I started playing Torchlight. Bye-bye development time. My Vanquisher and her pet mimic (a living treasure chest with teeth) are damn sexy. The chest can summon an army of skeletons (I sort of like to think they’re the reassembled bones of enemies he has eaten), and the Vanq has two pistols that she can fire at the speed of a machine-gun. It’s wicked.
Anyways, that’s the story this week. Development is on hold because I’m an addict. If you like dungeon crawls or action-RPGs, check out Torchlight if you haven’t already.
To describe it (for those who aren’t familiar with the type of game), it’s a Hack ‘n Slash. The core gameplay involves running around a randomly generated map, battling hordes of easily defeated enemies (and occasionally some harder to defeat ones) with one type of attack, and all other actions (spells, attacks, ect) taking both time and mana), while you collect gold and item drops, and try to manage your very limited inventory space until you can go back to town and sell the junk (items you can’t use), then it’s back to the dungeon to do it all over again. It’s an RPG, so as you kill enemies, you will eventually level up. You can then spend skill points on additional attributes and abilities, turning you into (eventually) a paragon of your chosen profession. In this case, the professions are: 1) the Destroyer, who is basically your melee powerhouse with limited range, incredible damage, and the ability to charge headfirst into combat. 2) The Vanquisher, who has an affinity with ranged weapons (guns, bows), and is good at setting traps and stealthy/sneaky attacks. and 3) The Alchemist, who I don’t have much experience with. The Alchemist is your pure caster class, able to use the best spells and summoning powers in order to fight by proxy. Each of these characters has access to a wide variety of unique powers, but also can share some of the same talents, and can build up the same attributes. For example, it would be possible to take my destroyer, equip some magic enhancing items, some spells, and some magic skill, and turn him into a caster. He’ll just never be quite as natural at it as an Alchemist.
Then there is the pet system. You can start with a cat or a dog, and they aren’t bad. Early on, they have more hp than you, and serve well as a distraction for enemies, or additional damage. Each pet can wear two rings and a necklace, so you might find some good enchanted ones to help them out. The pet can also learn two spells (my destroyer had a fireball shooting dog. quite fun). They can also be temporarily transformed by eating fish. The fishing minigame is not too hard, and thankfully, not a skill you can directly rank up (stupid WoW). Different fish will turn the pet into different creatures for either two minutes (normal) an hour (big version of the fish, rare), or permanently (giant version of the fish, quite rare). different pets have varying stats and abilities, but also retain what they had before. for example, if my fireball shooting dog eats a fish that makes him an ice-elemental, he will still have the fireball spell, but he’ll also have the ice-elemental’s ice powers, resistance to ice damage, etc.
Still, the pet’s primary function for me has been as a packmule. Your pet has the same number of inventory slots as you do, and can be ordered to pick up items (or you can grab em and put them in the pet’s inventory). The pet can then return to town (not helping you during that time), and sell his entire inventory to clear room. This is great for times when there are a lot of junk items lying around (and there are plenty of times).
For a while, the game’s creators had talked about their plan to make an MMO set in the Torchlight universe. If they do, and they keep the current gameplay’s pace and style, I think they could do what I was hoping Champions Online would do: blow World of Warcraft out of the water.