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 designed to detail the initial classes of Tales of Maj'eyal, as well as some of the earliest unlocks.

Classes in Tales of Maj'eyal are simpler than races to understand on base-though, the complexity is largely in the intermeshing of their large talent set.

Having said that, classes only have three factors that matter. Their initial statistics, their life modifier(the amount of life you gain per level), and their talents. The former matters very little-mostly it helps you equip gear early on as a physical fighter. Talents are by far the most important thing, but the life modifier doesn't hurt to pay attention to.

Berserker might be best classed as the all-rounder physical fighter. +3 Life Modifier is gamebest among any class-even frail races no longer feel frail with this class, and the higher mod races are quite durable.

Talent and gear-wise, they are a heavy armor physical fighter with a focus on two-handed weaponry and normal "bump" physical attacks. (So called because you can get them just by hitting a direction that the enemy is in.) This makes them the most similar to a classic Roguelike physical fighter-just run into things over and over until they die.

This isn't to say that they have no talents-quite the contrary-but they tend to be supportive of this playstyle.

Statistically, Berserkers want to focus on Strength the most. Dexterity, Constitution and Willpower are good statistics to boost. An optional ability set that is possible to find in the world synergizes strongly with Willpower, and Berserkers are one of the best users of it. Dexterity boosts the accuracy impact of Berserker and raises accuracy its self, while Constitution makes you that much more durable(as well as several talents in Conditioning using it).

Notable Berserker Talents:

-Death Dance. Generally not a big deal to level, but an L1 Death Dance is extremely good at heavily damaging enemies, and has some area of effect. Very useful.

-Berserker. The talent named after the class is quite good, though a bit odd-you sacrifice Defense and Armor for Physical Power, Accuracy, Stun and Pinning resistance.

Stun is a dangerous status, however-it slows your movement and vastly lowers your damage. Pinning isn't a joke for a physical fighter, either. Add in the fact that the Defense/Armor loss is a flat 10 and the power/accuracy bonuses scale, and this is obviously a great long term talent. In the short term, however, you do become noticeably less durable. Your damage will spike greatly, though. Pick this up at some point, but how early is player preference.

-Warshout. Confusion is a fairly powerful status, the area covered is large, and, once leveled, the duration is quite good. A very good talent all around.

-Stunning Blow. Stun is, as mentioned previous, a strong defensive status-and the enemy isn't even bright enough to know it can't do notable damage through it, making it better.

Stunning Blow's fast cooldown and decent duration stun combine to allow it to continuously stack Stun effects on the same enemy(Given enough leveling-leveling the talent beyond a 6 turn duration is rather a waste, by the way.). At least, so long as the attack hits and the enemy fails its status check.

Considering that Berserker(The talent, that is.) vastly ups the odds of enemies being hit and successfully statused, this is quite likely to destroy any non-Stun-resistant single targets-including many bosses.

-Rush. This is quite important for any physical fighter that gets it-it is how you get up to enemies to kill them, when they have ranged attacks and enjoy pelting you with them. Leveling it allows you to use it again faster, which is quite important, but doesn't have to be done right away. Getting it as soon as possible is good though.

-Mortal Terror and Unstoppable, in the Bloodthirst unlockable category. The former not only gives you a notable critical hit rate boost, but also will temporarily render negligable weaker enemies after critical hits. Unstoppable, meanwhile, literally makes it impossible to die while you're under its effects. Both are excellent talents.

-Weapon Mastery. Perhaps the most important Generic skill for the Berserker, it gives you more physical power, which means more damage and better status chance, in addition to simply raising your damage. Focus heavily on this.

While Berserker is a generally durable class with an emphasis on high basic physical damage, Bulwark is a poor base damage class with an emphasis on physical durability and high damage talents. +2 Life Modifier is still a fairly durable class on raw HP.

They focus on sword/shield combat. Single one-handed weapons are generally one of the lower damage options, and most of their attack talents are based around requiring this. On the plus side, shields are an excellent way to get easily switched and strong elemental resistance later in the game.

Since this guide is focused more on the early game, however, the big thing to note is that Bulwarks are amazingly hard to drop in the earlygame, and are indeed one of the absolute best classes to start the game with. They're fairly good later, though not the best class. But their defensive game early on is amazing.

Statistically, the most important stats for Bulwark are Strength and Dexterity. Dexterity raises their accuracy and the impact from one of their most important talents, while Strength is the general damage stat for physical fighters. Constutition makes a good, standard, and distant third.

Notable Bulwark Talents:

-Shield Wall. An absolutely amazing talent, Shield Wall gives a 20% penalty to your physical damage(Which can be mitigated with physical damage boosting, or weapons that convert your damage to other elements.). In exchange, it gives extremely large-and scaling with Dexterity-bonuses to Armor and Defense. In practice, Shield Wall will practically nullify physical damage, as many enemies fail to hit you and many more fail to do notable damage. It even grants Stun resistance!

Even later in the game, Shield Wall largely makes physical damage negligable, but early the impact is amazing. Cap it off.

-Shield Pummel, Overpower, Assault. Your main ways of dealing real damage, pick these up as soon as possible. Shield Pummel is an excellent skill to level up, as it both Stuns-an excellent status-and deals good damage. Assault is the best damage talent that Bulwark has, but it gains little from leveling-player's choice if you level it up or not. Overpower is generally worth leaving at L1, as it's not a very powerful talent, but it's still very useful to have-it does far more damage than your basic physical.

-Shield Expertise. This quietly raises the damage from all shield using talents-like Shield Pummel-as well as boosting Shield Wall's bonuses. Not a high initial priority, but good to get once you have your basic talents going.

-Riposte, Block. You won't find Block on your talent list-it's granted by wearing a shield, and levels up by wearing better shields. Block allows you to produce a temporary barrier against the next physical hit. Block will also absorb elemental hits, if the shield you're wearing resists that element.

Various later talents make this effect much stronger, but the key early-game thing is that it also gives the enemy that was Blocked a temporary status effect that makes the next hit deal doubled damage. Normally, the attack has to be fully absorbed to do this, but Riposte allows this to happen on partially blocked attacks, as well as raise the amount of hits that deal doubled damage. (Also, do note that it's hits, not attacks. Multiple hit talents will consume multiple charges of this, doubling damage until the status runs out of double effectiveness hits.)

Since Bulwark is largely focused on rotating a few damage talents, this is quite effective-block, then use Assault or Shield Pummel for massive damage. Riposte is required to really leverage this, however.

-Rush. See the Berserker section-being able to reach enemies that are pelting you with magical damage is important.

-Greater Weapon Focus and Step Up, in the Battle Tactics tree. The former essentially is a temporary, Dexterity scaling boost to all damage, and quite a large one, and is a great buff effect. The latter requires full L5 leveling to be truly good, but reliably grants you a huge amount of movement speed after kills. Movement speed makes it easier to get from enemy to enemy to kill them, so this is quite important.

-Armor Training. The way Armor works is that it reduces an amount of the basic damage stat of the enemy's attack equal to your Armor, or equal to the % that your Armor Hardiness is. So, if the enemy would have all of their damage nulled, but your Armor Hardiness is only the default 30%, 70% of their damage gets through anyways.

In less complicated terms-tons of armor means quite little without Hardiness, and Armor Training is the only place to easily get it. While Weapon Mastery matters a lot to Bulwarks too-it matters a lot to all physical fighters-Armor Training is quite important to them as well.

Archer is a fairly simple class, designed around ranged crippling and high damage, high speed ranged pummeling. With 0 Life Modifier, it's reasonably durable if an enemy happens to get up close, and is perfectly capable of using heavy armor.

Bows are the general preference for most Archer players, but Sling and Shield is more durable and less damaging-a reasonable tradeoff, though the class rarely needs that high of defense thanks to its ranged, disabling orientation. Regardless, you need the proper ammo-ammo in ToME is only temporarily limited, can be replenished using the Reload talent that comes with any quiver or bullet pouch, or simply by resting with one equipped. Keep an eye on your ammo!

Statistically, Archers focus strongly on Strength and Dexterity, for the most part. Sling users get good milage out of Cunning, which Slings partially use, along with Dexterity, to determine their damage, and makes a good third statistic.

Notable Archer Talents:

-Steady Shot. With a very short cooldown and very high damage, it's hard to go wrong with using this skill. Leveling it isn't required, but chances are that you'll be using it so often that you may as well hit L5 with it. It's usable with Slings and Bows, so there's few reasons to not use it.

-Aim, Rapid Shot. Aim is recommended for the early and middle of the game, while Rapid Shot is recommended later. Aim lowers your shot speed and roots you in place while the sustain is active, but gives you far, far higher damage shots thanks to a large critical hit and physical power boost.

Additionally, since Archer status hit rates are, unusually, based off Accuracy, the large Accuracy boost it grants is quite useful-and since bows and slings shoot at a faster than 100% rate, this mostly means you won't get bonus actions every few shots, not that enemies will act multiple times for your actions.

Rapid Shot is a better later game option, but is still worth considering early due to the fact that it doesn't root you in place. It is essentially the opposite of Aim(and can't be used at the same time as it). It's worth leveling both eventually-they are both excellent skills that excel in different circumstances. Sometimes you need movement, sometimes you need accuracy, etc. But picking one to hit L5 on is a great idea, and Aim has more earlier game impact.

-Scatter Shot. The description is slightly misleading; The attack essentially explodes at the aimed at point like a fireball, and it does not take multiple shots. (Notably, this isn't true of Volley of Arrows, which does actually fire multiple, non-piercing arrows.) Since this is a large radius Stun effect-and since Stun is an excellent status-this is a very effective move. The fact that it's very solidly damaging certainly doesn't hurt, either.

-Bow or Sling Mastery. It's not inconcievable that you'll want both-they both give bonuses to the rate that you can reload your ammo, and the bonuses apply regardless of what you're wielding, and stack. But pick one to reach L5 with as soon as possible-as usual, primary weapon talents are very important for weapon based fighters.

-Intuitive Shots, in the unlockable Archery Excellence tree. This provides an excellent defense, making your Archer that much more capable at short range. As some enemies are intelligent enough to pull you into your own arrows in flight, having some durability-so that you can shoot people in the face-can be a major help.

One of the less recommended for beginners classes, the Arcane Blade does have the virtue of being the most mage-like of the various starting classes. The main reason to warn off beginners is their huge pool of talents-a whopping seventeen categories!

Fortunately, some of their complexity is in flexibility-an Arcane Blade can specialize in two-handed weapons, sword/shield combat, dual-wielding or even no specific weapon at all. Still, they require committing to a specific, if not exact, build plan from fairly early.

Arcane Blades have +2 Life Modifier, which makes them quite durable, given their magical bend-only two other magically inclined classes have +2 Life Modifier, and neither are early unlocks. What armor to use on them is debatable-massive plate armors are not recommended, as they heavily boost Fatigue. Fatigue raises the costs of various talents, and does so with doubled impact for Mana based spellcasting. Mail armor or robes, depending on preference, is recommended. As mentioned, they can use practically any weapon, though dedicating to staves or mindstars may be recommended only for advanced players.

Arcane Blades also rely heavily on inter-talent synergies-multiple trees rely on other trees, or on other talents in the same tree, or simply grant you strong buffs that mean nothing without talents to use them with. As such, doing whatever you want on a whim is generally not recommended with Arcane Blade. Have a plan!

Statistically, an Arcane Blade's primary statistics are Strength, Magic and Cunning. However, they can make good use of every single statistic in the game-another reason they're more of an advanced class.

-Notable Arcane Blade Talents:

-Flame, Lightning. While many players suggest avoiding these talents, the reason involves a special, hidden category that requires special events to even see. For the beginner, this isn't necessary-and these talents can make a class that is extremely hard to use for beginners far simpler. Both Flame and Lightning are very good, fast cooldown beam attacks-leveling both means that, two turns out of three, you can constantly pound your enemies with ranged elemental damage. Quite useful for a physical fighter.

-Flameshock. An excellent, large area, high duration stun with a surprisingly short cooldown, and even some added damage. The main issue is that the status rate runs off Spellpower, which isn't as good for a base Arcane Blade as it is the other class that naturally gets the spell. Still, fairly useful, particularly if you keep a staff around to swap to before using it.

-Arcane Combat. This talent allows you to randomly hit enemies with spells after using a physical attack. There's no extra action cost-just the mana to cast the spell. This makes your basic physical attack far more damaging, and makes up for Arcane Blades having relatively low amounts of physical talents.

This, incidentally, is why many players prefer to avoid Flame and Lightning-Arcane Combat will only use one of the three spells Flame, Lightning or Earthen Missiles, per attack. Earthen Missiles is the most damaging, and many players prefer to skip the first two. Personally, I prefer the versatility that having all three-and the rest of their respective spell trees-provides. And the average player that is reading this guide probably doesn't have the hidden category Earthen Missiles is in yet.

Do note that you need Cunning to use this well, however. Cunning, while an excellent stat on Arcane Blade due to the skills that scale off it, is not something you should invest in early. Physical power, so that you can do more physical damage, and Magic, so that you can do more magical damage, are more important. Cunning should be invested in in the middle or later game. Still, this is good to pick up even early, as you can randomly hurt enemies with your basic physical attack quite heavily.

-Arcane Cunning. This allows you to convert your Cunning to Spellpower. Extremely useful; Arcane Blades end up with very good Spellpower due to this, eventually.

-Arcane Feed. This allows you to remove your Manasurge rune, if you want-you probably don't, but it depends on the player. (No one but Alchemists and two other unlockable Mage metaclass classes have natural Mana regen-everyone else needs a Manasurge Rune or a talent for it.) More importantly, it raises your critical hit rate by a fair deal. An excellent all around skill.

-Arcane Destruction. This allows you to convert your spellpower-which your Cunning may be boosting-to physical power, partially, which alone would make it interesting. However, it also allows you to critical hit and blast your enemies with a magic based elemental burst for free. This is a great single level, and worth leveling heavily as well.

-Various primary weapon unlockable trees. I would suggest fixing on one of the three trees early, rather than later, if you plan on having a primary weapon type-and you probably should. Two-handed weapons are probably the least important-you don't require Stunning Blow, the main draw of that unlockable tree, and if you plan on sticking with those, you may want to save the Category Point. But if you want sword/shield or dualwielding, you'll want the respective tree, for their strong physical attacks that run off Stamina-a resource Arcane Blade uses relatively little of.

-The entire Aegis tree. Arcane Reconstruction provides you with a nice heal spell-a good reason to care about this class, as healing abilities aren't common in physical fighters. Shielding raises the effectiveness of various shields, such as Shielding Runes and Conveyance's Displacement Shield. Arcane Shield gives you a barrier every time you use a healing spell-like Arcane Reconstruction-and as it turns out, this barrier is strengthened by Shielding. And Aegis is an active skill that boosts the power of all your barriers. Between the four, you can mitigate an amazing amount of damage.

-Phase Door, Teleport. Both of these are some of the best escape plans in the game. Pick one to hit L5 on at some point-Phase Door is more precise, but Teleport will reliably get you out of the sight range of the enemy. Given that Arcane Blade has relatively few mobility options, for a physical fighter, Phase Door is probably recommended-it won't get you right to the enemy, as it has a fuzz radius on the target teleport, but it'll get you close. Either way, both are excellent options.

-Combat Accuracy. While, like all physical fighters, a Mastery skill-Weapon Mastery, in this case, likely-is important, Combat Accuracy is worth a special note for Arcane Blade. They can't really focus on Dexterity, and this is one of the few ways to make them actually hit anything with their melee strikes.

Another less recommended for beginners class, the Rogue generally focuses on hit-and-run tactics and a more defensive playstyle, thanks to its relatively low durability.

With 0 Life Modifier, a fairly iffy amount of escapes and defensive abilities-mostly Defense boosts, which can situationally be pierced by high accuracy enemies or mages-and a focus on Stealth, which requires light armor, the Rogue is one of the least durable melee fighters. And Stealth is a major class focus-investing heavily in it is highly recommended, as enemies will constantly see through and target you through it otherwise.

On the upside, Stealth provides you with ways to deal huge amounts of damage. Rogues focus on dualwielding-already the highest damage weapon option. The net result is that they can do a crazily high amount of damage-enough so that, hopefully, they won't need defensive options that much. Still, it's very easy to mess up and die with a Rogue-they're not beginner friendly at all.

Statistically, a Rogue's primary statistics are Dexterity and Cunning, though it can be hard to keep one alive without some Constitution.

-Notable Rogue Talents

-Lethality. While leveling this isn't required-though it isn't bad-this is notable because it makes your Daggers run off Dexterity instead of Strength, allowing you to focus primarily on Dexterity and Cunning. This is essentially why Rogues work, in a sense.

-Flurry. While Dual Strike and Whirlwind are excellent attack talents that should be used, Flurry is amazing, potentially dealing triple your already high damage for one of the nastiest single actions in the game.

-Dual Weapon Training and Dual Weapon Defense. Training eventually raises your offhand damage from the 50% that is its base to dealing even more damage than your mainhand-essentially raising all of your damage 30%~! Dual Weapon Defense grants a large chunk of Defense that scales with Dexterity-early in the game this can mitigate the majority of physical damage, as you simply dodge most of the physicals headed your way. This is the difference between a Rogue living or dying in physical combat, and is quite important.

-Dirty Fighting. Another source of Stun, this allows you to keep enemies locked down, along with Dual Strike. Enemies that can't fight back effectively are much less of a danger to you.

-Stealth. While the Stealth tree is odd, it is excellent. Essentially, Stealth makes every enemy make a check against you every turn, while you're under its effects-if they fail it, they either don't see you(if they haven't seen you yet) or function as though they're blinded(if they have).

The effect of the latter is generally good-more intelligent enemies will try to fire in your general direction, but the less intelligent ones will simply try to mill around and find you. This mitigates a lot of potential ranged damage that otherwise you just couldn't take.

Leveling the main Stealth skill is very important, as it lets you re-enter stealth at short ranges as well as lowering the chances of temporary detection-which in turn means less people firing straight at you, and more firing around you. Shadowstrike allows you to leverage your Stealth into offense, when you finally break it. Hide in Plain Sight is not a requirement to level, but is a very useful single level for certain, and Unseen Actions can potentially allow you to Shadowstrike multiple times.

As a final note, an extra category point in this category is extremely popular-it boosts the power of all the effects in this tree notably, making it harder for enemies to see you, raising your damage from stealth, making it easier to Stealth near enemies, etc. It's worth considering for a heavy stealth build. Just don't neglect your normal talents!

-Dagger Mastery. As usual, the Mastery talents are quite important, and Daggers are definitely the way to go with Rogues.

-Nimble Movements. Rogues have relatively few good options for movement, and one of them is even in a locked category. This is the main exception, and can be used without breaking Stealth to get to enemies safely without them seeing you-or to get out of dangerous situations.

-Misdirection. Another Defense booster that even lightly mitigates non-physical damage. Stacking Defense means that only a rare few enemies will be able to hit you with any reliability, so this is very useful.

Another fairly iffy for the beginner class, the Shadowblade is essentially a Rogue that has gained magical support abilities in exchange for a weaker core game-Stealth is a locked category for them.

A blend of the Arcane Blade and the Rogue, Shadowblades are admittedly simpler than both-generally they want to pick a specific focus, either fast melee fighter or stealth oriented dualwielder.

Having said that, they have one of the most difficult early games of any class, thanks to a reliance on unlockable, later game talents that require high investment of some kind or another.

The Shadowblade has 0 Life Modifier, like the Rogue. They have a focus on Dexterity, Cunning and Magic, though Cunning is desirable. They dualwield daggers, like Rogue. Stealth oriented Shadowblades need to have light armor(Non-Mail/Plate), and are rather frail until they get Defense and their Stealth going-which can take quite a while. Non-sneaky Shadowblades can reasonably run heavy armor, however, and are generally easier to get off the ground.

Notable Shadowblade Talents:

-Lethality. While leveling this isn't required-though it isn't bad-this is notable because it makes your Daggers run off Dexterity instead of Strength, allowing you to focus primarily on Dexterity and Cunning. Shadowblades are even more strapped for statistics than Rogues, so this is fairly major for them.

-Flurry. While Dual Strike and Whirlwind are excellent attack talents that should be used, Flurry is amazing, potentially dealing triple your already high damage for one of the nastiest single actions in the game.

-Dual Weapon Training and Dual Weapon Defense. Training eventually raises your offhand damage from the 50% that is its base to dealing even more damage than your mainhand-essentially raising all of your damage 30%~! Dual Weapon Defense grants a large chunk of Defense that scales with Dexterity-early in the game this can mitigate the majority of physical damage, as you simply dodge most of the physicals headed your way. This is the difference between a Shadowblade living or dying in physical combat, and is quite important.

-Stealth. While the Stealth tree is odd, it is excellent. Essentially, Stealth makes every enemy make a check against you every turn, while you're under its effects-if they fail it, they either don't see you(if they haven't seen you yet) or function as though they're blinded(if they have).

The effect of the latter is generally good-more intelligent enemies will try to fire in your general direction, but the less intelligent ones will simply try to mill around and find you. This mitigates a lot of potential ranged damage that otherwise you just couldn't take.

Leveling the main Stealth skill is very important, as it lets you re-enter stealth at short ranges as well as lowering the chances of temporary detection-which in turn means less people firing straight at you, and more firing around you. Shadowstrike allows you to leverage your Stealth into offense, when you finally break it. Hide in Plain Sight is not a requirement to level, but is a very useful single level for certain, and Unseen Actions can potentially allow you to Shadowstrike multiple times.

The investment in this category is a bit different for Shadowblades than Rogues. Whereas Rogues start with the category, Shadowblades have to unlock it-a heavy investment in Stealth is two category points, and makes it quite difficult to specialize in their other abilities. Personally, I prefer to use Rogues for a heavy Stealth investment, as such-it can be very hard to get a heavy Stealth Shadowblade rolling, up until around L25 or so, when you have enough points to invest in Stealth heavily as well as your standard offense. The payoff is impressive, at least.

If much of this so far seems copy-pasted from the Rogue section, that's fairly normal. Shadowblades are fairly similar to Rogues in many ways. Fortunately, they do have some distinguishing talents.

-Illuminate. Illuminate grants you a magical, large radius attack spell/status effect. While getting high Spellpower on Shadowblades is hard, this spell is very useful, particularly since as of this guide's writing Illuminate can Shadowstrike out of Stealth, making it a great boon to early Stealth builds, which have few other strong options.

Blind is quite a solid status-enemies gain a fixed 50% chance to miss with melee attacks while blinded, and will often mistarget with ranged attacks. This talent is good enough so that some Shadowblades actually rely entirely on it, using Staves to power it-while I can't recommend that, keeping a Staff swap, or equipping Spellpower boosting daggers, is not a bad idea at all.

While Shadowblades do get Dirty Fighting as well, I recommend investing in Dual Strike and Illuminate over it. This doesn't mean that a level in Dirty Fighting is bad, however.

-Blur Sight. Much like Misdirection is for Rogues, so Blur Sight is for Shadowblade-a secondary way to boost Defense, making them much more physically durable thanks to stacking multiple Defense sources. It's overall not as powerful, but it's still useful.

-Phase Door, Teleport. Both of these are some of the best escape plans in the game. Pick one to hit L5 on at some point-Phase Door is more precise, but Teleport will reliably get you out of the sight range of the enemy.

Shadowblade, like Arcane Blade, has few mobility options, and while they do have one excellent option, it's only excellent for getting you into combat, and not out. I again recommend Phase Door for them. Teleport's a better option for heavy investment on them than Arcane Blades, though, as they lack healing and defensive talents-it's worth considering if you enjoy playing defensively. Regardless, you want L1 on both, at the very least.

-Shadow Cunning. While Spellpower is not, necessarily, a big deal for Shadowblades-relatively little they do scales off of it, mostly Illuminate and Blur Sight-some builds may specifically focus on these talents. If you're doing one that does, this talent is quite good.

-Shadow Feed. Much like Arcane Feed on Shadowblade, this allows you to skip on a Manasurge Rune-unlike Arcane Blade, this is quite a good idea, as Shadowblades consume relatively little Mana. Additionally, it allows you to attack faster, giving you free actions. Given that another possible build-centering key talent allows you to move faster as well, this is generally a good idea.

-Shadowstep. The main unique offensive talent, Shadowstep is a powerful attack that Dazes the target-rendering it largely useless until the next time it is attacked-and that also allows you a teleport to them. This teleport is even usable in areas that normally forbid teleportation, but does require an enemy target. It's extremely good, and should be used often.

-Ambuscade/Shadow Veil, in the unlockable Ambush tree. While Ambuscade has been nerfed repeatedly-it used to be the best talent in the game, likely-it's still a great option. It allows you to produce a copy of yourself temporarily and control it, allowing you to drain its resources, use any item based talents it has, essentially drain it dry... and then the effect expires, leaving you out only what the Ambuscade talent cost you to use. And if the copy dies, you don't. As an added bonus, the Ambuscade is heavily and unbreakably Stealthed.

Shadow Veil is designed to synergize with this-a powerful offensive/defensive talent that causes you to temporarily lose control. It's highly risky to use normally-if you get into a deadly situation, there will be nothing you can do about it-but Ambuscade provides a layer of safety.

There is a downside, however. Ambuscade cannot exist outside of line of sight of the creator, and while your Ambuscade is quite strong, your own body is helpless. Fortunately, you can switch back at any time, but this means Shadow Veil-which pre-empts any player actions, including the swap-can be dangerous still. Stealth and Invisibility(From the Phantasm tree)

An excellent beginner class, Alchemist is simple and fairly powerful, with a focus on staff combat, tossing powerful bombs, and letting their pet Golem-a second, levelable and equippable character, albiet with a limited equipment and talent set-deal with a lot of the problems.

A lot of the details come in with managing the golem, in fact. He has his own weapons/main armor, can use Rune-type Infusions(with three initial slots that can be expanded), and can be directed by examining him.

Equipment can be set by switching to him, via clicking on his small box in the upper left corner, and he can be leveled up this way as well-don't forget to level him! He has his own inventory and can be used as a storage bin-though getting any cash he gains out of him is only possible in the sense that he can also buy things. You can control the Golem and leave your Alchemist to the AI, but for various reasons this is not recommended.

Unlike the player Alchemist, however, a Golem's death isn't a big deal. It takes multiple turns and a small monetary cost to rebuild him for a base Alchemist, but they later can obtain a talent that instantly revives him without cost. This is good, as, while the Golem isn't horribly stupid, it is still an AI guided character.

At -1 Life Modifier, Alchemists are one of the less durable initially available classes in theory, but their Golem allows them a way to put a buffer between them and trouble. They specialize in staff usage-going as far as having a Staff physical combat category, which is quite useful for them. Oddly, both light armor(for mage related stats) and heavy armor(for more durability) work for them. While Mana costs are doubly raised with Fatigue, Alchemists rarely run into Mana problems .

The Golem has a fixed 13 total Life Modifier-above average, and equivalent to a Higher Bulwark, in fact. The Golem has no special weapon specialization, though-oddly-they may want a staff themselves due to much of their best damage being magical. Having said that, it's somewhat subjective-a good weapon means they do more consistent close range damage, while a staff means they do more burst/ranged damage. They do best with two-handed weapons.

An Alchemist's primary statistic is Magic, with Constitution a recommended secondary. The third statistic barely matters-Alchemists have little to worry about for Mana, to the point where removing their initial Manasurge Rune is a valid option. Cunning is an option for more critical hit rate. Strength is, oddly, an option, for more Physical Power-they have uses for it.

A Golem's primary statistics are Strength and Magic, with about equal importance. Since they get less stat points than a human-two per level instead of three-this is generally all you're going to get much leveling on. As a note, a Golem gets much less Class points than a player, and never naturally gains Generic or Category points-they can obtain these through unique item use, but this means less Generic and Category points for the Alchemist, and is not recommended.

Notable Alchemist Talents:

-Refit Golem. You get this no matter what, and cannot level it, but it's still useful to remember. It allows you to change the Golem's gear without swapping to it. It is used for swapping gems onto the Golem-something you can't do by swapping to it-if you get the Gem Golem talent. And it is used to heal the Golem if it is damaged, or revive it if it is dead.

Note, though, that Refit should only be used to revive the Golem if you're certain of your safety, as it has a long period of helplessness and the revival will fail if you take damage duing the process.

Note that there's no range requirement on Refit. You can be halfway across the map and still heal your Golem!

-Throw Bomb, Alchemist Protection, Explosion Expert. Essentially three parts of the same talent. Throw Bomb is the standard tossing of a little gem bomb, Alchemist Protection allows the bomb to eventually not hurt you, and Explosion Expert raises its radius, as well as raising its damage when used in tight spaces.

This combination is lethal-Throw Bomb is a huge burst of damage over a massive area if fully leveled.

Do note that the game cares about the quality of the Alchemist Gem you use for this talent. More expensive gems deal more damage. With 5 in all of these talents, bombs become one of the most devastating abilities in the game.

-The Infusions tree, or specifically two out of the four in it. These convert all your damage to one element(except Fire Infusion, which does not), and allows your bombs to deal more damage. This means that your bombs won't universally be walled by the first fire resistant enemy to come along.

I suggest Fire and Acid, personally. Infusions are generally not worth using unless they are level 5, and Fire doesn't require a running Sustain to be used, which makes it a good default. Acid is a good, generally applicable element with a useful secondary status.

Honorable mention to Frost Infusion, though-it's essentially as good as Acid, just requiring a few more points to reach, and makes the bomb the highest cold damage source in the game. Considering that cold damage is required for a specific, hard to reach unlockable category of talents, this can be useful.

-Golem Power/Resilience. Self-explanitory talents that make your golem better at hurting things and taking hits. Resilience is definitely the more important of the two.

-Channel Staff, and Staff Mastery. Your Alchemist doesn't have a lot to do with their turns-only the unlockable Fire Alchemy tree gives them something to do besides Channel Staff and Throw Bomb(or Shockwave Bomb, which doesn't get Explosion Expert bonuses.), and Fire Alchemy is merely decent. (Though it can make for quite a useful earlygame tree, if you choose to unlock it fast-it does very high damage early on.)

Channel Staff is the answer to this problem. Essentially, your Alchemist is a distance melee fighter, bopping people with a staff from range at a low cost. Channel Staff has no cooldown and can be used constantly, and directly hits the target tile, meaning that your Golem won't get struck by it.

Honorable mention to Defensive Posture in the same tree, providing a cheap and solid defensive boost to your Alchemist.

-Supercharge Golem, Gem Golem and Runic Golem in Advanced Golemancy. Supercharge is the most notable, giving your Golem the ability to be revived quickly, as well as a nice healing ability for it. Gem Golem allows you to boost your Golem's various stats, damage and/or resistances. And Runic Golem allows your Golem to reach five Rune slots-as there are various attack Runes, this provides him with added damage. (As a note, Runic Golem is inaccurate as of this guide's writing-it can only provide five Runes to a Golem, not six, and the L5 slot attempt does not function.)

-Extract Gems and Imbue Item. Extract Gems not only keeps you stocked on gems for bombs, but gems almost always sell for more than normal items. Imbue allows you to boost your own resistances, stats or damage, and is a good value for five Generic points.

Notable Golem Talents:

-Eye Beams. Level these up to L3 pronto, and consider capping off the talent. Eye Beams are, strangely, one of the Golem's best damage talents for most of the game, and provide it with a ranged option to boot.

-Molten Skin. While you don't want to neglect Strength, this is an excellent talent for dealing large amounts of stacking damage over time in a radius, and it doesn't hurt the Alchemist. Unfortunately, the Golem doesn't seem to realize this, and won't use the talent if you're in range of it, but this is rarely an issue.

-Knockback, Crush, Pound. Excellent single level investments that don't gain a lot through leveling them, these physical talents allow your golem to stay up in the enemy's face, where it belongs.

A barehanded melee fighter, the Brawler generally functions something between a Rogue and a heavier warrior type. They're generally not a great beginner choice, due to a large statistical split and their unusual combination of decent but not special durability and relatively low utility skills. However, their damage is extremely high, on the plus side, and gets higher as the game goes on.

With +2 Life Modifier, their raw life is comparable to other heavier physical fighters. However, unarmed talents require not using heavy plate. Mail, light armors and robes are the only options for Brawlers, as such. They can use their Mobility tree's Mobile Defense talent to make light armors more defensive, on the plus side, if the player chooses.

Their choice of weapon is, naturally, none-however, Gloves and Gauntlets have differing offensive stats. Gloves strike faster but deal less raw damage, and gauntlets deal more raw damage but strike slower. For Brawler, Gloves can potentially strike at 60% delay-getting an action more than three times per two turns. Gauntlets are an 80% speed weapon, giving a 5-4 ratio of your actions to a normal speed enemy.

Generally speaking, both options are excellent in different ways. Your cooldowns still cool down based on a "global" timer-taking more actions doesn't make them cool down faster, essentially. As Brawlers rely on very high multipliers for much of their damage, it's not a direct multiplier of damage to use gloves over gauntlets, as such. Both are good.

A Brawler's primary statistics are Strength, Dexterity, Cunning and Constitution. Unfortunately, this is four stats, and leveling four stats at once is nearly impossible. Generally speaking, skipping on Constitution is the best option-you only need a bit for one tree of talents, which can be gained from equipment as well. Focusing heavily on Dexterity, for its impact on your attacks(Gloves/Gauntlets use equal portions Strength, Dexterity and Cunning for damage) as well as talents and accuracy, is a good plan.

Notable Brawler Talents:

-The entire Pugilism tree. Sadly, at this point in time, its alternative, Grappling, isn't worth investing in, overall.

However, the entire Pugilism tree is excellent. Striking Stance, a free talent gained with the tree, boosts your accuracy and multipliers of the tree's talents based on Dexterity.

Double Strike allows you to attack twice in a row for no cost and with a fast cooldown that can be lowered more still by some gloves-an extremely good effect when capped out. Relentless Strikes further powers up the various moves in the tree even more, shortening their cooldowns. Spinning Backhand is an excellent mobility skill that deals solid damage. And Flurry of Fists is a massive damage talent.

This is one of the few trees in the game that is worth capping out entirely, in my opinion.

-Uppercut. While the Finishing Moves tree is generally lackluster on the whole, Uppercut is an excellent status option. Do remember that you need to punch people a few times first to get a decent duration on the Stun, though.

-Unarmed Mastery. Like any physical fighter, the Mastery skill matters a lot.

-Heightened Reflexes. An excellent talent that boosts your movement speed any time an enemy targets you at range-in practice, in many areas, this may as well be a flat rate movement boost due to how often you will be targetted by ranged attacks. It's quite helpful for surviving in these areas.

-Steady Mind. An excellent skill for Mobile Defense oriented light armor Brawlers, this grants them the Defense they need to survive. Even non-light armor Brawlers can make good use of this talent, however.

-Tactical Expert. Another good Defense booster, though more situational. This is best left to lower levels, as you rarely want to be fully surrounded as Brawler, and should plan to leave as quickly as possible if you are. Still, this and Steady Mind can make even a mail wearing Brawler fairly hard to hit, situationally.

-Exploit Weakness. An excellent way to deal even more damage. Ignore the small damage loss-when it's capped out, it's possible to have the damage loss average out to a net gain within a single multi-hit action.

The classic mage of the game, the Archmage is extremely powerful, through a web of strong synergies-and extremely frail. This makes Archmage non-optimal for beginners, but it's still quite possible to win with one, thanks to them having a strong earlygame and some fairly obvious build plans.

Archmages are generally built around versatility, rather than damage; An earlygame Archmage does decent damage, but only a few specific-and less flexible-builds deal high damage relative to the lategame. Fortunately, they can do this damage in full screen, multiple target hitting damage, constantly.

An Archmage has -4 Life Modifier-second worst out of any class, and the worst (A locked class that won't be addressed here) actually uses a resource besides life for durability. They specialize in light armor-like Arcane Blade, they have doubled mana costs from Fatigue, but unlike Arcane Blade, they can't afford any massive raises in Fatigue. Even wearing heavy gauntlets or boots may be worth reconsidering. (Though, probably not, but if you have a good lighter version of those...) They wield staves, for the Spellpower boost, naturally.

An Archmage's primary statistic is Magic. Willpower, Cunning and Constitution are all important secondary statistics-Willpower gives them more Mana, Cunning more damage(via more critical hits), and Constitution raises their terrible Life to something more tolerable. Constitution is the most important out of the three secondary statistics, but it does depend somewhat on the race and build you pick-a build that's planning on using one of the 250 Mana cost sustains may want to specialize in Willpower over Constitution, even.

Notable Archmage talents:

-Flame, Lightning, Manathrust. Often known affectionately as the "tri-beam" setup, gaining and leveling these to their respective beam levels(L3 is a good base for Lightning, so it does notable damage) allows your Archmage to constantly fire enemy-piercing beams. This is very solid slugfest damage until quite late, and is still useful even then as a utility area control option. It's dirt cheap, too.

Don't forget-when Flame asks for L5, an Archmage's talent level counts. Essentially, since each level counts as 1.3 levels due to their category rating, they can get Flame to beam at L4, not 5!

-Arcane/Aether trees. Specifically, Manathrust, Aether Beam, Aether Breach, Aether Avatar and Pure Aether. (This is not to say that the other talents are bad, but these are the central damage talents.)

There are actually five different elementally centric setups for Archmage to build around...however, four of them are in hidden categories that a starting Archmage will not have. Focusing on Arcane is the default choice for a beginner, as such, and it's a fairly good element-it's almost never resisted and Manathrust and Aether Breach are both excellent talents, dealing good line damage and excellent repeated area damage respectively. Aether Beam is relatively weaker, but still good.

Pure Aether boosts the damage of the tree, and allows you to pierce even the rare Arcane resistance(though, due to said rarity, it's not as high of a priority as other talents), and Aether Avatar allows you to use these talents more often.

-Illuminate, Flameshock. As stated in the Arcane Blade/Shadowblade guides, these are both excellent status spells. Archmage, with on average more Spellpower backing them up than either class, and the ability to chain the two together, can easily debilitate entire rooms for 10+ turns-more than enough time to deal with them.

-Fireflash. An excellent roomclear spell that does great damage with a reasonably fast cooldown.

-The entire Aegis tree. Arcane Reconstruction provides you with a nice heal spell-not as important for Archmage as Arcane Blade, as their raw life is rather low, but still useful. Shielding raises the effectiveness of various shields, such as Shielding Runes and Conveyance's Displacement Shield, as well as Temporal's Time Shield and Arcane's Disruption Shield.

Arcane Shield gives you a barrier every time you use a healing spell-like Arcane Reconstruction-and as it turns out, this barrier is strengthened by Shielding. And Aegis is an active skill that boosts the power of all your barriers. Between the four, you can mitigate an amazing amount of damage. For Archmage, this category is unbelievably good, between their high, caster spellpower and their multiple barriers that can be impacted by Aegis/Shielding.

-Phase Door, Teleport. Both of these are some of the best escape plans in the game. Pick one to hit L5 on at some point-Phase Door is more precise, but Teleport will reliably get you out of the sight range of the enemy.

For Archmage, Teleport is my prefered option-a controlled teleport is a very reliable escape, second to none in practice, and with Archmage's terrible raw durability, you don't want your escape to fail when you need it. Phase Door doesn't reliably get you out of line of sight, meaning that you can attempt to escape, only to eat ranged attacks before getting away.

-Time Shield/Essence of Speed in Temporal, and Spellcraft/Quickened Spells in Meta.

While you don't have to utilize these, they're certainly helpful. Meta's Spellcraft aids the Aether build, as it makes damaging spells-like Aether Breach-not harm you, in addition to Spellshocking enemies constantly. Spellshock lowers the enemy's resistances 20%, making this a good offensive and defensive talent. Quickened Spells, on the other hand, gives you a nice, constant faster cooldown set for all of your spells.

Time Shield and Essence of Speed are more build specific for Archmage-which uses its Mana to do everything, unlike Shadowblade. Time Shield is excellent with the Aegis tree backing it up and makes for a great class based barrier, but the 250 Mana sustain cost on Essence of Speed makes it more of a later game choice, especially since Archmage has no notable basic physical to back up its high speed. It's best used with Meta's Quickened Spells and Metaflow, so you have something to do with your actions, too.

An odd class, the Summoner specializes in making others do the heavy lifting. They have practically no direct damage options-the exceptions are in locked trees that compete with making their summoned critters stronger, in fact. But their summoned pets are quite good at protecting them from damage, and while individually limited, can add up extremely fast.

They're a fairly good beginner class, though their passive nature may turn off many players. Charging into a fight should only rarely be done with a Summoner-they're best staying as far away as possible and summoning.

The Summoner has a 0 Life Modifier-making them as durable as a Rogue. They can wear heavy armor with no penalty, though they may want a Mindpower boosting robe instead. They dualwield Mindstars, both for the Mindpower and Mind attack critical hit rate, and because they have a tree for Mindstar combat-though, for various reasons, they shouldn't unlock that with a category point.

Notable Summoner Talents:

-Practically every talent in the Summoning/Melee and Summoning/Ranged categories, as well as the first two in the Summoning/Utility category.

Summoners function based on having as many creatures out as possible in a combat situation, and each summon has their own uses.

Hounds are a good, high damage, accurate and early-game melee option, Minotaurs have an excellent status attack, Golems are extremely hard to kill, Jellies restore your Equilibrium, which you use to use talents.

Flamespitters make an excellent "turret", dealing consistent ranged damage. Hydras, by contrast, do a good burst of damage over a large area, but then are useless after that burst. Rimebarks deal constant area of effect damage, but can't move. Dragons are well-rounded area control, but expensive and last a relatively short period of time, and also somewhat suffer from Hydra's burst damage issues.

Turtles are durable and can force enemies to target them over other, less durable targets, while Spiders, though initially underwhelming, are powerful at range and close up if leveled.

Generally speaking, you want to get L1 in all of these. Good targets for heavy leveling are one of War Hound/Flamespitter(to get you through the earlier game), Dragons/Minotaurs(As they have talents that benefit strongly from leveling), and Spiders(As they gain lots of statistical benefit and talent benefit from levels), but practically everything but Jelly/Turtle can benefit from heavy leveling.

-Frantic Summoning. This, once you hit L5 with it, allows you to create a cloud of summons extremely fast, negating one of the bigger issues with Summoner. Namely, that they need time to get going, and that they can have their summons trashed as fast as they can make them in some situations. Very useful.

-Master Summoner and Grand Arrival, in the Advanced tree. Master Summoner allows you to reduce the cooldowns of all of your summons-not as useful as it sounds, as you have ten that are generally equally useful in different ways, but still useful in some situations. More important is Grand Arrival, which allows your summons to do highly useful support effects on summoning, in a large radius. And since Master Summoner has to be sustained to use it, you may as well get good milage out of Master Summoner and level it, too, eventually.

-Resilience, in the Augmentation tree. The durability boost to your summons is fairly low, but the duration boost isn't, and makes summons like Minotaur and Dragon, who have relatively low durations, far better.

-Psiblades, in the Mindstar Mastery category. The other abilities can be quite useful for more direct offensive talents as well, but the blades give you a much more powerful basic physical-full power Psiblades can outdamage normal dagger dualwield physical attacks, potentially. A solid option for anyone interested in a more active Summoner.

An unusual mobility oriented physical fighter, the Cursed is defined by moderate power passive and status effect talents that stack together to produce an eventual lethal combination.

The Cursed is both recommended and not recommended for new players; Cursed have a relatively weak early game, but their style of play is predominately based around normal physicals and using excellent movement talents to easily close the distance or escape-generally a fairly simple playstyle, if not as effective as some others early on.

Cursed have no predominate weapon, but they have one talent each that focus on a specific weapon. Dual-wielding is popular due to the talent associated with it being excellent, and due to the raw damage that dual-wielding provides. However, until you get said talents going, there's no reason not to swap to the best of axes/maces/swords that you find. Cursed are notably good with Mindstars as well, as Mindpower is used for some of their talents.

Cursed have +2 Life Modifier, making them as durable as Bulwarks/Arcane Blades on raw life. Their Hate resource is impacted by Fatigue and runs on relatively low margins-you may prefer to use mail instead of plate armor, as such.

Their key statistics are Strength/Willpower. Dexterity, Cunning and Constitution are excellent secondary options after these statistics have been built.

Hate is a rather unusual resource-whereas most resources are fairly obvious for their mechanics, Hate actually builds based on many unusual criteria. For Cursed, the most important things for boosting Hate are enemies entering the field of your Gloom(a specific sustain talent), killing enemies, and taking damage.

A special note; Cursed will be given the option to take their hate out on an object early in any run. If you choose to do so, you lose Willpower permanently, but gain a tree of special gear-oriented curses. The impact from this tree is questionable; It's a high investment tree with decent but not incredible impact. Additionally, the tree, if not leveled, actually has small negative effects with no upside. If you're not sure, pick no; You'll be fine without it.

Notable Cursed Talents:

-Relentless. Probably the best anti-status talent in the game, Relentless nearly fully walls two highly dangerous status(Stun and Confusion). Fear and Knockback resistance are solid bonuses to resist as well.

-Stalk. Stalk gives you a constant damage boost when you repeatedly strike an enemy-in practice, it's a fairly large boost against any boss, and applies to any type of melee-based talent.

-Gloom, Sanctuary. While the Dismay and Weakness talents you get on the way to Sanctuary are good, the best talents in the tree are the first and last ones. Gloom allows you to, as a sustained effect, constantly status enemies that are at short range, disabling them for free. Sanctuary is an excellent defensive talent against any ranged attack.

-Blindside, Reckless Charge. Both are excellent offensive mobility skills. Blindside only really requires a single point, and doesn't scale massively with more, but it literally teleports you to the target, cannot fail(even going through walls works, if you can see the target through them somehow!) and deals solid damage. Reckless Charge is the opposite-it needs to be L5 to work well, but it can be used to close distances, to escape, and to attack while doing both.

-Slash, Frenzy. Decent offensive attacks. They scale more as the game goes on and aren't terribly impressive early, but they're still useful.

-Preternatural Senses. Lets you see through walls. Obvious synergy with Blindside and fairly useful in general.

-Repel, Surge, Cleave. The key talents for various Cursed weapon builds, and some of the best they get in general.

Surge massively raises movement speed (and defense, if you are dualwielding), scaling with Willpower. Potentially this can double your movement speed, giving you two spaces of movement for every action your enemies get, as well as granting you a fairly impressive Defense bonus.

Repel and Cleave are generally less popular, but still good. Repel will randomly fully nullify physical attacks, getting a bonus to the rate if you have a sword/shield combo equipped. Cleave will randomly strike an extra enemy with any hits you deal, getting a bonus to the rate and damage if you have a two-handed weapon equipped. Surge is recommended over these, but they're still good.

-Rampage, in the unlockable Rampage tree. In actual fact, the talents to focus on are Rampage and Brutality, which grant you most of the bonuses. Tenacity's bonus gains relatively little with levels, and Slam is a physical talent only usable in Rampage, which makes its worth questionable.

However, Rampage and Brutality alone make Rampage an amazing talent, boosting your movement speed, attack speed, physical damage and multiple save stats while Rampaging. The impact is quite impressive, to the point where many players prefer Cornac for this class specifically to pick up Rampage at L1(Rampage does not require L10 as a category). Definitely worth the category point.

-Weapon Mastery and Combat Accuracy. Cursed also like Armor Training, as well, but the former two are essentially required to do damage and have it land.