Tales of Maj’Eyal – Gameplay Mechanics Guide

This is a general guide meant to explain all the basic stats and mechanics shown on the character page, intended both to help newer players understand the game and to act as a quick reference for more experienced players.

General

Resources

• Life: What it says on the tin. Usually, you die when it hits 0. Some items, however, such as “Die at -70 life,” will provide you with a die-at value. This means that you will die when you hit -70 life. For almost all purposes, it doesn’t matter whether you’re blowing your life or not.
• Stamina, Psi: bog-standard resources, with normal regen mechanics. Willpower boosts your maximum stamina.
• Mana works in the same way that stamina does. However, only a few mage classes have passive mana regen; everybody else has to rely on a Manasurge rune. Willpower raises your maximum mana.
• Equilibrium: When you use abilities with an equilibrium cost, you gain an entire equilibrium. Equilibrium talents have a failure chance that increases the higher your equilibrium is. Willpower reduces your talent failures, allowing you to cast more.
• The Paradox works in the same way as the Equilibrium. However, when you fail to use a talent that takes a Paradox, you have a chance to cause a random effect called an Anomaly instead, which reduces your Paradox. Furthermore, the more paradoxes you have, the stronger your ability to use them is. Willpower reduces your talent failures, allowing you to cast more.
• When you are not in combat, your hatred decays to half of what it was. can be obtained by killing things, dealing large bursts of damage, taking large bursts of damage, or taking damage while being low in health (in addition to class abilities).
• As you take damage, the feedback increases. The damage-to-feedback conversion rate scales downwards with your level.
• Positive/negative energy works in the same way that Mana does. Your maximum positive/negative energy increases by three per level, but willpower has no effect on it.
• 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.
• 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 speeds can take turns faster than everything else. If an enemy has a higher speed than you, it might take 2 actions every time you take an action. If you are faster than your opponent, you will simply ignore 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 a +50% global speed, you will take 3 turns for every 2 turns of normal-speed enemies. From a player’s point of view, this means that for every 3rd turn that you take, the enemies will not act.
• Attack speed, Spell Speed, Mental Speed, and Movement 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 has an effect on the value of all healing you receive, including direct healing, regeneration (both passive and buffs), and lifesteal. This can go negative, with effects such as Insidious Poison and Impending Doom.

Life Regen

What amount of life do you regenerate per turn?

Attack

Accuracy

Accuracy increases your chance of hitting a target and is opposed by the defense. If you are more accurate than your opponent in defense, you will receive a bonus effect depending on your weapon.

Armor Penetration

Armor penetration allows you to ignore the 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, the Stunning Blow will assess your physical power as well as your target’s physical resistance to determine your chances of stun.

• Powers have diminishing returns. The first 20 points of Physical Power you receive are used 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 grants you four spell powers, but because you already have four, it only increases your effective power by two.

Critical Chance

Abilities can be critted based on their type–spells use spell crit, attacks use physical crit, and so on. It’s also worth noting that healing can be crucial.

Spell Cooldown

It’s possible to get a percentage reduction in 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 with 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.

Defense

Fatigue

Fatigue increases most resource costs. Do note that it has no effect on the cost of sustaining talent.

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 regular attacks, or skills that are modified attacks (e.g. Stunning Blow). The 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 percentage of each incoming attack that can be absorbed by your armor. If you have 60% armor hardiness, your armor can only reduce incoming damage by a maximum of 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

It lessens the possibility of being chastised for the listed value. Additive, not multiplicative.

Crit Shrug Off

It reduces the extra damage that you take from critical strikes.

Saves

Physical and mental savings lower your chances of being impacted by the 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

It reduces the damage that you take from the corresponding element. All resistance is normally capped 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. 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 doesn’t have any fire penetration). This healing is affected by your healing modifier.

Effect Resistances

When a debuff is applied to you, you have a stated chance to resist it. These can be extremely powerful; in particular, having high stun/freeze resistance is extremely useful.

Damage When Hit

Any enemy that hits you with a melee attack will cause the stated damage and/or effects.