So, you've never played ToME before? Or maybe played it once and died horribly and confusedly?

Never fear! This guide is here for you.

This is a guide to the initially unlocked race options of Tales of Maj'eyal. While a relatively less impactful choice than class, the race you pick can still make or break your character, providing durability and abilities that you won't be able to gain otherwise.

Races generally consist of four different factors; Their initial statistic bonuses, their life modifier, their gained experience modifier, and their innate skillset-all races but Cornac have one, Cornac having a special, also uniquely good, replacement.

Generally speaking, the statistical bonuses are the misleading part-they have very low impact, equating to a single level of statistics at most.

Life Modifier generally means +1 to +2 HP(The value scales with leveling) per level, per point, and is more important. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it means 25~ extra life at L10 and over 100 at L50, the cap.

Experience modifier impact is hotly debated. In this writer's opinion, faster leveling speed is quite useful; While enemies do level as you do, enemies generally gain less damage from a level than you, and less versatility.

Talents are often the most important part-many racial talents supply unique advantages that your class won't cover. Cornac has no innate talent set, but in exchange they have a unique advantage in an extra Category point, which will be covered in their section.

The "standard" race, with 10 Life Modifier, standard EXP gains, and no special life changes. Cornacs are unique in that they are the only race to not start with a unique category of racial skills.

Cornac gets one extra Category Point. A Category Point allows you to unlock a locked category-if you meet the level requirements for it. It also allows you to unlock an infusion slot. Finally, it can be used to strengthen a currently existant category. The last is usually a weak effect, but it varies on the category.

While theoretically the middle road race, they actually tend to have lower durability than other races. Out of the starting races, Cornac is the second lowest on life-only Shalore has less, and only one point, at 9. On the other hand, Cornac definitely levels the fastest of all the starting races. The benefit of faster leveling is hotly debated, but this writer feels like the Cornac leveling rate is very useful up until the very end of the game. It's certainly very good for someone just starting out.

All told, using Cornac with a low durability class isn't recommended. Otherwise, they make very good characters of many types, and are a good choice if you just can't decide.

Incidentally, probably the best effect someone can have with an early game Cornac's category point is to get an infusion slot with it, for the most part.

An infusion is essentially an equippable talent that can be bought or found, and these are, by and large, defensive abilities-abilities your class may not have at all. Teleportation, healing, protective shielding, and more all can be found in this form, and on base you only have three slots to put them in. It's quite useful.

A fairly middle road race. Higher start with 11 Life Modifier, 15% EXP penalty, and the Higher racial tree, as well as a starting point in the first skill. (As a note; all non-Cornac races get a starting point in their first racial skill. This effectively means that all non-Cornac races get one extra Generic skill point.)

They also get +1 to non-Cunning/Constitution stats.

Generally speaking, the innate bonuses/penalties to statistics that various races get is reasonably worth ignoring. It doesn't do much even in the short term, let alone long term when your stats cap out at above 60.

Higher racial skills are extremely non-focused support effects, with a small bend towards magic.

Gift of the Highborn, the first skill, is one of the best first skills of any race-it is essentially a free Regeneration infusion that doesn't take a turn, and makes Higher particularly good at the early game. Later, however, it requires Willpower to stay useful, and not all classes care at all for Willpower, making the long term use questionable.

As a note-the first talent of every racial tree is, in general, instant and only gains cooldown speed from leveling it. They all generally make good single point investments, but leveling them heavily is questionable for gains, as they don't get more powerful-you can just use them more, and often not enough more to really change the outcome of fights.

Overseer of Nations passively boosts the absolute sight radius-normally a value almost impossible to boost-as well as your light, infravision and Heightened Senses effective radius-in practice, it lets you see farther. The impact is highly variable-many dungeons are cramped warrens where seeing past five squares isn't a big deal, while some others are huge, open, lit spaces and seeing past 10 squares-the normal sight radius-can potentially allow you to lay traps, avoid dangers and survive more reliably. It's a good skill, but generally a more advanced one-don't level it heavily early on.

Born Into Magic passively gives you a free-but-temporary damage boost on damage spells(Note that the definition of spells only cover Mana using skills, out of the initial classes.), resistance to a rare element(Arcane), and a boost to your Magic Save. Magic Save is your chance to avoid magical status effects-generally the least dangerous of the various status effects, but still useful. Not a bad skill, but not incredibly standout.

Highborn's Bloom allows you to, for a short period and with a high cooldown, cast most talents without consuming resources...but, if you don't have enough to use the talent to start with, it won't let you cast it. This makes it a rather advanced skill-you have to use it before you run out of resources, not after. Fortunately, this talent doesn't take a turn to use, which helps for using it effectively. Resources in general aren't too strict on the starting classes, so this isn't a major deal for the beginner, but it can have uses.

Overall, Higher are oriented towards caster classes-of which only two start unlocked, though one will be unlocked fairly quickly. Having said that, starting a Higher is a nice, middle-road and safe way to begin the game for any class. Gift of the Highborn is good on any build for the first few dungeons, and can really make a difference in how long you live.

An advanced-and somewhat newbie misleading-Elven race, Shalore are very unusual. They have 9 Life Modifier-the only starting race with less than Cornac, and the lowest of any starting unlock race-and a moderate 25% EXP penalty, as well as their own Shalore racial talents.

Statistically, they have a mage bend. -2 Strength, +1 Dexterity and Cunning, +2 Magic and +3 Willpower. This makes many people think they're a heavily mage race. While this is not entirely untrue, they aren't nearly as simple as that.

Their Racial talents are highly unusual.

Grace of the Eternals scales with the higher of Magic or Dexterity, and boosts your Global Speed for eight turns. Global Speed is the amount of actions you can take for an enemy's one. At endgame, this is an incredibly powerful talent. Assuming, that is, you're using Magic or Dexterity.

Potentially, you can get three actions for every two your foe gets, fairly easily at endgame. The haste duration lasts eight turns. Since this talent doesn't take a turn to cast, that's two or three free turns to attack, heal, etc. And these bonus turns don't lower the status' length, so in practice this lasts longer than it sounds.

On the other hand, your skills don't cool down any faster, so make sure you have something to do with those turns! This actually makes it strongest for a physical fighter, who has a no-cooldown option-namely, hitting things. But it's very good in general... as long as you're using one of the two stats in question.

Their middle skills are simpler. Magic of the Eternals passively boosts the critical hit rate and critical hit modifier substantial amounts. The former is obvious enough-the latter is the amount that critical hits do. Some classes rely much more on critical hits than others, but on the whole this is a fairly powerful passive ability.

Secrets of the Eternals, meanwhile, is a free sustained effect that will give you a chance to go invisible when hit with non-trivial damage, for a short time. Invisibility is a fairly complex statistic, but in practice most enemies will functionally be blinded, moving in random directions and shooting in your general vicinity, rather than directly at you. It's not invulnerability, but it's a very helpful bonus.

Timeless, the final skill, is the main reason most players pick Shalore. It lowers the duration of negative status, raises the duration of positive status, and drops all of your cooldowns by a fixed value.

In practice, Timeless is quite complicated. Raising the duration of positive status is extremely powerful for some skills. Berserker, for instance, has a temporary status that makes it impossible for them to die while it's in effect! Boosting that by a flat rate five turns is impressively good. Timeless also functions as a status cure-and one of the few that can impact all of the negative status you are afflicted with-and even makes your talents recharge faster. It almost certainly needs a full five Generic points investment to get full worth out of, but it can be worth it.

All told, Shalore are odd. They tend to leverage specific classes-those with powerful but temporary buff talents, those with heavy critical hit emphasis, and those with speed boosting talents to start with. (Grace of the Eternals can be stacked with other speed boosting abilities.)

In practice, however, they make a poor beginner race-their speed boosting is unimpressive at low levels and they are extremely poor at taking hits. Don't let the 10% raw HP less than Cornac fool you-Cornac will usually have a few levels on them, and everyone else has more HP than Cornac. Even their starting gear-a Phase Door Rune and a Shielding Rune-is different from all other races.

Add in the fact that classes modify your racial base HP upwards or downwards, and Shalore durability can become scarily low. Some classes can go as low as 5 Life Modifier with a Shalore, as opposed to 8 with some other starting races-a practical hit of roughly 25-30% less life! Definitely best used after some experience.

Thalore are the more physical oriented Elven race. With 11 Life Modifier and a EXP Modifier of 35%, they generally have the rough durability of Cornac, after leveling rate is taken into account.

-2 Magic, +1 Willpower/Constitution, +2 Strength and +3 Dexterity certainly loudly shouts physical fighter, statistically. In practice, though, Thalore's talents are extremely well rounded-though fully leveraging them can get expensive in points, easily.

Wrath of the Woods is a simple skill-lowers the damage you take and raises the damage you deal for five turns. The values scale with Willpower, not a physical statistic, oddly. However, the base values on this talent are good enough to make it worth remembering, and it doesn't scale strongly enough to be a powerhouse even on Willpower heavy classes-of which there are none out of the starting class unlocks. Decent, but not incredible.

Unshackled passively raises your Mind and Physical Saves. Mind and Physical Saves generally are what most of the dangerous status in the game-the kind that will place you in fatal situations potentially-check against, and the +25 from this skill is amazingly powerful at stopping negative status, early on, and is never useless. Capping this off when it becomes available is a very powerful boost to your survival... if you don't need the Generic points for other things too much.

Guardian of the Wood reduces your odds of being diseased heavily, your damage taken from Blight damage by a notable amount, and your damage taken from all forms of damage by a small amount. All Resistance is extremely powerful, and even the low(6%~) amount granted at cap by this talent is extremely useful, and Blight is a very common, and dangerous, element. Toss in the resistance to an annoying but not major status type, and you have a very good passive effect...if you invest fully in it, that is.

Nature's Pride is a simple talent that produces two friendly Treants for a short period. It takes no time to cast, the Treants are durable enough to distract enemies for their duration, for the most part, and they do extremely poor damage. Leveling the talent will give a (non-displayed) bonus to their statistics, but on the whole this is best left at a single point. It is, however, very useful as a one point skill.

Thalore are pretty simple. Their raw statistics are generally below average-slow leveling rate, 11 HP modifier. But their talents are top notch... if you have the 10 Generic needed to really cap out Unshackled and Guardian of the Wood. How much of a hit this is can be class and build reliant, and their advantages are more of a middle and lategame edge, rather than an early one(though Unshackled can certainly help after the first few dungeons).

They're good, but only Shalore need as much investment to be really good, and Shalore have extremely central abilities-Thalore mostly just survive better on theirs. Probably not the best beginner choice, but not a bad one.

Your standard, durable little person. 12 HP Modifier and 25% EXP Modifier makes these tied for the most durable of the initial races-and the unlockable race that has more raw durability is questionable for being better at the job than this or the other candidate.

-2 Dexterity/Magic, +3 Constitution/Willpower and +4 Strength is actually noticable early in the game, as well-the bonus HP and damage this provides is actually noticeable.

That they have a bit better of an early game is good, as they have a relatively dangerous starting dungeon that cannot simply be left. However, the flipside to this is that it's a unique starting dungeon, and that dwarves get a second unique dungeon. Dwarves are unique among starting races in this regard-every other starting race can easily reach any other's starting dungeon, and for optimal survival and easement into the game's concepts, really should.

As such, Dwarves can get more loot than other races, in the early game. This can be quite helpful.

As far as talents go, Dwarves are back-ended. Resilience of the Dwarves grants a temporary Spell/Physical save bonus, and an Armor bonus, that scales with Constitution. Useful, particularly for heavy armor wearers that are stacking armor up to start with, but likely the weakest of the first racial talents.

Stoneskin passively gives a small chance to raise your armor temporarily, when hit with a physical attack. Again, generally underwhelming, but not utterly useless either.

Power is Money is fairly unique. It passively raises all three of your Saves based on the amount of money you have, and its level. In practice, this can end up +35 to all three saves-an amazingly high bonus that in practice will cut status rates anywhere from 10-25%(Notably, this is subtractive-if a status had 50% chance to hit, it would have 40-25% chance. This is better than it sounds.). But you do need a couple thousand gold pieces laying around to fuel it.

In practice, this isn't a huge problem-after the middle of the game, the only thing worth spending large amounts of money on is, by and large, a 4000 cash item that you'll have to spend a while saving for anyways. So this is a fairly impressive talent, but unlike Thalore's similar skill, it tends to be more impressive later, rather than early.

Stone Walking is a simple talent-it's a racial, rather than gear or class, teleportation effect. While it's not very powerful-it can only be used if you're adjacent to a wall, and it can only go through a certain depth of a wall-it is still highly useful. You can use it as an emergency teleportation if you end up in the wrong place after a more normal teleport, a teleportation that can be used through Silence or magic disrupting effects(Fairly useful, as an optional event can permanently disrupt magical effects in exchange for other bonuses-which includes most teleports.), or just a general movement tool. It scales with Constitution and leveling, so it can potentially reach through fairly deep walls with some investment. But it's generally most useful, relative to the cost, at L1.

All told, Dwarves are a great middle of the road race. Due to how class modifiers work, they often make surprisingly good spellcasters, having disproportionately more HP after a -3/-4 to Life Modifier than other races. Their bonuses are a little less prominant for physical fighters, but having a teleportation skill can be more useful for the less magically inclined classes, and Power is Money is good for everyone. A very nice race, but the special start can take some work to get through.

Your other standard little person. 12 HP Modifier, 20% EXP Modifier makes these guys, surprisingly, as good on raw hit taking as Dwarves.

-3 Strength, +1 Constitution and +3 Cunning/Dexterity show an obvious bend towards Rogueish classes, which is one of the few times that statistics give an unmitigatedly good nudge towards useful classes-Halflings make excellent Rogues. They additionally get a special +5 Luck-Luck is a hidden statistic that boosts your saves/defense/critical hit rates, all by quite small amounts(The most notable impact is on criticals, but even then, 5 Luck only equates to +1.5% rate...).

Talent-wise, Halflings have an interesting set that rewards low investments disproportionately compared to high investments. Luck of the Little Folk is an excellent skill if you're boosting Cunning, granting a temporary bonus to all Saves and to all types of critical hit rate. Potentially, this can become upwards of 50% critical boost-if you're building Cunning on top of that, and have reasonably good endgame gear, this is a perfect critical rate for five turns, and some bonus saves on top of that. Very solid effect.

Duck and Dodge is a passive effect, that causes you to gain a temporary boost to Defense and absolute Evasion chance(Which is the odds that an attack will miss, even above and beyond a Defense check) for a short time, on enemy hits over 10-15% of your own life(varying on talent level).

In practice, this is an excellent anti-physical skill-both Defense and Evasion only check melee and archery type attacks, but this will effectively cut the damage from those by over half for a short period. It also becomes more effective with higher Luck, if you can find a way to boost it(they're quite rare!). Good for physical fighters who have to be up close and who don't have good Armor or Defense, or just for mages who need an emergency option-and it's still useful at L1!

Militant Mind passively grants a small bonus to all Saves and Powers based on how many enemies you can see, up to five enemies. While this is a fairly strong effect if you're facing a large crowd, it's underwhelming if you're seeing only one foe. A very player-dependant skill-depending on the style of play you prefer, and which class you're using, this can be a great skill to build up, or a noticeable but not special one level bonus that you get on the way to the next talent.

Indomitable is an excellent active, instant talent that instantly removes Pin/Daze/Stun type effects. (And Freeze, as well, though the description doesn't say this.) Additionally, it will block re-application of these effects for a while. While leveling this is rarely a major deal-it allows you to heal multiple of these effects off, and lengthens the block time-this is an amazing L1 skill that can save your life. Both Stun and Freeze are potentially quite dangerous effects.

Halflings are possibly the simplest race in the game-good durability, one of the faster leveling rates, and a talent tree that you can put four total points into and get surprisingly high milage. If you don't like hard decisions, Halfling is an excellent choice, and a good beginner race simply due to the good basic statistics.