Tales of Maj'Eyal

[MisterStone]

The engine is p. cool, the problem I had with the game is that it seemed to be based on constant use of powers and recharge; so each class is just a variant of self-heal, extra damage, cause stun, etc. skill sets. I guess the magic users are a little more varied, but still... yaaawn.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I liked what I've seen of the classes so far. Rogues play very differently from Berserkers, with the later benefiting from murdering as many foes as possible in one unbroken rampage to keep the combat buffs up, while the rogue is better off slipping in and out of combat, eluding foes and rentering stealth to set up favourable areas to attack in and get sneak attack bonuses. Most roguelikes pretty much every melee character uses the same strategies; abusing corridors/line of sight to limit the damage you take at all costs. My berserker was often well suited to letting enemies pile up around him to take them all out at once with an AoE attack, while my rogue could sneak by a whole room of enemies to take out the caster off in the distance and then slip away again. The berserker could close distance with a ranged enemy using Rush, but not if there were other guys/terrain in the way. Alchemist certainly plays a lot more interestingly than the usual '/spam generic attack spell at everything' gameplay most mages in roguelikes have. Trying to effectively use the bombs without toasting myself or the golem was interesting, tossing them in through doors or into blind corners, selecting the element to use not just based on whichever is least resisted, but also for accompanying status effects. The shadowblade rogue didn't start with stealth and I didn't bother taking it, but he played quite differently from the berserker, relying on hit and run tactics using very heavy burst damage and long stuns.

Hell, just the rune/infusion system is interesting by itself. You can have 2 of the same kind, and there are both healing and regeneration infusions, as well as status effect removers. You could pile up on those, or forgo healing abilities entirely and make use of utility runes like invis, teleport and vision. There's also direct damage runes of varying types. And being able to change your loadout when you want means you can deck yourself out with teleport + healing for one dungeon and AoE deathspells for another.

My only real gripe with these kinds of abilities is that because of the nature of a roguelike, you're encouraged to hoard as much of your power as possible, so I end up with 9 out of 10 cooldowns untouched while I just melee shit to death and pop regen once in a while. But part of that is the early game being easier, which I think is a good thing, and shit can still hit the fan when you run into something out of depth or crack open a vault and find yourself staring down 4 skeleton mages.

Only other gripe about the game is the awesome next gen graphics cause me some serious lag in certain areas, mainly weather effects. Apparently it's raping the memory for some reason. I'll have to dick around in the config file and see if it can be disabled.

 

[Lord Rocket]

I thik the most fun I've had was with the fighter I mentioned in my earlier post. I was using powers like Repulsion and Withdraw quite a lot to prevent myself from being swarmed by enemies, since my straight damage output wasn't all that great. These interacted well with the cooldown periods so I'd use a knock back type power in preparation for using a regen infusion/damage boost power etc. etc.
However I am now playing an Archmage which boils down to: Flame, Lightning, Flame, Lightning, and maybe a phase door every now and again. Boring.

EDIT: My computer is a couple years old now (AMD Phenom - not Ph. II - triple core, Radeon 5570) and I'm getting consistently good framerates. Arch Linux OS, Catalyst drivers which as per the latest revsion, are now usable.

 

[DakaSha]

I was playing this a bit after it was announced and although the engine was pretty cool it just didn't keep me glued to the screen as I had hoped..
However it was (still is) in an early state and I think ive just played so many/much roguelikes that I'm getting a bit bored of them. (never thought that possible 0.o)

Anyways gonna try this new version now. Seems like a pretty big update

edit: lol I wonder how many "fans" are nerd raging at the fact it's no longer set in the LotR universe

edit: Toughnuts the dwarven fighter took out "Bill the Troll" by leaving and reentering his "level" multiple times



This does seem pretty cool though and im quite enjoying it.. should probably make enemies follow the player through exits though or not allow the player to exit when surrounded

 

[Crooked Bee]

Rogues and alchemists are indeed a lot of fun in this game. Bombs are cool and challenging to use. I'll probably try playing a shadowblade a bit today.

 

[DakaSha]

I'm still using Toughnuts and it's neat how you can actually create a character build unlike most RL's..
Also "dungeon" generation is pretty nice. You can come across castles or other buildings in the woods and actually find things in them heh.. They also seem to have (simple) themes
Acheivments are nice.. as are unlock-ables (which was something I had planned back when i wanted to design a RL)

However there do seem to be some problems.. but it is still a beta so meh.

Also no highscore hope he changes that some time...

edit: came across a gravity worm 0.o
if there are more enemies like this along the way fights could be interesting

edit: unlocked summoner and got cockgagged by elementals attacking the village 0.o

Well this is interesting so far

 

[Fowyr]

I played older versions of ToME, great game. And last run with alchemist was very fun. Should check later.

 

[Higher Game]

Can traps and certain enemies still damage "artifacts"?

 

[DakaSha]

As far as i can tell nothing can damage any weapon. At least i havnt had anything degrade from acid attacks

 

[Damned Registrations]

I heard someone on their forums complain that an artifact got destroyed by an attack right after they picked it up, but that might only apply to unidentified ones, or stuff in your inventory and not equipped.

Haven't been to the endgame yet so I don't know if the traps there do retarded crap like dump your inventory or do other permanently damaging things. Hopefully not.

And I just realized, I was SO fucking sick of farming piety in roguelikes. I'm glad to play one where it's not an issue.

 

[Castanova]

But what do you farm instead? There's always something...

 

[DakaSha]

Dicks. you should try it
(edit: im starting to notice a trend with my first posts after waking up ^^)

 

[Damned Registrations]

Been playing this some more the last few days. Moar progress has been made. Tileset is nicer. More classes, items, skills, etc. Better balance. Shitload of dungeons (To the point you could very reasonably skip half of them if you aren't OCD about collecting artifacts.) Lots of new sidequests, many of which unlock character classes, game modes or skill trees for existing classes.
UI has been upgraded a lot too; stats now have mouseover tooltips, windows can use mouse scroll, stat screen isn't so cluttered. Pretty much all the previous lag issues and the buggy minimap have been fixed as well. I get a graphical bug if I die and start a new character without reloading the game, and it seems to have a slow memory leak, but these are pretty minor issues.
Overall. Very happy with where this has been heading. Currently trying to build up an Arcane Blade, but ignoring the basic direct damage abilities the class has in favour of powerful defensive shields, healing, and passive bonuses.

 

[Castanova]

I downloaded the game. Started a Human Berserker. I played through to the end of the first zone, a forest called Trollmire (is this the starting zone every time?). Anyway, so far I have to say the game was quite boring. The forest was not interesting to explore as it's basically an open space. The enemies were extremely easy to defeat. I got some items and new skills and stuff but it felt extraneous since I was easily winning all the fights anyway. The quest boss of Trollmire was a little bit harder but the only difference was that I used my health regeneration skill during the fight where usually I didn't. The only hard part was when I found a hidden entrance with some kind of treasure trove and I encountered a big boss. I couldn't kill him but I easily ran away and he didn't follow me through the zone transition.

The main thing I liked was that it had a more involved character system than most roguelikes. And I enjoyed being able to find new skills as random drops in the dungeon. That being said, not a lot of the skills that I saw in the talent tree seemed very interesting. I basically just pumped up the Stunning Strike to 5/5 as soon as possible and got passive bonus talents.

Does the game pick up at all? Do you have to go through this tedious starting zone every time you start a new character?

 

[tindrli]

downloading .. seems insteresting

 

[tindrli]

and after more than an hour playing i managed to drown myself in the city river

 

[Qwertilot]

Life traditionally is just very easy for warriors early and even mid game in roguelikes (well certainly *bands which this was a long, long time ago.). Try some fragile mage type instead

 

[SuicideBunny]

do levels repopulate eventually, or is it safe to use previously cleared once to rest?

 

[Damned Registrations]

There are many different low level zones. Different races start in different ones. Some have to fight their way out, but most (Like humans in the Trollmire) can simply leave to the world map right away and ehad for another dungeon. The starter dungeons would pretty much be Trollmire + Kor'Pul, Crystal Caves + Shaloren Hideout, and the the frozen forest and blighted forest (These aren't the exact names, and I'm grouping them by location, there's 2 near each of the 3 towns of Derth, Elvala, and whatever the woodelf place is called. Some are easier to start in than others, and different classes have different difficulties in some areas and in general.)

Levels never repopulate. I don't think shops restock anymore either. Basically impossible to scum, except adventuring parties, but those are deathtraps. There's easily 2-3 times as many dungeons as you need to be properly geared and leveled to play through the game though.

As far as when the game picks up... it depends a lot on your playstyle and class you pick. Most classes have a lot of active abilities and a lot of passives. I like stacking passive bonuses and winning via mathcraft a lot myself, but playing tactically with the abilities is certainly viable. My best character so far was a Shadowblade; I combined probability travel (high level sustained wall walking magic) with stealth to warp in and out of combat and blow all my tricks on an enemy to take them out then fuck off and recover. If you pick the plain human you get a bonus category point to start with which might net you some more options, though some classes have actives based on different stats (Say, dex moves and strength moves) so learning both will kind of gimp you. You're also missing out on 3/4 of the abilities until you hit level 12 at least. You can gain levels pretty quickly though, a lot of the dungeons only have 3 levels, and if you go in a bit under levelled, you can easily gain 3-4 levels. I'm usually level 8 by the end of the 2nd dungeon. I usually beeline for the stairs, kill the boss and head for another dungeon. Less tedious combat, faster levelling, but you miss out on the gear in the vaults and scattered in the levels.

I'd suggest checking out the crystal caves to get an idea of what some of the other areas/enemies/bosses can be like. As far as class variety, you'll have to play into the game a bit before you start unlocking most things. Archmages and summoners both unlock really easily though. The first via a quest for someone on the overworld map, the second you'll get by accident sooner or later. Most of the other ones are specific dungeons/sidequests you have to complete, sometimes in a specific way.

 

[SuicideBunny]

i charged the flying fortress twice and am now stuck in the realm the exploratory portal dumped me into. something with e at the beginning of the name and a lot of crystals.
cleared the map but no exit in sight and the recall rod just doesn't work, any ideas?

also, the tempest mage for the town attack sidequest didn't spawn in his dungeon....

 

[thesheeep]

Wow, that is actually a really good game. Good example of how a Roguelike game can be accessible and community-oriented, if the dev(s) just want it to be. Yes, I'm looking at you, Dwarf Fortress. (Don't start the shitstorm, I know they're not 100% comparable).

I have the urge to donate.

 

[Gwendo]

Is there a way to play it in ascii mode?

 

[Hirato]

Is there a way to play it in ascii mode?

1) load or start a game
2) Open the menu (ESC)
3) Select "Graphic Mode"
4) Change style to desired variant

I prefer ascii mode myself, the tiles make it rather hard to see just where the obstacles start and end.



And it seems there's a new release to try out...

 

[Gwendo]

Thanks, m8

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Been playing this for a couple days, pretty fun in the "Easy" mode (the one that gives you extra lives, may be called Beginner but I'm not sure). Keeps you from raging at bullshit deaths (ololo strong monster pops up outta nowhere and OHKOs your character, new game plzkthx), but you still can't get cocky (I was happy that I got a vial that gave me and extra life, just to nter a town under attack by djinns air elementals that ganged up on me).

Would probably do well on xbox live, it's very engaging and accessible. Unlocking campaigns and classes as you play is great motivation.

BUT! The Rod of Recall doesn't seem to work for me. It also says it can't login to online profile because of "bad game version" (it's the latest one). Both are probably just my dumbfuckery at work, though.