ToME Guide

[Therem Harth]

Other thoughts:

- Wands and Magic Device skill are powerful in the early game. Warriors/rogues/etc. can do a lot of damage with good device skill and wands of Manathrust and Noxious Cloud.

- Archery is not powerful until the later game, early on it's mainly about softening powerful monsters before they get in melee range. However, it can be really good for that if done right, especially when combined with wands. Keep an eye out for scrolls of Enchant Weapon to Hit/Dam, scrolls of Blessing/Holy Chant/etc., potions of Heroism, spellbooks of Divine Aim or Manwe's Blessing depending on who you worship - basically anything that improves damage and accuracy.

- While Berserker/Running tactics are necessary for a lot of characters at the beginning, you want to crank them back a bit later on. In particular the stealth hit from Running (and to a lesser degree from Berserker) is dangerous. Monsters waking up as you approach is bad.

[Pete Mack]

Tome Archery is massively powerful if you specialize in it. Multiple extra shots with a crossbow, ammo manufacture, and piercing shot make for some powerful possibilities. Piercing shot in particular turns the bow into a beam weapon, although collecting ammo is a pain afterwards. (Also, ammo almost never breaks for a high level archer.)

[Derakon]

Berserker also ruins your saving throw, doesn't it?

I generally ignore the movement modifier, because the stealth penalties are heinous for a relatively small speed bonus, and in the other directions, the speed penalties are massive for a relatively small stealth bonus. I do set my tactics to Cowardly since I play casters, though; it's free bonuses effectively. IMO the movement/tactics thing is not a very interesting set of options.

Stealth is really helpful especially in the Barrow-Downs, where you're likely to encounter flying breeders that can render a level uninhabitable very quickly if you don't kill them before they wake up.

[wobbly]

Tactics settings was actually the biggest turn off last time I took a look of Tome 2. My character needed to switch to berserk to hit but you had to switch away from berserk to open a locked door. Switching is free making optimal play a constant switching of tactics. Now if I got over this, plus a bunch of other flaws in the game I suspect I'd find a fun game underneath this muck. But when your confronted with broken mechanics right from the get go (& reading discussion on Tome 2 suggests it's broken all the way through), I mean that makes me reluctant to even bother with the game.

(AH if your reading I'd suggest doing something about Tactics setting. There seems more bad then good here)

[fph]

The Lost Sword quests are worth doing eventually, because they can give you access to out-of-class skills at up to a .5x multiplier (requires getting the same skill reward from three different quests). In particular, Mindcrafting can be a godsend for a lot of characters because it offers nearly unparalleled utility at very cheap SP costs.

Tip: if you plan on maximizing a Lost Sword skill (such as Mindcraft or Mimicry, also interesting for the free damage reduction), don't put any skill points on it until you reach .5x multiplier in it.

The Orc Cave special level is definitely a good source of power for young characters. Too bad the artifacts are so well-hidden; IIRC they're blocked behind blank granite walls. So bring a means of digging and some Object Detection scrolls.

I believe that the layout of that level is fixed, so if you don't mind spoilers just open s_death.map and check where the fixed artifacts are. (And if you don't like spoilers and cheesy mechanics why are you even playing this game?)

[Pete Mack]

Oh yes, right. For stances, you need to make four macros (not keymaps) that add or subtract 4 from speed and aggression settings, then return to the main screen. This makes it MUCH easier to adjust them to cowardly slow when sneaking and fast aggressive when in the fight of your life. (Use a similar macro in Sil for toggling flaming arrows.)