official Torchlight II

[greenwizard88]

I played the Torchlight 2 beta and I have nothing bad to say about it. It's polished in every way imaginable.

The release makes the beta, well, feel like a beta. :)

[Shadrack]

I was really really really wanting to get into TorchLight 2. Probably will have to wait until around Christmas though. I've been enjoying Diablo 3 and want to beat inferno. At that point I will probably not be interested in playing another game in the action RGP genera for awhile.

I really wish TL 2 came out BEFORE Diablo 3.

I plan to get into TL 2, just not right away. Plus giving it some time for the developers to patch whatever needs to be patched is not a bad idea.

Edit: Oh nice! I see there is a free demo that I can download and play. Hmmm..

I wonder how this will run on my step-son's computer. I think that its an early Core Duo (not even the 64 bit Core 2 Duo) but I installed my old 8800GT in it the other day and that seems to work OK.

[Shadrack]

Blame World of Warcraft. Worst art design of the past decade. But the addictive gameplay of "digital crack" has made this "look" ubiquitous.

I like the cartoon look and think it is really good art direction. I think WoW's cartoon look is part of what has given the game so much STAY power. If they went with something that looked more realistic back in 2004 then it would look really,really dated today.

Its all a mater of opinion.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I bought Torchlight in December 2009 and barely played it. And by that, I mean putting no more than 15 minutes into it. Part of why I bought it was for my younger brothers. Another part was to play it myself but I kept myself busy with other games. This time around, I plan on playing Torchlight 2 for a long while. I was frustrated by Diablo 3 and I'm itching to play an action RPG.

For those that are interested in trying the demo, you can download it here: http://www.torchlight2game.com/about

I read that if you "upgrade from the demo", you can use the character you made there in the full game.

[ShMaunder]

I played about an hour so far and really enjoyed it apart from my laptops graphics crapping out a bit. I found the original Torchlight a bit meh and was frustrated with the below par AI path finding which would end up with the pet getting stuck a lot. This one has improved on that.

Only played a little of D3 on the open weekend beta which I refuse to buy due to the always online requirement.

[Asrokhel]

I found the original Torchlight a bit meh and was frustrated with the below par AI path finding which would end up with the pet getting stuck a lot.

I didn't really have a problem with that, but the one problem I hated with the first one is if you killed an enemy near a "wall" or looted some items from a rack near a "wall" and the item ended up there, you couldn't get at it.

I don't know if they fixed it.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

It's the fifth most-played game on Steam today. Not bad for a game that was released yesterday.

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

[Nagisan]

It's the fifth most-played game on Steam today. Not bad for a game that was released yesterday.

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

That's actually current players, not the peak.....TL2 has a higher peak than Counter-Strike, making it the 4th most-played game on Steam today. Currently it is also the 4th most played game based on current users (as of this post).

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

That's actually current players, not the peak.....TL2 has a higher peak than Counter-Strike, making it the 4th most-played game on Steam today. Currently it is also the 4th most played game based on current users (as of this post).

You're right! I always thought the games were listed in order of most-played to least-played.

[dead.cell]

The way I see it: to have the two games so close to each other, minus D3's faults, at two completely different price points, there's no way anyone who likes Diablo III can go wrong in this purchase. At $15-20, it'd be silly to take sides and not give it a try. The developers have worked very hard in putting this together, and it's a very fun game, even if you think Diablo III might have an edge over it.

[compl3x]

You can download the soundtrack from Joystiq:

http://www.joystiq.c...ht-2-soundtrack

Thank you :)

[ShMaunder]

Played some more tonight. Found a couple of little annoyances; one being trying to attack a monster when an object blocks it but the character doesn't move to avoid it (so basically, you keep attacking the blocking object) - this also becomes a problem when you're on high ground trying to attack something on lower ground. I also managed to kill several of the elite monsters using ranged magic without them attacking at all (it looked like they were not changing from their default pacing around state).

Still, its a really good game so far. 100% worth every penny. If you like Diablo, you have to get it.

[Asrokhel]

Thank you :)

You're welcome.

[Tharp Daddy]

Any recommendations on Engineer skills? I generally play on my own and during the beta I enjoyed the construction tree with a cannon weapon, but things have changed quite a bit and given that you can only refund 3 skill points I am afraid to spend them somewhere, not like it later on, and be unable to go back and try something different.

On the flip side, being that character storage is local, I'm sure people will come out with character editors that at the very least would let you reset your skill points (all of them, not just the last 3 spent).....though this local storage system (which can be used online and in lan) just asks to be abused with hacked characters.

EDIT: It's ashame the TL2 forums are down, that's where I learned about a lot of the skills and what works and what doesn't during the beta. Hopefully they get them working soon (though a dev team of 33 isn't very big, they seem to care about the issues and aren't going to take off over the weekend just cause it's the weekend).

My engineer is only level 25 ish so take this with a grain of salt. So far i really like flame hammer (the beginning ability) it does crazy damage. I've put a lot of points into that, as well as Heal Bot which keeps me up pretty damn well, i've also invested into Large Weapons (i'm blanking on the name, it's the passive in the first tree that gives you + attack speed and stun chance).

Also, if you don't care about being flagged as a cheater to other players, you can reset your talents using the console I want to say the command is resetskills though i'm not 100% sure, give it a search. Also, because they are going to allow the game to be modded and integrated with Steamworks, you can bet there will be a respec potion very quickly after modding is opened up.

[Pupik]

After getting to act 3 in 13 hours, still having a blast with the game on my mage. Also today somehow managed to be one of the two percent that got this achievement: http://i.imgur.com/vZxf4.jpg

[Nagisan]

Playing Veteran with a good friend, I went tank/dps zerker (tank due to massive healing and gear focusing on damage reduction, damage from OP skills and lots of crit), my friend went glass cannon outlander. Going through act 2 tonight, he died about 5-6 times, I died once cause I wasn't paying attention to my health (was full, next time I looked at it I was almost dead and had no time to heal), this happened shortly after changing skill locations on my bar too so I wasn't accustom to my heal being where I moved it to.

He definitely has more DPS, but my DPS is more than capable of holding it's own (AoE takes 1-2 hits to kill most things around me, my single target skill Raze takes 5-6 hits to kill many champion mobs). Then when I need to heal I just Shadow Burst and heal for up to 21% of my HP depending on the number of targets I hit (and this will go up to around 10-12% PER TARGET for up to 5 targets when I max it out).

Overall I'm quite pleased with this game, it feels like what Diablo 3 should have been....not looking to start a flame war but this games has transmutation (ala D2's horadric cube), gambling (gambled an amazing unique claw, doubled my minimum physical DPS, increased my magic DPS by 6x it's previous value), lots of item drops (honestly many more uniques and sets than D2 even, and some of them are amazing, but lots of it is actually upgrades to what you are using, unlike D3). Though I would like to see better respec options, I am happy with where my build is right now, but if something gets changed and made much less efficient, I don't want to have to start over due to it.

[Tharp Daddy]

Playing Veteran with a good friend, I went tank/dps zerker (tank due to massive healing and gear focusing on damage reduction, damage from OP skills and lots of crit), my friend went glass cannon outlander. Going through act 2 tonight, he died about 5-6 times, I died once cause I wasn't paying attention to my health (was full, next time I looked at it I was almost dead and had no time to heal), this happened shortly after changing skill locations on my bar too so I wasn't accustom to my heal being where I moved it to.

He definitely has more DPS, but my DPS is more than capable of holding it's own (AoE takes 1-2 hits to kill most things around me, my single target skill Raze takes 5-6 hits to kill many champion mobs). Then when I need to heal I just Shadow Burst and heal for up to 21% of my HP depending on the number of targets I hit (and this will go up to around 10-12% PER TARGET for up to 5 targets when I max it out).

Overall I'm quite pleased with this game, it feels like what Diablo 3 should have been....not looking to start a flame war but this games has transmutation (ala D2's horadric cube), gambling (gambled an amazing unique claw, doubled my minimum physical DPS, increased my magic DPS by 6x it's previous value), lots of item drops (honestly many more uniques and sets than D2 even, and some of them are amazing, but lots of it is actually upgrades to what you are using, unlike D3). Though I would like to see better respec options, I am happy with where my build is right now, but if something gets changed and made much less efficient, I don't want to have to start over due to it.

The devs have said they have no plans to offer full respecs as they feel it makes the choices people make with their character "feel unimportant". They want to go for a Diablo 2 style where if you want to try something new, or you **** up your character, you just make a new one all together. But modding is going to be huge in this game, so there will be respec potions and the such soon after that's launched.

[Nagisan]

The devs have said they have no plans to offer full respecs as they feel it makes the choices people make with their character "feel unimportant". They want to go for a Diablo 2 style where if you want to try something new, or you **** up your character, you just make a new one all together. But modding is going to be huge in this game, so there will be respec potions and the such soon after that's launched.

Actually Diablo 2 now does have a full respec built-in...but it did take forever to get added.

[astropheed Veteran]

I'm enjoying this game a lot, I'm only level 30 since I don't have a whole lot of time, but all of my free time is going into this. I completely stopped playing GW2 because of this game and to be honest I thought it'd be the other way around.

This game really, really (really) deserves its $20 price tag.

[corrosive23]

Im a level 41 fire engineer. Ive gone full on in skill points with flame hammer, fire/spark, and spider mines.

[Mathachew Veteran]

A buddy of mine bought me this game the day after I got Torchlight from the humble bundle. I'm having a lot of fun playing as an Engineer and have this truly awesome Unique Greathammer. I feel like if I try another class I might be disappointed because of how much fun I'm having with this guy. For kicks I sometimes switch to a cannon.

[dead.cell]

Whoops, replied to the wrong thread. :pinch:

[TaiCrunch]

I haven't had too much time to play since it's been released, what with school and work and everything, only about a few hours or so. I went with a ranged DPS pirate-style Outlander on Normal for my solo character, and a powerhouse melee DPS Berserker on Veteran for multiplayer. Both are a lot of fun, but I have more an idea of what I want from my Outlander than from my Beserker. With Beserker, I've pretty much just been dumping all my points into STR and VIT, Pretty fun, but playing Veteran with a character type I'm not too familiar with makes it much more of a challenge.

I noticed when playing online it's a lot harder on my system than solo play is. I don't have the best computer, just a fairly new Dell laptop that can run it almost flawlessly on solo, but online I've had to fiddle with the settings quite a bit to run it smoother. Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?

[Twiddle]

Did Mordrox earlier on elite difficulty and recorded it. Fight took around 8 minutes or so, solo.

http://www.twitch.tv...59/b/334261243#

I later went on to take on General Grell solo on elite. That was hell. Fight lasted about 20 minutes of very careful "running my arse off, around pillars dodging assrapage, spamming health pots." But I prevailed.

I'm wondering if you can switch from Elite to Veteran. It isn't that it is too difficult, it is actually very trivial. All Elite does is make the game far too time consuming. A fight that could have taken 5 minutes took 20 simply because of health. As long as you have 100 health potions in Elite, you cannot die. I've made it to level 14 so far and haven't died hardly at all, just wasted a ton of time. If I'm going to go through content that is made trivial with health potions, I might as well just lower the difficulty so I spend less time on long fights, and get more overall game in, in a sitting.

Also, I wonder if there is a respec mod out. Strange enough, as an Outlander, I want to go full Focus/Caster type, instead of guns. I don't want to reroll my character for an embermage, but I have found that the Outlander's elemental abilities are far more powerful and as long as I keep mana pots, I can spam Glaive Throw which does a ton of damage.

[Nagisan]

Start a game and pick LAN or Internet, then you can change the difficulty. But it only changes it for that game and you can't pause by opening the menu. You have to do this every time you want to play on a different difficulty than what you started on.

As for outlander vs embermage, they both have builds that can do insane damage in similar ways. Obviously you have been using the Outlander's overpowered build (glaives), the embermage one is Prismatic Bolt......though this skill does take a bit of time to get as powerful as glaive, it does much higher single-target damage than glaive with similar multi-target.

Basically 1 point in Prismatic Bolt, then max the Brand passives. Increase Prismatic Bolt once you have enough mana to spam it.

The main differences between them:

Prismatic Bolt - Hits 5 targets max, but all 5 projectiles can seek out a single target (shoots 5 projectiles in a fan pattern that seek shortly after firing)....similar damage to Glaives at high levels but it takes longer to ramp up (I've seen people doing 500k and more to bosses with Prismatic Bolt).

Glaive Throw - Hits more and more targets based on tier bonus, though I've heard it's better to keep at the first tier due to mana cost. Does higher damage early on making it easier to start up. Only hits single targets once, making it far inferior in single target damage compared to Prismatic Bolt while being potentially superior in AoE (more targets per attack if leveled).

Embermage though has much better utility skills, you can teleport (which knocks back foes where you leave from and where you teleport to), you can freeze enemies, you can remove ALL of an enemies resistance (meaning you do 100% of your damage to any enemy, as opposed to your damage being lowered from an enemy having resistances....but this only happens with a staff and the staff mastery skill). No mana issues at all late game (put a few points in Charge Mastery....not many is needed....but you basically build charge to max far faster than you can spend the mana, which gives you infinite mana if you are hitting enemies). Ice Prison.....not that great as the pillars die fast, but against bosses they get confused for a second or two when you put it on them, and you can bottleneck enemies with it. Frozen Fate (passive), AoE immobilizes enemies in place when you kill an enemy (76% chance when maxed), meaning anything that doesn't die to your first pbolt, won't be able to come after you in large swarm scenarios.

I haven't played Outlander at all so I don't know what abilities they have compared to the above, but based on my friend (who went glaive outlander) he relied 100% on killing enemies before they could get close enough to kill him. He rarely used any defensive skills but its possible he just didn't need to cause things died so fast.

EDIT: There is a respec shared stash out, which basically is a shared stash full of respec potions (which do not flag your character as a cheater), just make sure you back up your current shared stash (or have it empty) before you use it. Actual mods that add respeccing probably won't appear until after the modding tools come out.