Tales of Maj'Eyal

It concentrates on battle tactics heavily, by

• have no hunger clock, and no enemy spawning. The player is free to rest forever to reset.
• have no consumables (except some rare items that gives significant permanent benefits)
• skills, items and other usables have cooldowns, in addition to their resource cost that can be recovered

Its main game play encourages the following loop:

engage

get attention of a minimal set of enemies

tense battle

in a few turns, the player survive while getting some of these enemies killed or damaged if they cannot recover

escape

run away from the battle field

reset

recover the cooldowns and resources

It has some meta progress, but the player is free to not use them:

• As a donator, you can pass on several items to next games
• There are locked races and classes that get unlocked with achievements.

Also, it has consequence persistence, and 3 modes of permanent death:

exploration

the player can resurrect for infinite times. When resurrect in this way, the character is put into a safe area where they can reset CDs. Then they can go back to the battle field at the same point, or be sent to the world map.

advanture

the player can resurrect for limited times, which are gained when certain progress is made. Mobs remain in the battle field resets their HPs to maximum.

roguelike

the player cannot resurrect, unless it finds and uses some limited rare items to gain extra life. These limited resurrection happens right away in the battle field.

In addition, it features 5 levels of difficulties. Combined with the 3 modes of permanent death, there are then 15 modes in total.

• easy
• normal
• nightmare
• insane
• madness

I personally like insane most. It is not too hard so options are not too limited, while make the gameplay interesting for the full game. In nightmare or below, the game is too easy once the build is running.

• basics (Micbran 2016), (Desires 2025)
• how to survive (ToME4Wiki 2014), (ToME4Wiki 2016), (Cathbald 2018b) (old), (DFuxa 2014)
• how damage is calculated (ToME4Wiki 2013a)
• zone order (Cathbald 2018a)
• choices (Cathbald 2018c), (Cathbald 2018d), (Kelley and mecirt 2014)

Also see the backlinks for winners with notes.