KevinC
2841
xMax seriously turns it into a whole other game - in a good way. Give that mod a shot before signing off from the game.
That’s actually how I played it and had some fun doing so. It’s asthetically pleasing, the skill trees were fun to mess around with and the gameplay is simple enough for short sessions. But I agree, it did feel much too easy.
I will admit though, I only made it to China before I stopped playing but it was more because I got distracted with other games. And I’ve played UP to that point twice. Started playing again a few months ago and hoping to get back to it soon to see if it really does pick up after the initial area. Not a bad game at all. And I’ve heard the expansion is even better.
Strato
2843
Yes, that’s the thing. The expansion was a much better game. Someone on this message board I believe did a video highlighting the variation in the world with the expansion, going from Greece through the various parts of Hades. It is unfortunate that normal difficulty does exist, considering Epic and Legendary is where the game does increase in challenge.
There is another program out there which will allow a person to hack their character, the TQ Defiler if I recall its name. It allows a person to add levels to their character, and to unlock the later difficulties. However, I completely understand that a person may not want to take a shortcut to that point.
ARISE THREAD!!!
So I am starting this game from my backlog, playing the version w/ Immortal Throne , so far I’ve patched it up to 1.17a and then patched that with some unofficial patch. And i just started and finished the first quest, and made it to the way-point portal thing.
Anyone have any pointers or tips? Or should I read through all 70+ pages of this thread? :p
As you advance the first several levels, let the pros here know which masteries you are thinking of pursuing (you’ll get to choose two). From memory there are a couple of combinations that don’t synergise all that well and can make late-game tough. The advice here will at least ensure you are on the right track.
Ah ok , well I think I made my first major choice my choosing the Lightning and Ice magic tree skills.
Lightning and Ice?
These are the masteries. One is chosen early on (first few levels), and the second can be chosen later (level 10ish?), unless you want to specialise in only one.
Lightning and Ice may have been to Storm mastery? In which case you’ll (spoiler alert) get the option to add another later on…
Keep in mind that you can (another spoiler alert) reassign most of your skill points later on once you meet special vendors in major towns. IIRC, the only skill point expenditures you’re stuck with are those spent on “mastery” levels.
Ah cool! Yes it was the Storm one.
Also is it normal to have loot names only show up when I hold the Z ( it think it was Z) key? Most other games just seem to spew loot names all over the screen ready to pick up.
Make sure you check out the mods I suggested elsewhere. I will try to remember to post them again when not drunk :)
I think <alt> and/or <tab> do something for loot as well (one of them only shows the non-junk items: you don’t want to bother with picking up the junk as your backpack fills up too quickly).
This Post?
I was going to pretty much just play it with the patches and fixes, but I’ll give it a read, and see if anything tickles my fancy.
The Lilith mod (recommended in that other thread) is excellent. It’s new and different with unique player skills and tons of unique enemies with new and interesting abilities, and it also comes complete with some great scripted sequences (better than the original game) set to a stirring soundtrack ripped from movies like Gladiator and Braveheart. However, it’s a totally separate campaign, so I’d probably save it for after you’ve finished the original game.
That said, the original game is very long, and I think I would’ve found it tough to finish (and enjoy) if not for two things:
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A co-op buddy. This may not be an option for everybody, but like many of these games, I found that it played much, much better in co-op.
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A difficulty-increase mod. The original game was painfully easy. A-RPGs like this are, of course, pretty simple affairs. What I found was that, given the incredibly low difficulty of the base game, my decisions and skill use and actions all seemed less weighty. If you find yourself a bit bored and/or wishing there was a bit more challenge, I highly-highly recommend a difficulty mod.
Trying a few of those mods radically changed the game for us, and we ultimately loved the game as one of our absolute favorites. We’re not hardcore ARPGers either. I beat D2 once, my g/f had played a fair bit of Guild Wars, but we’re hardly leet.
My preferred difficulty mod (after trying ~3-4) was one of the ‘Double or Nothing’ mods found here:
http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/25731-Release-Double-or-Nothing-1-16-(UPDATED-10-22-08)
I can’t remember exactly which one we settled on, but I think it was the ‘Aldente Core’ version with the ‘Xmax lite’ option.
Basically, all of the monsters will be tougher (as if your first playthrough was on ‘Epic’), and the ‘Xmax’ means there will be more monsters (which also means faster leveling and more skill points). We found that Xmax bosses could be either unbeatable or insufferable in some cases, so we played without that. However, the Xmax lite still gives you multiples of the enemy Heroes/Champions, and that’s a real thrill since they’re pulled from a random selection and the pack of them may vary a bit (some skeleton lich hero dudes will be shooting ice while others charge in with an axe or whatever).
I think the very beginning might be tough with that mod, but IIRC, you might be able to use it with an existing character. I’m pretty sure that’s what we did (since, like I said, we tested out several difficulty mods before we found our favorite). Once you cut your way through a gigantic horde of the satyrs in XMax, it would be hard to go back to the regular clump of 8-15 that barely even puts a sweat or a scratch on you. :-)
Personally, if you want increased difficulty and monster count (which I do), I feel like Underlord (http://www.moddb.com/mods/underlord) brings a bunch of other cool stuff to the table that you won’t get by just using a spawn increase mod.
Hmm, I don’t know if that Underlord mod was available when I played TQ. That looks neat though.
DeepT
2856
My advice is Warfare and Dream for skill trees, and mostly bump up your skill tree skill first to get the stats to wear the right gear. Put 1 point in abilities you want to use then go back to the primary skill tree skill. Once you are maxed in one of the skill trees, then fill out the skills you want. You may want to grab some minor skills from your second skill tree as well, but try and focus on one tree then the other one. If you try and work both, you will have very weak powers until you get to a very high level. That is, if you do not give up and just re-make a character.
Skill tree points can not be re-speced. Just the points for the skills in the tree.
Yeah, I didn’t know that when I was playing the first time. I put lots of points in Storm and Dream abilities, and then eventually started dying constantly until it just wasn’t fun anymore. A couple of years later I made a pure archer and did what DeepT just described, and was able to kick ass through most of the campaign. After I beat the regular game though, I got into the expansion pack content, and suddenly was in the same situation: constantly dying and couldn’t move on anymore. The game has some major difficulty spikes and balance problems.
I’m trying to think about whether a difficulty mod would have made the game more interesting for me. Considering how the difficulty is all over the place: probably. It would have to make some parts of the game easier and other parts harder. Is that what these difficulty mods do? Or do they just universally make the game harder? If the latter is the case, then they are probably for people who have already spent a lot of time with the game figuring out how to best use your skill points so as not to screw yourself over.
DeepT
2858
Yeah, the expansion kicks it up quite a bit. It is very off keel. Especially those demon archers which hit like a freight train. When you finish “normal” difficulty in the expansion in TQ, then move to the next difficulty, the first act is a walk in the park since it so much easier because you do not need to deal with those ridiculous demon archers. I never made it past the next difficulty.
Just got to Act 2, very much liking the maps. You can tell time went into making them, and they feel way more open than Diablo 3’s maps.
@Rock8Man:
AFAIK, all of the difficulty mods increase the difficulty for everything (e.g., by giving them greater resistance and attack bonuses like they’d have in the Epic playthrough). I never played through the entire game without such a mod, so I can’t comment on the base game’s difficulty past Act I or so. However, playing with the mods I did find that the difficulty spiked very noticeably in some areas. (e.g., All of those demon humanoid guys in the Underworld were really tough, both because of their speed and because they only needed a couple of hits to kill me. Archers were much tougher too with the difficulty mod, but I got used to running around to dodge their attacks while I tossed fireballs or charged into melee or whatever). Also, as mentioned above, I played almost exclusively with a co-op buddy, and that made it possible to do all kinds of baiting and kiting and other tricks so we could avoid getting mobbed and overwhelmed. On top of all that, the XMax parts of those mods means that you’ll kill more monsters so you gain more exp, and killing more champions probably meant that we collected more/better loot too.
As for the skill trees: I do remember being a bit disappointed with some aspects of the skill tree balance in the original (unmodded) game. It’s been ages since I played D2, but I remembered feeling like every skill in D2 was useful at every level (so you didn’t necessarily feel like early skill point investments were wasted). In TQ, it was definitely the case for me that some skills/spells felt like they almost completely superseded lower/alternative skills.
