty of times.
Some areas (despite being lvl 1 ' friendly') are hard for me to finish (especially final boss). Sometimes feels I'm missing part of my build to do it.
And what if I run, where can I go level instead... That's a question I'd like the answer to.

At last I can reach last bosses. But defeated. I will win next time.