Torchlight II Previews, Interviews, and Community Q&A

The guys over at RunicGamesFansite have put together eight separate content articles based on their time with Torchlight II at the recent Penny Arcade Expo, the lot of which includes previews covering everything from the storyline to the classes, as well as interviews with Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer. This massive community Q&A is of particular interest since it covers so many topics:
Question 6a: Is each class going to have a unique skill set or are there shared talents like TL1 (mAv)

Question 6b: In Torchlight the amount of builds each class offered was rather limited. How is Torchlight2 going to improve on this? (Dirkw83)


The goal is for each class to have around 30 skills and to have no shared skills. Just from looking at the classes in PAX, I believe that there will be many more builds this time around. Skills and class concepts were much more interesting and the skills more engaging.

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Question 21a: Any new End Game features you can reveal at this point? (Omnifas)

Question 21b: Some more information on a New Game+ mode (k4llus)

Question 21c: Can you tell us something about what endgame content looks like? (Dirkw83)


I asked Travis about this and he actually told me some really cool concepts they were thinking of, but they are still conceptual and were off the record because there may not be time to implement them. Here is what he was able to tell me: The plan is for New Game+ will be like Nightmare in Diablo 2 where you restart the game where you left off with more difficult monsters and better loot drops. You will continue to level your old characters. You should also be able to farm bosses if you want, to hunt for specific loot. Additionally, there may be an unlockable difficulty level (beyond very hard), and maps and the infinite dungeons are being combined into a more party friendly solution.

Webbstre's Note: To try to make this explanation simpler, let me explain as I understand it: Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and the possible unlockable difficulty (super hard?) are something you set when you make a game to play in with a character. New Game+ would be like going from Normal to Nightmare in Diablo 2, but you would still get the game difficulty setting when making a New Game+ game.

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Question 43: How will monster difficulty scale in multi-player? Will there be considerations based on player levels, or is it just a set increase per player? (hanfeitzu)

I am going to quote Travis for this one: (So currently difficulty in multiplayer is based on proximity, so when players are within 48 meters of you, that's when you start doing xp sharing, loot sharing, and where the monster difficulty starts to adjust. So basically, there is a curve based on how many players are proximate that scales the amount of damage you do to them down and the amount of damage they do to you up. And that will just change on the fly based on proximity so if somebody logs into your game, unless they're nearby it's not immediately going to boost it.)

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Question 57: Is there any dlc or expansions being planned for Torchlight 2? (ThomasJ) (Webbstre / Staff)

No for paid DLC. Their patcher program has been improved immensly, so we can expect to see some things added via download after the initial release. Guild were one example of this. As far as expansions, I asked Max and he said that it really depends on demand and how the game does.