Torchlight 2

Alright ponies, I've had enough tanks the past 40 days and would like to see if we could gather some players for a little Elite Hardcore run in Torchlight 2. Maybe on Friday or Saturday evening? In the end, it all depends on who owns Torchlight 2.


Elite+Hardcore itself isn't that painful at all, at least in the first half of act I.  
Characters below level 15 are easily replaceable (in case some accidents happen). And if you follow some basic rules like spending enough points in vitality and visiting the town's shops after each levelup (could always be your last one), you're fine.

Later on there's other important stuff like elemental resistances, damage reduction and picking a useful combination of skills, but let's just do this slowly but surely.

And is there somepony with some experience in phase beast challenges? I suck at those and they can be quite deadly on elite difficulty...

Maximum players in one game would be 6 (mane six would be awesome), but I would already be happy to gather four.

Y
E
S

20€ :C

Only chance for me to join is pirate.

Deldrin wrote:20€ :C

Only chance for me to join is pirate.

Ugh, spend less bucks on WoT!  
Afaik pirated version would still work, although we would have to use something like Hamachi or Tunngle.

Totem wrote:Y
E
S

Hope you're referring to being a phase beast challenge expert.  

Played to act III with an embermage on veteran... after that I got bored because it was boring alone

I am not spending any money on WoT I wouldn't waste otherwise. It's coming from my cellphone I have to pay bills to be able to call but I don't spend 95% of this money so I can use it on wot

Ok, since Totem can't play today and tomorrow, session will be postponed.
Nopony else? Don't tell me you all play Diablo 3.

Totem wrote:I will be available. (also torchlight 2? )

Yes, of course!

But since noone else showed interest, what shall we do? I'm always in for a little hardcore run. If Deldrin is not willing/able to sacrifice 2 GB of disk space we could also continue with your act III embermage.


At last week's LAN party I started my first (softcore) outlander. Seems to be a nice character class. Skills are rather confusing though and I have no idea how to distribute my attribute points.  

I bought some dvds and burned mlp on them so I have plenty of disk space now! I could even afford to install Saints Row 3!
Now I have pirated Torchlight 2 updated to ver. 14 so we might be able to do this.

Talking about versions, I'm running version 1.25.2.2 right now. Steam version might slightly differ (at least it sometimes did in the past), but they are compatible.
Any chances of updating to the latest version? Or Totem and me getting an older version?

well, I for some reason have 1.25.5.2

So you have a pirated Steam version.  Should be working.

I set up a Hamachi group.
name: READ Torchlight
password: Scootaloo

I still use Hamachi 1, as it's much easier to deactivate permanently when not needed. Hamachi 2 is just annoying.
If you prefer Tunngle, just let me know.

And we finally got it working with Tunngle, nice.  

Nice run yesterday, clearing a bunch of dungeons, finding a few uniques, dying to some bosses... Oh well, I think I'm keeping Zecora as a backup character as I don't know what skills to pick next (most likely more poison/glaive stuff). We should give it another go with new characters some time, just give me a poke (or I will  ).

Just keep in mind that it's always healthier to clear the overworld area before going into dungeons. (When in doubt, even more than once, just reroll the world and go. It's better to unlock a crucial skill than dying because of not having it. Even in Diablo2 I used to clear all seven tombs of Tal Rasha. I just hated Duriel so much.)
And phase beast challenges should be visited last, they are so deadly...

Next time we kick Grell's ass!

And now that we could get it working, nopony has any excuse why they can't play. Just ask Deldrin for DL link!

Totem wrote:And now that we could get it working, nopony has any excuse why they can't play. Just ask Deldrin for DL link!

AFAIK, my "IDontLikeTorchlight" excuse is still valid.

Abaddon wrote:AFAIK, my "IDontLikeTorchlight" excuse is still valid.

Sounds like a valid excuse to me.

Anyway, good news everyone!

After my Frost-Embermage had a terrible accident in the Bone Gallery lately, its successor cleared the Temple Steppes twice today and eventually killed Grell. I have some spare Runemaster and Ghastly items now and found a bunch of skulls and other uniques. If we don't buck up totally, the first 10 levels of our next run should be rather comfortable. I might haunt you tomorrow.

Awesome! Instead of frost-phasing over those traps I hit "Frostwave" and my lvl 30 character casts it while being shredded by blades.
Whatever.

Our last run was even less successful than the previous, We didn't even get to see the pirate cove, let alone Mordrox. Maybe play more berserkers or engineers, they already start with 25% damage reduction which makes things a lot easier.

So if you still have some endurance left, just gimme a call, I need a new frostmage.   (No more Ghastly and Runemaster stuff left though.)

Triple post!
Free Weekend!

Totem suggested to do another run.

So after three years my friends and I finally managed to beat HCE.



Well, the characters you see are about 1 month old, but you know, infrequent sessions, we just picked the game up again after a one year break.

Embermage on the right was using a shock build, Prismatic Bolts and Shocking Orbs are some badass facemelting skills, Frost Prison to keep enemy champions in place was priceless. Played very defensively most of the time, but it was always funny to see some Orbs arrive from off-screen. This character was probably the main source of damage.

Outlander on the left used some rather unorthodox set of skills, but it was a great asset to the whole group. No investments in dodge or poison at all, but his shotgonne managed to blind the crap out of enemies, plus Tangling Shot to counteract his gun's massive knockback if needed. Made boss fights a lot easier. At some point he invested some points in Sandstorm to deal with larger packs of enemies. Oh, and I forgot the Shadowling Brute, holy fuck that thing is amazing.

And then there's my mighty Berserker Bärbel in the middle (wearing Dwarfking Armour and wielding a Bashdrill which is totally facing in the wrong direction). I totally omitted level 42 spells and sticked to Eviscerate for clumped up enemies and Raze for single targets. Except for the Battle Standard my job was to soften up enemies with Howls and shred their armour. Due to lack of proper swords I switched to claws later on, the single target damage was amazing, sometimes we managed to take down act bosses in ten seconds.
On my part everything worked (more or less) great for the first three acts, but the last parts, including Vyrax' Tower and the Broken Mines got increasingly painful. Despite my solid defense (7k HP, ~45% DR, 60% block and even ~35% dodge while in range of Battle Standard) charging into groups of enemies only resulted in massive health loss, so I just kept spamming my supportive spells and deflecting incoming projectiles with my Ice Shield, while Shocking Orbs and Sandstorms cleared the battlefield.
I'm certainly not going to enter NG+ with that melee-zerker (still have to complete the three witches quest though!), but I guess if one really farmed enough proper gear, maxed out damage reduction and stacked up a little bit more HP, it would still be possible to reach lvl 70 safely.
In any case I'll stick to Frost Embermage or Cannon-Engineer from now on, still my favourites, pretty sure I could get them up all the way to lvl 100, in some very distant future...


Notable near death experiences in this run:
-Winter Widow hit me for ~1k dmg when I had only a little more than that. With her very first hit of course. I didn't even know it could crit that hard. Holy fuck, her attack animations all look the same to me, I wasn't prepared for this.
-I totally fucked up with a Frost Elemental in the Icedeep Caverns. Thought it would cast less annoying spells when I just engage it in melee combat. Nope. It simply doesn't have a standard melee attack, so it kept on casting spells. Like multiple ice waves. Directly in my face. All at once. For a second I thought I was dead becase I couldn't make out the last remaining red pixels in my health indicator under the red border on the screen that appears when you're really fucked up. But there weren't any other enemies around and the elemental's cast speed is rather low, so some potions saved me.
-I was farming gold in areas I had outleveled by 15 levels, when I almost died in the Witherways. I was just casually fighting enemies when all of a sudden my health just dropped towards zero. I didn't really realize what was going on there, but luckily was still able to Shadow Burst away and drink some potions (would not have been necessary as it turned out). I went back, carefully cleared the area and finally found what had almost killed me: It's one of those insidious floor traps, but a very special one. Firstly, it seemed to be the only one in the Witherways, hidden beneath sand (can't remember ever seeing one there before). And then, you only see the knives impaling you when it's almost too late, because it actually deals constant damage like the whirling blade traps. A very unpleasant surprise.