torchlight - a baby diablo

Ok, those forums DO have a lot of info! Though i now i realize i may have to respec my summoner/caster/dual-wand (ok maybe I did try too many things) Alchemist since i dumped too many points in the wrong skills. The game does encourage this, though, with the skill level tiering - which is totally cool - because it IS more fun to try out a dozen different abilities than to power build - though my eyes are definitely changing for my games with the other classes. Glad the respec potion exists, though, so I don't have to completely start over with Alchemist!

I hit level 10 last night and am thinking, even with kicking the level up to Hard, that this isn't going to take so long to complete. So I'm cool with screwing up my tank by choosing specs badly and then playing again as a blaster. It's mostly just dumb button-mashing fun for me so far, kinda like Marvel Ultimate Alliance (I played Diablo but not Diablo 2, and it was a long time ago...this is the first game like this I've played since then).

Haha, don't worry about completing the game here, trust me. There's... something afterward.

haha ok, I guess I can create multiple characters then? I want to see how the other classes work, esp. b/c I'm avoiding distance weapons and (for the most part) spells with my tank.

sure, why not? all your characters stay selectable/reloadable from the main screen in any case

cool, I think I'll do that then!

wow, playing on hard really cleared my sinuses out, so to speak: I was midway through a pocket dungeon (level 8; my char is level 10) and I ended up dying uh, 6 times? And that was just on the small second floor. Then I went back to the main dungeon and I did better, so I guess it was just the beefed-up pocket mobs that were the trouble.

best tip from the forums so far, if you haven't seen this:

before you go to the gambling man in town, put a socketed item in your pet's inventory. mouse over an item the diceman is selling. if:

-it has at least 3 requirements (level + 2 attribs)
-the socket/gem appears on the item in your pet's inventory

you have a 90% chance of getting a rare/unique item. (maybe all unique items have 4 requirements? dunno.) yeah i was complaining about being overpowered earlier. whatever, now i have a mace with a ram's head.

hah - I just sunk a couple of points into Barter, too. maybe I'll turn my chararcter into a gold finder

i didn't even bother with magic or gold find bonuses on my first main runthrough - a foolish decision! even getting 2 or 3% find, especially gold, makes the game go so much smoother

gonna try out that tip on the gambler - so far i've gotten screwed over for the most part on those

So far (about 6 hrs of play) I haven't found gold to be particularly necessary. The gear that pops has been plenty good, I think. Is there significantly better gear available for purchase at the store?

my best weapons have been store bought (drops have not been kind to me)

I should start checking out the store then; the town is kind of a dreary place to spend time so I try to get out asap.

I make enough money that I clean the gem seller out of gems every time I get - also I check to see what spells she has

I have a bad habit of constantly using the enchanter, which just eats up gold at a crazy rate, but then you get these awesome items with 10 bonuses and slots and whatnot. But I am probably better off buying more store stuff.

just finished this on hard, have absolutely no desire to do the endless dungeon or very hard

ok whoa is this fun as alchemist; sitting back, blasting away...and I just figured out that wands shoot too! but who needs to when you've got serious triple ember bolts blasting away!

dual wand, motherfucker! what's really sick though is if you go the summoner route, between all the different summon spells, your imps and golems you can control a ridiculous little army

yeah I am rocking dual wands! is there some reason not to? b/c so far no mob gets close to me when I'm blasting away with ember bolt (it has 50% knockback I think). playing on hard now too...but I think I"m only level 6 with this char so far.

RPS review spot-on, I think: www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/30/wot-i-think-torchlight/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/30/wot-i-think-torchlight/

That RPS review is quite correct, and I really like those guys, but wow did it really need 15 paragraphs to say "best diablo since diablo ii, shallow and great"? Ah, that's what they always do, though.

Euler: There's a dual-handed proficiency you might want to invest in at Level 20, I think, but the main reason not to do dual wands is to have a shield for better defense and blocking. But I'm pretty ok with that general strategy of blasting away anyone who gets close with spells. You'll know when the game wants you to slow down because you'll spawn on a new floor and BAM instamob death, kinda like forks said way early in the thread.

I may as well get a shield now b/c I'm mostly just perma-ember-bolting---it's so tactile-y satisfying to play on my macbook pro b/c blasting is two-finger-click (that gets a right click) and it just feels shooty, feels right.

it's gonna be tough to turn away from double wands now b/c I am rocking two sweet ones. whoooo this game is fun (thank goodness I don't have much time for it, o/w I could get sucked in)

game is 6x as interesting on Hard than Normal. i appreciate the level design more now that i'm not burning through them as fast. i have to make actual tradeoffs in spending / character setup.

Yes: although I haven't found hard to be very difficult either. I've moved to carrying a shield instead of double wands, b/c the occasional flash crushings by a huge gang of mobs o/w ends with me dead quickly. But as long as I can avoid getting hit much and I have enough mana potions handy (easy since they drop like crazy) then I can blast my way through anything. I hit level 20 last night. My kitty is pretty tough now (though a spider for 3600 seconds! kinda confusing mostly) and my golum soaks up plenty of damage. When I hit 25 I'll get the other golum too.

I think I'm on the cusp of starting to get better gear too. I seem to hit plateaus of gear, where the stuff I'm getting is no better than what I have, and then all of a sudden all of my gear starts to look worse than what's dropping. I just get attached to what I have so it takes me a while to give up. I wish better rings would drop though.

And I wish I could convince myself to *use* the gems I have instead of hoarding them on the hopes of maxxing them out with transmutations. If they were more common or cost less I might use them, but as it is they're just not good enough, esp. for the defensive abilities they confer.

Might as well use them, since you get so little money from selling gear that you're gonna upgrade out of eventually - - destroy it to get the gems back and keep transmuting. Though yeah, it does seem like a joke to get an extra 15 poison damage out of a weapon that's dealing hundreds of DPS already.

Btw, the Web spell is totally awesome. Especially as a summoner it's practically essential to surviving later on, but I imagine it's a good spell for other alchemist types as well. It's especially great to tie down minibosses while my army of minions completely eats them up. Wish I'd picked it up a lot earlier in my game!

I recommend the respec and potion stack mods (and Torchleech, why not), it's nice to not have to waste extra inventory slots on potions, identify and town scrolls.

Can I use those mods w/o becoming a cheater (whatever that means for a singer player game)?

Yeah, it doesn't turn on the cheat flag (which kills the shared stash).

Can those of us using the Mac/Cider port use mods?

Answer: yes, although finding the right spot to put them was annoying.

I installed the potion stack mod (using Steam) but it doesn't seem to work, at least not as I thought it would (letting me have 200 potions of a given type in a stack, rather than just 20). It doesn't seem to do anything. I did get the "installed a mod" achievement though.

level 22 now and it hasn't gotten too tough yet; I'm getting a little worn out with hoarding eq to transmute to gems, prob. b/c I don't have enough open sockets now to use the sweet gems I've acquired.

That's pretty much what the pot stack mod does, though it's nice that it also works for ID/TP scrolls too. One super slick thing - didn't realize Steamworks also syncs your mods! Pretty slick.

ok I got the potion stack mod to work; I think I needed a reboot maybe? Whatever; it's very nice now, though I'm hardly using potions at all now.

So I'm level 26 on hard, and the game is starting to get boring again: waaaay easy but yet annoying as the difficulty seems to have become a function of having tons of goblins thrown at me plus those annoying phasing dogs. None of them pose any serious threat to me so I can just stand there and blast, but I also can't really see what's going on (too many explosions, and I just mash mash mash blast blast blast). I'm at maybe level 27 of the dungeon: will the mobs soon get bigger, like in terms of screen real estate? I'd love to fight more of the big trolls or (way better yet) dragons or something huge. I can tell that I'm getting close to the end of the main quest but I'm kinda losing steam (haha). Is there cause for hope in finding bigger mobs soon?

the final battle(s) are pretty tough and mobbish iirc. there's also a monster in the last few levels who will devestate you if your deflect missile rates aren't up

ok I can look forward to that then! My deflect missile rates are probably not very up. Though I have two golums who soak up lots of damage. In any case I look forward to a tough battle.

New patch today! New challenge rooms or some such! I have no idea what they are but yay!

This game suddenly became a real drag. My character is level 31 and I'm on level 32 of the dungeon, the Black Palace. I don't think I'm underpowered and that grinding up to level 32 would help much, because there are these bastard Dark Zealots who occasionally get critical hits on me and then poof I'm dead. But the levels are so long that backtracking takes a long fucking time. It's not fun anymore. Is there something I should do to make it fun again? Like, some gear that will stop the Dark Zealots? I know I'm close to the end of the game and I'd like to see it through, but really I'm starting to feel bad about myself after wasting an hour or two on this. Maybe it's just not my style and I should start Dragon Quest V or something.

the dark zealots and the dark acolytes are the ones you need to watch for! you need good missile reflect gear. but yeah it gets to be kind of a drag at this point.

My belt is 50% missile reflect but I guess I can look for more. Between this, and the annoyingness of hoarding gems that are actually pretty useless relative to the strengths of good eq, I'm not sure what my overall assessment of this game is. There's definitely lots of room for improvement. The sucky plot is finally working to its disadvantage, because I don't feel like if I were to quit the game that I'd lose anything wrt the narrative.

I am happy that I finally got to fight dragons, though.

X% chance to 50% missile reflect is the lower end of reflect gear, so keep a lookout for better stuff. I suspect you're having similar problems I had with my alchemist, since I'm guessing you put all your points into attack spells and summons, instead of focusing more on one build or ignoring the Armor perk (key for summoner... actually, everyone). Definitely hit a wall in the last part of the game but I eventually trudged my way through the end - for the post-game I respec'd and enjoyed it a lot more.

This was after 120-odd deaths, though - I wasn't too smart about the build, and I kept taking the exp hit for dying instead of gold/restart. I think I had less than a dozen for my Destroyer game and my Vanquisher hasn't died yet, since I did smarter builds for them. For the Alchemist your spell scrolls are key, look for the rare late game spells Web and Blood Skeleton. If you're going heavy on the summoner build get some zombies, skeletons and archers. If not, get Elemental Protection or maybe Frost.

I also didn't realize the strategy of using a town portal scroll in the dungeon every few minutes. If you open the portal but don't enter it, and die, it'll be up in town so you can re-enter the dungeon where you opened it. So you lose nothing for choosing the "resurrect in town" option, then you can just enter the portal back. Portal scrolls are cheap, so do this if you're not already doing so!

In all of my games I was always at least a few character levels above the floor number, usually more, so you might want to do a Hatch quest or purchase a map dungeon - you'll level up easily since the monsters are matched to your level.

Yeah, I guess I need to grind and pick up better eq. I did a Hatch quest last night and it was pretty brutal, full of Dark Zealots. But I got 3/4 of a level too.

I'm an Alchemist and I focused on summons + ember bolt (now at level 10). My first golum is at 10 too, and my second golum is at maybe 4? I put a little into armor. My cat is getting cut up right away so I'm having to soak more damage myself. My armor is really high, it's just the Dark Zealots and those little skeletons that get shot out, and that I can't really see b/c of all the ember bolts I constantly shoot out, that cut me up. My cat summons VI zombies and skeleton warriors. I could do that with my extra spell slots: all I really cast from my slots is heal all. I haven't found Web or Blood Skeleton for sale or on drop yet. I have elemental protection IV I think. It's a pain to keep casting buffs, though.

Huh, that's a brilliant idea re. town portal. I've been picking the resurrect at the start of the level choice, which costs er 2000 or so gold; but I'm constantly sitting on about 20K gold so w/e. Still, it's good to save money in case really good gear ever happens to be on sale.

Blow the money on enchantments! Well, on stuff you know you're not gonna give up for a while.

Heal All is all right, but generally it doesn't heal yourself enough, and you're going to be chugging potions when those mobs hit you. I'd rather stick it on the pet for occasional use and give the spell slot to something else. And it's just easier to resummon golems and shift-click potions to feed to pet.

If you're gonna keep going the summon route, I'd recommend doing Pet/Minion Mastery, Burning Bind, and Charm Mastery for the summon spells if you keep up with that. If you get Summon Skeleton or Blood Skeleton, you can have up to 5 of each at a time, but you do have to pump them out constantly since they expire after a set time, unlike your Golem skills. But as an Alchemist, I think unless you go for a weird Strength attack build you're going to have to do a lot of continuous skill key mashing. Even with my Destroyer, casting Frost Shield every 30 seconds was essential.

My strength is pretty low; I have a wand that's actually quite buff but I rarely use it; it's just ember bolt ember bolt ember bolt. I have Burning Bind at level 2 maybe. I'm not committed to any particular build, which is probably part of the problem; although actually I'm not sure there is a problem, just more my frustration with doing fine and then dying in one shot once in a while with those damned Dark Zealots. O/w I'm doing fine, even with Dragonkins up close they rarely get a hit on me.

You guys must be playing VH, right? I found a Summoner guide and Hard has been, as you said, not that much ...

"torchlight - a baby's dildo"

this is $5 on steam again if anyone hasn't played it yet

Mac port arrives with the debut of Steam on Mac tomorrow!

(and it's got Steam Play, so no need to pay for it twice, hooray)

Sweet. I will totally get this tomorrow.