2741

It took me until late in the level 50’s, and well through Legendary before I decided to select a second mastery for my hunter. As can be expected, I went for the Haruspex (Hunter + Dream build) and suddenly, chugging potions became a thing of the past - Trance of Convalescence and Herbal Remedy mean my health regen rockets along, considering it is a class that isn’t meant to be hit.

I found it a hard decision to decide on and commit to a second mastery. Even with my own dual wield warfare character, I haven’t quite decided yet.

2742

I rather like it that the classes can stand on their own like that for such a long time though. Nice to see that the secondary Mastery is really just to flesh it out and customize, rather than something entirely necessary.

2743

I think it also has to do with finding good equipment. As long as I kept finding new bows, I was kicking ass as a Hunter. But the last good new bow I found was in Act II. So now in Act IV, I think that’s why my Huraspex (sp?) (Hunter + Dream) doesn’t do enough damage with the bow to be a viable character anymore. I switched to a good spear I found, but now I have to constantly chug health potions, and even then I die a lot.

It just seems like a really badly balanced game to me. This is the second character I’ve had now that can’t make it through the game on normal difficulty. The only characters I ever created in Hardcore Diablo 2 that could never make it through normal difficulty were a couple of necromancers and an Amazon build or two. But that’s because they couldn’t beat bosses, not ordinary monsters.

2744

Were those experimental builds by any chance? My necromancer was my favorite char (non hardcore) to do hell farm runs (including 2-3 solo uber runs) with.

2745

This was such an amazingly good game. Its such a shame that it didn’t have a random world generator at least on par with Diablo IIs. I almost wish I could erase my memory of this game and start over with it. The item generator was a bit weak too, I hope they address both of these issues in their new game they are working on.

2746

A world generator “on par” with D2? What? What is there to be “on par” with in such a simplistic do-nothing generator like D2 had?

2747

Generic advice for those new to the game:

Don’t forget that if you use another character and find a bow or some other item, you can put it in the shared stash. And for heaven’s sake, make sure to stack and then use your relics.

2748

I think thats the point, it doesn’t need to be complex. It just needs to make things random enough that every play-through isn’t the exact same thing. That’s really what killed TQ for me after the first play. The class differences just weren’t enough to keep me going forward when all I was seeing was the same levels turn of turn.

I’m hoping they’ve even improved on it more for D3 and that it’s in there for Grim Dawn.

2749

Also, do not waste points in Triumph if you’re a Warrior. The skill is bugged (never fixed) and does nothing for you.

2750

Or install the friggin, damn fan-patch and use whatever skills you want to.

EDIT: Seriously with a bug fix list like this I don’t see whay anyone would not have this installed:

Bugs fixed in patch v1.17
(more info on the fixes can be found here)

  • Outsider’s damage does not increase past level 15.
  • Liche King’s Soul Blight projectile has no sound and no visible impact.
  • Nymph has no aggressive or defensive controllers.
  • Nymph’s weapon attack does not use flat damage from pet bonuses.
  • Briarward does not get Epic or Legendary health boosts.
  • Shaman’s Leggings give double recharge bonuses.
  • Spellbreaker projectile fails to affect targets half the time.
  • Revenant Greaves don’t drop, and Epic and Legendary variants aren’t linked.
  • Gigantes defensive auras fail to activate because of an animation problem.
  • Gigantes monster gear and monster infrequent gear is a mess.
  • Normal Scepter of the Liche King has irregular damage values.
  • Monster Infrequent leg armor from Act 4 monsters can drop without affixes.
  • Percentage poison damage completion bonuses on relics and charms do not work.
  • Percentage poison damage boosts on Battlemarker shrines do not work.
  • Ravages of Time icon is too large.
  • Traps became dumber in 1.1.16.
  • Inzu the Dune Raider is a Beastman (should be Demon).
  • 6678 should be 6788
  • Removed fix notes from previous patch change logs that have been confirmed as not having been implemented, or not working as intended.

Bugs fixed in beta patch v1.1.16
Monsters

  • Polyphemus now gets the proper resistance across difficulties
  • Frozen monsters with unique spears are now fixed
  • Odontotyrannus (Beast) no longer drops Demons Blood charm
  • Double resistances from undead were removed

Items

  • Removed double -%recharge for normal Shaman’s Helm. Normal Shaman’s Helm now gets a single -5%recharge bonus.
  • Night mistress’ Staff projectile range has been restored, and new projectile is more visible
  • Legendary Tiger Claw now gives a proper OA bonus
  • Attack speed of Shiverblood fixed
  • Hermes Sandals now has proper bonuses for all three difficulties
  • Hermes Sandal movement speed bonus increased to 5/6/7 for N/E/L
  • Scepter of the Liche King’s base damage fixed
  • Might of Hephaestes now activates it’s granted skill properly
  • Batrachos Greaves have been restored to give +%DA instead of DA again

Skills

  • Coredweller now casts Taunt when in agressive mode
  • Mortal Wound now has consistent increase levelling up.
  • Ravages of Time icon is now replaced with a square to show it’s an active skill
  • Vision of Death now properly causes all successfully feared monsters to flee instead of sometimes getting stuck
  • Liche King’s Arcane Blast can now be used if the Liche is lower than level 5

Miscellaneous

  • Persephone’s mesh is now fixed
  • Near invisible projectiles on staffs without base damage are now replaced by a more visible projectile

Quests

  • The attribute points you get from the Great Emperor are no longer forfeited if miss your opportunity to talk to the emperor’s ghost.
  • Hades Generals quest reward now finally works.
  • Stygian Lurker quest reward can now be regained.
  • Hidden Treasure quest no longer gives incorrect experience if you complete quest before talking to quest giver.

Bugs fixed in beta patch v1.1.15
Monsters/Bosses/Devices

  • Controllers Fixed for megalesios spirit
  • Chest Traps Fixed (fire, frost, plaque, and poison)
  • Dark Obelisk Soul Fixed
  • Charon Minion Fixed
  • Night Mistress Hero Fixed
  • Many NPCs in Act 4 Fixed
  • Mob pools through out all acts Fixed
  • About 30 Mob Skills fixed

Effects

  • Effects for Eruption, Wildfire, Arrows(default, marksmanship, and scatter shot) and Dart(default) Fixed

Items

  • Many Chest loot tables Fixed
  • Loot Table for Clam Shell Fixed
  • Many Loot Tables for mobs Fixed

Shrines

  • Few Shrines in Greece, Babylon, Egypt, and Orient fixed

Quests

  • Quest Objects Mushroom Chest, Root Chest, and Urn of the Titans Fixed

Misc

  • Few UI Improvements (roll over style on ground items, and main hud)
  • Bug in Cliff Wall of Hades Cave Fixed

Bugs fixed in beta patch v1.1.13 and before
Bugged skills

  • Ravages of Time does not reduce damage.
  • Nymph actually does less damage on level 19 and 20.
  • The minus physical damage from Fatigue is totally messed up
  • Pets aren’t able to use petskills above their max level
  • Level 11 and 12 of Reflection yield no increase
  • Ternion Attack,the skill of “Spirit Mastery” will not take advantage of the
    “projectile speed bonus” witch Arcane Lore offered.
  • Triumph does not reduce damage

Bugged items

  • Homados/Barbarian’s Spiked greaves gives a wrong bonus
  • Some damage bonuses don’t work correctly. As can be seen in the editor, they should give two bonuses, but only one displays (and works). It concerns the following suffixes: "of Destruction, “of Carnage”, “of Devastation” and “of Annihilation”.
  • Normal affixes on equipment in Epic/Legendary
  • Epic Herakles relics give better bonuses than Legendary ones
  • The +%Armor Protection completion bonus for Theban and Battlemage sets does work, but does not display correctly.
  • Armour on Ismene’s Bracers is not given
  • The diseased plumage and venom sac charms sometimes don’t yield a completion bonus.
  • -%recharge and -%energy cost on Divine scroll of Archmages Fury doesn’t work.
  • Schlilsh’s Skinner (MI sword of the swamp Anourans); the bleeding damage it does is messed up across the difficulties
  • Affixes that grant a -%recharge bonus don’t work.
  • Erebus Crystal completion bonus mixes up Legendary with normal bonus
  • Overseer’s Crest should give +2 to earth enchantment but doesn’t.
  • Golden Fleece doesn’t give the right amount of -%energy cost cost.

Bugged drops

  • The loot tables are messed up, some items do not drop correctly. A partial
    fix for this was made.
  • Some bonuses that were obviously intended (+2 defensive skills on shields,
    +1/2 to certain class skills on staves and some more).
  • The Hermes Sandal relic is present in the database, but doesn’t drop
  • The Hermes Sandal relic doesn’t give bonuses on completing
  • Drop rates for Ismene’s Helm - enemies have 0% chance to wear this.
  • Bloodborn Leggings; the correspondent table refers to helmets instead of leggings.
  • Shaman Helms - gets -12% recharge at Normal, 0% at Epic and Legendary.
  • Shaman Leggings - gets -12% recharge at Normal, 0% at Epic and Legendary.

Multiplayer bugs

  • Phoenix (Legendary)The Heat Shield skill insta-kills allies.

Other bugs

  • Some textures are not readable by textureviewer
  • Numerous bad linkage errors in the database
  • Blacksmith in Epic Knossos doesn’t sell helmets.
  • Merchants do not sell bows in Epic Act 2.
  • +% damage bonuses on relics aren’t working correctly in beta patch v1.09RC
2751

Alright fine Staff Sargeant. I’ll download the fan patch. But it probably won’t help me not die in Act IV. Is there any way to get cool weapons in Titan Quest?

Like in Diablo 2 for example, you could take all your money and gamble it away on what you were hoping to get, and usually after a few tries you got something cool. Is there anything like that? Or am I just hosed as an archer because I can’t get any cool bows to drop? What is it with bows anyway? Bows were also the hardest ones to get cool versions of in Diablo 2 as well. Most magic and set bows and even a lot of unique bows in Diablo 2 weren’t very good. It’s almost as if game designers want to make sure that bow users don’t get good weapons in games like these.

2752

The necromancer didn’t used to be all that great at soloing back in the day. They fixed that in later patches by making skeletons a lot stronger (and less numerous). So the bane of the necromancer back in the day used to be Diablo. I remember the first time we played Diablo 2, on the weekend after its release, my two friends played Necros and I played an Amazon, and they just kept dying and dying and dying while going up against Diablo.

Even the expansion pack helped things, because they made a number of changes that helped characters survive, like being able to get hirelings and resurrect them after they die, etc. But yeah, back in the day, there were a few builds on normal difficulty that just couldn’t make it past Diablo.

2753

Oh, alright. Thanks for the D2 history lesson :). I didn’t know that, but that was probably relatively obvious since Blizzard constantly revamped stuff. The necro was one of my last classes and admittedly I had some good runewords farmed.

2754

With my own hunter, he managed to get through much of normal difficulty starting with the Ram Bow - a very lucky drop in the first act. Towards the third act it had to be retired. Can not remember what bow I used at the end of the final act of normal, but I do remember finding Borealis in the final act around Rhodes, so it might have been that which I was using. In the interim though, I can not remember.

Sadly, the only way to get cool items in Titan Quest is to hope luck is on your side. Or farm areas where beasts are typically attired in the gear which you are after - considering they drop the items they are carrying. The merchants do sell the occasional green item, which, combined with an artefact (for bows, can’t go past Artemis bowstring) is of great benefit.

Finally, where did you invest your points in with the character. For all hunter builds, study prey is essential, the difference to damage output is impressive.

2755

Yup Study Prey and the LMB mouse skill (marksmanship?) are essential. If you’re a ranger the wolves’ final skill, strength of the pack, is also an insane damage booster (when they feel like triggering it, bastards).

EDIT: If you are playing co-op make sure one of you has Nature as a class. It’s basically easy mode with all the animals running around and Heart of Oak giving +65% HP and +18% resistances.

EDIT2: And it has plague, oh wow haha. Nature is crazy OP If you are playing co-op with a damage dealer like an elementalist or a conqueror.

2756

At some point nearing the end of Normal you really want that AoE debuff to be cast on every pack of enemies you encounter. Your wolves (assuming you’re also nature) can’t take many hits at all so it’s kind of something you just need to deal with. Your trap is useless so try to have an item that causes enemies to slow down.

As for bows… it’s strange how green items from vendors can be more badass than anything else you’ll find. I’ve had plenty of those items outclass the blue ones, especially since you can’t use your runes on blue items.

Just don’t forget strength either, strength affects bow damage.

2757

Only one point in Study Prey so far. It’s hard to tell in Titan’s quest which skills will grow to be useful and which ones will just add a few percentage points and only have the biggest bang with the first point spent. I thought Study Prey looked like it was one of the one point skills, but if you say point expenditure is useful, then I’ll spend more later if I ever get any more points. Mostly I spent points on the Big Plus in both Hunter and then Dream mastery. I’m level 34. I kill things in a few seconds with a spear now, but it takes forever with the bow I currently have. The bow doesn’t seem that bad on paper, it does almost as much damage as the spear, but the spear I can swing relatively fast, while the bow is slow to fire. Most enemies so far in this act close on my character really fast and all seem to be on speed. It’s like a Hunter’s nightmare.

2758

You really want the skills that crank up the piercing damage and fragment to hit multiple targets.

Then you’ll be shitting corpses left and right when combined with a halfway decent bow.

2759

There is also a random drop fix released that’s not in the fan patch. It’s over at the titanquest.net “Modifications and The Editor” forums named:

“[REL] Random Number Generator MOD”

Make sure fanpatch 1.17a is installed and backup game.dll and engine.dll

2760

Yeah piercing damage is key. Lots of times when you look at bows, you want to look at the piercing damage percentage. At your level, that percentage should start causing more damage (assuming you have piercing talents and whatnot) than the bow’s damage range.