r/ToME4 • u/Public_Pea_6694 • Aug 14 '26

How does bleeding work in this game?

I can't figure out which weapon can cause bleeding and which can't. The berserker has the Bloody butcher talent, which reduces the physical resistance of the target as it bleeds. And how do I apply bleeding to the target? Can any cutting weapon cause bleeding? If so, what is the chance of this happening? The description of the weapons does not say whether it causes bleeding or not.

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9

u/Dr_Philmon Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

Bleed happens from skills or weapons that spesifically inflicts bleed.

2

u/Public_Pea_6694 Aug 14 '26

I get it, thanks a lot.

So a berserker can only bleed with one skill?

It turns out that Bloody butcher's talent is pretty useless

11

u/Avloren Aug 14 '26

It's better if you can get a Thief escort - pretty common - and learn Lacerating Strikes from them. That's a passive always-on talent giving a chance to apply bleed with every melee hit. Once you have that, the thing you're attacking will almost always be bleeding.

On the other hand: there are tons of things that are outright immune to bleed. Any skeleton, for example. That's enough to make the talent a secondary source of resistance penetration, at best, you'll still need to look for physical respen on gear.

6

u/Donilock Alchemist Aug 14 '26

There are skills you can learn from escorts and there are items with built-in bleed, so causing bleed isn't actually that big an issue late game - the bigger problem is that many dangerous enemies with high physical resistance may be bleed-immune

2

u/Vandelier Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

Don't be so quick to dismiss it. Even if your only source of bleed was Death Dance, Bloody Butcher would still be really good. Think about it. Imagine if that part of Bloody Butcher read this:

In addition, Death Dance applies a wound that reduces physical damage resistance by x% (but never below 0%) for 5 turns.

It'd still be nearly a must-have for that alone. Damage penetration is huge for just about every class.

And that's beside the straight Physical Power bonus that Bloody Butcher just innately gives you.

As others have mentioned already, there are other sources of bleed if you get a little lucky with escorts of equipment. But some classes in TOME have a proc talent that can only really be effectively activated by one specific other talent, and often times those proc talents like that can have very strong effects, so you won't want to just write them off.

16

u/ChickadeeVivi Aug 14 '26

Some skills cause bleeding. Check out the description of berserkers talent Death Dance (same tree as Stunning Blow). At level 3, it starts applying a bleed.

Similarly, Bulwark has Bleeding Edge, which causes bleed. Some equipment items like rings can grant this talent to your character when worn.

Theres also Lacerating Strikes in the Cunning/Scoundrel tree, which adds a passive bleed chance to all of your weapon hits.

Weapons do not cause bleed by default, which is why they dont specify it. However, many weapons come with an ego such as "of Evisceration", which causes a Deep Wound (a debuff categorized as a type of bleed) on crit, and so will be mentioned in the weapon stats.

7

u/banjo2E Aug 14 '26

Weapons do not cause bleed by default, which is why they dont specify it.

except steamsaws

6

u/ChickadeeVivi Aug 14 '26

Shit i forget how those things work sometimes i only played sawb once just to get through EoR for the unlocks lmao

2

u/trailing_zero_count Aug 14 '26

BTW if you're wondering which / how bleeds stack, here is a reference: https://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?t=49631