What kind of skills are worthwhile? Most seemed to be a downgrade from the basic attack. I have a mage who doesn’t know any spells. I just run around with two wands and shoot at stuff. Takes one button.
Not sure how badly Ember Lance got nerfed. That was the uber-spell. Spells from spell-scrolls seem to be better than the one you get from the class.
Well, I’m playing the warrior class. I have 3 self-buffs right off the bat, the armor/frost shield one, the aura that does damage to everyone around you, and spectral echo. Then I like to have the charge ability to quickly move places. Then I have a self-heal spell and also a group heal spell, both so I can stack the healing when I need it and also heal my pet. I also need the health and mana potions available on the bar. Devastate is right click. That’s 9 of the possible 11 slots right off the bat.
I like the doomquake ability, it has its uses when you need to do quick aoe damage. I like to have identify on my hotbar so I don’t have to fiddle with it to quickly identify stuff, although I suppose I could use f-key functionality instead. I’d like to keep a minion summoning scroll of some type around. I have chain vortex for when I need to stun. Spectral decay would be really useful, but I’ve already run out of space.
The warrior has a lot of somewhat similar abilities, but they have their usefulness in different situations. I don’t really want to play a game where all I do is purely click-attack, it’s interesting to have the different abilities at your disposal, and 11 at a time is just too limiting at high level.
Torchlight II has been announced and it will have … multiplayer!
I recently started playing again and beat the final boss with a fighter. Playing with an alchemist now.
For a while I was leaning on summoning a lot, even with non-alchemists, but it seems to get weak after a great start, even with minion-buffing gear and skills. Mainly I take passives like weapon/armor mastery, critical hit, and block and parry. When a good attack skill comes available, I specialize in that. By “good attack skill” I mean devastate, ember lance, and (I guess, I haven’t played the chick much) explosive arrow. I use the two mouse buttons for attacks but still have to use keys for pots and some secondary skills.
I like Torchlight, I like what they did to cut down on pointless quests and such, but I think it would’ve been helped by more anti-grinding features. It takes away a lot of difficulty if I can go level up in another dungeon. The game also rewards returning to town a lot to check if there’s good gear in shops. Even if I do grind I still die occasionally. I think the game lulls me into a false sense of security with the easy kills and plentiful health pots, then disciples or mycons take me out when I’m only half paying attention.
I hope the sequel has sale prices like the original. I also hope that the dungeons/overland areas have truly random layouts with modular design (known in roguelikes as “vaults” I think).