Torchlight II (not the MMO)

[Fabricated]

It's kinda cool how you can end up with pretty cool looking characters without any sort of farming. These are all my characters with their actual equipment, I'd say 60%+ was found by the character wearing it, and the rest are uniques shuffled into the shared stash.

[Azaroth]

Still waiting on the tools. Have a feeling I'll be waiting a long time, then be disappointed.

[Rendakor]

I can't really figure out a good skill build for the Outlander; mine is a shotgun/cannon user just using passives with a point in the jump away skill. I'd planned on focusing on the Shadow minions but the poison breath seems to suck. I'm thinking a cannon Engineer is closer to what I want to play, but I'd still like to know what I can do to make Outlander fun.

[Slayerik]

My GF didn't like Outlander at all, then tried the engi and fell in love. FWIW

[Hawkbit]

My enigneer got a blue cheapo pet tag at lvl 34 that has a 25% chance to stun.  I can't say enough about how overpowered this thing is; the damage I can do to bosses in 2 seconds uninterrupted is amazing.

[Fabricated]

Outlander frankly seems to kinda suck. Now that I have a bunch of points into passives that boost my weapons of choice (dual pistols) and two enchanted, gemmed, fairly powerful uniques I can kill shit but I'm super squishy EARLY in Veteran which does not bode well for the latter half of the game where some of my other characters have had ridiculously broken equipment in every slot + huge armor/resistances and STILL got obliterated at a moment's notice.

Mob balance just seems a bit off at the end. The endless hook-spamming dwarves that hit like trucks are fucking irritating. The penultimate level where the dwarves give way to the netherim things has usually been easier barring some bad luck.

[Lantyssa]

My Outlander has been fine.  I use dual pistol, Glaive, and pump up my Shadowlings and other passives.  My pet I give all kinds of minion abilities.

[Tarami]

Genuinely fun game, this. ARPGs aren't really my cup of tea, I only really played D3 because my friends did, but TL2 "gets it", as it were. I only wish it were a little more responsive in combat. Waiting for animations is as annoying here as it is in LotRO.

And yeah, mob damage stacks a little unintuitively. Occasionally I get smeared in an instant, having done fine for several dungeon levels. Just bad luck with cast timers and shit, I expect, but it can feel a little unfair.

Also agreed on it graphically being very consistent. Class-suited gear just seems to fit together. This isn't even close to a proper set, yet looks nice together:

[Ironwood]

That's a good look.

[Fabricated]

+elemental % damage is broken as hell on embermages. I have something like +130-140% fire damage on my fire-only embermage and I am the definition of a glass cannon.

[Merusk]

It gets better if you start to add in the staves skill that lowers resistances and ranks in elemental attunement.   EA seems like such a small damage tick but you can have ALL of those effects land at once.   At 10% chance to burn/freeze/poison/shock plus -26% to their armor even elites health burns down quick.   You just have to understand you're not alpha damage but relying on DOTs.

Plus Thunder Locus is fucking OP on single targets and only gets more so as its able to hit more.

[Outlawedprod]

Outlander frankly seems to kinda suck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiLSOUHIQl4
Incredible build to xploit spell procs on gears

[Rendakor]

Difficulty seems to spike in Act 3; my Berzerker used to be an unstoppable killing machine but now I get gibbed all the time, even by normal mobs.

[Sjofn]

There is something weird about this game visually. When I am outside in the above ground area (I'm only in the first chunk, mind you), the mobs just do not pop out enough for me, which is driving me a little crazy. Also, the stupidest thing in the world that bugs me: They let me pick what my cute animal friend gets to look like, then they add the fish thing and imply my pet should never NOT have a stupid fish buff on. My engineer wants her ferret to look like her ferret at all times, dammit!

Otherwise I like it pretty well, although I don't super love how building a character works (I don't really like assigning stat points, and I especially don't like how respec works in TL2, so I'm paranoid I'm fucking myself up, etc).

Mobs blending into the background in outside areas aside, though (I didn't have that problem when I was in a cave, for example), I really love the art style. A lot!

[Lantyssa]

I almost never use potions for my pets.  Give them a heal spell and they're pretty much unstoppable.  They won't be winning the game for you, but they're not going to die before you do.

[Sjofn]

The only one I like to use is the mimic one, really. 

[CaptainNapkin]

Somehow I have a level 30 character but never realized I could give spells to my pet... Do you just throw a spell scroll in their inventory?

On a side note at 30 with an engineer and still can't decide if I like melee or canons better and my build is all over the place as a result. Leaning toward melee though. If I ever decide I'll suck down one of those respec potions from the mod someone mentioned.

And while I can't walk by a fishing hole without drying it up, my ferret has never not been himself, so I sympathize with "it's my ferret and he's a ferret dammit"

[Fabricated]

To have your pet learn a spell, put a spell scroll in its inventory and right click it.

Also yeah, most of the pet transforms suck anyway. The unique ones are great. I haven't found any elementals yet though...in the original transforming your pet into an elemental was awesome.

[Sjofn]

So it's mostly just that first chunk where I have the blendy-mob problem, I guess, once I got into the snowy areas and the desert and stuff, it's been fine. So that's good!

I keep waffling between outlander and embermage, I don't know why. So I have two characters at roughly the same level as a result. I need to try out the canon thing on my engineer, I might like that better than the meleein'. The GAME wants me to make a berserker, I have a bunch of oj's restricted to that class. :P

And CaptainNapkin, I am pretty much the same as you. I see a fishing hole, I MUST FISH IT ALL UP. But it's pretty rare that I actually transform my pet. Because my pet is perfect as s/he is, dammit!


EDIT: I should probably add that right now I'm just dicking around on Normal difficulty while I figure out what I like, so I haven't had the "my outlander is squishy" issue yet.

[Sjofn]

AUGH

I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING NICE I THOUGHT ABOUT THIS GAME

ROACH DUNGEON

WORST DUNGEON

ARGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGH

[Lantyssa]

Hahahaha.  I was the same way.  There wasn't enough fire to give it a proper scouring.

[Sjofn]

Ingmar kept laughing at me because I kept going "AUGH FUCKING ROACHES ARGHGHGHGHGH" every two seconds. 

[Jimbo]

Just got the game today, was on a steam sale and it is awesome!

[Fabricated]

Are the dev tools out yet? Runic has been deathly silent since release. Last I heard there's a new patch coming that actually adds more content, including new tilesets, armor, etc.

[Reborne]

Are the dev tools out yet? Runic has been deathly silent since release. Last I heard there's a new patch coming that actually adds more content, including new tilesets, armor, etc.

I've seen no sign of G.U.T.S. though any time that Runic reply to the question of when it will be released, they say that it is one of their major priorities, so we're hoping for the big patch you mentioned.

I want it so that SynergiesMOD will be more stable and so I can add more recipes.

[Fabricated]

I wonder what the deal is. Maybe they're decoupling whatever bits deal with their netcode or something? Because as far as I know they literally didn't license any middleware for TL2; the engine is an even more modified OGRE3d I think which is an open source engine.

[Azaroth]

I get the feeling they're missing the boat here.

[Hoax]

Its already missed. PoE is just a better game for everyone but the most casual of casual but the thing is you don't get buzz or word of mouth from those players so when they get around to releasing something nobody will care at this point. People are already accepting how bad d3 is and going back to it at this point and having the fun there is to have.

[Fabricated]

Most people I know outside of here have pretty much uninstalled D3 and written it off as shit, hoping the first expansion unfucks the game as much as possible.

TL2/PoE are great, but man Runic kinda disappeared off the face of the planet right about at release outside of their pretty quick bugfixing. PoE's devs are doing it right in that you stand a reasonable chance of being able to talk with the actual Devs or at least their CMs in general chat if you're on at a reasonable time in NZ's timezone.

[Ironwood]

Its already missed. PoE is just a better game for everyone but the most casual of casual but the thing is you don't get buzz or word of mouth from those players so when they get around to releasing something nobody will care at this point. People are already accepting how bad d3 is and going back to it at this point and having the fun there is to have.

What ?

[Hoax]

-POE is best for those who miss d2 days with no respecs, complex builds, complex items, items that make builds etc. Its d2 with more d2. It has a good following of very hardcore audience that create some hype and word of mouth with streams and the races are a great draw to.

-D3 has omg Blizzard factor the bigger budget so it can create its own hype and is the prettiest and most casual friendly of the 3 games.

-This leaves TL2 with no niche to fill and therefore no reason it will pull players away from the other two games.

[Tebonas]

It still fills the "I can play it offline" and the "When I log in I am at exactly the same place as when I logged out" niche.

[Merusk]

Which is a damned important one to some of us.

Also, PoE: Grimdark for the sake of Grimdark.  *yawn*

[Tebonas]

Indeed, I usually play PoE until I get disconnected for the first time, then I play Torchlight 2 for the rest of the evening if I have a day where my Diablolike itch wants to get scratched.

[Wasted]

I couldn't get into T2 at all because I found the world so bland.