Storage Question!

[Incandenza]

Hi there,

Long time roguelike player with years of Angband and Nethack under my belt.

Haven't dug into ToME before, and I'm loving it so far.

I have a question I've searched around for, and can't seem to find an answer to.

The guide refers to building 8 as being my house that I can store things in, only in Bree there's no 8. There's a 7 and a 9, but no home.

Is this a bug or was this taken out at some point? I'm playing a Half-Ogre Warrior, and running 2.3.5 if that info is useful.

Anyone? While I do like the idea of having to make hard decisions about what's in my Inventory...I would love to stash some things I might need for later!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[Derakon]

The leader of each town will give you a quest to clear out some local monsters in exchange for being able to use their den as your house. In Bree, you need to deal with some low-level 'p' enemies, the strongest being a Bandit.

[Incandenza]

Amazing, thank you! Off to kill some bandits!

Cheers!

[Pete Mack]

@Incandenza Starting with the quest is almost always a mistake. You want to kill a low risk high EXP monster before passing CL1. The thieves' quest won't do it. A red naga in the stream south of bree is a better target. (Just watch out for hydras.)
Just figure out a plan. (!Hero and a sling or !oil will do it.)

[Derakon]

Ehh, it's up to you. I like starting with the thieve's quest because it's challenging while often still being achievable, and killing random wildlife always felt cheesy to me. Not that it's easy to avoid cheese in ToME, mind, but you don't have to go seeking it out.

[Incandenza]

Thanks for the advice - I should have also mentioned my Half-Ogre was pretty beefy by the time I realized there was no home building - he was more than robust enough to tear through those low rent thugs!

Though I did then later make the mistake of taking on the nearby Trolls and got seriously owned! Ha!

[Pete Mack]

Yeah with a half-ogre, your plab doesn't need to be very complicated. Just set your stsnce to fast aggressive (USE MACROS FOR STANCE.) Head south and let the naga come to you.

[fph]

There is a quest screen (ctrl+Q if I remember correctly?) where the approximate level of each quest is displayed, so you can avoid going in too early. I think the trolls are level 30. It's sort-of accurate, but there are some surprises.
As usual, spoilers help a lot, or otherwise there's the old fashioned way to learn in roguelikes, the one that uses lots of tombstone screens.

[Pete Mack]

Yeah, the trolls are tough. You can take them early IF you really optimize your skills. (Also, the early quests are all easy for archer class.)

[Yottle]

Any warrior character should be able to handle the thieves quest immediately. If you have your speed set to running you are faster than any of the thieves. Just stay in the corridor so only one can come at you at a time and back up at the right time so they can't hit you. The first kill will get you to level 2 and after that you can probably kill all of them with one blow.
The other easy town quest is the wolves in Lothlorien. By the time you can get there without being ambushed and killed they are trivial. I wouldn't try any of the other town quests until you have a buffed-up level 30 character.

[Derakon]

...and I wouldn't do the Khazad-Dum home quest at all, it's seriously unpleasant.

The problem with quests is that they often have "unfair" layouts. For example, one of the quests is just a big open room with a bunch of monsters, and sure, most of them are melee, but not all of them are. If you don't have a good way to limit how many monsters you're fighting, it's easy to get overwhelmed. And in quest levels, your usual escapes like Teleport Level or Destruction don't work.

So it can be very dangerous to go into a quest if you don't know what to expect. Once you've learned how the quest works, you can prepare and know with some confidence whether or not you're ready for it, but that first character, going in blind, is potentially in for a very rough time. The quest difficulty level indicators are only an extremely rough estimate.

[wobbly]

So it can be very dangerous to go into a quest if you don't know what to expect. Once you've learned how the quest works, you can prepare and know with some confidence whether or not you're ready for it, but that first character, going in blind, is potentially in for a very rough time. The quest difficulty level indicators are only an extremely rough estimate.

If it's anything like the PCB-like quests (likely considering some are common to both variants) then difficulty levels assume you know the quest & are prepared in advance. They're real in terms of summons/loot drops but an underestimate in terms of difficulty level.

[Derakon]

Incidentally, quests are one very good reason to pick up an ability that lets you generate LOS-obstructing terrain. Grow Trees, Stone Prison, and Thaumaturgy 'Blast - wall creation' spells are all ridiculously useful.

[Pete Mack]

Or unless you are an archer with +20 crossbow skill, and a nice stack of ego ammo. (It is easy to make it yourself.) Enchant an ordinary crossbow to +7, set phaser to mass slaughter, and start mowing down everything in sight. In any case, there are a number of quests that are easy to do before DL 30 if you have good ranges combat. Killing Uvatha, for example, is trivial with a good bow, a big stack of ?phase door, and !speed.