TOME 4 impressions

[Mankeli]

I've been playing quite a lot of TOME 4 recently and wanted to share some initial impressions for people who who might be interested in the game. Disclaimer: I'm still a somewhat of a TOME noob but maybe that's a good thing because if you haven't tried the game before, so are you! If some of my facts are incorrect, please let me know. I'm not trying to start a "which is better" competition, both games have their advantages and I think they are are both great. Having said that I do think I will get bored with TOME much earlier than I did with Crawl (which is maybe my most played game ever and I'll probably come back at some point). To keep things light I'll write this with a tongue-in-cheek attitude.

So, are you tired of item destruction, food/contamination management, lack of lore and the complete purposelessness of getting some stupid Orb which doesn't even do anything? Do you like a roguelike with a plot, graphics and tons of ambience? Do you like literally walls of text describing your equipment's attributes? Do you like completely off the wall wacky abilities your character can have, like breaking the whole darn space-time continuum so that you can time travel, being able to wield three weapons at once, or putting monsters into nigthmarish sleep while you become a version of the sandman who can actually enter the monsters' very dreams and kill them while they are still asleep? Do you like insanely fun sounding classes like Oozemancer, Mindslayer and Solipsist? Would you like to be able to build your own freaking class completely?

Also, do you enjoy bugs? Possibly game-ending bugs? Game-breaking bugs? Hilariously broken and/or unblanced abilities that make it optimal to, say, use scouting ablities before every freaking fight all the time (hello divinations X 100)? Do you like literally walls of text describing your equipment's attributes? Do you like to get one-shotted by unseen monsters? Do you like to get one-shotted by monsters from out-of-LOS? Do you like to cheese monsters who can't see you and kill them with ranged attacks outside of their LOS?

If your answer is "yes" then you probably should go download TOME right now and stop reading this.

I think overall TOME is quite different from Crawl maybe resembling more ADOM than Crawl in terms of design (but obviously TOME development has been much more active than ADOM's over the last ten years). It has tons of lore and wacky and interesting abilities but also major grinding/balance/bug issues compared to DCSS. It also feels surprisingly heavy on the computer CPU (compared to other roguelikes, that is, but it does have decent graphics).

TOME feels also quite complex in terms of what you need to know: A single piece of armour can easily have like a dozen special properties in addition to armour rating. The game offers you a huge amount of information, you can for example see the damage your dealing by damage type and exact numbers all the time, but still much of the information is hidden (like what your equipment actually does in addition to the wall of text you have already read). Also, at least some small parts of the information that is provided is, you guessed it, bugged.

Tome is a very class-based game but same classes may end up looking quite different depending on what you choose to develop (and depending on the given class, some don't have much to choose from at all and many talents are just too good to pass while others can be almost completely useless). So there is room for adapting to item finds etc. too. There is an enormous amount of different talents (=skills) in the game although at closer look many of them resemble each other quite a lot. Some skills can be learned while playing from various encounters, but I'd say the majority cannot and only depend on your race and class (well, pieces of equipment may have skills too which are attachted to them and cannot be learnt but can be used if you are wearing it).

In TOME both the player character and the monsters often feel like glass cannons (excluding some classes like magical shield archmages and enemy bosses although even the final bosses can be two-shotted with the right combination). If you can take the first couple of big hits from the monster before those skills go on cooldown (= period one cannot use that ability) chances are you will win. On the other hand, if you go into a fight without shielding/healing, even a berserker can get killed in just a few hits from a dangerous mage monster. You can build insanely damaging combinations/temporary buffs which are key to victory on characters like rogue. And I'm talking about something like +300 % - 1000 % effective damage output (maybe even higher) compare to just a normal bump attack! Not all monsters are dangerous and you will be fighting pretty basic things like slimes and spiders for the majority of the game mixed with the more dangerous type of monsters.

Rare/unique monsters are one of the best and the worst of TOME 4. They are monsters that get random class abilities in addition to their monster abilities. This can lead to a single piece of mold suddenly becoming a life-threatening challenge to your character. There can be wacky combinations like an undead Sun Paladin and they can fun to deal with but on the other hand they can be a horribly unbalanced death sentence and (effectively) one-shot you character. Also there are status effects. A lot of them. Check the TOME wiki and spend the next 15-30 minutes reading.

So, there you have it! Like I said in the beginning I'm really enjoying this game. However, it can sometimes be a very frustrating one too -and for all the wrong reasons, unfortunately.

[Amnesiac]

I played a bit, but returned to crawl, I just don't get hooked. And I love crawl's art MUCH more. tome kinda looks like a flash game to me.

[duvessa]

Eventually I stopped playing tome4 because I couldn't keep pretending that track/arcane eye/etc didn't exist. Running approximately as fast as Crysis 2 on DOS didn't help, either.

In TOME both the player character and the monsters often feel like glass cannons (excluding some classes like magical shield archmages and enemy bosses although even the final bosses can be two-shotted with the right combination).

It's pretty easy to kill either of the final bosses in one action even on the highest difficulty (assuming you can get there) with some classes. Or the optional bosses that have more HP, for that matter.

[Mankeli]

Eventually I stopped playing tome4 because I couldn't keep pretending that track/arcane eye/etc didn't exist.

Yeah, those are really really bad. I usually succeed in not using/taking those but I can't resist getting precognition from escorts often and then it's even worse because the game has to load every time you use the ability (which should be all the time if playing optimally) and when the effect ends too. It's surprising that I haven't seen many posts at all in TOME 4 forums that would consider those abilities problematic (I've seen some posts). But there are other really bad things too, like positive/negative energy management, digging, (especially the vault(s) that require you to dig like a dozen times separately) etc.

Running approximately as fast as Crysis 2 on DOS didn't help, either.

It's pretty easy to kill either of the final bosses in one action even on the highest difficulty (assuming you can get there) with some classes. Or the optional bosses that have more HP, for that matter.

OK, so readers take note that even my 1000 % damage increase estimation seems to be underwhelming.

[Sandman25]

Eventually I stopped playing tome4 because I couldn't keep pretending that track/arcane eye/etc didn't exist

The same happened to me. It's really boring and very time consuming to activate track, kill some monsters, retreat, wait for all talents get out of cooldown, rinse and repeat.

[Klown]

darkgod interview
http://beyondthedungeon.wordpress.com/2 ... 9/darkgod/

Anywayssss. I do play ToME, and consider it one of my 3 favorite roguelikes behind Pixel Dungeon and DCSS.

Presentation: ToME's UI and sexy hotbar for abilities makes the game very easy to get into and allows quick gameplay. ToME +1

Graphics: ToME has solid graphics, the best part being 64x64 tiles, so you can actually see what is happening. But sometimes it's unclear if you can go a certain way. Like forest/woods levels. It looks like you can go diagonal, then you end up cornered because the graphics aren't clear and obvious. DCSS has sexy old school graphics that look great and make most things clear. Too bad there isn't a 64x64 option yet. But at the end of the day, ToME comes off as very generic looking, while DCSS has true style. DCSS +1

Sound: ToME has some nice sound effects and music, DCSS has none currently. ToME +1

Gameplay: ToME's combat can be fun and fresh, but getting OHK'ed by something you can't see is a joke for any roguelike that tries to reward skill and tactics. The non-linear variety of dungeons is nice, but it can become linear because many dungeons are too tough for your character, so you end up on a pretty similar string of dungeons each time. Getting ambushed by super OP hostiles...not fun either. DCSS is probably way too long for it's gameplay, but it's still refined enough to blow past ToME's gameplay. DCSS +1

Lasting Appeal: DCSS has the option to go for more runes, way more species, less impressive and distinct backgrounds. But winning with 'each species' 'each god' can take a long time, especially if you aren't hardcore about the game. ToME locks content, even if it's a swapped file/add-on away from being unlocked. Purchaseable DLC coming in the future. That semi-commercial effect comes off as iffy compared to DCSS's free free and free. DCSS +1

[moocowmoocow]

Good reviews. I've been playing this a lot recently. I actually like having multiple lives in adventure mode because it feels less stressful. Of course this can be nullified by whacky balance things like getting sniped from out of LOS and monsters with tons of disabling status effects. You can tell, compared to crawl, that balance is really not a top priority... lore building, UI and lots of combat options are where the game shines. I would definitely recommend people try it. I've played it more than any other roguelike besides Crawl, and still enjoying it.

[Mankeli]

Haha, it's funny to see how the same things about TOME seem to bug us "crawl people" even if we do like the game. But yeah, good points left and right.

[Baldu3]

TOME4 has way too much item management, items disappear if not dropped in vaults, there is no control-f to find items, items have stats on them that need to be juggled frequently for high difficulty play, saving and loading is slow and happens constantly, and tracking items have incredibly unbelievable range.

It's really awesome besides those, I would have played it a lot more if it didnt have so much item management. I'm still shocked at how much loot there is in that game and how much time it takes to deal with it.

edit: also ug at the amount and frequency of negative status effects. Lots of the buffs never need to be recast on the upside.

[Amnesiac]

lol. Looking at all these complaints, I don't feel like returning to tome4.

Actually tome4 is not bad at all as "just some game" but as a rogue-like and especially in comparisson to DCSS it's not as solid in it's mechanics. And there is also question of straighforwardness, without that rpg suff like that rusty knife does 4.3 cold damage and that silver dagger does 2.7 acid. I'm not so sure that DCSS looks the same to new players as to me, though.

[I want to believe]

Played it a bit, but the beginning of the game is an absolute bore-fest once you've played it once, and even without perma-death on, you run out of lives eventually and have to go and do the starting area again. I would play it if only I could just skip those stupid trolls. Its not like its hard, I can just mash abilities to survive any of the starting game fights, but it just takes too long and is too boring.

[moocowmoocow]

I agree that item management and way too many stats is a huge headache. It's sad that darkgod seems to be moving on to an expansion instead of refining this flawed gem. Maybe someday people will fork it like what happened to DCSS.

[TehDruid]

As a disclaimer, let me say that I have spent tens upon tens of hours playing ToME in the past 2-3 years or so and even more playing Crawl. I'd like to point that to me these are two very different games. DCSS is a proper roguelike to me, nothing seems unfair (except extreme corner cases of unavoidable deaths and player inability to think).

Ever since I first played ToME, having played Dragon Age: Origins recently back then, I realized immediately that it ripped off lots of basic concepts from that game. First of all, the stats and what they do is EXACTLY the same... (you even get the same amount of stat points to allocate every time you level up, 3 FFS...) and the talent system (the shield offence tree being the worst offender, where the skill names are pretty much stolen directly from the weapon+shield warrior tree in DA:O). Oh, and there's stamina, instead of mana, for fighters. Coincidences? I think not! I highly recommend you play both and then tell me whether there's nothing common between them. By the way, in both of them, the characters didn't feel as customizable as they can be in a game like Crawl in many ways (equipment, skills being the most important).

The good:

• Its tile graphics are nice to they eye (I guess? Personally, I don't really like the art style and sadly it doesn't look like anyone is going to make a tileset other than the OldRPG one or w/e it's called, which isn't particularly appealing, due to different sprites having a very inconsistent art style) albeit sometimes confusing (since they make it hard to distinguish tiles when there's things like tall trees in there).
• It's got nice music (some may not like it though)
• Easy automatic game updates through the installer.
• Still offers ASCII option instead of tiles, even though it is very bad imo.
• Good character customization through different combinations of the talent trees (your class's as well as from escort quests and learning a few for gold)/infusions-runes/prodigies.
• Wacky time travelling, for those that like it.
• Autoexplore, which makes the game more convenient.

The bad:

• The game gets slow and the saving thing will get on your nerves and it happens every time you change maps. The game seems to get slower the more you progress towards the end, making it difficult to enjoy once you hit the midgame and after that.
• The equipment and what you can do with it is incredibly limited imo, there's only 5 tiers of weapons and armour you can get (and their rare and randart versions which are basically just random bonuses), and then there's the big amount of fixedarts one can amass by killing bosses and finding them in vaults and sometimes even on the dungeon floor.
• The amount of stats for resistances is just ridiculous, stun/freeze immunity is a huge priority, with the vast majority of enemies being able to debilitate your character in just a couple of turns with a bunch of terrible debuffs, some of them even able to use skills like *charge*, which instantly moves them to you and possibly dazes you. Also, most elite ToME players will tell you that saves are useless, at least until you get a specific skill in the game.
• There's no gods. Let's face it, Crawl's pantheon is simply amazing. It offers so much in terms of character choices.
• The game is very long and this together with the fact that the maps are not particularly interesting (ironic, since the game has lore, to not have proper atmosphere), translates into *boring* all over.
• Having to rely on inscriptions/runes/a few usable items to be able to use basic key survival abilities like teleport/blink (unless of course you play a mage character, which I find are ridiculously OP and are of course DG's favourite class) instead of having consumables.

The ???:

• No food clock; Promotes low-risk tedious repetitive behaviours in many areas of the game.
• No identification mini-game.

To me it seems that since DG is making a roguelike on his own (and seems to be very happy about it, in that review someone linked above), it's leading him to feel very invested in making the engine and the game and I think he wants to earn more money from it. Upcoming donator/steam-only DLC sucks for me because I'm used to all the content in my roguelikes being free, and the current steamtech UI DLC is quite expensive when you take the game's price on Steam into account...

All in all, the free version from the game's website is definitely a must-play. At least for anyone that's into horribly imbalanced roguelikes (imho), 'cause in the end *you* may like it way more than I did. Also, there's probably other things I should have put in the good/bad/??? sections, but that's all I could think of at the time.

[Arkhan]

I stopped playing TOME after roughly 2 weeks of playing and studying the game when I got banished (yes, there's a TOME version of that, the memory is fuzzy but it may have involved an item) and literally had not only a 0% chance of avoiding the killing mob(s, there were more than 7 and they were all faster and stronger than me) to begin with but a very low chance of resisting the transportation (since I caused it because god forbid I explore the world and loot I acquire from playing the game without spoiling myself first) followed by a 0% chance of surviving the stupid bullshit that is TOME'S abyss. I don't remember how I caused it, but I remember being angry enough to complain in the chat and was met by "that's how the game works." No, that's how a badly designed game works.
At least when I die in Crawl there's always a sense that I could have been wearing something else, done something else, or been somewhere else entirely which is not what that game does. When I played like 2 years or so ago there were mandatory areas early on that could just murder you if they felt like it. It would be like if upon entering d:10 the game had a chance of teleporting you into the center of a 9 square pool of lava.

There were skills that were literally worthless (we're talking less than traps and doors people), and it was buggy as all hell. It leaked memory like someone threw manticore spikes at it's brain, it took absolutely forever to save and load every time you entered a level. Once you knew how to play the gameplay was literally this tedium of "Rotating skill cooldowns and how to press them in order vol. 1" written by someone whose concept of variety is colored entirely in black and white (as in with some classes there were builds you went or you died to the point where the design decision should have been to automate them to avoid frustration.)

Hearing that as the game progressed it also got instant deaths from out of line of sight doesn't surprise me in the least, hearing that the gameplay didn't get more varied or interesting as it went on also doesn't surprise me, and hearing that the interface is still a puzzle that professor f* Layton himself couldn't solve without a wiki and a shot of vodka both doesn't surprise me and makes me sad. It had potential!

[Klown]

*daydreaming*
DCSS on the T-Engine with 64x64 tiles, music, sound effects, better graphic effects, improved UI, functional hotbar for spells and abilities.

[duvessa]

I don't think I could possibly stand playing DCSS in T-Engine. Unless it was on an SSD with a CPU running at ~30 GHz.

[Senban]

*daydreaming*
DCSS on the T-Engine with 64x64 tiles, music, sound effects, better graphic effects, improved UI, functional hotbar for spells and abilities.

You can run crawl with Necklace of the Eye, which would (IIRC) handle the 64x64 tiles (if someone would just whip up a set already) and music. It has a first person view mode as well, which is basically the one thing that RL's have been lacking all this time (although DoomRL in FPS mode would be pretty epic).

[Sar]

Why would anyone want a first-person view in a game that doesn't even try to simulate cone of vision?

[Mankeli]

The game gets slow and the saving thing will get on your nerves and it happens every time you change maps. The game seems to get slower the more you progress towards the end, making it difficult to enjoy once you hit the midgame and after that.

I've found that saving and exiting TOME altogether may help a bit with this. That said, TOME is still absolutely terrible for the CPU, for sure. People have complained about this in the forums but...

I don't think I could possibly stand playing DCSS in T-Engine. Unless it was on an SSD with a CPU running at ~30 GHz.

Yeah, this is no joke. I just bought a new laptop with AMD quad-core, 8 gb RAM and a 1 GB graphics card. Surely, this is not a combination to play all the newest 3D-games with the highest settings but I'm still baffled how badly TOME runs even on a brand new computer. And this is a freaking roquelike! Eventhough all the graphical effects etc. run smoothly the problem are the inexplainable not saving nor level changing related 0,5 second loading periods which are quite frequent.

I have to say my enthusiasm towards TOME is dropping already. The bugginess combined with the general unbalance/grinding/stupid has taken its toll. Hopefully I can get the first roquelike W before I feel like calling quits on this game.

It's sad that darkgod seems to be moving on to an expansion instead of refining this flawed gem. Maybe someday people will fork it like what happened to DCSS.

Agreed. There is a reason why the "Bugs" section is the most popular part of the forum in TOME 4.

[Senban]

Why would anyone want a first-person view in a game that doesn't even try to simulate cone of vision?

The answer could be in the question, that person might be thinking "I'd love to get in to roguelikes but the idea that all the sentient races, even the ones with good apts for archery have their eyes on the sides of their bloody heads is just too immersion breaking for me."
More likely it's just something someone coded in pursuit of the most obscure nerdgasm possible. That said the idea that someone's gone to all the bother of turning Doom in to a top down RPG and I can turn it back in to an FPS is daft enough to try at least once. And lets face it the market for turn based FPS isn't exactly at saturation point these days.

[Sar]

the idea that someone's gone to all the bother of turning Doom in to a top down RPG and I can turn it back in to an FPS

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=37044

[Klown]

Can Crawl technically not handle 64x64 tiles, or is it a 'too much work for the reward' deal?
(Not counting other programs like the one mentioned in an above post).

[Amnesiac]

I'm 100% satisfied with crawl tiles graphix though

[Bloax]

The biggest effort in having 64x64 tiles would be drawing them all.
Which would consequently raise just about every requirement for tiles now, and I doubt everyone finds spriting as easy as I do.

Another one would be the view distance, since with the current requirements to reach (at least) the border of your LOS is 2*9*32 pixels - and going to 64x64 would double that.
Which would all be fine and dandy, except that not all monitors are 1152 pixels high these days - in addition to the fact that you usually want to see a bit outside of your LOS.

[Hirsch I]

it looks so real... *-*

[Klown]

Optional 64x64 version download?
Might be nice for those with poor eyesight, or those who simply want to lean back in their chair and see everything easily.

Couldn't they all be resized instead of redrawn?(Still time consuming but better). Like this.

Spoiler: show

[Hirsch I]

bloax's is better

[Siegurt]

Probably 48x48 would be better for DCSS (800 px for LOS).

[duvessa]

Spoiler: show

if you want crawl to look like this, just play on a commodore 64 monitor

[Amnesiac]

Do you really think that crawl graphics are not good enough? I think I'm quite picky, but I find them good enough as they are. Also I thinks graphics are more for recognision of monsters than anything else, even if most are pretty and someone has put effort into them. I see an orc priest, I understand it's him and I don't care what his face looks like. Especially when I kill him in 1 second and press autoexplore. That said, graphics in crawl are pretty neat, literally.

[Klown]

Do you really think that crawl graphics are not good enough? I think I'm quite picky, but I find them good enough as they are. Also I thinks graphics are more for recognision of monsters than anything else, even if most are pretty and someone has put effort into them. I see an orc priest, I understand it's him and I don't care what his face looks like. Especially when I kill him in 1 second and press autoexplore. That said, graphics in crawl are pretty neat, literally.

If this is at me, I love Crawl's graphics, I just think a larger tiles option would be cool if it wasn't too much work.

[Hirsch I]

it would be cool if you could see the madness in sigmund's eyes.

[Amnesiac]

I think you can.

[dck]

Go into your init.txt and look for tile_cell_pixels. Change the 32 to something else, like 48 or 64.
Now enjoy the nightmare.

[savageorange]

64px tiles are buggy:

  Code:

tile_cell_pixels      = 64
tile_filter_scaling   = false


Note the uneven scaling (obvious on the needle tile, but can be seen on every tile). This should only happen if the size is not actually a multiple of original tile size (eg. if it's being clamped to 63 instead of 64. It -is- clamped btw, try setting it to 128 and you'll see.)

[duvessa]

Note the uneven scaling (obvious on the wand tile

that's a needle

[Senban]

the idea that someone's gone to all the bother of turning Doom in to a top down RPG and I can turn it back in to an FPS

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=37044

Ha, that's pretty cool. Don't see it cutting in to my Brütal Doom schedule too much although if I could cajole some friends into LANing it it might be fun.

[Klown]

  Code:

tile_cell_pixels      = 64
tile_filter_scaling   = false


This doesn't do anything for my game.

[savageorange]

  Code:

tile_cell_pixels      = 64
tile_filter_scaling   = false


This doesn't do anything for my game.

You are putting it in the /usr/share/crawl/data/settings/init.txt, right? (In the case that you're running Windows, I can't comment as I never use Windows)
Try putting it at the end of the file, so it will override any earlier setting in the file.

[Xion350]

One thing I dislike about TOME is how freaking EASY it is to break. Once you have regen equipment or the Regen passive you'll almost always out regen your enemy's damage.

[duvessa]

Once you have regen equipment or the Regen passive you'll almost always out regen your enemy's damage.

you should really try a difficulty level above easy some time

[TehDruid]

Once you have regen equipment or the Regen passive you'll almost always out regen your enemy's damage.

you should really try a difficulty level above easy some time

I have to agree with Duvessa. You must either have been playing on easy (which I have no experience with, since I want to unlock achievements always) or you just haven't made it at least up to the Master in Dreadfell yet. I like stacking lots of life regen too, but by no means does it mean that you broke the game. Granted, I've never won ToME so far, my best run has been a cornac summoner who I think made it to 48 then died to a huge dragon. I've reached lvl 50 with a ghoul alchemist in the normal arena though! Retch is very cool.

[Mankeli]

I'm not sure if he is talking about combat veteran tree or what but that +life regen falls of later in the game (and doesn't really break anything even earlier) and trying to "break the game" by outhealing monster damage is really bad anyways because since, as I wrote in my OP, your HP-sack berserker can get killed by a couple of hits. So even when +life regen/heal mod and especially fungus can be really nice, killing monsters is actually even nicer.

[Klown]

Regen does nothing against bosses that are too strong for your character, with some of them being 'un-runaway-able' charging at you and hitting you with spells and stuff.
It's like Crawl in the 'do most of a dungeon then go elsewhere if you can't handle the boss' ind of way; like everyone does Vaults/swamp,etc 4, waits on 5.

[moocowmoocow]

I'm not sure if he is talking about combat veteran tree or what but that +life regen falls of later in the game (and doesn't really break anything even earlier) and trying to "break the game" by outhealing monster damage is really bad anyways because since, as I wrote in my OP, your HP-sack berserker can get killed by a couple of hits. So even when +life regen/heal mod and especially fungus can be really nice, killing monsters is actually even nicer.

I think he's talking about the fungus tree that extends your regen rounds, makes them instant, and allows you to insta heal for large % of your current regen. But yeah it doesn't help against extremely high damage stuff. Needing to antimagic to get it is a big downside too.

[Mankeli]

I'm not sure if he is talking about combat veteran tree or what but that +life regen falls of later in the game (and doesn't really break anything even earlier) and trying to "break the game" by outhealing monster damage is really bad anyways because since, as I wrote in my OP, your HP-sack berserker can get killed by a couple of hits. So even when +life regen/heal mod and especially fungus can be really nice, killing monsters is actually even nicer.

I think he's talking about the fungus tree that extends your regen rounds, makes them instant, and allows you to insta heal for large % of your current regen. But yeah it doesn't help against extremely high damage stuff. Needing to antimagic to get it is a big downside too.

Yeah, exactly (except that wyrmics don't have to go antimagic).

I like the flawed gem metaphor and encouraged by the feedback people have given here about TOME (which are, for the most part, pretty same as my impressions), I have now started to campaign in favor of the removal of activated scouting abilities, adding reciprocal LOS and removing out-of-LOS (effective) instakills in TOME forums (so that at least some of these ideas would be implemented). I don't expect it to go well at all but we'll see . At least a few people there have expressed frustration concerning track etc.

If I don't get thrown out of the forum as a crawl-Infiltrator, there are more ideas for improvement here.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone!

[Baldu3]

So, this week-end I was stuck in a boring place with a notebook that had ToME on it. I decided to continue the game I was playing when I last played a while ago. I played just one zone of 3 floors, and it gave me a huge chuckle as it was the first time I tried it, it was called something like sludgepit, it seemed more or less a copy of slime pits in crawl. It was actually pretty cool since slimes split in that game so I had fun clearing the big mess, and when I cleared the 3rd floor, I noticed the walls were becoming slimes. Since it was a small room I decided to fight all the wall slimes, it was really cool!

Except I got too lucky. When I had finally completed that last slime floor. I had obtained over 300 new items. Fuck.

Since that game was on nightmare (hard) and roguelike (1 life) I felt like I really needed the extra power I could find on items to avoid instant deaths from ambushes soooo.... Urrrggggg.... I put the game down before I got done sorting through all that stuff with the incredibly inefficient item management.

edit: oh yes that guy found a pair of boots that gives controlled blink on a 30 turn cooldown with no downsides at all in a shop. And also a staff that has a random modifier called "Telepathy: Humans", which means I always see all human enemies (like half of all enemies) through walls without even having to activate abilities. Holy balls. Nightmare shnightmare.

[Klown]

I notice similarities to Crawl everytime I play.

The compound dungeon is basically yeek(white monkey things) slavers whose humans become free neutral/allies when you kill the slaver. Pikel !!!

[Zwobot]

The one thing about ToME4 I love is the lack of consumables. Honestly, I would love a DC:SS version in the future where instead of lugging around curing and healing potions I had inscriptions and such.

For those that don't know: ToME4 doesn't have tactical consumables - and conversly no item destruction. Instead you get a number of inscription slots in which you can put Healing, Temporary Damage Shield or Regeneration. There are also inscriptions which basically remove a debuff of a category and translocations (Blink, Controlled Blink and Teleport). Once used those inscriptions go into a cooldown - but they are fresh and useable once that cooldown expires - no permanent resources are expended.

I'm surprised no one has highlighted this depature from the usual roguelike design. Personally I find the resulting gameplay quite fun - as in every fight starts with your chosen set of tactical resources anew. (Let's not talk about other gameplay elements, such as the whacky LOS, emphasis on resists, the emphasis on boss battles and so on.)

[Sandman25]

I like Tome 4 "consumables" too but I am not sure they are good. It is comfortable for player but some decision-making is removed - you can use them in every fight. The same problem with no food and no piety, no matter how bad you fought in previous battles you are fresh and healthy for next battles. Maybe this is why Tome4 has more instakills than DCSS, to actually punish bad play.