Dueling Torches...or how's the Torchlight run going (m7600)?

[JustKneller]

I just figured I'd start a thread so @m7600 and I can compare notes on our respective Torchlight runs. How is yours going?

I traded in my bikini battle babe for this guy:

Spoiler: Kneller and Freddy

Low level armor, but way more coverage than the ladies get.

But, I didn't switch to make a fashions statement. All the flashy animations on the screen are making it difficult/impossible to see the actual monsters. So, I figured a summoner build will give me an offense that can see.

I got crazy lucky on drops. The helmet, shoulder armor, and hammer (which is actually a "staff" weapon) all give bonuses to minions. I wish the weapon was one-handed, though, so I could use a shield. Not to mention, I even got a shield drop that gives minion bonuses. However, the hammer also gives a hefty bonus to gold/magic drops so it took precedence. If I get a good weapon drop with +gold/magic, then I'll switch to that. But, I'll probably have this thing for a while.

Skill-wise, there are a lot of obvious choices for summoners for alchemists. However, I fell into a trap and picked the imp summon. It's rubbish. High mana cost, needs a dead body to conjure, and super squishy. I only put a few points in it, though, so it won't really matter in the long run.

For spells, I have Skeletons I, Skeletons II, Skeleton Archers II, and Zombies I. I have two skeleton spells because of the (pointless) cooldown. I mean, the summons already have a limit and duration tacked on to them. It's a little tedious to have to wait a few seconds between castings. This way, I can alternate between the two for my "infantry" (and have twice as many since they are different level spells). I can't multi-cast the archers or zombies so there's no point in having more than one each of them. I theoretically can have just under twenty minions out on the field (more if I use the imps). However, I don't have the mana to maintain the numbers and the only thing that will get me more mana is leveling and gear (and Advance Spellcasting will really up my recharge rate). My pet doesn't have any spells yet, but I'm aiming for Heal All and probably web.

For stats, I'm keeping Magic and Defense pretty even for now. I don't really need magic since I'm barely attacking, but I do need to defend myself if something breaks through the front line. I also need Magic for some gear requirements. The same goes for defense, but it's more important because of teleporters and ranged enemies that can target me. Once I get Magic to a comfortable number for gear, I may just focus on Defense. My personal combat effectiveness is going to taper off due to focusing so much on the summons.

My plan is to get through the main game and then maybe run him through the Shadow Vault long enough to hit level 100. However, the build mechanics, loot grinding, and how a summoner plays I'm finding to be less satisfying than Diablo (or Path of Exile) so I might just call it after the main story and move to the (from what I hear, better) Torchlight 2.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

I'd love to hear more about how both runs are going. I never tried a summoner build in Torchlight before.

I hear summoner builds work well in Grim Dawn. Speaking of which, if you're still looking for games similar to Diablo 2, you might want to try Grim Dawn some time, if you haven't already played it.

 

[JustKneller]

It's going pretty well so far, but I'm only just past the Overseer's chamber (9th floor?). I'm level 16, partly because I did a handful of random maps from Triya. I'm probably a little over-leveled, but I'm also playing on Hard. I have one more random map, then I'll get back to the story dungeon. I wish I didn't put the points into Imps and moved it to somewhere more useful. The Archers are also disappointing, namely due to the difficulty placing them (they're immobile). The higher the level spell, the more archers you get, the more room you need. However, if there's no room where you click, they get placed some random spot nearby (and often behind me where there's no action). I expect Ember Sentry will fill their role better when I get access to it. I'm deciding what to do about this. If I take them out, there really isn't another summon to put in their place (I'll hopefully get blood skeletons eventually, but that's way off). So, it's Skeleton 1, Skeleton 2, Zombies, and something. I might take Identify (which basically pays 250-500 gold every time your inventory fills, since I never find nearly enough identify scrolls). But, I'd rather go overkill on the summons if possible. Maybe I'll just keep the Archers for boss arena fights.

 

[m7600]

I'm not sure that I'll be able to complete a Torchlight run, in all honesty. It was fun for the first few levels, but now I'm just trying to find the motivation to soldier on. The game has several things that I like (I'll get to those in a moment), but for the most part, there's no hooks here, at least not for me. There's nothing here that baits me in any way. It's essentially a Diablo 1 clone with 3D graphics, with a skill system reminiscent of Diablo 2, but without the atmosphere and storytelling that made the first Diablo games so compelling. Of course, an ARPG doesn't need to have a brooding, dark atmosphere in order to be good. But if the atmosphere doesn't draw the player in, then the game needs to have something else that does.

One such point could be the game's style. Unlike @JustKneller, I happen to like the quirky, cartoonish and goofy style that characterizes Torchlight. But, just as the mechanics feel derivative of the Diablo franchise, to the point of being formulaic, the style feels derivative of the Warcraft franchise. Which isn't necessarily something bad, but speaking from a purely personal point of view, the game needs to offer me something more than Warcraft-ish style to hook me in.

So far, what I like the most about Torchlight are the things that are off the beaten path, such as the fishing mini game, the possibility of learning spells independently of the character's skills, the pet that can run back to the town to sell items, etc. These little things do indeed strike a chord with me, as I acknowledge them as creative and original design decisions. But these things aren't the meat and potatoes of this game, they're just extras.

Is Torchilight 1 a good game, overall? I guess. Would I recommend it? Probably, if you're looking for a Diablo 1 clone, or if you're a diehard fan of the ARPG subgenre.

With all of that being said, I'll see if I can muster enough motivation to finish at least one run.

 

[JustKneller]

there's no hooks here

I would agree with that. I mean, it's not a bad game, it's just nothing special.

Unlike @JustKneller, I happen to like the quirky, cartoonish and goofy style that characterizes Torchlight.

I wouldn't say I dislike cartoonish graphics across the board. For example, I think that the Don't Starve games are some of the most visually appealing games I've seen. However, it doesn't really work in Torchlight for me. The style is in the neighborhood of a generic mobile game. It's not really selling the theme for me.

Is Torchilight 1 a good game, overall? I guess. Would I recommend it? Probably, if you're looking for a Diablo 1 clone, or if you're a diehard fan of the ARPG subgenre.

With all of that being said, I'll see if I can muster enough motivation to finish at least one run.

You gotta stick it out. C'mon, let's race to the finish!

I'm not sure I'd recommend the game, though. Or, I'd recommend it with an asterisk. I'll talk about it more when I finish the run, but it revolves around some vanquisher disappointments and missing QoL features for summoners along with a couple other things.

But, I'm going to keep plugging away at it to finish it for it's own sake.

So, what's your build/strategy?

 

[m7600]

The style is in the neighborhood of a generic mobile game.

I think you nailed it, it really does give off that run-of-the-mill, generic mobile ARPG vibe.

So, what's your build/strategy?

Since I'm playing on Easy difficulty, I don't really have a strategy. I'm just mindlessly shooting at monsters with my trusty handgun. Then I collect the loot, town portal, sell the loot, go back to the dungeon, and start to mindlessly shoot at monsters. Rinse and repeat, ad nauseam. Though maybe I'm the one at fault here, perhaps if play at a higher difficulty I'd have more fun. As for the build, I'm following the Marksman path (shouldn't it be Marskwoman, since the Vanquisher is female by default?). I'm dumping all of my skill points into passive skills, i.e. Ranged Weapons Expertise and Critical Strikes, for now.

 

[JustKneller]

I think you nailed it, it really does give off that run-of-the-mill, generic mobile ARPG vibe.

That's part of what gets me. I mean, didn't they have some devs from the original Diablo on this? You would think they would take it as an opportunity to level up on the model. But some of it seems phoned in.

I think upping the difficulty would help. If I was on Easy, my minions would just mow through everything so quickly it would be a walking simulator. On hard, I do have to consider position. Even then, I'm doing ok. I just took out whatever was in the Vast Chasm causing the earthquakes. I didn't even get a chance to get its name. I had my full army out and buffed so the thing died in 3-4 seconds. I'm level 24 and on the 21st floor so probably not really even that over-leveled.

 

[JustKneller]

I just had my first death. It was in a secret dungeon off of Floor 23. I'm quite careful with my forward movement and keep my summoning line in front of me. However, targeting is really bad in this game (both for summons and enemies). Despite having a wall of skeletons between the enemies and myself, some monsters that spawn skipped through them and went right for me. Meanwhile, my summons ignored the monsters targeting me and focused on others (and some even just stood there). So it goes.

 

[JustKneller]

So, this is irksome...

Spoiler: loot

So a level 8 items gets me +3% magic find, +4 Magic, and +2 Dexterity. A level 40 item gets me +1% magic find and that's it. Yeah, totally epic...

And the thing is, neither of these items are really all that great. The magic find is the only thing even remotely useful here.

My general take on gear is that it doesn't actually scale (well) to your level. I'm generally finding stuff now that would be trash at even half my current level. I can sell it, but for my build, I don't really need tons of gold (just enough cash to buy the occasional upgraded spell. I do need shards, though, and I'm starting to think I shouldn't even bother with selling green/blue gear, instead transmute it all for stones, and only bother checking out uniques when they drop.

I would say, largely due to the lack of scaling, the loot grind isn't satisfying here. I'm kinda feeling like Torchlight's garbage man.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

So, this is irksome...

Spoiler: loot

View attachment 12811

View attachment 12812

So a level 8 items gets me +3% magic find, +4 Magic, and +2 Dexterity. A level 40 item gets me +1% magic find and that's it. Yeah, totally epic...

And the thing is, neither of these items are really all that great. The magic find is the only thing even remotely useful here.

My general take on gear is that it doesn't actually scale (well) to your level. I'm generally finding stuff now that would be trash at even half my current level. I can sell it, but for my build, I don't really need tons of gold (just enough cash to buy the occasional upgraded spell. I do need shards, though, and I'm starting to think I shouldn't even bother with selling green/blue gear, instead transmute it all for stones, and only bother checking out uniques when they drop.

I would say, largely due to the lack of scaling, the loot grind isn't satisfying here. I'm kinda feeling like Torchlight's garbage man.

You may or may not know that the forerunner of the Torchlight games was a game called Fate. Fate was produced by former Diablo developers who wanted to make a similar game that they themselves would enjoy, but without the restrictions and demands of working for a large company. They had a small budget, and the game needed to run well on less-than-top-end computers.

One of the elements they used was randomly generated loot. The item level or quality would affect how many affixes, and the RNG tables, but you could still get plenty of bad rolls. A lot of the random affixes wouldn't even make sense together.

It's an acquired taste, but a certain subset of the ARPG market enjoys the randomly generated loot element because it has a similar appeal to gambling. A huge amount of the loot you get, maybe most of it, is nonsensical garbage, but every once in a while, you can hit the "jackpot", leading to a big rush of pleasure in the brain.

It's a different approach from what most ARPG's do, especially any ARPG produced by Blizzard or Blizzard wannabes, where the loot is tightly designed and controlled in an attempt to balance everything, with multi-player interaction and competition always firmly in mind.

I personally don't much care one way or the other about the random loot design of Fate>Torchlight. What attracts me to Fate>Torchlight is the simplicity of the gameplay loop, and I like the bright colors, music, and cartoonish graphic tone. I find the prevalent grimdark tone of most current and some past ARPG's to be rather depressing, and often I want a more cheerful and uplifting tone to whatever game I'm playing. When I'm in a certain mood, Fate>Torchlight satisfies that particular kind of craving very well.

 

[JustKneller]

I've actually never heard of Fate, though just googled and read up on it a bit now. It's pretty clear to me why all these games are in the same neighborhood. Considering how long after Diablo II the first (Torchlight) game came out, you would think they would build on what worked. I'm fine with random loot generation, but not having it scale to level at all undermines leveling which is a key part of the gameplay loop.

I do agree that grimdark is low-hanging fruit for ARPGs. Where the disconnect happens with me for Torchlight is that they are trying to be grim with the story (i.e. Alric's descent into the mountain) but the visuals are Saturday morning disney cartoon. I've seen a lot of games that go non-grimdark with the visuals, but with a more unique style twist to fit it to the theme. Don't Starve basically uses cartoons, but they're offbeat in a Tim Burton kind of way and it works. Final Fantasy IX was cartoony in a very innocent child-like way, but it effectively provided contrast with the story's themes of existentialism and loss of innocence. I think that, if this is really the direction Torchlight wanted to go with visuals, they probably should have leaned more into the steampunk theme and do something story-wise a little more similar to the Dark Cloud series. That is, more cheeky with a grander, less down to earth, theme. As is, I can't take Alric seriously here and don't really care about the NPCs. I'd trade the whole town of Torchlight for a single Wirt.

All that being said...

Spoiler: Mistakes were made

I've decided to restart my run. While I like the retirement mechanic and can see its value if one was planning to keep grinding this game on the long term, I just want to have one really good solid run and then move on to Torchlight 2. I'm level 30 and realize that I've wasted about half my stat points and a third or so of my skill points. Since there's no respec option, it's time to begin anew with what I've learned. Here are all my terrible sins.

I've basically been putting alternating 2:3 and 3:2 in Magic and Defense every level. Bad idea for a summoner. Str/Dex/Mag are basically only good for their corresponding weapons/attacks and for some armor requirements. A summoner's damage comes almost entirely from the summons and related skills which aren't affected by these stats. The stats are also used for gear requirements, but embers and/or Armor Expertise can get you the stat points you need for gear. Meanwhile, you can never have enough Defense. So, the new plan is all stat points into defense.

I put points into a number of skills that were/are just a waste. I was leveling Adventurer, which boosts XP/Fame gain and potion recovery. However, the first two features stop working when/if you max your level, and you can just grind a little extra (maps from Triya or the Shadow Vault) for the same effect. It's basically a skill the lets you off the hook with playing the game a little. As for the potion boosts, there's plenty of potions (at least for a summoner). and you can always double down if you need to.

I put points into Nether Imp. It's a crap squishy summon that requires dead bodies to even re-summon it. It doesn't scale well at all. Not to mention, hotkey space is at a premium and you just don't have room for everything that could possibly help a summoner. Even if you did, having to constantly re-summon them really beefs up your administrative load.

Thorned Minions is not a bad skill at all. It's an especially great skill for a summoner to instakill a champion/boss that uses an AoE attack. The baddie casts it on your army and gets 75% of their own attack sent back to them at least tenfold. However, it's contextual, and with all the other button pushing going on, it can stand to be cut for the sake of efficiency and expediency.

I also put points into Ember Sentry. This is a deceptively bad, or at least tricky, skill. It's damage is going to be based on your magic stat and charm mastery. However, a summoner doesn't really need a magic stat. However to the however, an elemental alchemist is going to have high magic, but doesn't need charm mastery. In order to get good mileage out of this skill, you basically need to sacrifice the rest of your build. It's fine if you have points to burn, but a summoner doesn't have those points until well after level 50. I also noticed that this summon, when it even triggered, was doing about 1/10 the damage of my weakest minions. Plus, I had to be right behind the front line for it to be close enough for it to trigger, which is a dangerous place to be (and even got me unnecessarily killed once).

Meanwhile all those points would have done much more for me had I put them in other areas. I have a new plan now. I might take the character to the Shadow Vault to max out his levels, but I may just call it after I finish the story dungeon. I estimate that to be about level 50, so (with fame level ups) I estimate around 75 skill points by end game. That's enough to max seven skills and then go crazy with five skill points.

Tier 1 is Pet Mastery, Charm Mastery, and Burning Bind. All offensive supports. Defense is big for this character, but you win better by killing things faster as opposed to dying slower. Fun fact, max Pet Mastery and gear that reduces pet travel time a little has had my pet insta-travelling back and forth to town. That's handy. Burning Bind is the premier minion buff. It doesn't have a range that forces you into the fray like Frailty. It's not contextual like Thorned Minions. It just works.™

Tier 2 is Armor Mastery, Alchemical Golem, Beam Golem, and Barter. Armor Expertise helps with gear equips and, of course, makes my armor better. The golems are pretty solid summons by all accounts. I noticed that the Alchemical one is especially a little squishy, but I also only put one point in it with my prior summoner. If I dedicate more resources to it (and the Beam Golem) it should deliver better. Barter seems like an odd choice, but based on what I've read online (and my own theorycrafting) there's a solid strategy here. That is, at max level (and perhaps with gear that reduces vendor prices), it prints money. Is it cheesy? Maybe a little, but I can accomplish the same thing by repeatedly grinding low level maps from Triya. But, since drops don't really scale to level, I think I can be more efficient loot grinding with the Gambler. As for the loot I pull from the dungeon, I can transmute all of it for embers. It takes 512 cracked embers to make one shard and you can socket up to 22 shards in your gear. That's theoretically over 11,000 cracked embers to fully shard your gear. Granted, you'll come across some higher quality embers from drops, but I'm still looking at needing thousands of embers. Between all the swag from the dungeon and buying up embers from Triya with max Barter money printing, I think I can get there (or pretty close) by endgame.

So, that's seven skills. How am I going to go wild with my last five theoretical points? Ember Shield and Ember Phase. Ember Shield is a good one to soak up a hit or two, especially from ranged attackers that shoot over your frontline. It can buy you enough breathing room to fall back and keeps you from taking a real hit. Ember Phase is also good for the same reason. You can instantly teleport back, then have the time/space to summon some archers and zombies that can take down the charging opposition before it can get to you. Plus, if the enemies are close enough when you teleport, they get stunned. You just need one point for each of these. I'm torn on the last three points. I could put a little more meat on Ember Shield. I can put three points in Block and Parry for a +6% block chance. I can also put the points in Treasure Hunter which will help the ember grind. I'll see how I'm feeling at that point, but I'm leaning towards Ember Shield or B&P.

 

[JustKneller]

Spoiler: Early days

I'm level 10 and have had some ups and downs. I've only cleared through floor 5 because I've been doing every village side quest as they've popped up. I got lucky with Triya and managed to get my base army pretty fast (by floor 3, I believe). That's Skeletons I, Skeletons II, Archers I, and Zombies I. It's been a little slow in terms of clear speed, though. I decided to do this play "fresh" to see what my new grind strategy shakes out. So, I didn't send over all the great minion bonus uniques that my prior incarnations manage to drum up. Apparently, getting massive bonuses to minion damage/health/speed/armor really lets you mow through things. Go figure. I nearly got myself killed trying to keep pace, but it's a lot more under control now that I've slowed down.

I have Pet Mastery 5, Alchemical Golem 1, Armor Expertise 6, and Ember Shield 1. Armor Expertise is tier 2 for this build, but it's been the only skill in which I can drop points on some levels. I know I can hold the points until other skills open up, but I like spending the points as I get them. My gear is nothing to write home about, but it's still early days, of course.

I'm going to solider on with the story dungeon and side quests. If it starts to get a little too hot, I'll head back to town and grind some low level maps from Triya.

 

[JustKneller]

Spoiler: Movin' on up

Level 20 and Floor 16 so far. I have Pet Mastery 10, Charm Spell Mastery 10, Alchemical Golem 2, Burning Bind 1, Armor Expertise 6, and Ember Shield 1. Most of my gear in unimpressive, except for a ring that gives me +2 Charm Mastery. I'm not sure if this can push the level past 10, but based on what I've read online, you can actually boost your skills to 20 with enchantments.

It's going ok. Not having all that uber gear slows down the clear speed, which lets me see how minions actually function. The pathfinding and targeting is pretty bad on both sides. I've had minions run into a corner while an enemy was behind them whacking away. I've had enemies target me and try walking against a wall of minions to get to me, only to get smacked down. Sometimes summoning style ranges from comical to frustrating.

I'd like to have more points in the Golem, but higher priority skills won out and is paying off. However, now that Pet Mastery and Charm Spell Mastery are maxed, the only high priority is Burning Bind. I should have points to send the golem's way on my way to level 30.

My spells haven't really improved much. I have Summon Skeleton II and III (instead of I and II), still, as well as Archers I. I did manage to pick up Zombies IV just as I hit level 20. Triya just hasn't had what I need in stock. Ideally, I'd have Archers IV and Skeletons III and IV.

I tried an experient with my pet and gave them summon Aloe. I figure, it's one more warm body and effectively casts heal all. However, the pet won't use this spell (but will use other summons). That was about 4k gold wasted. I think I'll just stick to giving it two heal spells.

I'm probably going to grind a couple L1-10 maps, just to cycle Triya's inventory for better spells. I also have a Hatch quest to do. So, maybe I'll do that first. Otherwise, I'm caught up on NPCs.

Onwards and downwards!

 

[m7600]

Speaking of items, I've found a unique rifle:

Spoiler

 

[m7600]

And, just like that, after about 3 more minutes, I found a second unique firearm:

Spoiler

 

[JustKneller]

Spoiler: Still at it

Level 30 and 25 floors in. I realized something. Because I'm transmuting all the loot into embers, and doing that generally gets you at least a dull ember (not a cracked one). That means I really only need 256 embers to get to a shard, not 512. That means I need on only around 5600 embers to fully shard my gear, not the 11k I previously quoted. Just to draw a point of comparison, it takes more than twice the transmutations to get a top tier gem in Torchlight than in Diablo 2. Not only that, but I believe that Diablo 2 maxes out at 15-16 sockets across all gear. So, that means you only need just under 3900 transmutations (at most) to fully socket your gear. Just a little math nerdery for you. As for me, my highest tier gems are a few star embers, which are three levels away from being a shard. So, basically, each one needs about 450 dull embers to max out. I don't think I'll make it by endgame.

Anyway, I have Pet Mastery 10, Charm Spell Mastery 10, Alchemical Golem 10, Beam Golem 2, Burning Bind 8, Armor Expertise 6, Ember Shield 1, and Ember Phase 1. For spells, I picked up some higher level spells when they showed up in the shop and saved them for level 30. This has me now with Skeleton V, Skeleton VI, Archers VI, and Zombies VI. I just need Blood Skeletons to replace Skeletons V and my spells will be complete. Freddy, on the other hand, is already maxed out and packing Heal All V and VI.

I've managed to pick up a couple pieces of actually useful gear. I have a wand that boosts minion speed, a helm that boosts their speed and damage, and halfway decent gear otherwise. I did have to pass on a couple of gear upgrades for which I couldn't possibly hit the stats, but they would have been minor upgrades. A small price to pay for max defense. To be honest, I'm not sure how good my defense is. I've been doing pretty well staying behind the front line, and the enemies that break through have trouble even getting past my Ember Shield.

Part of me wants to focus on Barter so I can grind the Gambler for more minion gear. However, maxing out the Alchemical Golem has paid off and I want to do the same for the Beam Golem. Either way, I'll be finishing off Burning Bind in the next few levels. Then it's a matter of deciding between Barter and the Beam Golem. Though, really, minion gear helps my whole army, while Beam Golem helps just the Beam Golem, so it could be Barter first.

 

[JustKneller]

A quick update. I'm level 37 and just maxed out Barter. Sure enough, you can sell for more than it costs to buy...on some things. I should mention, one of my items gives me a 2% break on vendor prices, but I don't think that matters here. As I said, it's only some items, and in fact, very few items. So far, I see that it only works for identify scrolls and dog/catfish. If you do it with identify scrolls, you make a whopping 1gp per trade. However, the dog/catfish is where the money is. If you manage to acquire a stack of them, they are worth over 400gp a trade cycle. I pulled some shenanigans with the town waypoint and exiting/entering the game to reset the merchant's inventory so I could buy at least a stack of each fish. Had I known these were where the profit was, I would have picked one up on my trips back to town throughout the game. A full fish inventory would be worth over 8800gp per trade cycle.

In any event, it goes as follows. Reset merchant inventory, buy a new fish, trade cycle to 100k, buy out anything interesting from the gambler, check Triya for Blood Skeletons, buy all her embers, transmute the junk from the gambler into ember, merge what I can, repeat. This is probably an exploit, but you would think it would have been found and patched out in testing if it wasn't meant to be there.

Normally, I like to make things tough for me in a game and even do self-imposed challenges to make things more difficult. It's extremely rare I take advantage of an exploit. However, if I'm being frank, I don't really even like this game and I'm only seeing what this method shakes out before I finish the last few floors (I'm on 30 now) and can call it a day on Torchlight.

In other news, I've had two deaths since my last post. Both were for the same reason. Between the new enemy effects on the final floor, my massive army, all the explosions and animations everywhere, I literally can't see a thing in a large battle. Something somehow somewhere broke (or penetrated) my Ember Shield and took me down in a fraction of a second. I suspect it was a dark zealot. They have elemental attacks which Ember Shield doesn't block and they love to ignore my summons. Oh well, I can just start back at the beginning of the floor for an irrelevant gp cost.

I may not even mess around with the Barter exploit. It's tedious, and the likelihood of getting decent minion gear is quite small. I could just rush the endgame since both death and gold are irrelevant and that will be that. We'll see...

 

[JustKneller]

Spoiler: The End

Aaaaaaaaaaand...we're done.

I didn't mess around with the Barter trick too much, and didn't get anything useful from it anyway.

I had a handful of deaths to get to endgame, and only two in the final fight. Mostly it was because I just couldn't see anything on the screen. I was ready to be done by the time I got to the last few levels. I didn't even explore or collect loot. I just steamrolled through to the next stairway down and rushed the end.

The final fight was...disappointing. The big bad evil guy summoned a metric ton of help. Like, the entire screen was literally crawling with dragon creatures and then skeletons came from all sides, too. All I had to do was summon and buff while I kited everything. I still got swarmed those two times, though. I'm surprised it was only two times. The screen was literally covered in enemies.

I'm putting my final thoughts in the game-you-just-finished thread. But, long story short, I didn't really care for the game. I'm going to take a break for Freedom Fighters before taking on Torchlight 2. I really hope they improved on the model in the sequel. Oi.

 

[JustKneller]

Ok, so we're back on Torchlight, the sequel this time. I'm reading over some basics on the wiki and relevant threads on reddit to figure out what to build for this. My impression is that this game is scaled differently. I maxed out at just over 200 Defense in the last game, and that's with putting literally every level up point into defense and focusing on defense with armor. In Torchlight 2, people are talking about builds with Vitality of 400 and Strength of 1000. But, it's still only 100 levels and 5 points a level. I have a few different build ideas I'm considering.

Engineer (tanky summoner) - On one hand, everything I'm reading seems to indicate that armor is pretty useless by endgame. On the other hand, armor isn't what makes this build tanky. Instead they get special abilities, like forcefields and healbots, that help make up for armor's shortcomings. Based on what I've read, a summoner is tougher to build than in the first game because you don't get your essential summoning skill until level 14, which is pretty well in.

Outlander (blinding shotgunner) - I was let down by gunplay in the first game, but people online say this glass cannon build can basically blind hordes of enemies (and bosses) so they would be untouchable. It's not the fastest clear speed, as it sacrifices power for disabling, but I'm less concerned with that and more concerned with being able to survive when plans go sideways.

Embermage (Prismatic Bolt) - This character is a straight up blaster. Their focus skill does add elemental damage effects (i.e. DoT from fire, slow from ice, etc.), but it reads as pretty minor compared to the Outlander's blinding.

I'm going to tinker for a bit, and then settle on a character for this run.

 

[JustKneller]

I'm leaning towards Engineer. The other two are glass cannons and if the screen clutter is anything like the last game, I'm going to take some hits for sure.

Stats are a little weird in this game. Rather than each class having a "class stat" and then you choose how to split between that and health, every stat is of relative importance to all classes. For an tanky engineer, it actually gets a little complicated. Strength is just damage (as well as critical damage). My engineer doesn't need to worry about this. However, there are gear requirements to consider. Dexterity increase critical chance and fumble recovery (apparently attacks can critically miss). Not useful to me at all. But, it also affects dodge chance, which is useful. The only thing Focus does for me is add mana, but I've read that this kind of build could be starving for it at times. Finally, there's Vitality. A pure defense stat. It increases your health, armor multiplier, and block chance. The last one is the most important.

There's a hard cap on Dodge and Block of 75%. I would assume that if you have both maxed out, that means there's only a 6.25% chance of an attack getting through, and this build will have a forcefield for that. Then again, I also read that there are a lot of enemies that are "undodgeable", but nothing is unblockable, so block is more valuable.

The thing that complicates things the most is that no real consistent builds have emerged, at least not for this kind of engineer. Some say Dexterity is great, others say it sucks. Focus is overtuned, Focus is worthless. And so on...

So, my strategy, for lack of better information is as follows. Three points a level will go to Vitality, the rest is to round out my other attributes. Other than Strength, everything brings something to the table aside from gear reqs. This build relies on good gear more than others, so being able to meet gear reqs will be a big help. Once I get the others to a respectable level, it will be just Vitality. Hopefully, that will work out.