Hey folks!

I'm Ithuriel[te4.org], a long-time player and enjoyer of TOME. I've beaten the games a number of times on Insane, and played around with a variety of different mods. This guide is broken down into sections according to the stat breakdown on the Character sheet in-game.

Whenever you look at the character stats screen, it will show changes since the last time that you looked at it. This can be very handy, as you can see what changes a new item would make to your stats and damage.

Resources

• Life: What it says on the tin. Usually, you die when this hits 0. However, some items will give you a die-at value, such as "Die at -70 life." This means that you will die when you hit -70 life. For almost all purposes, it doesn't matter whether or not you're blow 0 life
  
• Stamina, Psi: Bog-standard resources, with normal regen mechanics. Willpower increases your max Stamina and Psi.
  
• Mana: Functions similarly to Stamina. However, only a few mage classes have passive mana regen; everybody else has to rely on a Manasurge rune or class talents. Willpower increases your max Mana.
  
• Equilibrium: When you use abilities with an Equilibrium cost, you gain that much Equilibrium. Equilibrium talents have a failure chance that increases the higher your Equilibrium is. Willpower decreases your talent failure chance, effectively allowing you to cast more.
  
• Paradox: Paradox functions similarly to Equilibrium. However, when you fail to use a talent due to Paradox, you cause a random effect called an Anomaly instead, which reduces your Paradox. Additionally, your abilities that use Paradox are more powerful the more Paradox you have. Willpower decreases your talent failure chance, effectively allowing you to cast more.
  
• Hate: Decays down to half your current Hate when out of combat. Can be gained by killing things, dealing large bursts of damage, taking large bursts of damage, or taking damage while at low health (on top of class abilities).
  
• Feedback: Increases as you take damage. The damage-to-feedback conversion rate scales downwards with your level.
  
• Positive/Negative energy: Functions similarly to Mana. Your max Positive/Negative Energy increases by 3 per level, but is unaffected by Willpower.
  
• Vim: Vim is gained primarily by killing enemies, as well as a few class abilities. The amount of Vim that you gain from a kill is increased by your Willpower. Talents that require Vim will spend Life instead if you have insufficient Vim.
  
• Steam: Steam is always capped at 100, with the exception of one talent that increases your cap. Steam does not naturally regenerate; instead, you need to use an inscription slot on a Steam Generator.

Speed
Creatures with higher speed can take turns faster than everything else. If an enemy has higher speed than you, it might take 2 actions every time you take an action. If you have faster speed than an enemy, it will simply not act on some of your turns. The way it works behind the scenes is that every turn takes a certain amount of energy. Creatures all get energy at the same rate. Whenever a creature hits 1000 energy, it takes a turn. (The following explanation assumes all enemies are moving at normal speed).

• Global speed increases the speed at which you gain energy. If you have +50% global speed, you will take 3 turns for every 2 turns of normal-speed enemies. From a player point of view, this means that on every 3rd turn that you take, enemies will not act.
  
• Attack speed, Spell Speed, Mental Speed, and Move Speed work by reducing the cost of the respective action. This means that they stack multiplicatively with global speed. If you have +100% Attack Speed and +100% Global Speed, you would take 4 turns for every turn that enemies take!

Healing Mod.
This affects the value of all healing that you receive, such as direct heals, regeneration (both passive and buffs), and lifesteal. Effects such as Insidious Poison and Impending Doom can reduce you below 100%, thus reducing all healing you receive. Healmod caps at 0% minimum and 250% maximum.

Life Regen
How much life you regenerate per turn.

Accuracy
Accuracy increases your chance of hitting a target, and is opposed by Defense. If you have more Accuracy than your target has Defense, you will get a bonus effect depending on your weapon.

Armor Penetration
Armor penetration allows you to ignore a corresponding amount of your target's armor. Having more armor penetration than your target's armor has no further effect.

Powers
Powers increase the damage of corresponding abilities (Weapon damage and physical talents for Physical Power, spells for Spellpower, and mind talents for Mindpower). Powers are also used to determine your chances of debuffing an enemy. For example, Stunning Blow will check your Physical Power and your target's Physical Save to determine your chance of applying Stun to the target. (Certain skills will use Accuracy to apply debuffs instead).

• Powers have diminishing returns. The first 20 points of Physical Power that you get apply normally. After that, though, you will need 2 points of Physical Power from items/stats to increase your effective Physical Power that's actually used in the game's calculations. This increases by +1 every 20 points- so you need 3 points of Physical Power to get 1 effective Physical Power between 40-60, 4 points per at 60-80, etc. That's what it means when an item says "Spellpower: +4 (+2 eff.)" The item gives you 4 Spellpower, but due to how much Spellpower you already have it'll only increase your effective Spellpower by 2.

Critical Chance
Abilities can crit according to their type- spells use spell crit, weapon attacks use weapon crit, etc. Weapon crit is calculated by adding your Physical Crit chance to your weapon's crit chance. The displayed crit value on your character sheet is higher than your true physical crit chance, as it also adds the crit chance of your gloves. Do note that heals can also crit.


Spell Cooldown
It's possible to get a percentage reduction to cooldowns. In almost all cases, the reduction rounds down, with the exception of Windtouched Speed and the sustained talent Matrix (i.e. you need at least 11% cooldown reduction to reduce a skill from a 5 turn CD to a 4 turn CD).

Damage Modifiers
Many items in the game will say something like "Changes damage: +14% lightning". This will increase all lightning damage that you deal by 14%. These effects stack additively.

Damage Penetration
Damage penetration allows you to ignore some portion of your target's damage resistance. This functions multiplicatively, not additively. Having 50% physical damage penetration means that
you ignore half of an enemy's physical resistance. Caps at 70%.

Damage Conversion
Certain effects will explicitly convert a portion of your damage into another damage type. All damage modifiers are applied after this conversion.

Fatigue
Fatigue increases most resource costs. Do note that it has no effect on the cost of sustained talents.
Unaffected by fatigue:

• Equilibrium
  
• Vim
  
• Steam

Normal fatigue penalties:

• Stamina
  
• Hate
  
• Negative/positive energy (only costs, not gains)

Double fatigue penalties:

• Mana
  
• Psi
  
• Feedback
  
• Paradox (increases failure chance

Armor
Armor reduces the damage that you take from weapon attacks (e.g. basic attacks, Stunning Blow, etc). Armor directly reduces damage before any modifiers are applied. If you have 100 attack damage and the enemy has 25 armor, using a skill that deals 200% weapon damage will deal (100-25)*2 = 150 damage.

Armour Hardiness
Armour hardiness is the maximum percent of each incoming attack that can be absorbed by your armour. If you have 60% armor hardiness, your armour can only reduce incoming damage by a maximum of 60%. If you have 90 armor and 60% hardiness, an attack of 190 damage would be reduced to 100 damage, but an attack of 100 damage would only be reduced to 40 damage- your armor can only reduce incoming damage by up to 60%.

Defense
Defense helps you avoid being hit by attacks. The more Defense you have, the less likely you are to be hit.

Crit Reduction
Reduces your chance to be crit by the listed value. Additive, not multiplicative. Only works against weapon attacks.

Crit Shrug Off
Reduces the extra damage that you take from critical strikes.

Saves
Physical, Spell, and Mental saves reduce the chances of you being affected by negative effects of the corresponding types. Saves are affected by diminishing returns, just like Physical Power/Spellpower/Mindpower- raising your effective saves are harder the more saves that you have.

Resistances
Reduces the damage that you take from the corresponding element. All resists normally cap at 70%, although there are some effects that can change this.

Damage Affinities
Damage affinities let you heal a percentage of the pre-resistance damage that you take immediately after the damage. This can be very powerful; if you have 30% Fire affinity and 70% Fire resistance, you're effectively immune to fire damage (as long as the enemy didn't have any fire penetration). This healing IS affected by your healing modifier. You can still be killed by a large hit that kills you before the healing kicks in, so be careful!

Effect Resistances
You have the stated chance to resist a debuff whenever it would be applied to you. These can be very powerful; in particular, having a high Stun/Freeze resistance is invaluable.

Damage When Hit
Any enemy that hits you with a melee attack will take the stated damage and/or effects.