... on Roguelike as a difficulty level. For now.

Honestly, maybe it's just too damn ambitious to believe, I could just waltz in here an beat this fine game the way it's 'meant' to be played, before ever having played through a few (dozen?) times on an easier level.

I mean, I really, REALLY used to be able to get to T2 with most of my characters. Get into the Fortress nearly every game. That was before my glorious run with a Drem Writhing One to level 50 (https://te4.org/characters/16429/tome/49e13bec-0702-4c25-9cbf-bd72de55f6bb) followed by attempts to really break into the Orc campaign. Seems like I sorta lost all mojo, as I can't even get into the Fortress anymore.
These days, I'm running an (at least) 4 game streak of games with Zero (0) items to solve the breathing under water problem for Lake Nur. What's that tell you?

So anyway, 11 years and 5 weeks, and 309 characters (most all of them dead) I give in to advice you basically read all over the place: Start on Adventure, you clueless nit!

Wish me luck. :)

Edit: I finally have a Winner!
https://te4.org/characters/16429/tome/d7ffd991-b238-4049-a080-66148f57df27
I'm pretty sure that Elemental Fury played a vital part in this, but either way, my drought is over!

Hey, so i have this problem where there is water tiles all over the map, i think its a graphical glitch caused by OpenGL shaders, i dont know how to fix it and i dont want to disable it and lose the effects, i have an AMD graphics card. any help would be appreciated !

As a mage, if you are taking damage you have a problem. Alchemists have golems to fix this problem, while Archmages have movement speed gear and buffs. Necromancers have disposable pets and resistance, defense, and armor upgrades, most of which improve at below 0 hp. The problem is, even with gear and a high-Constitution race, the "below hp" regime is generally less than half of their hp. Playing with a "the first 2/3 of my hp are disposable" mentality is liable to give you a dead character.

Enter the Hiemal shield. As an always-on sustain that substantially improves a necromancer's hit points, the shield makes incidents like "Oops, that wyrmic can do 300 damage with a breath attack" into embarrassing mishaps instead of new character generation.

“Sounds great. Why is it love/hate?"

Love, because the Hiemal shield is iconic - it is recognizably and unquestionably a necromancer talent.

Hate, because… try benchmarking shields. AMs get 2000+ hp shields. The Disruption shield turns your mana into hp, and the Temporal shield heals you. The Hiemal shield is about 1/4 of that, and it just unsustains. You can damage nearby monsters when it happens, but that doesn't help you survive in nearly as direct a fashion as healing.

And the cost of the Hiemal shield is absolutely not cheap. This thing eats souls. Hiemal shield takes 1 soul and 30 mana to sustain — no problem — but eats another soul if it takes even 1 hp of damage and has to refresh. Slip on a rock? That’ll be 1 soul please. Unlike the Stormshield rune, which lets damage below a threshold through and only takes big hits for you, the Hiemal shield takes damage from any attack. Not only that, but when you combine other shields with it — like shield runes — it STILL counts as being damaged and eats a soul afterwards.

Hello my minions!

So it's been a while, far too long even, but now I'm finally rea..

**out of nowhere, a wild minion appears and grabs DarkGod, shouting, "WHERE IS LOST LAND? GIVE IT TO ME NOW!!!"**

Ok ok my wild minion, just let me finish!

As I was saying, I'm finally ready to speak more about Lost Land. It's now in a rather usable state but it is a very big thing and as such, I've decided that I'd do an open beta / early access for it for once!

The current plan is that such a beta would come soon and be available on te4.org (worry not steam and gog people, you can use stuff from te4.org directly too). Now, what is soon? I'm not sure, but I can tell you a bit about what will be inside!

• 6 new races, two of which have further minor variants:
  • Risen (Human / Halfling), a form of perfect undeath, unique to the Empire
  • Vampire, need I say more?
  • Atroren, elven undeads with .. peculiarities
  • Reptilian Saupur, lizard-like humanoids
  • Draconic Saurpur, lizard-dragon-like humanoids
  • Vessel (Gold / Bone / Steel / Crystal,) a kind of undead construct to house the soul of those whose bodies are beyond repair
• 3 new evolutions:
  • Exarch, a powerful undead servant of the Empire, on the same power-level lore-wise as a Lich
  • Ancestral Host, a Saurpur that merged with a core-seed to become treant-like and protect the Imperium
  • Psi-ghosts, Solipsists that fully shed their physical bodies, solely existing as beings of pure psionic power
• 3 new classes:
  • Dust-mage, a kind of mage specialized in using sand and stone
  • Graverobber, a rogue that learns some necromancy and ice magic to facilitate their .. activities
  • Praetor, an elite soldier of the Empire, with command over the imperial legions
• 22 new zones, and the overworld map of Tar'Eyal itself, to explore and, most likely, die in! Some with rather unique gameplay or setting... Did you know you wanted a zone where you ride a giant dragonfly in its mad flight over the continent to tame it? Now you do!
• A new campaign that replaces all the first half of the base game campaign and ties into the second half.
• A way to become permanently mind controlled by a sentient fungus!
• Many new creatures: ghosts, scorpions, antlions, some demons and many more and obviously for a game called Lost Land:
• *DINOSAURS*
• The usual new artifacts, lore, music and so on. But also new visuals for many existing items! An iron sword is an iron sword, but it will look different!

Now being a beta, it is not complete. Some unlocks will be missing; many texts will be too. Some/lots of placeholder gfx will exist; if you are lucky, you may even have a glimpse at my fantastic hand-drawn art (yes, you can start being very afraid now)! And obviously, balance will be atrocious, and the whole thing will be riddled with bugs (and I'm not talking about ritches here!).

Stay tuned for another post announcing the actual opening of the beta!

Now Lost Land is all well and dandy, but I do know I took far too long to make it; sure the world was hit some covid and all, but still I recognize my shortcomings, and it could and should have come sooner. Now, to avoid making the same mistake twice, I contacted the good Recaiden, a well-known and respected ToME modder, and asked to partner with him to start building the next expansion already! And he agreed! This way, the next expansion will already be well underway when LL is fully out, and since I'm not the only one on the project, on the coding side, I won't be able to slack off as much! :)

So it's with great pleasure that I announce that development has started on Beneath the Tides (title may or may not change), an expansion that will bring you over and under the vast oceans of Eyal and ... beyond!

Without spoiling too much, I can tell that you'll be able to play either nagas (of the Vargh Republic) or trolls (of the Kar'Haïb Dominion) and pirate your way to treasures and glory! Well, at least until some unexpected event propels you into an epic adventure! Prepare to encounter weird new threats but also some that ring closer to home...

Ok ok minions, do not panic. This is not another expansion announcement! The SoE is something else entirely, it is a lorebook that the great Liberty is currently working on, the person you have to thank for the amazing and disturbing lore of cults :)

It will take the form of an in-universe book, written by somebody that most players already know (but I can't reveal who they are, it'd be a big spoiler, sorry!). It will discuss various aspects of the world of Eyal, its history, its inhabitants, the way the universe works, the nature of magic, souls, Nature, ... And lots of stuff from outside of Eyal too, from the local star system to things much further away...

Here is a little quote from it, where the writer discusses horrors:

Obviously, I will not give any release date for that one, but I'm sure lots of you will be eager for it! I'm not yet sure the format of it either; probably some kind of ebook maybe also distributed on external ebook platforms, or who knows if there is demand, maybe as a physical book too. Please give us your opinions on that!

I made it to the Master with a level 24 halfling rogue playing on normal difficulty and rogue like mode. Not knowing that he resurrects after the first kill, I gambled and hung in the fight only to down him and get clobbered after he resurrected. I have only played roguelike in the 10 or so attempts I have made at the game, but think it might be time to try some adventure mode so that I can cultivate some knowledge. Loving it so far, though!

Rejoice in all the cold corners of Eyal for the Santascape has come!
Log on, jump on your characters and enjoy the cold feeling of deat...err...joy and merry presents!
Will you find your presents or your doom? You have until the 1st of january to find out!

Meet the friendly local elementals!

Have a hug with the cuddly snowmen!

And finally meet Nikolas to see if you deserve your presents!

The Santascape is a yearly special server event, triggered every 10 minutes by the server to all players currently logged in. There are others such events, come find them all during the year!

This quest is heavily screwed toward assassin lord with Forbidden cults enables as you can get ego reroll for free. And in my opinion artefacts from merchant are not worth it, as they are expensive, while character returning from far east is most likely armed to teeth with them. And he lacks ego reroll. As it stands there is no real reason to choose merchant instead of Assassin lord, as reward for merchant is worse than from assassin lord while being harder to get.

My favorite thing about the game so far is that it has the perfect level of detail. Enough information and art to let your eyes do all the work if you so desire, but if you take it slow, it is all the information you need to really let your imagination run wild. I've always loved ASCII and roguelikes for their ability to make my addled imagination spring to life as if I were 8 years old all over again, and ToME4 is unbelievably good at commanding the theatre of the mind while also being perfectly readable on it's own.

Much love.