I played this some. Only got midway through with Vanquisher, didn't play the other classes much. I don't know to what extent the other classes are like Vanquisher, or if Vanquisher is just the cheesy class of the game.

It seemed like there were too many junk skills, and that you get pigeonholed into obviously overpowered synergies. I just maxed Ricochet, ranged weapons, and the critical hit thingy, and eventually I was probably going to work on dual wielding after the other bonuses capped out. And... not much else, really, except utility one-pointers, Wind of Justice especially.

Was playing on Hard mode. Spammed Ricochet all day. Got a little mana restore on hit so I wouldn't have to bother with mana potions. Game never really got hard. Might go back and finish the game someday (I hear the difficulty eventually climbs up a bit later on).

I briefly tried melee Vanquisher stuff on a new character, and it was just horrible and pointless, unless with better gear or something it actually works or is somehow fun or rewarding in some other way.

....despite all that, Torchlight was kind of fun. Polished in some ways, but sort of lacking in balance, and missing the multiplayer that might make TL2 the definitive D3 killer, since D3 is sort of struggling and disappointing lately.

> Was playing on Hard mode. ...


Easy Mode is super easy.
Normal is Easy
Hard is Normal - good for newbies
Very Hard is where experienced action RPGers should be playing.

And HardCore has perma-death which should keep you on your toes considering there are mob traps on most levels. Hard-core is an option on the 4 levels of difficulty.

Another way to add more challenge is simply not leaving the dungeon until you've killed the final boss.

There's also the "I am Death incarnate" mod, which (supposedly, I don't have any personal experience with it yet) increases difficulty with a huge amount.
However, from what I've read here, the GOG version of the game might not be 100% friendly towards modding..

It has a problem loading mods, (the game crashes )and it is not a mod specific problem since it has happened with several mods.
I have a version I bought from Runic on my computer,and the mods work fine with them.
I have some supicisons that GOG messed up on it's version of the TL exe file and that is what is causing the problems. GOG had better fix this since the huge Modding community is one of the things which has made torchlight such a sucess.

Thanks for confirming that.
Indeed, the many mods for Torchlight are a huge boost (and I really couldn't play the game without some of them), and, what's more, they even advertise TorchED as one of the col extras that come with the game, so it'd be pretty awkward if you couldn't use the mods you've made with it.
GOG really has to look into this issue.

I find playing the maps makes it much harder. The regular play-through dungeon is comparatively easier. But many of the maps have traps or even bosses right by the entrance. On some of them you will be fighting before your character moves forward a single step. It can get pretty overwhelming sometimes, especially if you have magic casters who cast skeletons on you or spam the whole area with so much magic you can hardly see what's going on.

Does hardcore let me keep the saved game so that I can check up my dead character stats? Kind like the iOS game Sword of Fargoal?

That's a shame because I like that feature of Sword of Fargoal, it let's you load your save only to see your character dead in the floor and you can see how much deep he went into the dungeon, kills, weapon etc... I don't want to save my savegames, just being able to see the achievments of my dead character.

I can't get TorchED to respond. I've loaded it and de=loaded it, and it's still poop. And that's why I bought Torchlight here. Robbed.

How long have you waited after starting it? For me, it literally takes minutes to load it up (it is very resource-heavy, as far as I can tell).

You're correct. I had not enough patience it seems. Looks intimidating. :\