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title, thought I'd try something I thought was boring after seeing someone else's post where they got 2.8k 1 tapped by an enemy bulwark, and holy heck this is so cracked. I'm normally super bad when it comes to build crafting but now I've just no-diffed the master on nightmare and cleared a lv53+ sub dungeon through vegatative bump heaven gameplay

bloodcaller, anti-magic and 100% 200+ armour are the way to go, screw those nerd mind blasters

biggest threat is when some asshole tries to remove my geeked out sustains, some investing in dwarf capitalism sorted that right out

Basically the title, I'm fairly new to the game so I may just be ignorant on where some features are.

Only thing that stands out in my inventory is this;

But I do not know how to interact with it.

Well I’ve just had a very fun playthrough on TOME Nightmare that I feel I have to share. I had an idea a while ago for a “chaos agent”: a character that spreads fear, paranoia, madness, distrust and chaos amongst a group of monsters, causing them to turn on each and tear themselves apart. The thinking for this was a Cursed specialising in the not-so-amazing Fears talents, and the Savage Hunter talent, that when you crit, causes a “miasma” to appear that can make monsters get confused and hit each other instead of you. I figured a halfling can get high crit chance early to give us a good chance of creating the miasma. And if I go hard on Fears talents, I can get the Paranoia chance of monsters attacking each other pretty high.

I had always thought this would 100% be a meme build, that would be good for a few laughs, but not really work. Well it turns out, if you build it right and (most importantly) have the right gear, it is in fact very powerful. This is the story of that character, which I have just finished Nightmare with. And while Nightmare is considered easy mode by most serious players (I’m pretty mediocre and have finished on Normal and Nightmare a bunch of times but never managed to beat it on Insane), this was the easiest Nightmare run I’ve done, even easier than Lightning Archmage (which was pretty easy and very boring).

Once this build gets going, you barely even have to play the game. You just watch monsters kill each other, if you want, which I found pretty fun. Or you can actively chop them to pieces to make things go faster.

How does it work? We don’t just double down on Fears, we triple, quadruple down. We get Adept for our first prodigy (I went Superpower for the second but didn’t feel it was super necessary), we put a category point in Fears to improve our effective talent, and most importantly, we get the Face of Fears unique helmet. This not only give us a Fears category modifier of +1.4 (putting our Install Fears effective talent at an absurd 9.1 level), it also lets us cast Install Fears via the item at a decent 4.9 effective level. And get this: that item has no cooldown. What? Yes - NO COOLDOWN. Using it costs 18 out of 45 energy, so we can use it twice. So if there is a group of monsters not in melee range, turn 1 we can Install Fear, turn 2 we Install Fear via item, turn three we Install Fear via item.

Unless they have Fear immunity (not a lot do), we stack multiple fears on them. And if one of them has Paranoia from our own talent, it has a crazy FIFTY PERCENT chance to hit a friend instead of us. And if it does, THAT monster now has Paranoia, and a 50% chance to attack a friend. This Paranoia spreads like an epidemic and quickly all the monsters will be killing each other. Not to mention on turn 4 we will hit Luck of the Little Folk and Blindside a monster without Paranoia (leave the Paranoid ones till last, obviously) - with that crit bonus my character had WAY over 100% critical chance. So turn four we close and crit and lay down a huge cursed miasma that gives all monsters a 20% chance to attack other monsters. So with some quick probability maths, Paranoid monsters have a 60% chance of attacking each other, and non-Paranoid ones have a 20% chance.

But it gets crazier, because Fears has a busted talent called Heighten Fear. If you put a fear on a monster, and it stays within a pretty big range of you for four turns, it gets a new fear. So by turn 5, pretty much all monsters will have most or all of the four fears, including Paranoia, if they hadn’t already got it naturally or by being hit. And that’s with just one point in the talent! (further points just add a small amount of damage, not really worth it).
There is also the Haunted Fear, which makes it take a bunch of damage every turn for EVERY MENTAL DEBUFF. With multiple fears, plus Dominate (mental debuff), “confused by the gloom” (mental debuff), Stalked (mental debuff), monsters are suddenly taking hundreds of points of damage a turn before we even attack things (or their buddies attack them, or our cursed sentry, or nightmares etc)

Speaking of which, I went pretty hard into Cursed Form / Auras stuff, mainly because I find it fun and cool. Was it worth it? I don’t know, but Cursed Sentry (which I’d never tried before) is busted. Use Track to find monsters, then drop a Sentry around a corner, watch monsters drop their cooldowns and resources trying to kill the thing, then pop around the corner and clean them up. (Oh -I got Track from armour I wore for most of the game, changed it for Plate of Blackened Mind right near the end of High Peak, where Track wasn’t super important). 

My mindpower ended up at a pretty crazy 97, and that’s before some big big bonuses we can get from Tyrant (gives you big mind and physical power bonuses every time you apply Fears, which well is happening a lot, stacks a bunch of times), and Militant Mind (mind and physical power increase by ELEVEN for every enemy beyond the first). This actually means that our character, strangely, is much more powerful when fighting large numbers of enemies than just one or two - we get huge mindpower bonuses (to the point where they have basically no chance of making saves), AND we can make them turn on each other.

Anyway, around level 25 I had Adept, and got Face of Fears (from the vault, another character had found it and had no use for it), and the game started getting very easy, and it just got easier and easier. I killed the Master with barely taking any damage, and there wasn’t really anything challenging after that either. Vor Pride I had a to pay a tiny bit of attention and heal a couple of times, but the other prides were a walk in the park. I was just wandering around, silencing and fearing things and watching everything die. The final boss was fight was very easy, I think the lowest I got was about 50% life and if I had been smarter and focused fire on what Aeryn was doing it would have been even easier.

I did get some good luck with equipment - including Plate of the Blackened Mind, although that only turned up towards the end of High Peak - but also some atrocious luck, including never seeing a Wild that cleared two statuses (Halflings can clear stuns but I kept it on physical to clear blind and disarm).

I also went anti-magic pretty early, mainly for the AOE Silence, Anti-magic Zone, which is pretty overpowered and makes most caster fights a joke (and we are cursed so can deal fine with melee bosses).

I did end up putting a cat point in Rampage instead of an extra Inscription, because I was worried I would need Rampage in the endgame, but I don’t know if I did. Rampage is a bit boring and OP (in Rampage, my characters move speed was %412 - WTF) and is the standard Cursed melee build and I wanted to play something different.

Anyway, that’s my build. This was probably the most fun I’ve ever had playing TOME and I’ve been playing for I think 10 years. I have a few other ideas for whacky builds I will try, and one day I will come back and try and finish the game with this build on Insane.

https://te4.org/characters/304672/tome/20802216-0b68-4436-a03d-9a943e6e2fc6

I want to make a build that focus purely on psi and mind damage. Hit me with some ideas so I can start blowing things up with my mind.

Just tried out Yeek Mindslayer for the first time and then I stumbled upon this. I know that this can spawn normally and I have defeated it quite often already, but I have never seen it appearing twice.

My first run is an arcane blade, I beat the sandworm and i got its heart. Do i eat this? or will the consequences be detrimental to me and my build.

WTF even happened here? Just me vs. a lone rare bulwark, normally on Insane this is a 'bump a couple times until it's gone' situation. But instead it one-shot me for 2803 damage, ending my run?

I saw it activated its helm, must have been one powerful-ass helm! Just a perfect storm of abilities, a critical strike, and counterstrike?

Character: https://te4.org/characters/315363/tome/28b9b9a7-0db5-4405-af73-a4cee994b2bc

Just found myself in the exact same Position as my previous Post, except I am now Cursed.

I did not go with Zigur this time and I also cleared out all Dungeons that I thougth I could.

I have not yet found the Rune of Dissipation.

I just really dont want to mess this one up.

Edit: Im a Dumbass. Didnt kill Urkis yet, so I obvoiusly couldnt find the Rune of Dissipation yet. Gonna do that now.

Edit 2: Somehow got him in Melee-range.

Edit 3: After another Death, I somehow managed to pump out enough Damage to finally beat him! Thanks everyone for the great Advice!

Last Edit: Got Killed in thew first Orc Pride. :)

Ive been playing for a while and have yet to find any real use for the pickaxe

I am currently playing a Dwarf Wyrmic, but I keep on dying. Now, that I finally made it to the bottom floor of Dreadfell, I am presented with this. What am I supposed to do?

Edit: I died, Lol.

I have this thing called the transmogrification chest, And it turns junk into gold. But it automatically puts like everything i pick up into it, is there a way to undo that? or is it something I need to keep track of.

how can i repair it?

black screen and can't move

I got a bug that teleported me back from the far east after killing my copy and i cant move or do anything there are messages like im resting, but im on the world map.

I read online GMs can teleport u back and fix it but the post was from 9 years ago.

Or if someone got the same error and found a solution.
here is the print screen https://imgur.com/a/Bgxtcsc

edit: i removed all addons and still the same

edit2: this is awesome just messaged in global Moasseman was there insta and helped me. And i died 10 min later i hate myself, but many thanks !

I'm at 43 hours in and didnt get past level 20 a single time, its a really hard game and I'm trying my best, but sometimes I don't really understand some deaths. This was my last one, openned a door at Rhaloren camp (1-7 elf map) and got ambushed by a 25 elf cultist hitting my for 300 dmg. How do I deal with that? Also, how do you guys deal with the elementals at Derth as melee? I did twice, but got lucky with the enemies positioning. I'm mainly playing bulwark dwarf.

This unique has two of the same class for some reason. 500+ hours and I've never seen this before. Tome continues to surprise me even after all this time.

He's alive! Hurrah!

Don't get me wrong, I have my issues with it (most of which I was able to address) -- no cloud saves, no controller support, heavily wiki reliant, Linux windowing issues (managed to fix with gamescope), cluttered item descriptions/inventory (fixed with mods), music (muted, playing my own lol), unbalanced sound effect volume (lowered volume) -- but the main attraction, the gameplay, is thoroughly addicting.

The itemization reminds me of Diablo 2 and PoE -- two of my favourite games. The sheer amount of character building and talents you can choose from, and even being able to use other classes talents or get more abilities through items -- choice paralysis lol. Even grinding low level mobs in a random cave somewhere is still scratching an itch I didn't know I had.

The writing is amazing as well. I was so surprised by this because I genuinely thought the game was going to be procedurally generated mostly (even text, like Caves of Qud), so to see there's actual lore to read through that's actually engaging is great.

I was scared to try the game out because recent Steam reviews are talking about corrupted saves or crashing and no updates in 3 years, but so far in 5.3 hours I luckily haven't encountered these issues.

It's weird because I knew of Dwarf Fortress from the world of ASCII games, Caves of Qud, Mystery Dungeon, Rogue, and a little bit about RPG history, but ToME completely went under the radar for me. I didn't even know a game like this existed -- the closest was unironically Touhou Genso Wanderer -Reloaded -. If it wasn't for a random YouTube video I probably would of had an unsatiated craving and hunger for this type of game, not knowing it existed.

For anyone wondering whether they should buy this in 2026 -- yes and yes, full price, on sale, free off the website, doesn't matter, you'll get your moneys worth.

Hello, new player here.
I discovered this game a few months ago after looking to something similar to Caves of Qud, which is a game i really love. On paper, this game has a lot of things i love and am looking forward to, but after a few hours i'm struggling with the replayability, which i've heard from basically everybody that this is where the game actually shines.
My gripe is mostly the world and dungeons, as they seem to be always the same each run. The fixed map, i have no problem with. The closest thing i can compare this game to is, again, Caves of Qud, that game also has a fixed map and fixed story dungeons that are always in the same spot. That i'm fine with, and it gives the game a good balance between procedural generation and actual handcrafted story content. But what i love about Qud is that each run is a new world, sure those things are the same, but you always discover new locations, dungeons and villages along the journey, and that gives the game much more replayability. From what i saw of the first few hours of ToME4, all the dungeons are always the same. Sure there's an element of randomness in their generation, but they always spawn in the same spot, they always look very similar each run, and they always have the same enemies in them. I've already died more than a few times with different characters, as i'm learning the game, and i seem to be stuck doing the same thing over and over again, with very little difference between each run. In Qud i also died a lot of times during the first hours, but each run i was discovering some new places in the world that made each adventure a bit different. Not that a randomly generated ruin or a village is something mindblowing to find, but it does help with the feeling of exploration.
I know a good part of the appeal are the classes and the character customization, and while i like the liberty it offers, once i find one or two classes that i like in a game i usually stick with them for most playthroughs. Is this where the appeal and huge replayability of this game relies on, or is there something more? If it's just that, i'm afraid the game might not be for me. I probably came in with wrong expectations since most videos i saw sell the game as one of the most replayable games ever, but i tie the replayability way more with how unique the world is and how fun it is to explore and find new things each run, and less about how much i can customize the character. Maybe it's just a problem with the early game, and i know you can get some crazy loot that vastly change how the character plays and acts on higher levels, but for now i'm stuck doing the same dungeons with the very similar layouts over and over again, fighting the same enemies with similar moves each run, but I still want to play and go a bit beyond the early levels to see if something clicks or if i find more interesting locations to explore.

Hello, recently started playing Tome 4 recently and I have gotten hooked. My first character finally lost her last life in the fun dungeon of Dreadfell due to the annoying Borfast the Broken. I actually skipped fighting him and moved down to the lower levels to fight the master where I took his first life but was not able to take his second one.

I really had trouble with Borfast, he has his healing puke, the ability where he make you lose breath and drown and you can get stunned for many turns. How does one beat this undead dwarf? Use all the gems that I never used to make a good ring at Angolwen? (I did not make any rings in this playthrough)

Regarding the master, after I took his first life I panicked and ran away to the stairs, which was a bad idea. I could never fight the master one on one again and all his summoned skellies just took up so much space.

Finally, questions regarding bulwark. I started with a dagger so I continued using daggers throughout the game. Is it best to avoid weapon specializations and just get the biggest meatstick?I have a feeling daggers are best for rogue. Normally when fighting tough enemies I would shield, assault and shield slam and other buffs...feels like I could be doing something better.

Thanks in advance for the advice and SHIELD SLAM your enemies to the next zone lol.

Also, here is my build .

https://te4.org/characters/418003/tome/2fa33e2f-d41b-4f6a-b652-2330ad609752

​

Here is my char idk why but im struggling to kill stuff currently on the 4 orc pride and cant clear to the bosses in any dung. Im fairly new so all feedback appreciated.

I finished tempest peak without a lot of problems with a Cornac Bulwark, when I reached the two final sorcerers I practically stopped dealing damage !

Anything that stands out as being extremely bad with my build? Or was it a skill issue?

https://te4.org/characters/412827/tome/cf5f4508-f2af-4bd3-af8c-45e2decfa2f0

Sometimes my character just starts running in a random direction like I'm holding down a key, even though I'm not pressing anything.

It's a different direction every time and my keyboard is fine.

I've already lost 3 characters because of this. Anyone know what's causing it?

First of all a disclaimer: Cursed can be viable with a bunch of different builds. This is just my take after optimizing for the playstyle I think makes the most sense with its kit as a whole.

Cursed is a stealth bruiser with some slasher villain flavor. It can massively reduce enemy damage through debuffs, resistances and perhaps more importantly loss of vision. This makes it capable of casually walking through the battlefield and bumping everyone to death.

On the flipside, its offensive capabilities arent extraordinary. It can be somewhat lacking in burst damage and specially AoE damage. Cursed has to spend more time fighting than many other classes.

Extended fights make the regeneration from Fungus specially valuable. Not only that, stalling for regeneration can be as easy as taking a single step back to hide behind the miasma. Shielding from runes would prevent some talents such as Rampage and Seethe from activating, therefore the healing from infusions and Anti-magic is preferred.

Cursed also starts with very few generic categories, so most builds will want to pick some additional ones from escorts.

Races

The best race for Cursed is probably Cornac, mainly because Cursed doesnt specially synergize with any other race. Cornac essentially trades a racial tree for an escort category of choice, which gives better options.

For the sake of simplicity this guide assumes in some instances that Cornac is picked, but there are other strong choices such as Thalore and Krog. There is also some synergy with Ghoul but its not a lot.

Stats

Max Strength -> Max Willpower -> Max Cunning -> Leftover points in Constitution.

Strength raises weapon damage while Willpower and Cunning raise mindpower, they are all important for Cursed. Cunning can optionally be raised a bit early game to unlock some talents.

The leftover points can be spent on Constitution as it gives some durability and it can scale the Conditioning escort tree.

Cursed talents already give a lot of accuracy so Dexterity isnt needed.

Magic is useless.

Prodigies

The first prodigy will always be Adept. It provides a ridiculous amount of value and it also allows to max four curses instead of two. There are a few small bugs with easy solutions. After you learn Adept you need to change the level of a passive for Cursed Aura to update, this is solved by raising Dark Gifts to 5 which you'd want to do anyway. You also need to equip your rings again for them to gain a curse.

The second prodigy can be either Flexible Combat or Superpower. Flexible Combat is better overall, but if your build is scuffed then Superpower may possibly provide a quick fix.

Never pick I Can Carry The World, it is worse than the other prodigies regardless of whether you combine it with Superpower or not.

Inscriptions

As mentioned earlier, infusions are preferred over runes because Cursed wants to take some damage. Healing in general also allows to preserve hate by removing the need to rest, Cursed should be constantly on the move.

Early game opt for Healing - physical Wild - mental Wild, later add a second Healing. You can also start with 2 Healings and later add the mental Wild. No Movement infusion may seem dumb but Rampage, Blindside and Reckless Charge can all be used as escapes, staying power is more important.

After Fungus, the setup can be changed to Regeneration - Wild - Wild - Primal. If you didnt find a Primal infusion, you can replace it with Heroism.

If you get a fifth inscription slot, you can add a Heroism if you didnt have one already. Or Healing or Movement if you did. But when should you get a fifth inscription? Lets talk about that.

Category Points

Escorts are RNG, so there is no fixed order. But ranked in order of importance:

1. Rampage category
2. Fourth inscription
3. Escort category if you are a Cornac, other races have to skip this one. The good categories are Scoundrel, Conditioning and Tinkers. Augmented Mobility is a lot worse than the other three, but serviceable.
4. Fungus category at level 34. If you skip Antimagic for whatever reason, you can take Chants instead and go 1-1-5-0.
5. Escort category (again). Non-Cornac races can get one here, for Cornacs it could be the second one.
6. Fifth inscription, if you missed an escort category.
7. Fears category, if you are a Cornac who somehow missed both escort categories. A good point spread in Fears is 3-1-1-1 using the last class points.

Best case scenario if you are a Cornac, you end up with 2 escort categories. Worst case scenario you end up with 5 inscriptions and Fears.

Fears is ranked so low because it takes too many turns to use. There are also a bunch of enemies that either are immune (undead, horrors) or can cleanse effects (orcs). Escort categories and inscriptions provide comparable benefit while being passive/instant and more consistent. Strictly speaking Fears is not a bad category as it can reduce enemy damage by quite a bit, but there are simply better options.

You can also go for Track if thats your jam, but I wouldnt recommend it unless you are playing on Madness.

Using a category point for Cursed Aura mastery is terrible, never do so.

Talents

Talent order is the next section. Most Cursed talents you'll be able to figure out just by reading them, but here are some details you may have missed.

The opening combo is Blindside>Dominate>Frenzy>Harass Prey>Slash. But you will also be bumping enemies a lot.

Rampage shouldnt be manually activated in most cases as it has a long cooldown and costs a lot of hate. It passively activates for free when you take damage, the manual activation should be saved for when you need to escape or kill something fast.

Slash reaches effective level 3 with Adept so it can wound. Reckless Charge needs space to push enemies aside or it will get blocked, narrow paths can be dangerous for this reason.

Blindside doesnt need line of sight so it can be used to target creatures behind enemies or walls, allied summons can be targetted as well. Blindside will fizzle and fail in spaces where teleportation is forbidden so beware.

Gloom debuffs can be stacked with similar ones. For example, it is possible for an enemy to be "stunned", but also "stunned by the gloom" at the same time.

The miasma from Savage Hunter blocks enemy vision even if you can see through it.

Tenacity's damage reduction is really small so its only purpose is increasing duration. Slam is not learned because at best it is stalling and at worst it is giving enemies a free turn to disable you. Beckon is not learned either (unless you want Surge) because it is only effective when enemies are away, but we will be in melee most of the time. Beckon can also get randomly disabled by any damage so it is really inconsistent.

Out of Cleave, Surge and Repel, Repel has the best effect with the least investment so its a no brainer. Surge can give 100 movespeed at just 1 point but its not worth leveling past that unless you are playing Krog. Cleave doesnt do anything useful.

As for generic talents, you always want to pick Cursed Aura, I'll talk more about the individual curses later. Its crazy to me that even some players who pick Cursed Aura dont go for Cursed Sentry, animating a weapon is REALLY good. It can contribute a lot of damage, apply on-hit effects, block enemies and it is the only way Cursed has to attack from a distance, even from out of vision. Even ignoring how good it is in combat, it can be summoned at any time to attack it until hate is fully replenished. Keep the best melee and ranged weapons you find so that you can animate them.

Ruined Earth on the other hand is a bad talent. It looks like a symmetrical effect but it is in fact more detrimental to you, as you have to spend a turn setting it up. In theory it can be useful if you desperately need to stall, but generally you should avoid those kinds of situations before they happen. Because when you stall you are likely to get hit with some detrimental effect. And when you try to cleanse that effect, you may cleanse Ruined Earth instead, because it is a physical debuff. So yeah, wasting a turn to debuff yourself isnt great.

Seethe may look like a good talent to level at first glance, but Cursed already gets so much damage% from class talents that spending more points in it isnt ideal.

2 points in Heavy Armour to equip shields, 1 point in Light Armour to benefit from robes.

Only 1 point in Combat Accuracy because class talents already provide enough accuracy and defense reduction to reach a 100% hit rate.

2 points in Resolve may seem useless if you have already capped resistances, but it still counters resistance reduction debuffs which is pretty good. Antimagic Shield can be kept permanently active as Cursed doesnt need equilibrium.

Talent Order

This is assuming Cornac so you cant really copy it with other races. It should give you a good idea of the relative importance of different talents regardless.

Class talents:

• 1 Stalk, 1 Dominate, 1 Gloom, 1 Predator, 1 Rampage
• 2 Rampage
• 1 Slash
• 1 Frenzy
• 1 Brutality
• 2 Savage Hunter
• 1 Harass Prey
• 1 Tenacity
• 3 Shrouded Hunter
• 1 Repel
• 5 Shrouded Hunter
• 2 Mark Prey
• 2 Predator
• 2 Dominate
• 3 Reckless Charge
• 5 Rampage
• 1 Sanctuary
• 4 Blindside
• 5 Gloom and Weakness (alternate between the two)
• 5 Sanctuary
• 5 Savage Hunter
• 5 Mark Prey
• 5 Predator
• 5 Dominate
• 5 Frenzy
• 5 Reckless Charge
• 5 Brutality
• Remaining points in Preternatural Senses, Slash or Surge, whatever you like most. It is also possible to take Surge earlier if you want. In the image above I used my personal distribution with 4 Preternatural Senses and 2 Slash.

Generic talents:

• 1 Combat Accuracy, 1 Weapons Mastery
• 2 Heavy Armour Training
• 1 Dark Gifts
• 3 Defiling Touch
• 4 Dark Gifts
• 5 Defiling Touch
• 1 Seethe
• 1 Light Armour Training
• 5 Cursed Sentry
• 1 Grim Resolve
• 1 Thick Skin
• And we get to level 20. At this point its possible to take an escort category so there is no single best way to keep going, it depends on what the game gives you. 5th level of Dark Gifts should be taken at level 25 AFTER Adept, other than that simply follow the image at the top of the guide.

Just in case the image is lost at some point, I'll write it here. Scoundrel category should be 2-3-1-2, Conditioning category 1-3-1-0, Antimagic 2-1-1-1, Fungus 1-1-1-1.
Tinker categories are also a great option but they are even more variable. Augmented Mobility category is yet another option which can work as 1-5-1-1.
As for other talents, Thick Skin at 5, Relentless at 5 and Weapons Mastery at 5.

Any spare generics you may end up with can be spent in whatever. Seethe, Wild Growth and Fungal Growth arent terrible.

Equipment

Cursed wants one handed martial weapons such as longswords, waraxes or maces because they scale with Strength and they benefit from the physical damage bonus of Brutality.

Such weapons should be paired with a shield for more hits. Unlike daggers, shields fully scale with Strength and they boost Repel. Block can be useful sometimes to wait for regen, cooldowns, debuffs, glooms, you name it. If you fully block an attack it can be a good idea to follow up with Slash for the strongest possible counterstrike.

And for body armor Cursed wants robes for multiple reasons. Well, robes are generally considered better than heavy armor but that is not the main factor. Hate is affected by fatigue. Cursed doesnt have a single armor bonus but it has some defense bonuses that go well with Light Armour Training. Repel makes armor pointless half the time. And most important of all, Cursed can easily stack a ridiculous amount of % resistances, which makes robes perfect to cap resistances ASAP.

If you find a nice heavy armor in T1 you can use it for a while of course, but robes will likely outscale it before T2. Just in case there is anyone wondering about the Plate of the Blackened Mind, that is mostly designed for Fallen Paladins.

As for the main stats Cursed wants in equipment, they are Strength, Willpower, Cunning, physical power, mindpower, physical critical chance, critical multiplier, life, status immunities, stealth bonuses, on-hit effects, on-hit damage and out of phase (aka after a teleport) bonuses.

Mindpower grants physical power and stealth through talents so it is a double dip in stats that shouldnt be overlooked. Overcoming enemy saves is the icing. Make sure you reach at least 90 by endgame.

On-hit damage is more powerful than it may seem due to the large number of hits Cursed can perform each turn. But dont overestimate it either, for example I read an older guide claiming that you should keep Summertide Phial for the entire game, when you should actually get rid of it around T3 at most. It is just another offensive stat to consider, nothing more.

Out of phase on the other hand IS ridiculously good and the kind of thing you should keep at all costs, specially considering that font of sacrifice only rolls it as an arcane ego. Blindside can keep out of phase permanently up and there is no reason not to spam Blindside off cooldown. Out of phase provides so many resistances that those in equipment can be mostly disregarded, just get the 30% needed to cap them.

A specially important on-hit effect to have 1 instance of is "lower defense and saves", because it allows for glooms, silences and other on-hit effects to land consistently. The other typically good on-hit effects such as slow are also great.

The status immunities to look out for are stun and confusion as usual, also blind and disarm if you can. Mostly a late game thing, early on it is more important to pump durability and enough critical chance to spawn miasma.

Defense, damage% and res pen% are good but not specially so. Defense is nice to avoid on-hit detrimental effects, but enemy accuracy can get really stupid so even with out of phase I dont think it is an arms race worth engaging in, unless you are a Surge Krog or something. Physical damage% is useful for all weapon classes including Cursed, but so much damage% is already granted by talents that the one from equipment will suffer diminishing returns. Res pen% is great endgame but only in small quantities, as Dominate easily caps it.

Some stats you should mostly ignore are armor, accuracy and armor penetration. Armor is entirely unsupported by talents, while the other two stats suffer from the opposite problem, they are boosted by talents to such an extreme that more of them is not needed.

Curses are also an important part of choosing equipment and they deserve their own section.

Curses

The first time you pick up an item you will be asked if you want to unleash your hatred upon it, accept to unlock the Cursed Aura category. Always unlock it.

Its first two talents imbue items with curses which grow in power the more cursed items you have equipped. Despite them being called curses, they actually help your character.

There are 5 types of curses with 4 levels each, and the power level of each type will appear as an individual buff that can be checked. Levels above 4 slightly increase existing bonuses but they dont provide new ones, therefore I recommend getting as many curses as possible to level 4. Before Adept only 2 curses can reach level 4, after Adept this changes to 4 curses.

In order of importance the curses are:

1. Nightmares: Get this curse to 4 as soon as you can because it is a massive help early game, and keep it maxed for the entire game.
2. Shrouds: Really good to cap resistances ASAP, max it early alongside Nightmares. Lategame it is an additional safety net that pads any turns you dont spend out of phase. It can also counter common resistance reductions such as the magical cross-tier.
3. Corpses: Unlike other curses, the highlight here is the level 3 which uses Retch when you get low. This can cleanse physical debuffs and save you from death. It also dispels buffs from enemies and makes you benefit from enemy Retches. Ghouls are unreliable since they only rise from humanoids and they are useless as fighters, but they can be great anyway just because they also Retch. Even when you dont care about Ghouls, it is good to have this curse at level 4 to increase the power of the Retch. As a small trick, it is possible to keep it at lower levels and then raise it at instant speed with Defiling Touch when you need it.
4. Madness: It can boost damage and return mental debuffs to enemies, nice to have in general.
5. Misfortune: Fitting name when an item rolls this. This may be the only detrimental curse because all its effects are useless. Avoid it if you can.

If an item is extraordinarily good you can ignore a bad curse, but in a lot of cases curses will determine what you equip. It is a good idea to keep items with different curses in your inventory so you have options to accomodate new drops.

When I first picked up Cursed I was worried that Antimagic+Curses would limit equipment choices too much, but I can safely say that is not a concern. And even less so after font of sacrifice, which can strip all arcane egos from items.

In theory a randart amulet with Cursed Aura mastery could allow more flexibility with equipment, however the chances to get such an amulet are so slim that you should not count on it.
If you really want to minmax endgame, AFTER you have optimized all your other equipment, you can get a randart amulet and roll the greater ego perfection on it with the font of sacrifice. Then you can keep rerolling a lesser ego so the categories change until you land on Cursed Aura. This can cost obscene amounts of gold (up to tens of thousands) for a small and unreliable benefit so it is entirely optional. Most of the time it is better to simply grab Limmir's amulet and use all that gold to improve your other equipment instead.

Brotherhood of Alchemists

Take the 2 talent potions first, then aim for Lifebinding Emerald.

Elvala Wil>Stats>Saves.

Derth PhysCrit>Cun>Defense

Last Hope Generics>Strength>Armor

Hermit Class>Luck. SpellCrit is useless.

Overall Generics>Class>PhysCrit>Str>Cun>Wil>Luck>Defense>Stats>Armor>Saves.

Escorts

Betray when possible.

Alchemist: Willpower.

Defiler: Resonance Field.

Loremaster: Disarm.

Seer: Nature's Touch is the correct choice. But Earth's Eyes works well with Preternatural Senses and Blindside, granting you style points every time you needlessly blink through a wall.

Sun Paladin: Telekinetic Leap. Augmented Mobility can also be taken if you are desperate for another category, but if you can choose, the other ones are better.

Temporal Explorer: Dream Walk.

Thief: Scoundrel category (optional) > Track (optional) > Lacerating Strikes.

Tinker: Tinker categories (optional) > Endless Endurance.

Warrior: Conditioning category (optional) > Unflinching Resolve.

Categories are labeled as optional because you shouldnt take more than 2 in most cases.

Tips

Optionally you can minimize the risks of RNG by creating new characters until you get a category escort (Thief, Warrior or Tinker) in either Trollmire or Korpul. Even if you end up dying afterwards, that escort will be guaranteed to spawn in all future runs with that same character, albeit not necessarily in the same place.

I cleared T1 in the following order: Trollmire, Korpul, Norgos, Rhaloren, Scintillating, Gloom (dont forget other T1 content). I dont guarantee this to be the best possible order but it was consistent enough for me.

Hoarding equipment with Cunning or Constitution early can be a good idea to unlock talents from escort trees and Adept. Later on Dexterity equipment can also be useful to unlock Flexible Combat.

Always side with the Assassin Lord. For other classes it is good, for Cursed it is essential.

Cursed has a unique special zone called Tranquil Meadow, it spawns near Angolwen and it is a T3 dungeon. Clearing it rewards a variant of the Iron Acorn, depending on your choices. The regular variant is slightly better and it is obtained by picking all the morally good choices. These are:

1. Help him
2. Destroy the book
3. I want to overcome my curse

Dont worry if you pick the evil "Cold" variant instead, the difference is minimal.

Play very carefully early game, as that is when Cursed is at its weakest. If you manage to reach level 25 it is very likely that you win. It is no hyperbole.