Torchlight & Torchlight 2

Phml said:

Added you on my friend list. Unless there's another ArmouredBlood floating around, but it seems doubtful. I'm Phml. Hurray for unconventional names. :)

Cool, you must've added me through runic cause I don't see anything on steam. Times are going to be interesting hahah, I don't usually get up before 10 (2 am for you), and go to bed around 3 am (7 pm for you).

@quast: It's interesting you've got so many points left over, I'm only level 20 on my mage so those points are pretty much all that I'll gain when I get to your level. I'm kinda split between fire and ice, I love hailstorm and shotgunning icy blast, but the basic fire attack and the flame mace are great too. And then there's the awesomeness of thunder locus (2 seconds longer per upgrade is crazy). So I'm not sure why you're holding onto those 15 points. Apparently there's a console command that lets you respec any time, if you don't want to go through rerolling a character.

Being lvl 29 on my pure melee Embermage, I can tell that it's far from too squishy or low on damage, and I absolutely have no skill points left to spend. That is, even with a melee mage who has only two active skills that are of any great use (magma mace and the teleport). Elemental boon is ok for tougher fights but I can't bother keeping it on all the time, so it's currently sitting at one point. Those passives are just way too great. Staff mastery is awesome for any build, assuming that you're using any skill that uses weapon DPS. Planar rift (?) is an amazing defensive skill, especially when you know that you're going to get hit. Fire and ice brands are great extra damage since the enemies get burned (magma mace) or frozen (teleport) often. And elemental affinity makes those effects last longer so that I can get even more out of the brand skills.

I'm on the latter part of act 2 with four deaths I think, and two of those happened just because I wasn't paying any attention. It's a high risk build that requires plenty of skill, as you can't take as much hits as an engineer could, but teleport gives you unparalleled mobility which is particularly good against bosses and champions. If you see a big attack coming, just jump away. I don't know, to me it seems that if you're sitting on lots of unused skill points you're doing something wrong. Especially with an Embermage which has a ton of awesome passives.


Edit: I heard some people think that TL 2 looks like a children's game. I beg to differ.

Cool, you must've added me through runic cause I don't see anything on steam. Times are going to be interesting hahah, I don't usually get up before 10 (2 am for you), and go to bed around 3 am (7 pm for you).

Yeah. Well, I went and added you on Steam now, I'm the guy with the four letter name.

Got to about halfway into act 2 with my friend. I'm not sure how the scaling difficulty for multiple players work, it seemed odd at times. Against the Engineer (boss), when my friend was dead and out of the zone I could handle him just fine, but as soon as he was back in each hit would leave me (or my friend) almost dead. I could wade through lvl 23 mobs without thinking too much on my lvl 17 berserker solo, but as a duo we were having to fight just as hard as level 23s against level 23 mobs. Feels like they're just scaling up by a multiplier, possibly x2? Which might make sense in theory but doesn't work all that well because it's burst damage that kills you, and as a result soloing feels vastly easier (at least for people who just jump in with no clue about the game mechanics yet); but then, playing with friends is much more fun, and seeing your friends getting stomped is part of the fun, so who cares I guess. :)

Quast said:

Zerkers otoh, are seriously undertuned

I completely disagree. My second character, which I play in coop with a friend, is a tundra berzerker with wolf summons, focusing on caster aspects. Tons of focus, cast speed and +cold damage%. At lvl 28 my northern rage does 450-650 damage a hit to enemies, and I can easily one-hit a lot of normal enemies in Act 2. Basically, my friend tanks with his engineer and I run in and stomp everything to pieces with northern rage. Against tougher enemies, fill rage -> icy breath + elemental overtune -> spam hatchets (which do critical damage in rage). That's also over 400 damage a hit with my hammer, and with 30% or so cast speed it's very spammable as long as you've got the mana.

The only problem with this build is that it takes a while to get going: Hatchets become available only at lvl 14, and you won't have all the gear needed to utilize them well that early. But once you hit 21 and get norther rage, things become much, much easier.

Had some time with the game recently and I love it just as much as the first game. Colorful graphics and good gameplay, I am happy that pots don't stack every 10 or 20 like the original did.

I also read from the Steam forum that they already patched the game yesterday to fix some things.