Let's Play Tales of Maj'Eyal: Introduction

So, been playing a lot of Tales of Maj'Eyal, and apparently I'm rather good at it, going by what other people who play the game say about typical progress. So I thought I would do a Let's Play of it.

If you don't care about all the nitty gritty details, you might want to skip the rest of this post; the game is quite complex, and I am endeavoring to explain the game so people who haven't played it can follow what I am doing. I'll get to the action next update.



Here's the main page, and as you can see I am also Terrabrand on Tales of Maj'eyal. Mostly, this won't directly matter to this LP; I plan to play it offline to avoid issues from chat based spoilers. I'll be playing smart, but I will endeavor to present this LP so that it is as close to the 'pure', unspoilered experience of the game -with the caveat that most actual new players won't do the kinds of things I'm doing, I certainly didn't when I was new- in terms of unlockable classes and more. Accordingly, though I will be playing with the Ashes of Urh'ok DLC, which I happen to own, I am, among other points, skipping the character creation screen (thar be spoilers about things I have unlocked) and starting on Normal Roguelike (I recommend Normal Adventure settings for new players, frankly) with a class and species you start the game with.

(As an aside, Normal is the baseline difficulty, and the easiest the game allows unlocks on. Roguelike and Adventure are the same, except Adventure accommodates you dying and continuing with an extra lives system. I won't be needing extra lives on Normal, in spite of the fact that I have yet to clear the game with an Alchemist. In fact, I have, at time of posting, only two wins... But that's mostly because of a lack of focus, if I am honest. Keep jumping to other characters)

Specifically, a Shalore Elf Alchemist. Say hi to 'Vigaroe Shalore Alchemist', our creatively named Shalore Alchemist. You actually start a run looking at this level up screen, surprisingly, with those points unspent. As you can see, we have three stat points, two class points, and a generic point. The class and generic points are honestly a bit confusing in name. On the far left, as a column of images, we have the six core stats (both our base and modified values- that modification includes from species.) As the screen is telling us on the far right, we can only raise a stat to 60 at most as its actual baseline in normal play. Shaloren (The settings plural for Shalore- we have three kinds of elves in the setting, Shalore, who are magic focused, Thalore, who are physical/druidic styled, and Nalore, who went bye bye in a massive cataclysm ages ago)Elves get -2 strength, +1 dexterity, +2 magic, +3 willpower, and +1 cunning.

I'll explain the stats in more detail as we go, for now, that's strength, dexterity, constitution, magic, willpower, and cunning, in that order. Some of what they do is probably fairly obvious if you play a lot of role playing games or roguelikes, but explanations as it becomes more relevant.


Here we have on the right the games own explanation of Class Talents. It's... misleading, to be honest. The key point is the series of Talents to the immediate right of the stat icons are Class Talents, which means we use Class Points to boost them or learn them. Talents also require stat values, levels, and (in most cases) the previous Talent in their Talent Tree to learn. In other words, I need the leftmost talent (at least one point invested, to be precise) in any of these trees (the games term for the categories like 'spell / Golemancy'. Kinda confusing, I'll admit, if you expect branching like that tends to imply. Trees don't branch here) to get the one to it's right, that one for the third one, and the third one for the fourth one.

We also need to be level 4 or higher to take said second tier Talents, 8 for the third, and 12 for the fourth. As we are level 1, none of the ones other than the first five are relevant right now. I'll get to those in a minute.


This is the game's description of Category points. There's a species that starts with one; since we aren't playing it, we won't care until level 10. That'll be a bit.


Generic Talent points meanwhile are exactly the same as Class Talent points except we get less of them and they apply to a different set of trees. The class/generic divide is actually meaningful- for one, every species (excuse me, Race) has a Race talent tree (except that one doesn't. I'll get to that at some point, probably, but not for now.) with is always a Generic Talent Tree, and as the game alludes to you can pick up Generic Talent Trees from various quests and stuff. This is probably part of why the Alchemist has seven class trees (the greyed out ones are 'locked' and thus irrelevant to us right now- with a category point, we could unlock them, but, again, we need to be at least level 10 for that. Addendum: Ghoul King has informed me that he does not see greyed out talent trees. This would be because, I imagine, of the fact that they are also 'closed', hiding the icons and leaving only the names- 'Advanced golemancy' and 'Energy alchemy') while we only have four generics, one of which is the Shalore racial tree.

The very first thing we want to do as an Alchemist is pick up this Talent- Extract gems. Extract gems is realistically mandatory for any Alchemist- eventually, we will want five points in it, the maximum investment. It will make us rich and feed a resource need on the class.
Class points wise, our first goes to this talent. Alchemists get, as a class feature, a Golem. It's basically there to be a combination meatshield and secondary damage source. Realistically, actually the primary in the very early game, if playing smart. Golem Power makes your Golem a better fighter. Accuracy, in a not very shocking turn of events, helps it hit things in melee. Doing more damage is obviously good. Physical Power both factors into the game's physical damage formula (You get one damage per point of Physical Power, except there's a step down effect where you need an increasingly large amount of raw Physical Power to get an actual point of functional Physical Power. Get used to that idea, lots of stats deal with it.) and additionally goes into inflicting Physical status effects, making them more likely to occur, and (to a point) last longer. So it's very important to physical combat. (Addendum; I have learned since first posting this that accuracy and not Physical Power is used to apply physical statuses. )
Frost Infusion...
Acid Infusion...
and Flame Infusion basically do the same thing, except doing different damage types and having different side effects. As I understand it, you should generally choose one to have points in, as a result. You start with Flame Infusion... But as the screen is telling me, I can unlearn it (by right clicking it to take the point out instead of left clicking to put it in- I use the mouse controls nigh exclusively. If there's a keyboard control way, I don't know it), which refunds the point and lets me spend it elsewhere.
So I do, and then spend my stat points in magic. I realized while writing this post I should have shown the Talent in Explosive Admixtures;

So this screenshot was taken later (which is part of why my interface is peaking out behind it). Throw Bomb is THE essential alchemist skill. It's a tad underwhelming for the moment, compared to some other class' Talents, but is very powerful- and will only get better. Note that we could take it to Talent Level 2- most initially available Talents have a required level of 0, and very nearly all Talents require one level higher for each level you raise them, so we need level 2 for level three of it, level 3 for 4, and level 4 for 5. As the tooltips are showing, it will increase in range and damage if we level the Talent.
So here's what we see as soon as we close the level up screen- our character's backstory, such as it is.

In most cases, you are looking at a canned backstory based on race, but some classes displace that.

Welcome to the Scintillating Caves.

First 'smart thing no new player would think to do' I'm going to do; Leave.

Scintillating caves is a terrible area for a level one character, even more so for an Alchemist I'd say. But all Shalore characters start here. Instead, we are going to run off to a much easier area. But first...



Here's what mousing over ourselves shows, in the lower right. (also, you can see my interface- It's somewhat customized, the lower left contains my Talents for use, rather a lot of them, I'll get to that next update, but the default interface would place the icons as a bar along the bottom of the screen. There's a little button with a lock icon in the very lower right corner that unlocks interface elements to be moved around, resized, and more, and I find this overall more convenient). We can get similar information on enemies...



Or our Golem. It's slightly tougher than us overall. And a lot better in melee... But I ought to explain. If you don't care for the details, I suggest skipping to the next screenshot. 

HP is hit points, the total damage we can take. Resists is blank because of the game's 12 damage types (well, kinda, there's some weirdo variants... but for the purposes of resists, it's 12) we have no particular resistance to any of them. If we had significant resistance to one or more types, it'd tell us the percentage of damage from those types we resist. 'hardiness/armor' refers to two related values; our Armor Hardiness and our raw armor value. In short, armor kicks in against all melee and ranged attacks that are used against us (spells and similar typically bypass it), with Hardiness being the maximum percentage of damage from a single hit we can block (that is, our Golem's 60% means it will always take at least 40% damage from an enemy attack) and the raw value of armor being the maximum raw number of points- we are limited by the worse, not the better, of the two, per hit. (eg if our golem was hit for 5 melee damage right now it would take 2, because it can't block more than 60%, while if it was hit for 100 it'd take 95, because it can only block up to 5 regardless).

Accuracy and Defense mostly determine upfront whether attacks hit or not- if the attacker's Accuracy is equal to the defender's Defense, it's a 50% chance to hit. For each point Accuracy is above Defense, that rises by 2.5%. For every point below, it lowers by the same- capping at 100% and 0%, at the extremes.

P. Power, S. Power, M. Power, are respectively the Physical Power, Spell Power, and Mind Power- Mind power is very important to certain classes, but almost entirely irrelevant to us as an Alchemist and likewise to our Golem. They make you better at inflicting status effects, of the appropriate source types, and Physical Power as noted earlier is (one of) the scaling factors for weapon damage, while damaging spells- and healing spells, among others- scale their numerical values based on Spell Power in ways I largely do not understand. But more is better.

Mind Power does the same for psionic sorts of abilities- which we don't have, so again we mostly don't care.


P. Save, S. Save, and M. Save are Physical Save, Spell Save, and Mental Save. The defensive counterparts to the Powers, specifically as concerns blocking status effects- a high spell save does not, for example, cause an enemy to take less damage from our Alchemist Bombs. While we lack psionic abilities, the same is not true for our enemies- so we rather care about all our saves- to a point. Mostly, there are better ways than saves to be sure a horrible status effect doesn't wreck you.

All that said, there's nothing in view, but I want out of Scintillating Caves. it's dangerous. So I take advantage of the entrance/exit I am standing on...



And appear here. Welcome to the world map. We are standing on the entrance to the Scintillating Caves. Those buildings to the south are Elvala- the Shalore town. Interestingly, my mouse cursor doesn't show in the screen shots, even though the game has a custom mouse cursor, and I am using the games own screenshotting feature, but you can see the description of Elvala in the lower left because I had my mouse over it. Our Golem has vanished into us, not getting world map representation.

But we are off, to elsewhere. We move up and to the right, and find this; Effectively speaking, this 'Allied Kingdoms human patrol' is decorative, in practice. But there are hostile forces wandering the world as well, in which case we care. Exactly who is hostile to us depends on a few things. Since these guys are friendly to us, though, we ignore them.

Also you can see the Scintillating Caves where we were just standing, shock.



We move up here... (taking intermittent screenshots so you can see how the locations we pass through map together. There's also the helpful minimap, in the upper right, but it might be a bit hard to see)

Over this way...

Farther north... Hello, who are you?


A novice mage? I thought magic was shunned. And what's an Angolwen? (His faction- the Allied Kingdoms are obviously, well, some manner of nation. The Shalore are our species and a nation as well, apparently) So we talk to him.
So we ask the obvious question (highlighted thanks to my mouse cursor)

A sad story? Mayhaps I can help! Surely, it's a quest...

Ooh ooh, I had this question- sort of- earlier, let's ask!

The keepers of ar... Art? No, I'm betting Arcane, given he admits to being a mage...

We'll keep this in mind, yes.

Get a quest.
our second, actually- here it is in the quest log. Echoes of the Spellblaze is a fancy but unhelpful quest that directs us to hit the dungeons nearest to Elvala- which we probably would have done without that direction. Didn't think to get a screenshot, it's honestly unimportant.
So we move on- back there is the entrance to an area called the Maze. Our friend the mage was standing by it. 'min level' is misleading- it's the game's suggestion for the minimum level your character should be...

But it's usually too low, to be blunt. We are doing something very questionable if we enter the maze at level 7.

Meanwhile, there are towns with minimum levels like 15 or 20... That are completely unthreatening. You have no reason not to enter them, and indeed, they often possess important shops.

We move forward, and find another town- Derth...

And these 'Ruins of Kor'Pul'. We'll be going there relatively soon- but not yet.

Instead, we press forwards.
To find the Trollmire. It's full of Trolls. It's also the easiest Zone in the game- little dungeons that make up the game. Compared to most Roguelikes, you don't have a big normal dungeon- not in the main game, anyways- and instead little individual zones, three to ten floors long, dart the landscape.

Next time, you'll join me inside the Trollmire, I'll explain a bit more- hopefully not too much- and get to the fighting, killing, and looting.

Comments

  1. I've always wondered where you came up with the name shaloren?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can see the 'Welcome to Tales of Maj'Eyal' screenshot has the intro text almost immediately say "You are of the Shaloren".

      Delete
    2. 'Shaloren' as a term is used consistently throughout the game, including as Ghoul King said in the intro text. It's also used in lore drops, including one specifically about the Shalore as a people.

      Delete

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