'Leave me alone, stupid Great Wyrm of Power' Let's Play ToME!

Alright a short update today due to going to dinner with family tonight. I'll update with another one tomorrow or later tonight.

Well, since it was the only vote, I'll be heading into the Barrow-Downs to hit level 10, and then head to the first god quest. I start off by equipping the dagger and ring of levitation that we identified last entry. I then head off to the west of town, where the path to the dungeon lies!



And that purple > that looks suspiciously like the entrance to a completely thief-free house that won't almost kill a Yeek or anything, is the entrance to the Barrow-downs. So let's head in!





'Oh please help me! A horrible Green icky thing stole my sword! I'm nothing with it.'

He lost his sword to...an icky thing. Do they even have hands to steal his sword with? Whatever. Anyway this is our first introduction to Fumblefingers. Whenever you encounter him, a certain amount of monsters will be generated on the level that he is on. You have to kill them all in order to get his quest reward, and they can be anywhere in the level. On the other hand, you can just go down to the next level instead if you so choose.



Here Eek finds her first of the fearsome foes that need to be slain. As you can see, it is level 7 which is higher than you might expect for the first level of the dungeon. This is because quest monsters are generated of higher level, so as to provide more of a challenge. However these are still green icky things, and as such not to be worried about. Eek enjoys her target practice.



Killing that first icky thing propels Eek up to new heights. She uses the skill points gained in slaying the incredibly evil green mold to max her Bow-mastery, Archery, and Combat. Eek then presses onward.



That e you can see there, floating smugly? That's a floating eye. You do not want to screw around with that e if you're melee. They can paralyze you leaving you helpless, and causing many a YASD to new warriors confident in their abilities. However, Eek has no such problems since she is an archer, and unleashes a hail of arrows fit to block out the light from her lantern. She pockets a Sling for her troubles.



The : in front of Yeek signifies a pile of rubble. Eek could use this rubble to create sling stones with her Ammo Creation skill. However, she is not using a Sling so this would be worthless. Instead she (T)unnels her way through with the shovel she purchased earlier. In the next room, Eek puts down another green Icky thing, and obtains two unidentified potions. There are three basic ways Eek could ID these. One is by Sell-IDing, where she sells them to a store unidentified. The store will automatically Identify them for you, and in the future they will be IDed. The second is to use a scroll. This is a waste unless they have been pseudo-IDed as good or better. The third way is to Use-ID them. This is usually an incredibly bad idea, which leads to drinking some kind of awful explosion juice half of the time. I generally use sell-IDing.



Here I get cocky and pay the price. I allowed the green icky thing to get into melee range, and it's acid attack hits me. But it doesn't just do damage. It hits my cloak as well, lowering it's defense benefit down to zero and rendering it useless. Suddenly I feel a lot less bad about killing these green Jell-O monsters. I slay it, and (R)est to full hp after picking up my arrows from the ground.



Here I have just slain another green goblin, and in so doing gained my ninth level. I'm used to playing powerhouses which level slowly, so this is a little shocking to me. I cap off the skills I have raised to cap so far (Archery, Bow-mastery and Combat), and then save the points I have remaining for a bit. I then head south and kill a few Jackal (C)anines. These hunt in a pack and are rather weak, so I slay them as they run through the door. In my travels after, I find another Yellow unIDed potion, and an unIDed scroll, which will also be Sell-IDed.



Here I am going up another foolish amount of levels, after killing an icky thing. Having quests on makes every character level faster, although Yeeks go even faster than I'm used to. I cap and bank as standard, and move on to find a new type of unidentified potion, Dark Green.



And yet another level. Eek is starting to run low on arrows here, so in lieu of materials to make more, she heads back up to town to buy more. Even though when you go back down the level will be randomly generated again, quest status is saved. So I'll still be able to kill the rest of the green terrible bads.

Selling the unIDed things, I find...
-Potion of Sleep (Makes you fall asleep)
-Potion of Resist Heat (Adds, temporary Resist Heat)
-Potion of Heroism (Gives you a temporary bonus to fighting. Useful for low levels)
-Potion of Blindness (Makes you Blind)
-Scroll of Object Detection (Detects objects!)

I also make a couple purchases.
-Long Bow (Has a x3 multiplier instead of a x2 like the Short Bow, so it deals more damage)
-37 arrows

And then it's back into the dungeon...OH GOD NO


WHY. This is exactly what I was talking about. I don't know even close to everything about this game, and apparently what I do know is wrong. Well this is incredibly discouraging. I'm gonna take a break right now, and then later today or tomorrow I'll delve into the Hidden Temple to find the relic of Eek's god, Manwe.

Oh hey, ToME! Awesome.

Yeah, those quests will get you. You've got to complete them in one go -- progress is lost if you exit the floor. Thankfully you discovered this on floor 1, right?

re Kejardon: yep, Manwe's temples have lots of invisible baddies. I hope Eek has see invisible! This counts as a vote towards attempting the temple, by the way.

re Unbelievers: unbelievers have a thematically cool mechanic where the more powerful and enchanted a dark sword gets, the worse its antimagic field gets. That is, there's a tradeoff between antimagic and damage. I've seen the numbers for how the tradeoff works, but I've never rolled an unbeliever and gotten one to a high enough level to really see how it plays out (not that there would be any choice if you found this one artifact darksword called Mormegil...). Maybe it gimps them? Maybe it makes you play strategically and carry around two darkswords to swap out? Maybe it doesn't matter? Who knows!

For the next character (which I feel bad voting for right now, but Eek is a yeek; hilarious deaths are in her blood :P ), I think Comb Stranger has the right of it:

Ahahaha. ha. hmm.
Well, you've got half-way decent HP and plenty of skill points, as long as you can afford the arrows and a few potions you can probably get through the temple.
If you don't get instakilled by something you can't see. I am rather concerned about Eek walking into a group of clear mushroom patches.

I should try that ToME thing some day.