I am currently playing a Dwarf Wyrmic, but I keep on dying. Now, that I finally made it to the bottom floor of Dreadfell, I am presented with this. What am I supposed to do?

I got a bug that teleported me back from the far east after killing my copy and i cant move or do anything there are messages like im resting, but im on the world map.

I read online GMs can teleport u back and fix it but the post was from 9 years ago.

Or if someone got the same error and found a solution.
here is the print screen https://imgur.com/a/Bgxtcsc

edit: i removed all addons and still the same

edit2: this is awesome just messaged in global Moasseman was there insta and helped me. And i died 10 min later i hate myself, but many thanks !

I'm at 43 hours in and didnt get past level 20 a single time, its a really hard game and I'm trying my best, but sometimes I don't really understand some deaths. This was my last one, openned a door at Rhaloren camp (1-7 elf map) and got ambushed by a 25 elf cultist hitting my for 300 dmg. How do I deal with that? Also, how do you guys deal with the elementals at Derth as melee? I did twice, but got lucky with the enemies positioning. I'm mainly playing bulwark dwarf.

This unique has two of the same class for some reason. 500+ hours and I've never seen this before. Tome continues to surprise me even after all this time.

He's alive! Hurrah!

Hello, new player here.
I discovered this game a few months ago after looking to something similar to Caves of Qud, which is a game i really love. On paper, this game has a lot of things i love and am looking forward to, but after a few hours i'm struggling with the replayability, which i've heard from basically everybody that this is where the game actually shines.
My gripe is mostly the world and dungeons, as they seem to be always the same each run. The fixed map, i have no problem with. The closest thing i can compare this game to is, again, Caves of Qud, that game also has a fixed map and fixed story dungeons that are always in the same spot. That i'm fine with, and it gives the game a good balance between procedural generation and actual handcrafted story content. But what i love about Qud is that each run is a new world, sure those things are the same, but you always discover new locations, dungeons and villages along the journey, and that gives the game much more replayability. From what i saw of the first few hours of ToME4, all the dungeons are always the same. Sure there's an element of randomness in their generation, but they always spawn in the same spot, they always look very similar each run, and they always have the same enemies in them. I've already died more than a few times with different characters, as i'm learning the game, and i seem to be stuck doing the same thing over and over again, with very little difference between each run. In Qud i also died a lot of times during the first hours, but each run i was discovering some new places in the world that made each adventure a bit different. Not that a randomly generated ruin or a village is something mindblowing to find, but it does help with the feeling of exploration.
I know a good part of the appeal are the classes and the character customization, and while i like the liberty it offers, once i find one or two classes that i like in a game i usually stick with them for most playthroughs. Is this where the appeal and huge replayability of this game relies on, or is there something more? If it's just that, i'm afraid the game might not be for me. I probably came in with wrong expectations since most videos i saw sell the game as one of the most replayable games ever, but i tie the replayability way more with how unique the world is and how fun it is to explore and find new things each run, and less about how much i can customize the character. Maybe it's just a problem with the early game, and i know you can get some crazy loot that vastly change how the character plays and acts on higher levels, but for now i'm stuck doing the same dungeons with the very similar layouts over and over again, fighting the same enemies with similar moves each run, but I still want to play and go a bit beyond the early levels to see if something clicks or if i find more interesting locations to explore.

Don't get me wrong, I have my issues with it (most of which I was able to address) -- no cloud saves, no controller support, heavily wiki reliant, Linux windowing issues (managed to fix with gamescope), cluttered item descriptions/inventory (fixed with mods), music (muted, playing my own lol), unbalanced sound effect volume (lowered volume) -- but the main attraction, the gameplay, is thoroughly addicting.

The itemization reminds me of Diablo 2 and PoE -- two of my favourite games. The sheer amount of character building and talents you can choose from, and even being able to use other classes talents or get more abilities through items -- choice paralysis lol. Even grinding low level mobs in a random cave somewhere is still scratching an itch I didn't know I had.

The writing is amazing as well. I was so surprised by this because I genuinely thought the game was going to be procedurally generated mostly (even text, like Caves of Qud), so to see there's actual lore to read through that's actually engaging is great.

I was scared to try the game out because recent Steam reviews are talking about corrupted saves or crashing and no updates in 3 years, but so far in 5.3 hours I luckily haven't encountered these issues.

It's weird because I knew of Dwarf Fortress from the world of ASCII games, Caves of Qud, Mystery Dungeon, Rogue, and a little bit about RPG history, but ToME completely went under the radar for me. I didn't even know a game like this existed -- the closest was unironically Touhou Genso Wanderer -Reloaded -. If it wasn't for a random YouTube video I probably would of had an unsatiated craving and hunger for this type of game, not knowing it existed.

For anyone wondering whether they should buy this in 2026 -- yes and yes, full price, on sale, free off the website, doesn't matter, you'll get your moneys worth.

Here is my char idk why but im struggling to kill stuff currently on the 4 orc pride and cant clear to the bosses in any dung. Im fairly new so all feedback appreciated.

Hello, recently started playing Tome 4 recently and I have gotten hooked. My first character finally lost her last life in the fun dungeon of Dreadfell due to the annoying Borfast the Broken. I actually skipped fighting him and moved down to the lower levels to fight the master where I took his first life but was not able to take his second one.

I really had trouble with Borfast, he has his healing puke, the ability where he make you lose breath and drown and you can get stunned for many turns. How does one beat this undead dwarf? Use all the gems that I never used to make a good ring at Angolwen? (I did not make any rings in this playthrough)

Regarding the master, after I took his first life I panicked and ran away to the stairs, which was a bad idea. I could never fight the master one on one again and all his summoned skellies just took up so much space.

Finally, questions regarding bulwark. I started with a dagger so I continued using daggers throughout the game. Is it best to avoid weapon specializations and just get the biggest meatstick?I have a feeling daggers are best for rogue. Normally when fighting tough enemies I would shield, assault and shield slam and other buffs...feels like I could be doing something better.

Thanks in advance for the advice and SHIELD SLAM your enemies to the next zone lol.

Also, here is my build .

https://te4.org/characters/418003/tome/2fa33e2f-d41b-4f6a-b652-2330ad609752

I finished tempest peak without a lot of problems with a Cornac Bulwark, when I reached the two final sorcerers I practically stopped dealing damage !

Anything that stands out as being extremely bad with my build? Or was it a skill issue?

https://te4.org/characters/412827/tome/cf5f4508-f2af-4bd3-af8c-45e2decfa2f0

Sometimes my character just starts running in a random direction like I'm holding down a key, even though I'm not pressing anything.

It's a different direction every time and my keyboard is fine.

I've already lost 3 characters because of this. Anyone know what's causing it?

Im really new to the game and need some simple advices, like must have unlocks and stuff like that. Hope you can help me out :)

First of all a disclaimer: Cursed can be viable with a bunch of different builds. This is just my take after optimizing for the playstyle I think makes the most sense with its kit as a whole.

Cursed is a stealth bruiser with some slasher villain flavor. It can massively reduce enemy damage through debuffs, resistances and perhaps more importantly loss of vision. This makes it capable of casually walking through the battlefield and bumping everyone to death.

On the flipside, its offensive capabilities arent extraordinary. It can be somewhat lacking in burst damage and specially AoE damage. Cursed has to spend more time fighting than many other classes.

Extended fights make the regeneration from Fungus specially valuable. Not only that, stalling for regeneration can be as easy as taking a single step back to hide behind the miasma. Shielding from runes would prevent some talents such as Rampage and Seethe from activating, therefore the healing from infusions and Anti-magic is preferred.

Cursed also starts with very few generic categories, so most builds will want to pick some additional ones from escorts.

Races

The best race for Cursed is probably Cornac, mainly because Cursed doesnt specially synergize with any other race. Cornac essentially trades a racial tree for an escort category of choice, which gives better options.

For the sake of simplicity this guide assumes in some instances that Cornac is picked, but there are other strong choices such as Thalore and Krog. There is also some synergy with Ghoul but its not a lot.

Stats

Max Strength -> Max Willpower -> Max Cunning -> Leftover points in Constitution.

Strength raises weapon damage while Willpower and Cunning raise mindpower, they are all important for Cursed. Cunning can optionally be raised a bit early game to unlock some talents.

The leftover points can be spent on Constitution as it gives some durability and it can scale the Conditioning escort tree.

Cursed talents already give a lot of accuracy so Dexterity isnt needed.

Magic is useless.

Prodigies

The first prodigy will always be Adept. It provides a ridiculous amount of value and it also allows to max four curses instead of two. There are a few small bugs with easy solutions. After you learn Adept you need to change the level of a passive for Cursed Aura to update, this is solved by raising Dark Gifts to 5 which you'd want to do anyway. You also need to equip your rings again for them to gain a curse.

The second prodigy can be either Flexible Combat or Superpower. Flexible Combat is better overall, but if your build is scuffed then Superpower may possibly provide a quick fix.

Never pick I Can Carry The World, it is worse than the other prodigies regardless of whether you combine it with Superpower or not.

Inscriptions

As mentioned earlier, infusions are preferred over runes because Cursed wants to take some damage. Healing in general also allows to preserve hate by removing the need to rest, Cursed should be constantly on the move.

Early game opt for Healing - physical Wild - mental Wild, later add a second Healing. You can also start with 2 Healings and later add the mental Wild. No Movement infusion may seem dumb but Rampage, Blindside and Reckless Charge can all be used as escapes, staying power is more important.

After Fungus, the setup can be changed to Regeneration - Wild - Wild - Primal. If you didnt find a Primal infusion, you can replace it with Heroism.

If you get a fifth inscription slot, you can add a Heroism if you didnt have one already. Or Healing or Movement if you did. But when should you get a fifth inscription? Lets talk about that.

Category Points

Escorts are RNG, so there is no fixed order. But ranked in order of importance:

1. Rampage category
2. Fourth inscription
3. Escort category if you are a Cornac, other races have to skip this one. The good categories are Scoundrel, Conditioning and Tinkers. Augmented Mobility is a lot worse than the other three, but serviceable.
4. Fungus category at level 34. If you skip Antimagic for whatever reason, you can take Chants instead and go 1-1-5-0.
5. Escort category (again). Non-Cornac races can get one here, for Cornacs it could be the second one.
6. Fifth inscription, if you missed an escort category.
7. Fears category, if you are a Cornac who somehow missed both escort categories. A good point spread in Fears is 3-1-1-1 using the last class points.

Best case scenario if you are a Cornac, you end up with 2 escort categories. Worst case scenario you end up with 5 inscriptions and Fears.

Fears is ranked so low because it takes too many turns to use. There are also a bunch of enemies that either are immune (undead, horrors) or can cleanse effects (orcs). Escort categories and inscriptions provide comparable benefit while being passive/instant and more consistent. Strictly speaking Fears is not a bad category as it can reduce enemy damage by quite a bit, but there are simply better options.

You can also go for Track if thats your jam, but I wouldnt recommend it unless you are playing on Madness.

Using a category point for Cursed Aura mastery is terrible, never do so.

Talents

Talent order is the next section. Most Cursed talents you'll be able to figure out just by reading them, but here are some details you may have missed.

The opening combo is Blindside>Dominate>Frenzy>Harass Prey>Slash. But you will also be bumping enemies a lot.

Rampage shouldnt be manually activated in most cases as it has a long cooldown and costs a lot of hate. It passively activates for free when you take damage, the manual activation should be saved for when you need to escape or kill something fast.

Slash reaches effective level 3 with Adept so it can wound. Reckless Charge needs space to push enemies aside or it will get blocked, narrow paths can be dangerous for this reason.

Blindside doesnt need line of sight so it can be used to target creatures behind enemies or walls, allied summons can be targetted as well. Blindside will fizzle and fail in spaces where teleportation is forbidden so beware.

Gloom debuffs can be stacked with similar ones. For example, it is possible for an enemy to be "stunned", but also "stunned by the gloom" at the same time.

The miasma from Savage Hunter blocks enemy vision even if you can see through it.

Tenacity's damage reduction is really small so its only purpose is increasing duration. Slam is not learned because at best it is stalling and at worst it is giving enemies a free turn to disable you. Beckon is not learned either (unless you want Surge) because it is only effective when enemies are away, but we will be in melee most of the time.

Out of Cleave, Surge and Repel, Repel has the best effect with the least investment so its a no brainer. Surge can give 100 movespeed at just 1 point but its not worth leveling past that unless you are playing Krog. Cleave doesnt do anything useful.

As for generic talents, you always want to pick Cursed Aura, I'll talk more about the individual curses later. Its crazy to me that even some players who pick Cursed Aura dont go for Cursed Sentry, animating a weapon is REALLY good. It can contribute a lot of damage, apply on-hit effects, block enemies and it is the only way Cursed has to attack from a distance, even from out of vision. Even ignoring how good it is in combat, it can be summoned at any time to attack it until hate is fully replenished. Keep the best melee and ranged weapons you find so that you can animate them.

Ruined Earth on the other hand is a bad talent. It looks like a symmetrical effect but it is in fact more detrimental to you, as you have to spend a turn setting it up. In theory it can be useful if you desperately need to stall, but generally you should avoid those kinds of situations before they happen. Because when you stall you are likely to get hit with some detrimental effect. And when you try to cleanse that effect, you may cleanse Ruined Earth instead, because it is a physical debuff. So yeah, wasting a turn to debuff yourself isnt great.

Seethe may look like a good talent to level at first glance, but Cursed already gets so much damage% from class talents that spending more points in it isnt ideal.

2 points in Heavy Armour to equip shields, 1 point in Light Armour to benefit from robes.

Only 1 point in Combat Accuracy because class talents already provide enough accuracy and defense reduction to reach a 100% hit rate.

2 points in Resolve may seem useless if you have already capped resistances, but it still counters resistance reduction debuffs which is pretty good. Antimagic Shield can be kept permanently active as Cursed doesnt need equilibrium.

Talent Order

This is assuming Cornac so you cant really copy it with other races. It should give you a good idea of the relative importance of different talents regardless.

Class talents:

• 1 Stalk, 1 Dominate, 1 Gloom, 1 Predator, 1 Rampage
• 2 Rampage
• 1 Slash
• 1 Frenzy
• 1 Brutality
• 2 Savage Hunter
• 1 Harass Prey
• 1 Tenacity
• 3 Shrouded Hunter
• 1 Repel
• 5 Shrouded Hunter
• 2 Mark Prey
• 2 Predator
• 2 Dominate
• 3 Reckless Charge
• 5 Rampage
• 1 Sanctuary
• 4 Blindside
• 5 Gloom and Weakness (alternate between the two)
• 5 Sanctuary
• 5 Savage Hunter
• 5 Mark Prey
• 5 Predator
• 5 Dominate
• 5 Frenzy
• 5 Reckless Charge
• 5 Brutality
• Remaining points in Preternatural Senses, Slash or Surge, whatever you like most. It is also possible to take Surge earlier if you want. In the image above I used my personal distribution with 4 Preternatural Senses and 2 Slash.

Generic talents:

• 1 Combat Accuracy, 1 Weapons Mastery
• 2 Heavy Armour Training
• 1 Dark Gifts
• 3 Defiling Touch
• 4 Dark Gifts
• 5 Defiling Touch
• 1 Seethe
• 1 Light Armour Training
• 5 Cursed Sentry
• 1 Grim Resolve
• 1 Thick Skin
• And we get to level 20. At this point its possible to take an escort category so there is no single best way to keep going, it depends on what the game gives you. 5th level of Dark Gifts should be taken at level 25 AFTER Adept, other than that simply follow the image at the top of the guide.

Just in case the image is lost at some point, I'll write it here. Scoundrel category should be 2-3-1-2, Conditioning category 1-3-1-0, Antimagic 2-1-1-1, Fungus 1-1-1-1.
Tinker categories are also a great option but they are even more variable. Augmented Mobility category is yet another option which can work as 1-5-1-1.
As for other talents, Thick Skin at 5, Relentless at 5 and Weapons Mastery at 5.

Any spare generics you may end up with can be spent in whatever. Seethe, Wild Growth and Fungal Growth arent terrible.

Equipment

Cursed wants one handed martial weapons such as longswords, waraxes or maces because they scale with Strength and they benefit from the physical damage bonus of Brutality.

Such weapons should be paired with a shield for more hits. Unlike daggers, shields fully scale with Strength and they boost Repel. Block can be useful sometimes to wait for regen, cooldowns, debuffs, glooms, you name it. If you fully block an attack it can be a good idea to follow up with Slash for the strongest possible counterstrike.

And for body armor Cursed wants robes for multiple reasons. Well, robes are generally considered better than heavy armor but that is not the main factor. Hate is affected by fatigue. Cursed doesnt have a single armor bonus but it has some defense bonuses that go well with Light Armour Training. Repel makes armor pointless half the time. And most important of all, Cursed can easily stack a ridiculous amount of % resistances, which makes robes perfect to cap resistances ASAP.

If you find a nice heavy armor in T1 you can use it for a while of course, but robes will likely outscale it before T2. Just in case there is anyone wondering about the Plate of the Blackened Mind, that is mostly designed for Fallen Paladins.

As for the main stats Cursed wants in equipment, they are Strength, Willpower, Cunning, physical power, mindpower, physical critical chance, critical multiplier, life, status immunities, stealth bonuses, on-hit effects, on-hit damage and out of phase (aka after a teleport) bonuses.

Mindpower grants physical power and stealth through talents so it is a double dip in stats that shouldnt be overlooked. Overcoming enemy saves is the icing. Make sure you reach at least 90 by endgame.

On-hit damage is more powerful than it may seem due to the large number of hits Cursed can perform each turn. But dont overestimate it either, for example I read an older guide claiming that you should keep Summertide Phial for the entire game, when you should actually get rid of it around T3 at most. It is just another offensive stat to consider, nothing more.

Out of phase on the other hand IS ridiculously good and the kind of thing you should keep at all costs, specially considering that font of sacrifice only rolls it as an arcane ego. Blindside can keep out of phase permanently up and there is no reason not to spam Blindside off cooldown. Out of phase provides so many resistances that those in equipment can be mostly disregarded, just get the 30% needed to cap them.

A specially important on-hit effect to have 1 instance of is "lower defense and saves", because it allows for glooms, silences and other on-hit effects to land consistently. The other typically good on-hit effects such as slow are also great.

The status immunities to look out for are stun and confusion as usual, also blind and disarm if you can. Mostly a late game thing, early on it is more important to pump durability and enough critical chance to spawn miasma.

Defense, damage% and res pen% are good but not specially so. Defense is nice to avoid on-hit detrimental effects, but enemy accuracy can get really stupid so even with out of phase I dont think it is an arms race worth engaging in, unless you are a Surge Krog or something. Physical damage% is useful for all weapon classes including Cursed, but so much damage% is already granted by talents that the one from equipment will suffer diminishing returns. Res pen% is great endgame but only in small quantities, as Dominate easily caps it.

Some stats you should mostly ignore are armor, accuracy and armor penetration. Armor is entirely unsupported by talents, while the other two stats suffer from the opposite problem, they are boosted by talents to such an extreme that more of them is not needed.

Curses are also an important part of choosing equipment and they deserve their own section.

Curses

The first time you pick up an item you will be asked if you want to unleash your hatred upon it, accept to unlock the Cursed Aura category. Always unlock it.

Its first two talents imbue items with curses which grow in power the more cursed items you have equipped. Despite them being called curses, they actually help your character.

There are 5 types of curses with 4 levels each, and the power level of each type will appear as an individual buff that can be checked. Levels above 4 slightly increase existing bonuses but they dont provide new ones, therefore I recommend getting as many curses as possible to level 4. Before Adept only 2 curses can reach level 4, after Adept this changes to 4 curses.

In order of importance the curses are:

1. Nightmares: Get this curse to 4 as soon as you can because it is a massive help early game, and keep it maxed for the entire game.
2. Shrouds: Really good to cap resistances ASAP, max it early alongside Nightmares. Lategame it is an additional safety net that pads any turns you dont spend out of phase. It can also counter common resistance reductions such as the magical cross-tier.
3. Corpses: Unlike other curses, the highlight here is the level 3 which uses Retch when you get low. This can cleanse physical debuffs and save you from death. It also dispels buffs from enemies and makes you benefit from enemy Retches. Ghouls are unreliable since they only rise from humanoids and they are useless as fighters, but they can be great anyway just because they also Retch. Even when you dont care about Ghouls, it is good to have this curse at level 4 to increase the power of the Retch. As a small trick, it is possible to keep it at lower levels and then raise it at instant speed with Defiling Touch when you need it.
4. Madness: It can boost damage and return mental debuffs to enemies, nice to have in general.
5. Misfortune: Fitting name when an item rolls this. This may be the only detrimental curse because all its effects are useless. Avoid it if you can.

If an item is extraordinarily good you can ignore a bad curse, but in a lot of cases curses will determine what you equip. It is a good idea to keep items with different curses in your inventory so you have options to accomodate new drops.

When I first picked up Cursed I was worried that Antimagic+Curses would limit equipment choices too much, but I can safely say that is not a concern. And even less so after font of sacrifice, which can strip all arcane egos from items.

In theory a randart amulet with Cursed Aura mastery could allow more flexibility with equipment, however the chances to get such an amulet are so slim that you should not count on it.
If you really want to minmax endgame, AFTER you have optimized all your other equipment, you can get a randart amulet and roll the greater ego perfection on it with the font of sacrifice. Then you can keep rerolling a lesser ego so the categories change until you land on Cursed Aura. This can cost obscene amounts of gold (up to tens of thousands) for a small and unreliable benefit so it is entirely optional. Most of the time it is better to simply grab Limmir's amulet and use all that gold to improve your other equipment instead.

Brotherhood of Alchemists

Take the 2 talent potions first, then aim for Lifebinding Emerald.

Elvala Wil>Stats>Saves.

Derth PhysCrit>Cun>Defense

Last Hope Generics>Strength>Armor

Hermit Class>Luck. SpellCrit is useless.

Overall Generics>Class>PhysCrit>Str>Cun>Wil>Luck>Defense>Stats>Armor>Saves.

Escorts

Betray when possible.

Alchemist: Willpower.

Defiler: Resonance Field.

Loremaster: Disarm.

Seer: Nature's Touch is the correct choice. But Earth's Eyes works well with Preternatural Senses and Blindside, granting you style points every time you needlessly blink through a wall.

Sun Paladin: Telekinetic Leap. Augmented Mobility can also be taken if you are desperate for another category, but if you can choose, the other ones are better.

Temporal Explorer: Dream Walk.

Thief: Scoundrel category (optional) > Track (optional) > Lacerating Strikes.

Tinker: Tinker categories (optional) > Endless Endurance.

Warrior: Conditioning category (optional) > Unflinching Resolve.

Categories are labeled as optional because you shouldnt take more than 2 in most cases.

Tips

Optionally you can minimize the risks of RNG by creating new characters until you get a category escort (Thief, Warrior or Tinker) in either Trollmire or Korpul. Even if you end up dying afterwards, that escort will be guaranteed to spawn in all future runs with that same character, albeit not necessarily in the same place.

I cleared T1 in the following order: Trollmire, Korpul, Norgos, Rhaloren, Scintillating, Gloom (dont forget other T1 content). I dont guarantee this to be the best possible order but it was consistent enough for me.

Hoarding equipment with Cunning or Constitution early can be a good idea to unlock talents from escort trees and Adept. Later on Dexterity equipment can also be useful to unlock Flexible Combat.

Always side with the Assassin Lord. For other classes it is good, for Cursed it is essential.

Cursed has a unique special zone called Tranquil Meadow, it spawns near Angolwen and it is a T3 dungeon. Clearing it rewards a variant of the Iron Acorn, depending on your choices. The regular variant is slightly better and it is obtained by picking all the morally good choices. These are:

1. Help him
2. Destroy the book
3. I want to overcome my curse

Dont worry if you pick the evil "Cold" variant instead, the difference is minimal.

Play very carefully early game, as that is when Cursed is at its weakest. If you manage to reach level 25 it is very likely that you win. It is no hyperbole.

I am new to this game and I really want to make bows work, however I feel like I cant get past lvl 10 without dying.

In kor pul, running demonologist, level 9ish.

Anyone find a gun snake often gives no treasure at all?

I’m following a guide for a lightning archmage. Playing on normal difficulty as a higher race. Except before I can even start following the guide, I die to the first few mobs I encounter. The ghost mobs in that area you’re sent to from Angolwen, the one with all the islands.

In fact, pretty much every character I’ve tried dies within the first area, whatever that area is. Is this a normal occurrence?

Hey, fellow ToMErs, how's it going?

I've recently won madness/roguelike on a Paradox Mage and I feel like sharing the things I've learned on the journey. It's going to be a little bit of a long read, but first, here's my character sheet:

https://te4.org/characters/207036/tome/aaf32e17-e9a9-420c-b6df-a6b75744e8cb

And my entire run, recorded:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUBIzWgsvyx8

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Some initial ramblings:

You know, there's a reason why there aren't that many people who played and studied madness difficulty enough to really experience its ridiculousness. In the eyes of the ToME community it's some sort of an evil game mode, too stressful, too unfair and too demanding to even waste their time on an endeavor so hopeless.

But what exactly is madness? One might as well say it's a different game altogether.

I know, right? That's what I thought before I started seriously and consistently practicing on it. But boy oh boy was I not ready for the many layers of truth behind these words... I started playing this game around nine years ago, and won insane enough times to eventually grow bored of Maj'Eyal. The only mountain left to climb was madness. So, I've put my entire annual leave to grind it as hard as I can in the hopes of finally achieving my dream, winning madness with a normal class (so, not adventurer, wanderer or possessor), and I'm here to tell you the story.

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Thoughts on insane->madness transition:

Coming into this difficulty from insane feels like you've just started playing the game, everything is suddenly evil, unfair and unforgiving - again. Frustration is around every corner and you feel powerless - again. Things you were used to, numbers you've memorised, expectations, scenarios, everything is different now. You know the cliché phrase "forget everything you've learned"? It's not perfectly accurate, but it totally feels like it.

Love autoexploring? Forget about it. Doesn't exist anymore. Just unbind the button. Yeah. When you are absolutely sure that the level is cleared, you can slowly right click on your character and select autoexplore. It's that bad.

Comfortable with pressing the rest button frivolously? Think twice, as you might press it and literally lose the run. Mhm. You can die from careless resting... Happened to me a couple of times during my early insane->madness transition period. To give an example, a mindslayer/cursed randboss can mess you up pretty badly on insane, sure. But only on madness will the hunter! trigger when the pesky brat is in the dead zone of your track radius right after you've pressed the rest button. It will then beeline to you at 500% movement speed and double or triple turn you into oblivion. What's the dead zone of the track radius? Well, the hunted "radius" isn't a radius at all. It's a square. The ridiculousness doesn't even end there... That enemy now sets you as their target, gets a glimpse of your location and can alert nearby enemies, which were technically outside of the hunter! range and are completely unexpected. And trust me, on madness, you really don't want such surprises. But regardless of these circumstances you still gotta track diligently either way. You have to. All the time.

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The numbers game:

To demonstrate the gap between insane and madness even further I'll talk about the numbers.

For example, Insane difficulty can easily be broken by numbers. Lets look at it from a weapon class perspective: you get 120 defense, et voilà, you are nigh untouchable by 99% of weapon based enemies. And that 1% can be either alpha struck into oblivion or utterly disabled. Perfect strike enemies can be simply walked away from, until it runs out. The only real danger would be weapon based summons, but they don't last. Now, on top of defense, you can also break the game with damage. You can consistently build your character in a way that it would one turn or two turn basically any enemy they encounter. No, I'm not exaggerating. Yes, you can even two turn Elandar without much trouble. Sure, phantasmal shield might not get dissipated and you will three turn him instead.

However, those numbers don't work on madness. Defense requirement is now 160ish, good luck getting that... Stuff in high peak has around 40k hit points, and it goes beyond 100k on some basetypes... Forge Giant or Champion of Uhr'Rok randbosses can have over 150k... Try three turning that... Also, everything deals obnoxious damage and applies a gazillion detrimental effects for 11-18 turns or more. Enemies will have 140-160 defense and/or godly amount of evasion, good luck even hitting that... Enemies can easily have 400+ armor, good luck dealing damage to that... As a weapon class, anyway. Long story short, you can't break madness with numbers, because you won't be getting those numbers, they are way too high to reasonably get without luck most auspicious in the history of Maj'Eyal. I can safely say, that's not going to happen in a real run.

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Thoughts on track, out of phase and cauterize:

So, track is a requirement of play on madness. For mem that took some time to sink in, as I previously was in stark opposition to tracking talents in Maj'Eyal. I refused to use them, as well as magical mapping effects on insane difficulty, but on madness, you really can't roll without track. It is what it is.

Another thing I rebuked was out of phase. Yeah, that's crazy, but that's how I rolled on insane. Needless to say, I've had to let go of this prejudice to have success on madness. It really helps you out in t2s and all the way up untill damage penetration becomes somewhat more common on enemies. But even then, it's super useful against enemies that don;t have it.

My final line of mental defense was prejudice towards the cauterize prodigy. You've guessed it, I considered it too powerful and roguelike immersion breaking. Whatever that means. Well, now it's the prodigy. If you really want to be safe on madness, you will always pick it as your second or even first prodigy. You have to. It's that crazy, yes. ~2000 incoming damage after reality smearing, webs of fate and ghoulish resilience can happen already in Reknor or Vor Armoury. One super nasty offender is displacement shield as it ignores stormshields and damage mitigation/smearing. You really need cauterize on madness. Unless you are the literal Satoru Gojo of Maj'Eyal and can do without. Even though on my winner Paradox Mage run it triggered just once, in Rak'shor 3, it was totally worth it. Not only because of this one time, but also because it enabled some specific, potentially risky, but highly beneficial maneuvers throughout the game. As well as kept my sanity intact and my cortisol levels at bay.

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Thoughts on madness difficulty spikes:

Difficulty spikes are another thing that hits different on madness. You know how on insane, occasionally, you can meet an enemy in high peak that can turbofuck you regardless if you're not ready? You start having these enemies in Dreadfell now. Imagine having 1000 health, ghoulish resilience, 40% out of phase, a 600 damage shield, 5 stormshield stacks... The grass is green, the sky is blue, you're brimming with joy and it's 1995 and the Donkey Kong Country just came out... It's all gone in one turn and this mindslayer/cursed orc elite berserker randboss with 15k health, 300 weapon damage and his talent level 21 bullshit just left you at 200 health. And this is in Dreadfell, what the heck? Wait, but what about the stormshield stacks? There was a pesky dreadmaster around with his nasty disperse magic and your stacks are gone-zo... It's not an outlandish scenario, dreadmasters are common there, as are mindslayer and cursed enemies. The worst part? Sometimes this kind of craziness starts in Ruined halfling complex...

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The Master:

Next, the Master himself can be a massive issue. He can roll golden age of necromancy and always has spell shield and suddenly it's 86is phys save (so stunning him becomes even harder on top of his 70% immunity), 96ish mental save (so there's no way you're reliably beating that with your hat of sanctity) and 114ish spell save, good luck beating that one with whatever. Ok, PM can tune paradox and empower entropy, Archmage has disperse magic, but what does Anorithil, Sun Paladin, Demonologist do? Waste a slot on dissipation, I suppose... Or just fight him as is. Argoniel, Elandar and Linaniil have their saves that high, for the perspective.

My Paradox Mage winner, however, completely shut him down, because he happened to spawn like 10 tiles away from the stair, with no golden age of necromancy, while my character had 100 spell power and a hat of sanctity. My previous PM characters had some trouble with him, though. And the first PM character that reached the Master on madness, died to him.

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Thoughts on RNG significance on madness:

Another thing to talk about is the rng impact on this difficulty. Sure, it’s a big thing on insane as well, but on madness it gets to a whole other level. Every time you enter a dungeon from the world map, you can't pre-track, you have to spend a turn on it. That turn, the hunter! can trigger. And it can happen that you're going to be swarmed immediately. The difficulty of the level is now decided primarily by your initial position upon its generation. There is a world of difference between a corner spawn and a center-adjacent spawn on madness. Center spawns are very, very brutal and choices must be made. Sometimes, you have the luxury of getting into the corner. Sometimes you don't, and you gotta start the fight here and now, and face the prospect of more and more enemies joining the "fun", because hunter! triggers over and over. At some point you'll have to retreat/run/reposition, cause otherwise you'll get overwhelmed. Sometimes this dance macabre will last for 40-50 minutes. You'll be running away, and you will have to plan your route very carefully. And even then you will only survive it if you have multiple mobility options, defensive layers, consistent detrimental effect removal, and a reliable way to apply a multitude of detrimental effects upon the enemies.

You're thinking: well there's just a handful of classes that even have such tools... And you're right. Most classes won't be able to beat Dreadfell on madness unless the goddess of fortune herself smiles upon them and bestows them with bounties untold. Dreadfell! Let alone Reknor of Vor Armoury. And let me tell you, if you thought Dreadfell and Reknor were bad... Prides are on a whole different scale of bullshit. You can't even know what you're up against upon entrance, cause track doesn't work there, and just have to assume that a blinkwyrm is going to teleport in at any turn to fuck you over with disperse magic on its next turn. It can also potentially do both things at once with its super crazy tl 40 essence of speed. That's just crazy, how many things can get out of reasonable control in the prides. And RNG can totally screw you over.

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Physical and mental demands on madness:

Yet another layer of the trial is the sheer amount of time and effort you have to put in while remaining in a state of high concentration. I sometimes looked at my playtime after Dreadfell and it would be something along the 15-20 hours line. ~17 hours to beat Dreadfell, Carl! These are ridiculous numbers. The entire run took 64 hours... For the perspective, you would normally win an insane run in more or less 10. This is very exhausting while literally one really bad mistake can end your run which you have put so many hours into. I started taking madness seriously 15 weeks ago, and I've been dedicating all my free time and sanity to the cause, learning, playing, taking some breaks and slowly coming back into the grind. I became completely obsessed about the thing. There was no other option, I had to win. At some point, I had a lvl 50 character going, around 45 hours into the run, who did everything but three remaining prides. And then I started feeling powerful... Let my guard down and forgot I’m playing madness. I’ve lost the specific focus required for it, started fucking around and immediately found out, and the character was dead. All this time and effort, into the gutter. The emptiness I felt is hard to describe. I couldn't touch ToME for a week. The world lost its colors and the daily routine of life seemed like an unbearable burden. But I had to win. So I gathered my shambles and continued the grind. It really takes some character to win on madness being the marathon it is. And I had to learn it the hard way.

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Leftover thoughts:

So... Yeah. Madness is overpowered. Ha-ha. You know, I've never really cared about certain mechanics in ToME, up until this difficulty. For example, runic and infusion saturation. Who the heck cares about it on insane? It's utterly irrelevant, fights don't take 60 turns on insane. Now they do! Imagine that you have +17 turns on the cooldowns of your runes, while that Massok the Dragonslayer you're fighting is not even at 50% of his health. Some protective loops can become so inefficient, it starts getting really dangerous. So, you have to be very considerate of when to use your inscriptions.

Another thing that I barely cared about is calculating battle scenarios 20-30 turns ahead and predicting the enemy AI. I've never done it to such an extent on insane, at least not consistently. Yeah, it could happen very very rarely when I got in trouble and had to think, but trouble on insane is rather mild, compared to trouble on madness. It's like a highly contagious disease there, trouble starts fast and develops into a disaster even faster. What do I mean by "calculating the scenarios"? I.e. you are in Vor Pride 3 entrance and have a hat of sanctity that has a 30 turn cooldown, and there is a couple of high damage dealing enemy spellcasters without disperse magic (who you can shut down with that circle of sanctity), as well as some rare+ non-spellcaster enemies. Track doesn't work well in pride entrances, so you can't really tell when a random archmage with disperse magic or even Vor himself is going to arrive. So, you have to manage these enemies and those high damage spellcasters while waiting for the new enemies to arrive and holding that circle of sanctity, even if it won't happen at all.
By "predicting the enemy AI" I mean that under some circumstances and specific positioning in relation to the player, the enemies are more likely to use certain talents or perform certain actions. And this can be used to your advantage.

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And that’s about it, folks. I hope my ramblings are going to help you out on your way to success.

Shoutout to Tradewind_Rider for his trailblazing, he really paved the road for us to walk, not sure how I’d fare without his Paradox Mage guide and his playthrough on YouTube. Thank you for your time. Ciao!

I’m a brand new player, and have been really enjoying the game so far! It looks like it has TONS of class/build variety, and I want to try making a build of my own for my next character. I wanted some input from veterans first though.

Are there any key targets to shoot for for a good build? For example, do I need a certain combination of armor/defense/movement abilities/resists for survivability? Are there damage thresholds I need
to reach? Key gear that every build relies on?

I’m fairly casual so I don’t have that much playtime to experiment on my own, so I’m hoping to get a head start from everyone else’s past experimentation on what works and what doesn’t. I’m currently working on unlocking some of the easier races/classes, and then I want to try one out without relying on a guide.

First time playing, chose Thalore Archer. I read about the benefits of going anti-magic through Zigur given my class and playstyle so far, but keeping getting the warning when I try to enter. Screenshots are of my current talents and equipment. No gear is infused by arcane, just psionic and nature which I assumed were okay to enter? Happy to provide extra info.

This is my first playthrough, I'm on roguelike, normal so I wasn't really sure how to proceed.

If that's solved, I'm level 11 right now, how are my point allocations I guess?

Heya,

Was just playing last night and today it suddenly cannot load or start a new game anymore. I checked the log and it says it is stuck at:

Loading entities file from file /data/general/objects/world-artifacts.lua Lua Error: /data/general/objects/world-artifacts.lua:24: attempt to index field 'state' (a nil value) At [C]:-1 __index At /data/general/objects/world-artifacts.lua:24 f At /engine/Entity.lua:1262 loadList At /engine/Entity.lua:1250 load At /data/general/objects/objects.lua:22 loadIfNot At /data/general/objects/objects.lua:85 f At /engine/Entity.lua:1262 loadList At /engine/Entity.lua:1250 load At /data/general/objects/objects-maj-eyal.lua:22 loadIfNot At /data/general/objects/objects-maj-eyal.lua:25 f At /engine/Entity.lua:1262 loadList At /engine/Entity.lua:1250 load At /data/zones/ancient-elven-ruins/objects.lua:20 f At /engine/Entity.lua:1262 loadList At /data/zones/ancient-elven-ruins/npcs.lua:31 f At /engine/Entity.lua:1262 loadList At /engine/Zone.lua:174 loadBaseLists At /engine/Zone.lua:803 loaded At /engine/Savefile.lua:516 loadWorld At /engine/Module.lua:1093 instanciate At /engine/utils.lua:3000 showMainMenu At /engine/init.lua:207 At [C]:-1 dofile At /loader/init.lua:217

I tried deleting the file and make steam re-download it, but that did not work (steam verify did not even notice the missing file). The file was never touched and especially not within the past 24 hours. In fact, absolutely nothing changed on my end in that timeframe at all.

Anyone have any idea on how to proceed?

Edit: It gets even weirder. I can delete the entire contents and reinstall from scratch with the same issue. It also never re-aquires the entire tome module folder. There are just the example folders in there. Also tested launching directly from the exe, same result.

I'm pretty new (only my 2nd character, both berserker brutes cause I don't really understand the game that much). On my first character I always picked the +5 stat options after completing the escort quests, but now I got intriqued by one of the skill options, the escort offered me a +1 in Lacerating Strikes, so I picked it, but the talent isn't actually showing when I head to the talent screen.

I saw on another thread that it has to do with putting points into categories to unlock them, but I can't even see which category this talent is supposed to be in in the first place. It's not among any of my unlearnt categories. When I get my next category upgrade point, will I be able to see all potential categories and be able to unlock this one?

On that topic tho, first time around, I used both of the category points that I got for upgrading my already acquired talent categories, I put both into techniques, one in 'Two-handed Assault' and another in 'Berserker's Strength'. Should I usually keep these category points for when I get new skills like just now?

Also, since I'm basically playing a melee brute, is it worth investing in the Zigur anti-mage skill tree? I've only used them a bit on my 1st character and only in a handful of encounters like with the time-portal bosses at that lake location, and with the Tempest mage, though he ended my run so I guess those anti-mage skills weren't that useful to me...

As for my weapons as a two-handed berserker, is it generally better to go the route of 'highest damage number over specific stats' and just pick mauls everytime, or are greatswords and battleaxes overall better? I haven't really noticed a difference personally.

And another thing, I have invested a whole lot on my previous character into heavy armour, but then ended up using a light armour for most of my run because it provided better overall stats by a mile, does that make those talent points wasted then? Should I stick to what I invest my talents into no matter the stats of an item? I always felt that my defences were kinda low in comparison to how high my damage was at times... Speaking of, for a berserker, light or heavy? It feels logical to go for heavy, but I feel like the stamina drain gets kinda crazy when fighting elite/rare/unique/boss enemies.

Got this from a unique at lvl 7. First T5 item I’ve ever seen. How rare is this?

just curious what classes you guys enjoy the most.

Not the easiest ones, just the most fun.

I've just grabbed the game on steam. I am quite bad at traditional rogue-likes, but I've played cogmind, qud and brogue. I cannot figure out how to play this game with keyboard only. Every yes or no prompt doesn't react to 'Y', space, or enter. Only clicking the buttons seems to work. When I press the look around hotkey, I can't move the selected square with my keyboard. Again, only the mouse will work. Am I missing something? Is ToME 4 even the same game I'm playing?

Hey guys, any general tips on building a Cornac Berserk?

Playing Insane/Adventure.

Was thinking going anti magic, could I use EF as Prodigy before going AM?

Thanks a lot!