I was inspired to make this guide ever since a new influx of players came in due to Elysium's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtcCmtz1j3M

ToME has many guides on Steam, its wiki, and its forums, but unfortunately most of them are several years old and it's difficult to sift through them and discern which information is still applicable and which is outdated. It also seems that most of them are focused on builds while glossing over tactics/strategy, which I think is way more important to learn. ToME is sorely hurting for up-to-date noob-friendly guides, so I guess I'm making one.

The main part of this guide is a detailed walkthrough on how to play a dwarf bulwark from the start of the game all the way to the final boss. In my opinion dwarf bulwark is probably the most noob-friendly starter combo because of their high health and simple kit. Along the way you will also be gradually introduced to various game mechanics to help improve your understanding of the game, as well as various tactics and strategy to help improve your chances of survival.

This guide skips a lot of optional zones that I don't think are beginner friendly and/or don't provide much rewards. However, I encourage you to explore them in a future run once you are more experienced. At the end of the guide there will be a section listing all the zones we skipped and their corresponding wiki link for your convenience.

If you are a more experienced player, you still might learn something new skimming through this guide.

This guide assumes that you are playing the base game without any DLC.

All right, lets boot up ToME and start a new game.


The in-game tutorial does a pretty good job going over all of the basic controls for the game. You should replay it anytime you need a refresher on the controls. Once you are done with the tutorial exit back to the main menu and start a new character for real.

This is what the character creation screen should look like if you are just starting and don't have anything unlocked.

Make sure you copy the options set in the screenshot above. You can mouse over the various options to get a more detailed description. When you are ready hit "Play!" on the bottom left.

Let's first adjust some settings for quality of life. When the game first loads you are greeted with the level-up window. We will revisit this later so just hit 'Esc' for now to leave. A text window giving some introductory lore for your character will pop up, hit 'Esc' again to exit out of that. Now we are finally in the game world, hit 'Esc' one more time to bring up the menu, then select "Game Options". Make these following changes:

'Esc' out of the game options menu and click this the lock icon on the bottom right to unlock the ui:

Use the left mouse button to shift the game log, chat log, and hotkey bar a few centimeters up. Then use the right mouse button to resize the hotkey bar so that it has one extra row.

Default Settings:

Adjusted Settings:


As you can see in the adjusted settings, you are now able to see more of the map, and you also have more space on your hotkey bar for hotkeys. This should improve your gaming experience immensely, in my opinion. Of course, feel free to tweak these settings to your own preferences. When you are done don't forget to click the lock icon again to relock the ui.

Press 'p' to open up the level up window again. It should look like this:

We will be putting all of our stat points into Strength for now, because it is the primary stat that we scale with. Also, most of our talents have strength prerequisites before we can learn them. You should mouse over one of your darkened class talent icons to confirm:

Notice how at the bottom of the talent description on the right it says "press 'x' to swap to advanced display"? I recommend that you press 'x' and leave the advanced display on, since it will better show show you how your talents will scale as you level them up. Now allocate your stat points and talent points to match the screenshot below, then exit out of the level up window:

As you level up through out the game you will level up and obtain addtional stat points and talent points to spend. Whenever that happens refer to the closest "Level x point allocation" section in the guide for help on how to spend those points.

All right, let's try out our starting talents. The first thing you should do is activate your "Shield Wall" sustained talent. You will know that you have done this successfully when the talent's corresponding hotbar icon becomes highlighted yellow, as well as a buff icon showing up on the right side of the screen. Congrats, you now have a constant buff that will improve your tankiness. However, you should be aware that in rare instances some enemies can force you to deactivate your sustains. If you are afraid that you will forget to reactivate your sustains when that happens, I recommend that you do this for all your sustains: right-click their corresponding hotbar icon and select "Auto-use when available", then right-click the icon again and select "Request confirmation before using this talent".

Now move around the map and try to find an enemy to use our offensive talents on. Try using "Rush" to quickly close the distance on an enemy. Next try using "Shield Pummel" on an enemy. That enemy should now be stunned. To confirm, mouse over the enemy to view their stats and status effects. For a more detailed explanation, you can right-click that enemy and select "Inspect Creature", then mouse over the corresponding status effect. By doing this, we will learn that stunning will significantly reduce an enemy's damage output, disrupt their talent usage, and slow their movement speed. Stunning is a potent disable early on in the game, so make sure you shield pummel the tougher monsters liberally!

You also should notice a bunch of green icons on your hotbar. Those are your inscriptions, and they serve the same role as consumables in other RPG's. The difference is that inscriptions have infinite uses and are only limited by their cooldowns. Also, if you spam them too much their cooldowns will steadily increase. Let's briefly go over the inscriptions you currently have. Right now you have a healing infusion and a regeneration infusion which both help you recover back health. However notice how when you mouse over the healing infusion, the tooltip says that the usage speed is "instant" (meaning that you can use it without taking a turn), while the regeneration infusion's usage speed is "standard" (100% of a turn). This means that the healing infusion is better suited for being used in a pinch, while the regeneration infusion is best used preemptively. Your last inscription is a wild infusion that removes negative physical status effects, which we will go over more in detail later.

Finally, the last thing I want to go over is your "Resilience of the Dwarves" talent. This is a special racial talent that is unique to dwarves that temporarily buffs your tankiness. While it is active, its icon will show up on the right side of the screen alongside your sustained buffs. Notice how its usage speed is instant, a relatively common trait among temporary activated buffs. Therefore it is usually a good idea to simultaneously pop all of your temp buffs at the start of a tough fight.

Related wiki links:
Talents: https://te4.org/wiki/Talent
Status Effects: https://te4.org/wiki/Effect
Inscriptions: https://te4.org/wiki/Inscription

Sorry for the big info dump, NOW we can actually start playing the game. Your goal right now is to reach the 3rd floor of the dungeon with your dwarf buddy Norgan. Use the 'z' key to autoexplore until you run into enemies, then use your abilities as you see fit to eliminate them. After everything on the screen is dead, use 'r' to recover your health and stamina, and restore your talent cooldowns. This game has no time limit/food clock, so you can spend as many turns as you want with no penalty. Rinse and repeat. When you autoexplore the entire floor you will automatically move to the stairs. When you reach the stairs, press '>' to move on to the next floor.

Make sure to use your health recovery inscriptions when your health gets low. You also have a passive ability called "Vitality" that triggers when you drop below 50% health, which will enhance your health recovery. Be aware that it has a 15 second cooldown though. If you want to view its cooldown on your hotbar, you can press 'm' to bring up your talents menu, and then drag and drop the Vitality icon to your hotbar. As long as you pay attention to your health and cooldowns, you should be totally fine. Eventually you will reach the 3rd floor and meet the...

This guy is a total pushover, especially if you let Norgan jump on him first. Just use your talents off cooldown, and he should fall over easily.



Once he inevitably dies, make sure to pick up the loot he drops. If you don't have the Transmogrification Chest yet (don't worry you are guaranteed to find one later), you have to manually press 'g' to loot items off the ground. If you find any equippable gear, you can equip them by accessing your inventory with 'i'. However, if it's a weapon, make sure that it is a one-handed sword, axe, or mace first before equipping it. One of the items Brotoq drops will be the Rod of Recall, which will show up on your hotbar when you pick it up. If you activate it, then rest a few turns, you will teleport to the overworld map. Unfortunately, we can't use it in this dungeon, so we have to manually take the exit stairs out. Once you do that, you will show up in the Iron Council town and Norgan will leave you. After that happens you can take the stairs on the bottom left to exit to the overworld map.

Keep pumping Strength whenever possible. However, eventually we will reach a point where we are limited from putting all our points into strength. When that happens, put the remaining points into Constitution. We want to eventually level up talents in the Conditioning talent tree, which has CON prerequisites instead of STR. Our goal for now is at least 28 CON.

As for talents, we now gain access to Riposte and Repulsion. Riposte improves our ability to inflict counterstrikes on enemies after blocking their attacks with the 'Block' talent. Enemies debuffed with counterstrike are susceptible to take double damage from attacks. Their defense also gets set to 0, which makes them guaranteed to get hit. From now on you should try inflicting counterstrikes on enemies as much as possible for big damage. Repulsion is a nice "get off me" tool. It also refreshes Rush, so you can do a Rush>Repulstion>Rush combo if you're feeling saucy (don't do it, it costs too much Stamina at this point of the game).

We now have three points in Heavy Armour Training which means we now can wear massive armors. From now on, prioritize wearing massive armors since they provide more tankiness than regular heavy armors.

The first thing I recommend doing is to use autoexplore to explore the whole overworld map. Your character doesn't get hungry or tired, so there is literally no penalty in doing this. However, if you run into patrols with a red border around them, DO NOT bump into them, or else you will trigger a difficult encounter. If you run into one by mistake, you can try using the Rod of Recall to escape. However if the enemies have already spotted you, you can try beelining to the exit back to the overworld (usually located on the left side of the screen) and hope for the best. Once you have revealed everything in the overworld, it should look like this:
Next, we should talk to the novice mage to start the "An apprentice task" quest. As you go through the Tier 1 dungeons be on the look out for items in YELLOW text that are "powered by arcane forces".

(Orange items also work, but it is super rare to find one early game on normal difficulty)

Once you find one return to the novice mage and then you will gain access to the mage town Angolwen.
Now lets go do our next Tier 1 dungeon, Trollmire.

Trollmire mainly contains trolls and various wildlife critters, and is a relatively easy zone. However, you will probably start encountering monsters with pink/salmon backgrounds. These are called "rares", and each of them is granted bonus talents from a randomly selected playable class along with their base talents. For example, a rare monster that has the bulwark class can rush and shield pummel just like you. Going over how to deal with every single class in the game would be too much of an info dump, and I think it's better if you gain that knowledge from your own experience playing the game. Here are some general tips though:

• Get in the habit of using right-click->"inspect creature" and viewing the talents of any new unfamiliar monster.
  
• Try to learn which debuffs each class is able to inflict through their talents, since they are a large contributing factor to a monster's threat level.
  
• Use debuff removal inscriptions to swing the fight to your advantage. The wild infusion you start with can cleanse physical debuffs like stuns. Debuffs show up in a column next to your buffs on the right side of the screen, and you can mouse over them to learn whether they are physical, mental, or magical. Your healing infusion can also cleanse wound, poison, and disease type debuffs.
  
• Early on trying to fight multiple rares at once is just asking to be overwhelmed by debuffs. Your single wild infusion may be able to handle a single stun from one rare, but if another rare reapplies the stun a few turns after, the wild infusion kind of loses its effectiveness. If your character is strong enough, you can opt to brute force these encounters by continuing to fight while under a whole bunch of debuffs, but I really recommend that you try your best to avoid these situations whenever possible. Whenever you run into multiple rares, the best course of action is usually to immediately kite backwards through the way you came from to attempt to spread them out and separate them. You should also try to lead them towards a chokepoint where you can fight from a better position.
  
• Later on when your character gets stronger and you start obtaining significant amounts of status resists(especially stun resist) and/or saves, you will be able to play more aggressively.

(A rare Rogue class snake just stunned me with its Dual Strike talent, how rude!)

Trollmire is also where you can potentially start getting escort quests, where you are tasked with escorting a weak npc to a purple portal off in the distance. If you succeed, you are able choose a reward from options including stat increases, talents, or being able to learn a new talent category (more info on the last one later). For now, pick any of the stat increases except Magic. We will be going Antimagic in the future, and if you accidentally picked any magical talents you will be locked out of doing that. Unfortunately, the escort has a tendency of getting themselves killed by wandering into enemy territory, so make sure you stay several steps ahead so that you are the one engaging the monsters and not the escort. The wiki also gives solid advice on how to handle your escorts here[te4.org]. Don't get discouraged if you fail to save an escort, this also happens all the time to more experienced players. Above all, don't hesitate to bail on your escort if your life is in danger, they are not worth dying over.

(An escort quest showed up on Trollmire 3)

As you go through Trollmire you might also run into enclosed structures that are sealed off with a door or a big rock, and a prompt usually shows up when you try to open them. These are called "vaults", and they usually(but not always) contain monsters that are significantly higher level than the current zone. If you notice that a particular type of vault is giving you trouble, then that signifies that you should probably come back later when you're at a higher level before opening them.

(Example of a vault)

Somewhere on the 3rd level of Trollmire you will meet...
You will fight 1 of the 2 depending on whether the map is a forest or a marsh. Both of their strategies involve simply bumrushing you and then pummeling you with basic attacks. Shax might also attempt to shoot a laughably weak water bolt at you. As long as you keep stunning them with shield pummel they shouldn't be a threat. Give them a few good counterstrike hits and they should die easily.

When you injured them significantly they dropped a note which will reveal a path to a hidden 4th level on the right which will contain...

Bill will probably initiate with Rush which will probably daze you. Being dazed will hinder your combat abilities, including your chance to apply stun with shield pummel. Dazes are unique in that they can be dispelled by taking combat damage. You can cleanse the daze with a wild infusion, but you can also spend the turn using a noncombat ability like regeneration infusion and have an enemy smack you out of the daze, saving the wild infusion for later. Bill hits harder than Prox, but the same strategy of stunning and landing counterstrike hits should still work on him.

Once you kill Bill, he will drop the Transmogrification Chest which will unlock it for all future runs if you haven't done so already. Now instead of having to manually pick up each item with 'g', you will automatically pick up items and store them in the Chest when you walk over them or autoexplore. Now whenever you change levels you will have to decide which items you want to move from the Chest into your normal inventory before transmogrifying the rest into gold.

Make sure that you also manually transmogrify any useless items that you have in your normal inventory before you picked up the Chest. When you're ready use your Rod of Recall to return to the overworld.

We now have access to Shield Slam, which gives us another method of blocking and inflicting counterstrikes. We also now reached the breakpoint for Riposte granting us another extra counterstrike on block. Now after each block we have the opportunity to inflict 3 counterstrike hits in total. We are now already a lean, mean, counterstriking machine, but things will get even better in a few levels...

Next head to Derth and talk to the shady cornac man to enter the Arena

Here you will have to fight in a series of 1v1 battles, 3 in total. I will let you have the fun of figuring out how to approach these battles. Once you are victorious you will be awarded 2 bonus generic talent points.
Next head to where the lumberjack village should be. In order to have the village show up on the map you have to wander around in the big red circle below its spawn location for a random number of turns, until a text prompt of a villager running to you for help shows up. When you enter the village you will have to face....

You should immediately scramble to the center of the map and attempt to locate and engage Ben before he can kill any more villagers. Ben is another melee goon like Prox or Bill, except he has a special Gloom aura that randomly stuns, confuses, or slows you. Annoyingly, these debuffs cannot be cleansed with a physical wild, so you're just going to have to suffer through it. But don't worry, if you continue to use your trusty stun and counterstrike strategy, you will show Ben who the superior melee goon is.

Once you kill Ben, if you saved enough villagers they will reward you with a pickaxe which will allow you to dig through walls. If you didn't get the reward, don't worry, you can buy a pickaxe from the shops in Derth or Iron Council.

You should be level 10 by now, which means it is the perfect time to go shopping. Why, do you ask? Because every time the player's level reaches a multiple of 10, all the shops in the world receive additional stock in their inventory.

(Here are all the towns with shops)

The best thing we can do with our limited gold right now is to spend it on new inscriptions. The first thing we want is a movement infusion so that we can actually have an escape option. However, don't rush to buy the first movement infusion you come across. It is better to browse through all the inscription shops first and pick the one with the best stats. Inscriptions with "of the warrior" will tend to be better because they scale with our STR, however other stat inscriptions may still have great base values so don't count them out.

When you attempt to inscribe your new movement infusion you will be presented with the option of overwriting one of your old inscriptions or unlocking a new inscription slot with a category point. Lucky for us level 10 is when we receive a new category point, so go ahead and unlock that new inscription slot. We will receive more category points at level 20 and 34.

The next inscription we would like to have is the shatter afflictions rune. This is a debuff removal inscription that can remove 1 physical, 1 mental, and 1 magical debuff in a single use, which makes it super versatile. We don't really care about its shielding mechanic, we just want one with the lowest cooldown possible (12 is the lowest it can go). Do note that once you inscribe a rune you will be unable to enter Zigur until you get rid of it, because runes are magical and Zigur HATES magic. If you are unable to obtain a good shatter afflictions rune, the next best thing is to have one physical wild and one mental wild. Very rarely you will come across a dual status wild that can remove two types of status effects, but don't count on it.

As for your 2 remaining inscription slots, feel free to get whatever seems good. Personally, I would like to have at least one health recovery inscription so I can do "sustain kiting", which is just repeatedly running away with movement infusion while healing up. My character ran out of gold to spend after buying the shatter afflictions rune, so I was still stuck with two of my starting inscriptions. If that's also the case for you, you can just revisit the towns once you obtain more gold.

(my character's inscriptions)

Besides inscriptions, I recommend that you don't spend your gold on other gear for now, and depend on monster drops instead. Currently we need to save up our gold for other stuff I will get into later. Still, now would be a good time to give a brief overview of the gear stats that we want as a bulwark.

Defensive stats in order of priority:
1. Health/Die at -Health
2. Stun Resistance
3. CON
4. Armor
5. Health Regen/Healing mod
6. Physical resistance
7. Other damage resistances

Offensive stats in order of priority:
1. STR
2. DEX
3. Increased physical damage modifier
4. Critical multiplier
5. Physical damage penetration
6. Critical chance
7. Accuracy
8. Physical power

At this stage of the game we are unlikely to find gear that will cover even a fraction of the stats listed. For now, just look for gear with +health and equip a weapon with the highest base damage.

If you mouse over a weapon you will see its base damage listed as a range of numbers it can roll:

Actually, I don't think this information is very helpful, so let's change it. Hit 'Esc' to go to the Game Menu and then select Game Options. Then enable Advanced Weapon Statistics.

Go back to your weapon. You should see that the base damage changed to a single averaged value. We can now go through weapons at a glance with the assumption that "bigger number = better", and equip the weapon with the biggest number.


Egos are descriptions that determine what stats a piece of gear has. Go here[te4.org] for a more detailed explanation on egos as well as a list of all possible egos. I recommend that you bookmark that page since you will be constantly referencing it. At this point in the game, keep an eye out for these particular egos...

weapon: of massacre
shield: reinforced, of resilience, impervious, swashbuckler's, of earthen fury
main armor: impenetrable, of resilience, of Eyal, fortifying, of the dragon
hat: of the mountain
cloak: resilient, thick
gloves: sand, of dexterity
belt: of resilience
boots: undeterred, of speed
lantern: of health, bright
rings: of perseverance, of life, of the mountain
amulets: grounding

Egos that I have not listed can still be useful, maybe even better. I will let you refer to the wiki and make the judgement call yourself.

Pink/salmon gear are dropped by rares and have stats that are not associated with any egos (randpowers). Orange gear are like beefed up versions of pink gear, but are not usually encountered until way later in the game on normal difficulty. In order to view the egos on these types of gear, you have to equip them first.

There are also yellow items which are basically the same as uniques in other RPG games.
Go here[te4.org] for more info on item types.

Lastly, look for higher tier gear since they have better stat scaling. The max tier is 5.

Are you tired of getting info dumped on yet? I swear I will be more brief from now on for reals.


Our next stop is Ruins of Kor'Pul.
The main thing you need to be aware of here is that some tiles are unlit, meaning you can't see into them unless they are within your light radius. To check your light radius, press 'c' to bring up your character sheet and look in the General tab. You can also mouse over tiles to check if they have the 'Lit' tag or not on the bottom right of the screen.

If something is hitting you from an unlit tile and you can't see it, you should retreat and lure it into your light radius or some lit tiles instead of blindly advancing towards it (unless it's a stationary enemy like a jelly using Slime Spit, in that you case you have to advance).

WIki link on how vision works: https://te4.org/wiki/Vision

On the third level you'll meet...

This guy likes to open up with Freeze and then will cast a few basic spells. Once you cleanse the Freeze, he should be pretty vulnerable to being whaled on.


Alternatively, you'll be fighting this dude. What's dangerous about him is that he can get lucky and proc Earthen Missiles multiple times from his melee attacks. If that happens and your health gets low, you should run away and reset the fight before reengaging. His luck will run out sooner or later...



Next let's head to Scintillating Caves. From now on, whenever you enter a Tier 1 Zone, you will get a prompt saying that this zone is too easy for you, and if you want to skip to the last level. Always select "Stay Here", because we want all the experience, loot, and gold we can possibly get.

By the way, my character got enough gold to buy more better inscriptions



The crystals here shouldn't put up much of a fight. You should be able to steamroll your way through here. On the third level(or fifth if you got the alternate layout) you'll meet...

You can sidestep its spells, Matrix style. You can also block them and smash its face in with some huge counterstrikes.



Here you will encounter real mages, not those posers in the Scintillating Caves who can't even move. Now would be a good time to go over the "corner camping" technique you should start employing against ranged enemies:

(A pesky mage has been spotted)


(Break line of sight and wait a few turns. If the enemy takes too long you can peek your head out around the corner to nudge its pathfinding ai.)


(Once he shows his ugly mug, ambush him!)

This technique is safer than rushing them on sight and finding out that there are 2 more mages behind them.

I also recommend that you don't open up the vaults in this zone, because they may contain the annoying and dangerous elven corruptor and/or elven cultist. These guys can go invisible and nuke you with critical spell damage, and shouldn't be trifled with. Doors that don't give you a prompt before opening them should still be safe to open. On the third level you'll meet...

She will use her Rod of Annullment which will put a few of your talents on cooldown. Punish her for this mild inconvenience by taking her life.




Just more wildlife critters to steamroll over. On the third level you'll meet...

Just another melee goon except he's more stun-happy. You are still the superior melee goon though.



Alternate Boss. This guy will pull you into melee range and then cast ice storm. However, he can't move so he gets hard countered by movement infusion.






The wildlife critters now have weak mental abilities. They should still be pretty easy to deal with though. The map layout here can screw you over by placing you in a wide open space surrounded by enemies when you first enter a level. If that happens I recommend that you use a movement infusion to dash to a narrow hallway where you can fight from a more advantageous position. On the third level you'll meet...

This thing constantly spawns shadows around it. Sometimes the shadows just blink around harmlessly, other times they can pin you and burst you with spells if you're unlucky. Therefore, you should destroy the source as fast as possible. Fortunately, the Thing is usually kind enough to blink next to you into melee range, where you can bash its face in.

Alternate Boss. It will put you to sleep and then fire bolts of physical damage at you. It's super vulnerable once you get in its face though.




You can access this dungeon through the upper left stairs in the Iron Council town. You will encounter horror type monsters here, how spooky! By now you will be so overleveled that everything here should be trivial for you. On the third level you'll meet...

This is a gimmick boss fight. The Mouth will constantly pull you towards it every other turn, and you will be unable to deal direct damage to it. It will periodically spawn slimy crawlers that you can kill to damage it. Once you understand the gimmick, it should be easy for you to win.





Go back to Derth, and you will notice that there is now a storm cloud over it. When you enter the town you will discover lightning elementals causing chaos. Use your trusty corner camping technique to deal with these threats. You will know that you have cleared everything when a text prompt with a scared halfling pops up. This will continue the "Storming the City" questline which we wlll finish later.

Now THIS is what I call a power spike. Once you hit level 12 you will be able to learn Assault, an amazing talent that will carry you through the entire game. Now whenever you inflict counterstrike on an enemy, you will be able to consume all 3 counterstrike hits in a single Assault, with 2 of them being guaranteed juicy crits. This combo is strong enough to one-shot most enemies and even some bosses, and henceforth I will be referring to it as the "wombo combo".

We also maxed out our Shield Wall sustain which among other things grants us 50% stun resist, meaning that we will be able to resist stuns 50% of the time. Once we obtain 50% more stun resist through our gear, we will be fully stun immune (barring a few niche situations).

We also got 4 levels in Unflinching Resolve, which gives us a random chance to cure ourselves of a variety of debuffs each turn, making us more difficult to get locked down by enemies. While leveling you should have gotten at least 28 CON somewhere along the way. When that happens, start putting your non-STR points into DEX.

Now let's get into the Tier 2 dungeons.


Let's do Old Forest first
More wildlife critters, except now they spawn in swarms and will attempt to mob you. You should be fine if you fight them from a chokepoint.

I recommend that you stay away from the vaults that contain carrion worm masses. Those contain worm-that-walks, a hard-hitting melee monster that can debilitate you with diseases. The vault with the stairs leading to the bandit fortress can also be really tough.

On the fourth level you'll meet...
This guy really likes to spam freezing abilities. If you're frozen and you're unable to cleanse it, you can opt to attack the iceblock to try to shatter it. You can do this by attempting to move in a direction or targeting the iceblock with a talent. When you get close to him, he will cast Tidal Wave which will inflict the Wet debuff, making you even more susceptible to getting frozen. However, you can easily avoid the wave by kiting backwards when he casts it. Fortunately he doesn't do much damage so you should be able to outlast him.

Alternate boss. This guy will try to pin you in place and then summon a firestorm. It does more damage than Wrathroot, but since it can't freeze you constantly, you're free to wombo combo it to death with impunity

After you clear the area, you'll notice that there is a path in the south leading to the Lake of Nur. We are skipping that area, so just use your Rod of Recall to return to the overworld.


The remaining tier 2 dungeons are all completely unlit, and our pitiful default 3 light radius isn't going to cut it. Hopefully, some of the monsters you killed have dropped a lantern with a better light radius. Some pink gear can also grant bonus light radius. If not, we can also check the tool shops in Derth and Iron Council for some better lanterns.

One easy way to boost our light radius is to go to the jewelry shop in Angolwen and have the shopkeeper craft a copper citrine ring for 200 gold by selecting the option "I am looking for special jewelry", then picking a ring and a gem from your inventory. If you haven't picked up a ring and/or a gem during your travels, you can buy a ring from the shopkeeper himself, and you can buy a citrine gem from the gem shops in Derth and Iron Council.

Ideally, you should have 9-10 light radius once you are done preparing.

Our next stop is Sandworm Lair. One common way new players die in this zone is that they get buried in sand and then suffocate to death. You can avoid this by equipping gear that turns you into an undead, removing your need to breathe. These types of gear include belts with the ego "of unlife" and lanterns with the ego "of corpselight". Try looking through all the light armor, cloth, and tool shops of all the towns for these gear. Another solution is to have a teleport rune inscribed that can teleport you to a free tile whenever you get buried. If you are unable to find any of these things or you are too lazy to browse through all the shops, then you should still be fine on normal difficulty, you just have to play more carefully.

The gimmick here is that you have to depend on sandworm burrowers to dig paths for you in order to traverse the dungeon. If you have the "Tooth of the Mouth" artifact or a pickaxe with a similarly fast digging speed, then you can dig your own tunnels without risk of being buried. If you have undead gear, then you can play more loosely, otherwise you have to stay real close to the burrowers. One neat trick you can do if you have undead gear is when you first arrive in a chamber that is filled with enemies you can movement infusion back the way you came from and purposely let yourself get buried. The aggro'd enemies will scatter in all directions looking for you and some of them might even end up getting buried and suffocate to death, saving you the trouble of fighting them.
The glowing chests here may contain tough 'unique' monsters that possess the traits of 2 classes, but they may also contain tier 5 orange items if you're lucky. Open them at your own risk....

On the fourth level(or second if you got the alternate layout with the GIANT burrowers) you'll meet...
She will summon a bunch of enemies and blind you with Sand Breath. She is also stun immune so your Shield Pummel won't work on her. Ignore the summons and focus fire her. If you're lucky and she gets tagged with counterstrike, great! If one her summons tanks the counterstrike for her, no big deal. Besides her Sand Breath, she is a rather unimpressive fighter. Once you kill her she will drop a unique item "Heart of the Sandworm Queen". If you go into your inventory and consume the heart you will be awarded bonus stat/talent points equivalent to one levelup.


If you did your homework and boosted your light radius, you will have no problem clearing this place. If not, you will be stumbling blindly through the long winding corridors and having a miserable time. If you got the alternate layout, you will also be required to jump through the giant cracks on the floor to proceed. Once you jump, there will be no way to return except to use the Rod of Recall to teleport out.

On the second level(or fourth if you got the alternate layout) you'll meet...
The Minotaur will automatically aggro on you the moment you enter the level, so if you wait in place you can let him come to you (sometimes he gets blocked by another enemy though). This jerk has 2 stuns and 2 confuses! Luckily, this is where having Unflinching Resolve really pays off, since more likely than not you'll be able to recover from these debuffs earlier than you should. Once you endure through the onslaught of debuffs he should fall to a wombo combo or two.

Alternate boss. This guy will also automatically aggro on you the moment you enter the level. He can grab and pin you with his tentacles, and his melee attacks can proc lightning spells. If you keep your cool though, you should be able to out-dps him with your wombo combo.

Wow, I didn't expect my guide to be this long! From now on I will gradually speed up the pace of the guide, while only slowing down to explain important game mechanics and strategy. I think I have given you enough knowledge and tools to learn the game on your own. Remember, right-click -> "Inspect Creature", mousing over stuff to read tooltips, and the wiki[te4.org] are your friends.

By now you should have hit level 20, which means that the shops are once again stocked with new inventory. You can go browse the inscription stores again for potential upgrades if you want. More importantly though, you should go check the gem shops in Derth and Iron Council, because they will start stocking quartz gems. You might have also picked up some quartz as you went through the Tier 2 dungeons. Once you have some quartz, you can start crafting quartz rings that can grant 30% stun resist in Angolwen. My character crafted one with a copper ring since those are the cheapest, and decided to save the rest of the gold for other stuff later. Crafting multiple rings are usually reserved for higher difficulties since you get more gold in them.

We are also able to start the "Trapped!" quest now. If you wander back and forth in the snowy mountain area at the top of the overworld, eventually you'll receive a text prompt saying you found a trap door. Enter it and you'll enter a level filled with sneaky thieves. On the second floor is the Lost Merchant and the Assassin Lord. You can talk to the Assassin Lord and choose whether to side with him, or fight him to save the Lost Merchant. If you have the "Forbidden Cults" DLC, it is better to side with the Assassin Lord since you get access to an endgame mechanic[te4.org] that breaks the game. However, since this guide assumes you are playing without DLC, we will go with the other option...

The Assassin Lord will start off the fight by teleporting away and stealthing. His stealthed thugs will also ambush you. I recommend that you dash into one of the rooms so that you don't get surrounded. However, before you activate your movement infusion you should do the following:


Click the sword and shield icon on the upper left corner of the screen to change the movement mode to 'passive'. This way, you won't accidentally bump into a stealthed thug and cancel your movement buff early. Once you fully repositioned yourself you can change the movement mode back to 'default'. The Assassin Lord's signature move is Shadow Veil, a temp buff where he gains all damage resistance, becomes immune to all status effects, and constantly blink attacks you every turn. You should have decent armor by now from Shield Wall, Heavy Armor Training, and your gear, so you should be able to weather the storm. For reference, my character had 73 armor and only lost about 20% health during the entire duration. Once his Shadow Veil ends, you can retaliate with a wombo combo and end him quickly.

Once you kill the Assassin Lord, the stairs will be revealed and you will be able to escape. From now on if you get a popup prompting you to enter another dungeon from the overworld, you should always refuse. Those zones are not beginner friendly and do not contain much rewards.

I think the best way to conceptualize the damage mitigated by armor is through "% damage reduction". The attacker's base damage is checked against the defender's armor and armor hardiness. You can get this info at a glance by mousing over the relevant creature:

The "% damage reduction" is calculated by dividing the defender's armor by the attacker's base damage.

Example 1: defender has 50 armor. attacker has 100 base damage. 50 / 100 = .5 -> 50% damage reduction. All of the attacker's attacks will be reduced by 50% against the defender.
Example 2: defender has 14 armor. attacker has 21 base damage. 14 / 21 = .667 -> 67% damage reduction. All of the attacker's attacks will be reduced by 67% against the defender.

If the defender's armor hardiness is equal to or greater than the % damage reduction, nothing changes. However if it's lower, the % damage reduction will be reduced to the armor hardiness %. So lets say in example 2 the defender's armor hardiness is 30%. Then the % damage reduction will go down from 67% to 30%. All of the attacker's attacks will be reduced by 30% against the defender instead.

Also remember that armor penetration(APR) subtracts the defender's armor. You can view an attacker's APR by Inspect Creature -> Attack tab.

More detailed explanation on how armor works if you're interested: https://te4.org/wiki/Damage_Reduction,_Armor,_Resistances,_and_Affinities

Let's head to our final Tier 2 dungeon, Daikara.
The main threats here are the snow giant thunderer and the snow giant boulder thrower. The thunderer casts lightning spells, while the boulder thrower has a spammable boulder throw talent that knocks you back and is very annoying. By themselves they aren't much of an issue. However, if a group of them all use their talents on you at the same time, they can do some serious damage. Therefore, if you run into a group of them you should resort to the tried and true corner camping technique.

If you run into a group of non-hostile cultists, try to fight far away from them. If one of them dies, it will trigger a countdown timer that will lead to a boss[te4.org] spawning that will most likely one-shot you. This also applies to all other zones they spawn in.

On the 3rd level you'll come across a yellow portal known as the "Temporal Rift", Do not go inside, it is not a beginner friendly zone.
On the 4th level you'll meet..

He has an ice breath that can freeze you and is immune to stuns. Other than that there is nothing really notable about him.



Alternate boss. Similar to Rantha except he now has a fire breath and a confuse roar. The level that you fight him in is a wide open area, so take care that you don't get ganged up on and kite backwards often.

Once you hit level 20, you will receive another category point which you should use on unlocking the Battle Tactics category. You do this by simply clicking the greyed out text of the locked category. You will then be able to learn Greater Weapon Focus, a temp buff that will grant you a chance to proc extra hits off of your melee strikes. You should always pop this before a tough fight since it's a straight-up dps boost.
Also, don't forget to activate your Daunting Presence sustained buff once you learn it, it will generate an aura that will slightly hinder your enemies' combat ability and chance to apply certain debuffs on you.

Next let's go to the ruined halfling complex

On the 4th level at the bottom of the screen you'll come across a door that leads into what appears to be a really wide room. Do not open that door yet, that is the boss chamber and we need to make some preparations first.

If you open the door, the boss will immediately aggro on a npc character. If we want to save the npc, we need to kill the boss asap. However, the boss has high defense, and he will dodge most of our weapon attacks if our accuracy isn't high enough.

• Defense is the alternative defensive option to armor, and is typically favored by wearers of light armor/robes
  
• Accuracy/defense only applies to weapon attacks, not spell-like abilities.
  
• If the attacker's accuracy is equal to the defender's defense, they will hit 50% of the time.
  
• If the attacker's accuracy is higher than the defender's defense by 20 or more, they will always hit.
  
• If the attacker's accuracy is lower than the defender's defense by 20 or more, they will always miss.
  
• More detailed explanation of calculating hit chance here[te4.org].
  
• Stacking (raw) accuracy/defense on a character has diminishing returns. More info on it here[te4.org].
  
• You can view a creature's accuracy/defense at a glance by mousing over them:
  
  

How are we going to obtain more accuracy in a pinch? We could swap our gear, or we could
do this:
First, make sure you are out of combat by resting. Then pull up your level up window and look for talent icons with a light blue background instead of grey. Those talents are where you put your most recent points, and you can refund them by by right-clicking the talent icon. You can refund up to 4 class talent points and 3 generic talent points at a time. You can permanently "float" points in a specific talent that you want to unlearn later if you remember to refund all your points after every level up.
Now back to the matter at hand, we want to respec our points into Perfect Strike and Combat Accuracy. The process should look something like this...

(Before respec)


(After respec. Notice how different talents have the light blue background)

Once you are done, you can open the door and face...
This guy likes blinking around and hates yeeks. Counterstrikes will set his defense to 0, but you will be unable to inflict counterstrikes on him at first because he will be attacking the yeek and not you. Don't worry though, just activate Perfect Strike and your other temp buffs, and hopefully he will die before the Perfect Strike duration is up.

If you successfully save the yeek it will give you a small permanent boost to your mental save and confusion resistance. If you failed, it's no big deal. Remember to respec your points to what they originally were.

We need to get Antimagic to solve our endgame survivability problem, so let's head to Zigur.

In order to even enter the town we need to get rid of our magical runes first by overwriting them with infusions. For example, my character replaced his shatter afflictions rune with a physical/mental wild (lucky find). Once you're in, head to the building next to the arena at the top of the screen to start your trial. Make sure you replace all your gear that have "powered by arcane forces" egos, otherwise they will be forcibly unequipped. Once you complete the trial, you will gain the Antimagic talent category, but you'll be unable to use runes and equip gear that have "powered by arcane forces" egos. We'll also be locked out of Angolwen forever. It definitely hurts that we won't be able to make use of valuable egos like "undeterred", but you will eventually appreciate the power of Antimagic more as you approach the end game.

Antimagic talents use equilibrium[te4.org] as a resource, displayed as a green bar on the top left of your screen. The basic gist of how it works is the more WIL that you have, the less likely your talents will fail.

• Stormshield runes: stormshields provide unparalleled damage mitigation for a short duration, and you can chain 2 together back-to-back for up to 8 seconds of nigh invulnerability. They are great for high dps builds that can act fast.
  
• Cauterize prodigy: Gives you one-shot protection. Typically taken on higher difficulties where incoming damage can spike unexpectedly. Pairs well with classes with defensive steroids that are not always active.
  
• Ethereal Form prodigy: The most overused prodigy in the game provides absolute damage resistance(provides an additional defensive layer separate from normal resistances) and is the main reason why builds stacking defense are very strong. You can probably brute force Ethereal Form/defense stacking on all of the classes if you try hard enough. It's so broken that one might question if it really counts as a win if you win with it. (The answer is yes, disregard anyone judging you.)
  
• Out of phase (OOP): OOP is a temp buff that gives you a variety of bonuses whenever you blink, most notably up to 40% all damage resist. OOP bonus is a stackable stat that you can obtain from random pieces of gear. Here is a video about how you can abuse OOP explained by a ToME legend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ROSaEsz-c

You might wonder why I decided to focus on Antimagic for this guide instead of the above listed. In my opinion Antimagic is the most straightforward, beginner-friendly option for a bulwark. It is also probably the easiest to obtain on normal difficulty.

Now let's go to Dreadfell

Dreadfell has 9 levels, and it is like the midterm exam for your character. If you pass, you get to move on to the second half of the game where you travel to a new continent(overworld) called The Far East. I will give you a few pointers and leave the rest to you.

• If you are not undead, standing in ghoul retch can be hazardous for you because it can strip valuable buffs such as regen infusion or Vitality regen.
  
• Banshees can periodically aggro monsters in a radius around them towards you. If you find the whole floor swarming towards you they are probably the reason why.
  
• You might want to respec back into Perfect Strike if you're having trouble hitting invisible enemies

Before you enter the 9th level, I want to briefly go over one of the most broken mechanics in the game...
You probably understand by now that bulwark specializes in 1v1 duels and is not very good at fighting while surrounded. Sometimes the map layout lets you funnel in monsters one by one through a chokepoint, other times it screws you over by giving you wide, spacious areas as far as the eye can see. But what if I told you that you possess an ability that lets you bend the map layout to your will? Yes, it's the ability you've had since early in the game, digging! More specifically, digging zigzag tunnels. Zigzag tunnels break line of sight and lets you fight enemies one at a time once you lure them in. The enemies' pathfinding ai will also get hindered, and they will waste several turns stumbling back and forth when they are inside the tunnels.

(A bulwark's paradise)

Um, well it's kind of tedious. I recommend binding Dig to one of the 0-9 hotkeys so you can spam it easier. You might also dig a bunch of tunnels that you end up not using when you clear a level, making you feel like you wasted your time. However, whenever you find yourself in a dangerous situation that you need to escape from, I guarantee that you'll be thinking, "Damn, I wish there was a zigzag tunnel that I can run to." I'm not saying that you should dig all the time, but as you get more experienced playing this game, you will develop a better intuition of when digging will tremendously improve your odds of survival.

With this newfound knowledge, enter the 9th level and immediately start digging into a nearby wall. Once you are comfortably entrenched within a zigzag tunnel network, venture out to meet...

If you fight this guy out in the open, you will soon find yourself surrounded by skeletons and ghouls and not having a good time. However, if you manage to lure him into a zigzag tunnel, he becomes much more manageable.

(Master baited)

Sometimes he will summon a vampire behind your back and cut off your escape route. If that happens, make sure you switch your focus to the vampire. If you're surrounded in a zigzag tunnel, you always want to kill the weaker monster first to open up an escape route asap. Your racial ability Stone Walking can also help you escape zigzag blockages.
When you kill him for the first time, he will revive back to full. Kill him again to put him down permanently and take his staff.


When you try to recall out of Dreadfell you will instead be ambushed by a band of orcs. This is one of the few parts of the game where dying doesn't count, so don't be too stressed out and do your best. Regardless of the outcome, exit to the overworld and head to Last Hope.

Once you hit level 25, you will gain a prodigy point that you can spend to gain an especially powerful talent. We will be spending it on the "I Can Carry the World!"(ICCTW) prodigy, since it will massively boost our damage and scale many of our talents.


ICCTW will also boost our carry weight which will let us hoard more gear. If you haven't noticed by now, you can use +stat gear to satisfy talent prerequisites. From now on, keep an eye out for +CON, +WIL, and +CUN gear. +CON is used for maxing out the Thick Skin talent, +WIL is for levelling the Antimagic category, and +CUN is for levelling the Survival category.

You should be hitting the stat cap(60) for STR pretty soon. You should also start spending your non-STR points on WIL instead of DEX. Our goal is at least 30 WIL. Antimagic Shield is a powerful flat-damage reduction sustain, but if you don't have at least 30 WIL it will auto-deactivate too much to be useful. It will last longer the more WIL we have, but we would rather spend our stat points on other things once we hit 30 WIL. The plan is to have at least 30 WIL and supplement it with +WIL gear if convenient.

We now have the Step Up ability which grants us more flexibility when fighting multiple enemies. We can now choose to speedily press our attack from distant foe to distant foe, engage in hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, or maybe a mix of both. Sometimes the game bugs out and gives us less than a standard turn's worth of the buff, but it is still very useful regardless. We also started learning the Blinding Speed talent, which will allow us to act faster during the first few turns of battle. Hold off on sustaining Precise Strikes until we max it later.

When you hit level 30, you can go shop for better inscriptions or lanterns if you want.

Once you're in Last Hope, head to the center of the town and talk to the Elder there to continue the main questline.


Reknor will now be revealed on the overworld, and will be right beside Iron Council.

On the 4th floor you will meet Golbug the Destroyer. Once you kill him he will drop the Orb of Many Ways, which will allow you to travel to the Far East. But before you do that, you should recall back to the overworld to take care of one last bit of business.

Head back to Zigur and talk to Protector Myssil. She should be in the neighboring building next to where you started the antimagic trial. This will continue the "Storming the City" questline and reveal Tempest Peak on the overworld.


On the second level you'll meet...
This guy is a notorious noob-killer because he nukes hard and can perma-daze you if you're not 100% stun immune. This is why I had you put off fighting him until as late as possible. Even if you're not 100% stun immune, you should now have all the tools needed to deal with him. First, activate your Blinding Speed and silence him with Antimagic Zone. Then rush in and get a nice wombo combo on him and he should go down quickly.

When you return to Protector Myssil she will buff your Mana Clash to remove magical sustains. She also reveals the Fungus category but we will be ignoring that for this character.
Now go back to Reknor and use the Orb of Many Ways on the portal in the last level.

Kill Krogar, talk to the elf, then make your way out to the overworld.

I don't recommend autoexploring the whole continent because the large amount of dangerous orc patrols make it too much of a hassle. Instead, make your way to the Gates of Morning Town.


Talk to Aeryn, then talk to her again inside the town and exhaust all of her dialogue options. She will grant you the Relentless Pursuit talent, which you can use as a last resort debuff cleanse. Next, talk to Zemekkys in his home, and he will reveal the Vor Armoury in the overworld. Next, talk to Melnela and accept her quest to reveal Ardhungol in the overworld. As a side note, Limmir will take over ring crafting duties now that we can't access Angolwen anymore. We will be utilizing him later, so make sure you start hoarding any voratun rings you come across.


On the 3rd level you'll encounter Ungole. When you kill her she will drop the Rod of Spydric Poison. What's neat about this item is that you don't have to have it equipped in order to use it, so make sure you drag it from the inventory onto your hotbar.
Go through the portal and talk to Melnela to complete the quest.

The second level contains the quest item and plenty of epic loot. Don't open the vault at the top though if you value your life. Return to Zemekkys and he will direct you to Briagh's lair.


Kill Briagh and take the Resonating Diamond. Return to Zemekkys again and he will open a portal back to Maj'Eyal. Let's take the portal back using the Orb of Many Ways and return to Last Hope.

When you reach level 34, you will gain another category point which you can then spend on another inscription slot. My character decided to get a 10 cooldown mental/magical wild.

Once you reach 30 WIL, start maxing out your DEX, then your CON. Now that you have gotten all of your Antimagic talents, you can start being a real menace to spellcasters. While silenced, creatures will not be able to use any talents with the "is a spell" tag. Also, if you equilibrium gets too high, you can cast Mana Clash on an empty space to lower it.

We will now focus on boosting our saves, mainly spell save. The main reason for doing this is that it will act as a fail-safe in case the final boss battle doesn't go well for you.

• An attacker's power is checked against a defender's save to determine whether a debuff will be applied.
  
• The types don't always match up. For example, a minotaur's confusion Warcry is physical power checking mental save. Some talents might even use accuracy as an apply power..
  
• If the attacker's power is equal to the defender's save, the debuff will be applied 50% of the time.
  
• If the attacker's power is higher than the defender's save by 20 or more, the debuff is virtually guaranteed to be applied.
  
• If the attacker's power is lower than the defender's save by 20 or more, the defender is virtually guaranteed to shrug off the debuff.
  
• More detailed explanation of calculating hit chance here[te4.org].
  
• Stacking (raw) powers/saves on a character has diminishing returns. More info on it here[te4.org].
  
• You can view a creature's powers/saves at a glance by mousing over them:

If you're getting deja vu, that's because saves/powers work almost identically to defense/accuracy.

Having high spell save will help us resist a variety of nasty magical debuffs, and it will also reduce the frequency of getting spellshocked, a cross-tier effect[te4.org] that will reduce our resistances. Out of all the cross-tiers, this one poses the most imminent threat to our life. Normally spell save is a low priority luxury stat, since there are so many other things to gear for. However, our class/race combo has the rare privilege of being able to amass a large amount of raw spell save from talents alone without depending on gear. Additionally, our Daunting Presence sustain will reduce enemy powers, making our saves even more effective. Our racial talent Power is Money will provide a whopping +50 raw saves. However, we need to have at least 3000 gold to get the full effect, so start saving up!

A few classes have the potential to stack so much saves that they essentially become immune to all debuffs. However, this becomes much more difficult to achieve in higher difficulties as the chance to randomly generate an enemy with overpowered stats becomes more likely.

Talk to the Elder in Last Hope again. Next, talk to Tannen and hand over your Orb of Many Ways.


The lost merchant you saved now has reopened his shop and will sell you tier 5 orange items for a whopping 4000 gold, which you probably will not be able to afford. Remember, we need to always have at least 3000 gold for Power is Money.

Talk to Ungrol and ask him to make the elixir of foundations. He will give you a list of ingredients that you can obtain by killing certain monsters. He will also give us another quest which we will ignore. You can view the list in your journal by pressing 'j'. You don't have to complete this immediately, but once you obtain everything return to him and he'll give you an elixir that you can consume to gain 2 generic talent points.

Talk to Agrimley in the overworld and ask him to make the elixir of focus, which will grant us 2 class talent points.


His location is random and could be in any of these spots on the overworld:


To be honest, you could have started this quest way earlier, but you usually don't find all the ingredients until near the end of the game, if at all.

More info about the quest: https://te4.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Alchemists. You can choose the rest of the elixirs to make.

Now that you have returned to Maj'Eyal, new challenge bosses have appeared in some of the zones you previously cleared. We will only be fighting two of the important ones though.

First, head over to Sandworm Lair. On the first level, the Corrupted Sand Worm will immediately aggro towards you. Kill it, and it will drop Wyrm Bile, which you can consume from your inventory to gain a bonus category point. We will be spending this category point on unlocking the Warcries category. Wyrm Bile will also randomly adjust your stats, but the effect is minor.

Then head over to Reknor. On the last level you will find Lithfengel, who will drop the main quest items when killed.

You can find info on the rest of the backup guardians here[te4.org]. Some of them are much tougher than the ones we fought, and it would be wise to put off fighting them until later.

Return to Tannen and he will reveal Telmur on the overworld

On the last level the Shade of Telos will automatically aggro towards you. Hide in a corner and let him come to you. After you kill him, return to Tannen and you will be transported to his basement.

On the first screen, you have to flip all 4 switches in the corner rooms in order to escape. On the last level you have to fight Tannen and his drolem. I recommend rushing past the drolem and focusing Tannen first. Once they both die and you loot their corpses, you will be able to escape.

Use the Orb of Many Ways on the newly constructed portal to return to the Far East.

Your next task is to take down the four orc prides[te4.org]. There you will start fighting light brown "uniques" and orange "randbosses", which are stronger than your average pink rare. However, you are also stronger than you were before, both in raw strength and tactical knowledge. Learn from your mistakes and don't give up!


You can do them in any order, but I have numbered them in the recommended order to do them in.

Each floor has 2 stairs. One leads to a vault while the other one leads to the next level. Make sure to mouse over them to confirm which one they are. You can do the vaults if you want, just be aware that there is a small chance that you will roll an extremely deadly zone-specific vault[te4.org]. The other prides will also have similar mechanics. The orc elite fighters here love to spam their Battle Calls, ping ponging you all over the place and putting you into awkward positions. As long as you have good armor(100+), you should be able to fight your way out of these positions with the help of Step Up. On the third level you'll meet...

This guy is one tough mf. He will likely require multiple hit-and-runs before he finally goes down. If you have access to Track(refer to the section "Level 40 point allocation"), I recommend that you use it to clear out all the other rooms that he isn't in first. I also recommend that you dig some zigzag tunnels so that you can kite him easier, otherwise he will spam his gap closers on you. You should probably avoid hitting him while he's blocking, just kite backwards when he does it.

When he dies, he will drop the Orb of Destruction, permanently granting you +6 STR. Aeryn will then contact you and reveal Eruan on the overworld. Don't go down the slimy stairs on this level yet and head to Eruan instead.


On the last level there will be a portal. Use the Orb of Many Ways to get transported to the Charred Scar. Here, you will be placed under a time limit which you can see on the left side of the screen. You should start spamming your movement infusion and rush to the bottom ignoring enemies when possible. At the bottom you will have to fight Fyrk, who is no match for your antimagic powers. Now you are free to autoexplore the whole map and pick up any loot you skipped before leaving through the portal.

I want to briefly talk about the 'Track' talent in the Survival category, even though my character hasn't learned it yet. In a nutshell, Track gives you wallhacks and allows you to scout out enemies before they can spot you. It allows you to identify deadly threats and avoid them if necessary. Because of this, Track is very useful in higher difficulties and is usually taken early in the game. However, if you find gloves with the "of the nighthunter" ego, a lantern with the "watchleader's" ego, or body armor with the "of delving" ego, you will be able to use Track if you have them equipped. My character found nighthunter gloves, so I was able to skip learning Track. However, if you haven't found any of the relevant gear yet, you should consider learning Track, since it will help a lot in Grushnak pride.

You should be level 40 by now, which means shops will start stocking end game quality gear now. Keep an eye out for any nice purple tier 5 upgrades (highest tier for gloves is 4 though). The gem shops in Derth/Iron Council may also stock bloodstone, which grants 60% stun resist. You should take one to Limmir and craft it with a voratun ring. It's pretty expensive at 1000 gold a pop though. If you already have max stun resist, fire opal rings are a nice alternative.

weapon: quick, truestriking, warbringer's, of rage, of ruin
shield: impervious, swashbuckler's, of shrapnel, of crushing, of earthen fury
main armor: hardened, fortifying, of thunder, of the dragon
helm: defender's, warlord's, of fortune, of the bounder
cloak: restorative, battlemaster's, of backstabbing, of the guardian
gloves: heroic, of war-making
belt: ravager's, skylord's, of recklessness
boots: restorative, blood-soaked, of invasion, of massiveness
lantern: watchleader's, preserving, nightwalker's, piercing, of the zealot, of illusion
rings: gladiator's, warrior's, of life, of the mountain
amulet: enraging, vitalizing, of murder

weapon: Butcher[te4.org], Thunderfall[te4.org], Razorblade[te4.org], Witch-Bane[te4.org]
shield: Summertide[te4.org], Blightstopper[te4.org]
main armor: Tarrasca[te4.org], Plate of the Blackened Mind[te4.org], Plate Armor of the King[te4.org]
helm: Eye of the Forest[te4.org], Omniscience[te4.org]
cloak: N/A
gloves: Spellhunt Remnants[te4.org]
belt: Girdle of Preservation[te4.org]
boots: Boots of the Hunter[te4.org], Unbreakable Greaves[te4.org]
lantern: Umbraphage[te4.org], Guidance[te4.org]
rings: Ring of the War Master[te4.org], Glory of the Pride[te4.org]
amulet: Garkul's Teeth[te4.org]
tool: The Guardian's Totem[te4.org]

When you first enter the zone, you will be surrounded by a bunch of casters. This zone has a permanent Sinister Aura debuff that makes enemies more dangerous, so if you're unlucky they can nuke you to death with a bunch of critical spells. I suggest that you use your movement infusion to rush past them through the door, and fight them from a better position. On the third level you'll meet...

This guy is Master 2.0, and the same zigzag tunnel strategy should also work on him. Unfortunately my character pulled aggro before I could get a chance to dig, so I had to kite the guy from room to room. If your Mana Clash manages to remove his Bone Shield, he becomes a lot more vulnerable.


Like Rak'Shor, you will be surrounded when you first enter the level. However, the entrance enemies here are not as threatening, so you should be able to stand your ground. It's kind of lame how you are unable to zigzag tunnel in this zone, so you'll just have to fight honestly. On the third level you'll meet...

This guy's biggest threat is his banshee-like howl which can aggro surrounding monsters towards you. To mitigate this, you should clear all the buildings near the stair entrance before advancing. Once you encounter Gorbat, immediately retreat to lure him back to the area you cleared. He should be pretty manageable if you can isolate him.


Ugh, surrounded by casters at the entrance again? And now they can also blink for even more annoyance. My typical opening strategy is to Rush->Repulsion one group of casters, then improvise from there. On the third level you'll meet...

He can summon a freaking meteor?! If you can survive the initial burst damage then you can easily cripple him with your Antimagic talents. The Vor my character fought only had about 600 mana, and I was able to drain it all after two rounds of manaburning him then running away. He should be easy pickings after that. You should also be careful not to waste your attacks on his Mirror Image. If the game log shows that your attacks are not doing any damage, then you're probably doing just that.

Pick the Eternal Guard prodigy at level 42. It will help you block more damage and apply more counterstrikes, what's there not to like?


We can start sustaining Precise Strikes now that we started putting points into it, which will give us some much needed physical crit chance. We also started putting points into the Warcries category. The main talent we're interested in is Battle Shout. It can be used before a fight to give a big boost to our health and stamina. It takes a standard turn to use, however.

Now that the four prides are destroyed, we can head straight to High Peak and face the final boss(es). However, you can also do some bonus levelling to get as close to level 50 as possible by revisiting some of the stuff you skipped earlier.

Back in the Vor Armoury there was a vault I told you to skip which contains "overpowered greater multi-hued wyrms". You can actually clear this vault relatively safely if you play patiently. When you first open the vault, immediately break line of sight if you don't want to get burst nuked by multiple dragon breaths. Some of the dragons should be immediately aggro'd towards you, but if for some reason they are not you can use a tentacle totem to aggro them instead of using your face. You might be able to find one in the Shatur town.

Fortunately, the dragons tend to wander separately from one another, so you should be able to coax them into 1v1 scenarios with enough patience. You should always try to have only 1 dragon in your line of sight at any time, 2 at the very most.

(A good position to start a fight)

Once you kill all the aggro'd dragons you can aggro the rest of the dragons in the vault and clear it without much fuss.

My character also went back to Maj'Eyal and cleared the rest of the backup guardians[te4.org].

Now head down the slimy stairs in Grushnak Pride.

You will encounter pedestals where you must use the appropriate orb you got from the pride bosses. A special enemy will then get summoned to fight you. Once you activate all four pedestals, you will then unlock the path to High Peak. You won't be able to leave once you enter, so make sure to do your final shopping/preparations. I recommend that you get at least one magical wild infusion that you can inscribe just before the final fight.

I put my last remaining stat points into Cunning

The final stretch. We just need to ascend 10 levels to reach our goal. Each level's exit stairs is guarded by a random unique whose difficulty can range from trivial to very hard. If one is giving you trouble you can simply ascend the stairs after luring the unique off of it. In higher difficulties the enemies' level is way higher than the players, so the preferred strategy is to beeline to the stairs while fighting as little as possible. However on normal difficulty the enemies are more manageable and can be used as the final remaining experience points to reach level 50. If going for the beeline strategy, a Burning Star[te4.org] or Omniscience[te4.org] along with a high level Track will significantly speed up the process. On the 10th level, use the Orb of Many Ways on the green portal and you will be teleported to the Sanctum where you will meet...

This is it, the final battle! Aeryn will show up to help and will draw aggro, so for a limited time we can focus on outputting as much damage as possible without worrying much about defensive tactics. Your Antimagic talents will also provide further disruption, so make sure to spam them off cooldown. You should focus on Elandar first because he is the squishier of the two as well as the bigger threat. He will annoyingly kite away from you and spam his blink, so pinning him in place with the Rod of Spydric Poison will help a lot.

The most surefire way to win this fight is to end it early with overwhelming firepower, but this is only possible if you're wearing super good gear. If you managed to accomplish this, then congrats! You are a legend. However, if your gear is not at that level, then what will likely happen is this: You will be chasing Elandar all over the level on a wild goose chase while Aeryn slowly gets beaten to death by Argoniel. While this is happening, monsters are spawning from the four portals to contribute to the chaos. Eventually Aeryn will die, and then the bosses will start focusing their wrath on you. In this scenario, the most common way that the player will die is that they get completely manhandled by Argoniel's hexes and curses. However, this will not happen to you, because you have your fail-safe: SPELL SAVE. With high enough spell save, Argoniel's deadly debuffs will bounce off of you harmlessly.

(Look at Argoniel's pitiful spellpower after getting brutally mogged by my Daunting Presence)


(nope. nope. nope. and nope.)

However, you still shouldn't completely let your guard down around Argoniel, because she still can gain significant amounts of spell power through Bloodlust stacks, which she can gain through landing melee strikes.

(Argoniel with max bloodlust stacks. Still not as high as my spell save (67).

All right, now on to how we can actually seize back victory. The first thing you should do is close the four portals spawning monsters. You can do this by mousing over the portal to check its type, then use the appropriate pride boss orb while standing over it. After that, you can focus your attention on Elandar if he's still alive. Argoniel won't be much of a threat if you periodically kite away from her to reset her Bloodlust stacks. After Elandar's down, you are pretty much guaranteed victory as long as you don't get too careless. The best time to go in on Argoniel is right after she wastes her most crippling debuff, Burning Hex.

Congrats on reaching the end of this guide(or skipping to the end, that's ok too). As a reward, I will tell you about another one of the most broken mechanics in the game: Deaggroing!

Enemies that are aggro'd towards you will drop their aggro if you change to a level that causes the game to autosave (by default this is only whenever you go to and from the overworld). There are many applications for this, but my favorite one by far is stranding tough enemies in zigzag tunnels.

Step 1: lure enemy into zigzag tunnel.


Step 2: make a mad dash to the stairs with a movement infusion


Step 3: return to the overworld


Step 4: PROFIT. Feel free to explore the rest of the level without worrying about that enemy anymore.

This is very useful in higher difficulties up to insane, because sometimes you will run into unkillable god enemies that will just hound you throughout the whole level.

If you think returning to the overworld is too much legwork, then you can change the settings so that you will autosave on every level change. Open up the Game Menu with 'Esc' then go to Game Options->Misc->enable "Zone save per level".

Be aware that changing this option will not affect the zones you already visited. Also, this will break the deaggro mechanic on the current zone you are on until you restart the game.

Non-rare enemies that can pass through walls like sandworm tunnelers, banshees, etc. can never be deaggro'd.

List of skipped zones starting from the lowest level range. I recommend that you visit them in a future run now that you have a better understanding of the game. Some of them might even contain unlockables[te4.org].

Hidden Compound[te4.org]
Ruined Dungeon[te4.org]
Golem Graveyard[te4.org]
Lake of Nur[te4.org]
Mark of the Spellblaze[te4.org]
Last Hope Graveyard[te4.org]
Temporal Rift[te4.org]
Old Conclave Vault[te4.org]
Dogroth Caldera[te4.org]
Dark Crypt[te4.org]
Flooded Cave[te4.org]
Shadow Crypt[te4.org]
Hidden Valley[te4.org]
Sludgenest[te4.org]
Elven Ruins[te4.org]