Runic Games 2011 Fansite Event: hawkn's Write-up

Webbstre's note: This is Part 1 of hawkn's write-up on the visit to Runic Games and hands-on impressions of Torchlight 2. Part 2 will come out in the near future, as soon as it is possible to type and not fail classes. You can find the other coverage by clicking here!

How the day went:

(Note: I'm not going to mention names of characters or the main enemy to avoid spoilers. I will also leave out the names of a lot of abilities, since many aren't finalized)

We started out in the morning at the office (let's say it's a bunker somewhere between Russia and New York). All of the community members got to meet each other, and meet the devs. Jerich was asking questions about asking questions from the community Q&A.

Most importantly, THERE'S A HAWK PET. Now that that's off my chest...

Right from the start, we went into the secure room in their bunker to play the game. It was already booted up, just waiting for us to play. Beckoning us, if you will. Of course I had to choose the Outlander. He looked like a cross between Naruto and InuYasha. Runic's art team has put together some awesome options for character customization – and we didn't even get to see them all. Not only is the skin tone and face different, but the actual facial structures are even different, and it varies from class to class. Jerich was asking questions over his shoulder.

Everybody agreed to try multiplayer on Normal for the first play through. We were thrown into the starter zone of Act 1. When the game is finished, there will be cut-scenes at the start, and in between Acts (Like in Diablo). The act starts in the middle of a destroyed village. There are guards all over the place, and the occasional pack of puny mobs that I quickly kill with my Outlander's ranged attacks. Pretty soon, we found the first main town. After talking to a few quest givers, buying some items from the vendors in town (I know buyback has been in for a while, but it was still nice to actually use it), and selecting a reward for completing my quest (You can now choose from a variety of items when you finish a quest – now you can actually find something useful), we started to adventure out of town.

We quickly destroyed all who dared block out path. Until we found some skeletons with shields – those guys are hard to kill. You had to destroy them with outright damage, let a DoT kill them, or attack them from behind. There was a good variation of enemies, and this time around, there are just a lot more enemies in general. It felt like a good mix of huge groups of enemies, and the occasional “tank” kind of enemy that requires a bit more effort or strategy to kill. At this point of the game, I was using the Outlander's shot that hits enemies, and then explodes to damage nearby enemies as well, in combination with Rune Vault (The awesome backflip), and my targeted AoE slow. I felt like a badass, champion killing machine. Jerich was probably asking questions for you guys. That's right, he did it for you!

At one point when I killed a monster, it dropped a Golden Key. You can use these to unlock golden chests that are scattered across the map, and contain a lot of gold, and some better than average gear. In my first chest, I found a rare set piece, a gem, and a few other items. I'm going to bring up a few things here. First of all, set items are much easier to get now. They aren't streaming from the severed arteries of slain monsters or anything – finding a set piece is still exciting. But I was able to gather 3 pieces of a set while exploring the same general leveling area. It feels a lot better than Torchlight 1, where a set piece was next to useless. Also, about gems; there is only one level now. This was done to stop the packrat mentality that people had when playing Torchlight 1. Let's be honest. How often did you actually use a gem you found? Almost never you say? Exactly. How often did they just sit in your stash in town? The entire game? Yeah, I thought so. I found that I was using gems a lot more often, and not regretting it. You can still remove gems from items, and vise versa. There are also a lot more gems that have unique stat bonuses and abilities. Not to mention most bosses drop cool unique items now. But enough of my drooling over the way items work now.

We discovered and entered one of the many side dungeons as a group, killed some stuff, then kind of left. Don't ask me why. We just did. And we left Mika to fend for himself. Luckily, the game scales in difficulty depending on where other players are. In fact, I'm pretty sure Mika managed to finish the dungeon. Anyways, we continued on, to yet another side dungeon. And this time, we went all the way. The enemies had a lot of variety. Some would split when you killed them. One kind would teleport around, and really drive you crazy. Others would raise dead enemies as more of their kind, who would in turn also raise dead enemies. It could get mess very quickly. But with the combined might of our abilities, we managed to reach the boss. He ran around puking on you, and summoned skeletons. Poor Jerich died numerous times. I spent most of my time Rune Vaulting out of the way of enemies, and their attacks. Bards will sing songs of our epic awesomeness. Eventually though, he died, I collected my loot, and we left the dungeon to collect our quest rewards.

While going through the next area, and spending some skill points, I found a crazy little skill called “Zombie Dust”. It gave me a breath that I could cast indefinitely, as long as I had mana for it. It not only damaged enemies at a good rate, but if it killed an enemy, it would raise them as a zombie minion. The max I could have seemed to be six. The spell completely changed my play style. I would run into a group of enemies, use the ability, then Rune Vault out, and let my minions feast on the carnage.

I used this method to get to the next boss, a giant minotaur thing. He had quite a few abilities, such as a charge, and a ground slam that would make parts of the roof fall on you and cause damage. There were also enemies that weren't exactly push-overs who would occasionally come into the room, and attack you. There was a lot of kiting, and dodging attacks. The boss fights felt engaging, and each one was different.

Not long after, Wonder said we had to go eat lunch. I do hate human necessities. Either way, it was a great chance to talk to the devs. Over lunch, Jerich grilled Marsh – I think he managed to get through five or six pages of questions (If you haven't got the hint yet, thank him for how great a job he did getting your questions answered). One thing that was brought up, was enchanting. And it's very exciting where they are going with it. Now, the only way you can wipe your item, is if you pay to. There are enchanters throughout the game, who all specialize in specific kinds of enchants. One may give you a random kind of fire enchant (Fire resist, Fire damage, etc), or another may give sockets. They also have varying levels of enchants (They can enchant anywhere from one to four times, with four being the rarest). Nothing bad can happen while enchanting either from what I understand. Overall, the system is much better than the one in Torchlight 1.

Speaking of improvements over Torchlight 1, you can now right click an item to identify it, as long as you have a scroll. Green items are automatically identified, and Blue items are identified if they are at or below your level. If you wait until you reach the right level, the Blue item will automatically be identified. Unique items still need to be identified no matter what level you are.

After lunch, we played some more. This time, we all played single player. I chose to play a Very Hard Berserker (mainly because everyone else was playing VH – I don't back down from a challenge). Let me say from the start, Very Hard is much harder than it was in Torchlight 1. The Berserker plays much different than the Outlander as well. She reminded me a lot more of the destroyer from Torchlight 1. She had a bleed ability, along with a breath that froze enemies, and a Wolf summon. I had to be much more tactical with how I fought my enemies. Further into the game, the Berserker has a lot of life steal skills, but for the first 5-10 levels, I was downing health potions like Umbriel eats souls. I had to go to town quite a few times to restock my potions quite a few times, and that doesn't even begin to take into consideration how many times I died. That was one of the times when the shopping list Travis wants to add would have been nice. The idea is that when you send your pet to town, you can give them a list of basic items to come back with. However it's not confirmed, and currently just something they'd like to add.

Anyways, I managed to make it to a side dungeon. And it was hard (but fun). For the first two levels, I fought my way through to the next level, but it took a long time. Many town portals were used, and many close calls were had (I didn't want to look at my journal at that point, the number of deaths was undoubtedly high). By the third level, I just wanted to get through, so I ran towards (what I thought was) the exit. However a giant skeleton dude didn't seem to like that. He had an attack that would simply hit you for a good portion of your HP, and two other attacks that depended on how close you were to him. He had a ground slam that would simply cause a blast wave that hurt if you were close. If you were a good distance away, the attack would instead cause a few shock waves to be emitted from the blast wave, and follow you. If you didn't dodge it. I used a combination of the thrown lightening axe ability that I had recently learned, and staying close until right before his blast wave hit, so it wouldn't cause the homing shock waves, to slowly chip away at his life, and eventually kill him. Once I had killed him, and reached the treasure room, the rest of the enemies felt like a piece of cake.

I think the Berserker felt pretty good, but will benefit from a little bit of work. I didn't get a chance to keep playing on her though, because we did the podcast right after I killed Mr. Skeleton Dude. If you guys hear me ask a question that you remember submitting to the fansite Q&A, it's probably because I read it off the massive list Webbstre sent me. Sorry I wasn't able to say “So and so asks: ...”.

Before I talk about my chance to play the Embermage, I thought I'd address the question about private servers. Max and Travis both said that it's something they'd like to add. However, it's simply talk at this point. He genuinely sounded like if it did happen, it would be a patch that Runic adds in after launch. It's always possible, but don't keep your fingers crossed. I know many people will never read this, and continue to ask for private servers, but I might as well let some people know it probably won't happen.

We had about an hour between the podcast, and going to dinner, so we all rushed back to the computers for a bit more time with Torchlight 2. I of course made an Embermage, and this time decided to play on Hard. I'm not sure if it was the fact that I was playing ranged, or just that Hard is a bit easier than Very Hard, but it felt very good. The Embermage has some useful abilities in basically all of the trees, and there's no reason to limit yourself to one tree, but I focused primarily on Fire. On top of the constant stream of firebolts you can pump out, the Embermage also has the homing pillars of fire that do a good amount of damage. I put all of my stats into mana, so I was the definition of a glass cannon. I could cast spells for a very decent amount of time before I even began to go low on mana, and the bonus to magic damage only served to help my dps. I was able to get a good distance into the main quest, but I didn't have time to do a dungeon. I did however find a few cool areas where for instance, I could click a tomb that caused dozens of waves of skeletons to be summoned. Once I beat them all, it started raining gold and loot. I think the random areas/event quests that Runic has added only makes the game that much better. By the time they dragged me away, I had found two parts to a caster set, and was able to kill most things in my path, and was enjoying doing just that.

At dinner, we were able to talk a bit more about the game, and Jerich managed to finish the Q&A. Seriously, give the man a cookie.

Afterward, we walked back to the studio one last time, and Marsh showed a bit of Act 3, and a dungeon from the second part of Act 1. Both looked great, and showcased the variety of environments, and monsters that will be in Torchlight 2.

Webbstre's note: Check back later for Part 2, with hawkn's impressions on random things in the game, why he thinks it will hold his attention longer than Diablo 3, and open Q&A to anyone who wants to leave him some questions!