Torchlight - Runic Games

[Kageh]

Played it for about 4 hours last night. It is a solid, entertaining and very polished Diablo clone, right up there with Titan Quest. I love the art style and the little touches they did to the game concept. Animations and sound/visuals are top notch, I just wish the dungeon levels were a bit more expansive, because the mine sure feels cramped. Town music is SO Diablo, and I can see all the "Fate" elements that made it into the game as well (yay for pet running to sell stuff!).

Something what also struck me, the dungeon levels remind me a lot of the barbarian Diablo 3 footage that Blizzard first showed when they disclosed Diablo 3 at Blizzcon 2007 (was it 2007?).

Skill trees are another cool touch. I'm seconding the question about respeccing, anyone know if it is possible? I'm currently just clicking left and right points as I feel compelled.

Currently playing a destroyer on hard difficulty, it's challenging and great fun.

[Xuri]

Without having tested or read anything about it, I'm guessing you can at least use the transmuter thing to combine several lesser-quality gems into a higher-quality gem.

I've reached level 11 on my Alchemist now (on Normal mode - meh), though I'm not sure how effective the talent/spell-choices I've made are. At least I could finish a "random dungeon" (spawned from one of those maps you can buy) with level 14 mobs at level 10 =P

Started a second character too, on Very Hard + Hardcore. Ranger. Currently level... 2 :P

[Nerf]

It's 3:30AM, i was planning on hitting the sack around 1:15
Fuck.

Game is fun tho, and I got a string of good enchants and my fastest attack speed pistol is at just shy of 200dps right now, good times.

Now the real question is do I drop the $20 on this, or feed my shiny item addiction with borderlands on the PC or ps3?

[Kageru]

Skill trees are another cool touch. I'm seconding the question about respeccing, anyone know if it is possible? I'm currently just clicking left and right points as I feel compelled.

Taken from one of the developers on the Official forums

There was much heated debate about Respec. We decided to make it ridiculously easy to mod in, but not the 'base' functionality.
We were aiming for a much faster-progressing game than an MMO that that replay with a new class or a new build fun, rather than dipping your toes into every skill along the way, and not necessarily giving them a fair shake. But Respec is a big issue for people, so even though it didn't 'win' for base functionality, we still ADDED the functionality, and made it fairly trivial to enable for those of you who this is a deal-breaker for.

[Kageh]

Thanks for digging that up! I'll have to take a look at the editor then.

[Falconeer]

I am enjoying it a lot. My only gripe is longevity, loot or not I loved Dungeon Runners for two intense days before dropping and forgetting it and I foresee the same happening here as the two games are pretty much identical as far as I can remember. Nonetheless, great fun and 14 euros well spent.

[FatuousTwat]

Found a bug... Instead of buying spells from the merchant, you can just drag them onto one of the 4 spell tabs in your inv, and you will learn it without spending anything.

[Yegolev]

Real Diablo III begins now!

[Malakili]

Thanks for digging that up! I'll have to take a look at the editor then.

I'm pretty sure when they say its real easy that its actually that they've added an item called a  "Respec Potion" (in functionality, if not precisely in name), that you can drop onto a vendor, or anywhere else if you want them bad enough.  So, you could set the price for them as well.   Just gotta wait until the end of this week or next week to get our hands on the editor now.

[AcidCat]

Yeah the game is a lot of fun, very polished and I really dig the art style. I'm not a fan of having to identify items, and I wish you could rotate the camera during gameplay, but those are minor issues.

[Malakili]

Yeah the game is a lot of fun, very polished and I really dig the art style. I'm not a fan of having to identify items, and I wish you could rotate the camera during gameplay, but those are minor issues.

At least i think all the items you identify increase the sell value of the item more than the cost of a identify scroll, I've been trying to keep track, but I forget to look sometimes.  I hated that in Diablo 2, when I would indentify a magic (blue), item and it wouldn't increase the value of the item enough to even pay the cost of identification.  Granted, you got Cain pretty early on anyway.

[Draegan]

Apparently if you drag an Id scroll from a merchant onto an item in your inventory you dupe that item (with different stats).  Heh.  I'll get this game after my hardon for Borderlands subsides.

[Ingmar]

Game is  very much .

I want multiplayer for it but I am also very sure its not worth a subscription fee to get it, if that's their plan. Unless the fee is *really low*.

[Musashi]

Couple of Diablolike noobery problems in this thread need cleaning up.

Respec - No.  Level up another dude.  It's what the whole game is about.

I don't mean to be a dick.  Well okay maybe I do.  But if you even remotely like min/maxing, then this game is your dream come true.  You're meant to focus on only a few skills, and tailor your attributes to gear.  So if you want to make a warrior-mage who uses staves and runs around in mage gear, you can do it.  The trade off is that while you lose the warriors traditional super-brawny, up-in-your-grill style of play, you gain full functional use of some of the skills in the Barbarian tree that are usually more for flavoring your dude with some magic.  Then you can further customize by picking out specific end game gear, and you are really only limited by your imagination, as evidence by the loyal following Diablo still enjoys.  Dudes are still coming up with new stuff.  Respecs only hamper this by basically making it pointless.

TL;DR - At the end of the game, you can maximize one stat by using the minimum in the others for the requirement of the gear you want to wear given the build you're building.  If you respec every time you get a new idea, you are a cheap whore.  Make another dude, and test it.  Let me know how you did.

Isometric camera - It's like that on purpose.  No you can't move it. 

The idea here is that the majority of the enjoyment of the game comes from fighting hordes of monsters.  Now while in the Diablo days, there was a technical limitation to how many sprites could be on your screen, that's less the case now.  Now it's just a matter of the suspense of not knowing what's around the corner of your screen.  Ask yourself why you want to move the camera.  Because you want to know what's coming, right?  No shit.  Commit pussy.  Not enough of a thrill for you?  Try it on Hardcore then, bitch.

We've been over these issues before, fellas.  I'll expect better of you by the time D3 comes out.  Use this game for practice.

[Kageh]

Couple of Diablolike noobery problems in this thread need cleaning up.

Respec - No.  Level up another dude.  It's what the whole game is about.

I don't mean to be a dick.  Well okay maybe I do.  But if you even remotely like min/maxing, then this game is your dream come true.  You're meant to focus on only a few skills, and tailor your attributes to gear.  So if you want to make a warrior-mage who uses staves and runs around in mage gear, you can do it.  The trade off is that while you lose the warriors traditional super-brawny, up-in-your-grill style of play, you gain full functional use of some of the skills in the Barbarian tree that are usually more for flavoring your dude with some magic.  Then you can further customize by picking out specific end game gear, and you are really only limited by your imagination, as evidence by the loyal following Diablo still enjoys.  Dudes are still coming up with new stuff.  Respecs only hamper this by basically making it pointless.

I guess it all depends on the time it takes you to level to try out your new builds.

If you know your way around the "loyal Diablo (I assume you mean Diablo TWO?) following" you know that, past your first build, it is all "rush me up to hell and level me so I can try out my new build". No one enjoys leveling up level 1-98 the umpteenth time to "try out a new build". At least the smart people and the ones with friends do that. Call it convenience, call it lazyness, I call it "this needs respec".

I may be meant to focus on a few skills, however to learn on which skills I want to focus on I need to try them out, y'know? By this logic, I'm going to waste a character and valuable time to learn which skills are good and which skills are crap, so that when I got that I can start anew and - worst case - waste another character to learn which skills that I thought are good are crap because they don't scale well and so on and so forth.

Respec is comfort. Comfort is a sign of progress. There's nothing hardcore or particularly appealing about wasting time. It is just that, wasting time so you learn stuff that you could've learned without wasting time.

[Malakili]

Game is  very much .

I want multiplayer for it but I am also very sure its not worth a subscription fee to get it, if that's their plan. Unless the fee is *really low*.

The MMO version is going to be free to play with micro transactions.

[Morfiend]

Real Diablo III begins now!

Not with no multiplayer.

[Kageh]

Apparently if you drag an Id scroll from a merchant onto an item in your inventory you dupe that item (with different stats).  Heh.  I'll get this game after my hardon for Borderlands subsides.

Whoops, indeed, just tried this. Grab scroll, click with the scroll  on the item, the scroll icon turns into a (still unidentified) copy. Base item type remains, stats change. Does feel a lot like cheating though. Might be fun to try re-rolling epix though, if I'm bored. Like gambling, just for free 

[Musashi]

No one enjoys leveling up level 1-98 the umpteenth time to "try out a new build".

This is where you and I differ.  I do enjoy it.  And there are others like me.  You might be one too, if you were willing to give it a go.  For sure if there's no way to rush in this single player version, it will be significantly more difficult.  But I don't know if there is or not yet, and if there isn't, we can mod in either respecs or faster xp.  So you'll be able to pick your poison, either way.

[Lantyssa]

Here's an idea.  Give me the respec option, and if you would rather level a character than play around with your abilities a bit, knock yourself out.

[Ingmar]

Game is  very much .

I want multiplayer for it but I am also very sure its not worth a subscription fee to get it, if that's their plan. Unless the fee is *really low*.

The MMO version is going to be free to play with micro transactions.

Ah, good.

[Yegolev]

Real Diablo III begins now!

Not with no multiplayer.

I'm pelting you with SoJs.

[Kageh]

http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1953

Apparently there's a console command that gives you the respec potion. And if you use this, it appends "the Cheater" to your character name and disables your shared stash. I chuckled there.

EDIT:

No one enjoys leveling up level 1-98 the umpteenth time to "try out a new build".

This is where you and I differ.  I do enjoy it.  And there are others like me.  You might be one too, if you were willing to give it a go.  For sure if there's no way to rush in this single player version, it will be significantly more difficult.  But I don't know if there is or not yet, and if there isn't, we can mod in either respecs or faster xp.  So you'll be able to pick your poison, either way.

You are right about that. Like Lantyssa said, I just want the option.

[Morfiend]

Real Diablo III begins now!

Not with no multiplayer.

I'm pelting you with SoJs.

On the bright side. They didnt use Gamespy.

[schild]

Single Player games should come with a warning label:

Not intended for use by people with extreme attachment disorder. And Nonentity. Also, no bitching.

[Yegolev]

Any remote possibility of me bitching disappeared when I saw I could pick a cat or dog as a pet and I heard the music.  Have you heard the music?  Also, unrestricted multiplayer in Diablo II was not that much fun.  LAN, sure.  I can wait.

[Kageh]

Back in Fate I managed to fish some special fish and transformed him into a dark unicorn permanently. Now that was cool! I'm curious for the "uber" pet types they have here.

[Yegolev]

I am going to waste so much of my life on fishing.

[Nonentity]

Single Player games should come with a warning label:

Not intended for use by people with extreme attachment disorder. And Nonentity. Also, no bitching.

Hey - I beat like, three or four single player games this year so far! That's a new record for me!

[Morfiend]

Single Player games should come with a warning label:

Not intended for use by people with extreme attachment disorder. And Nonentity. Also, no bitching.

Hey - I beat like, three or four single player games this year so far! That's a new record for me!

I bet if we made a thread talking about just our enjoyment of coop gaming schild's head would explode.

[Falconeer]

Just found a level 2 (I am level 1) gold (unique) hat. Clownshoes.

[Ingmar]

Just found a level 2 (I am level 1) gold (unique) hat. Clownshoes.

That is remarkable why?

[Sjofn]

Here's an idea.  Give me the respec option, and if you would rather level a character than play around with your abilities a bit, knock yourself out.

You stole my post!


EDIT: By the way, Non, your avatar makes me squee every time I see it.

[Malakili]

Here's an idea.  Give me the respec option, and if you would rather level a character than play around with your abilities a bit, knock yourself out.

You stole my post!


EDIT: By the way, Non, your avatar makes me squee every time I see it.

If you can wait until next week (or maybe in friday if we are lucky!), when the editor is coming out I'll make a quicky mod for you and you can respec to your hearts content.

[Ingmar]

One of the Torchlight devs already did apparently:

http://www.runicgamesfansite.com/torchlightmods/node/32