I beat the Cyclops first time. However, lest you think I’m some kind of Titan Quest prodigy, every previous time I played it the Cyclops handed my ass to me multiple times. I remember running back there death after death, whittling his health down a little more each time. So I’m not sure what was different this time. They did say they’d rebalanced many aspects of the game, so I figured they’d nerfed him a bit, but maybe not. I actually had more trouble with the centaur dude a little earlier.
Today I put my damage output up from 105 dps to 155 dps, mostly by upgrading my gear, more judicious use of relics, and crafting another really cool artifact. I am the hot knife, the monsters are my butter. It’s actually nice to feel like a god, though, but I do feel a little overpowered right now. I suspect it’s a difficult game to balance given the number of possible combinations of masteries, gear and buffs. I hear Act III ups the difficulty a fair bit, which I am obviously fast approaching.
DeepT
2982
Sometimes I had trouble with the cyclops, however, IIRC only one of his attack is really dangerous and the rest can be mostly ignored. You can also run out of range to heal up.
Enidigm
2983
These seem to be the definitive Titan Quest build videos. Six years old (!) but still relevant.
I’ve never finished a game of Titan Quest - I mean I’ve never gotten through Normal difficulty. I’ve never even seen Hades or whatever. The annoying thing about all these style of Diablo games is that Nornal difficulty isnt even the “true” game. What that means in practice is that you have to save your skill points almost all the way through Normal which I find off putting.
One thing you may try though is quickly leveling all the way to the 24 or 32 mark to skip the low tier stuff.
I powered up to Nymph with nature and with three Beastcaller jewelry items she’s a machine gun, when I tried the Anniversary edition.
I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. TQ is incredibly forgiving of your choices, I’ve found, making practically any build manageable, even if melee builds of all sorts get the shaft when it comes to boss fights and those potential one-hit kills. I’m one that usually just picks what feels best and what I like to play, paying little attention to trying to find the right mix of stats, skills/spells, and gear. I actually prefer playing that way as I don’t want to spend a lot of time agonizing over character development choices, even though I love having the huge variety that TQ offers.
Only advice I’d offer is to pay attention to your opponent’s tells and prepare to dodge, run, and strike gorilla-warfare style. So unlike Diablo in that respect.
I don’t think I’m a particularly skilled player, although I’ve a lot of experience in TQ, specifically, so maybe this is a game that’s designed perfectly for my more methodical style of play. Love how easily I got back into it, playing a Diviner again (Dream/Spirit). All came back so quickly.
Rock8man
2985
Yeah, that’s how I beat the Cyclops finally. Just picked up a random bow from the ground nearby and just shot him, backed off, dodged out of the way of his stun attack wave, ran, shot him again, etc. My main problem with that is that I’m doing this with a mouse. So it’s not like doing similar things in ARPG on the console. That can be really fun thing to do on the controller. But with a mouse, where you’re constantly click click clicking and your hand is kind of hurting sometimes, it’s just annoying. And the fact that I’m playing on very fast game speed doesn’t help matters either. But mostly it comes down to this activity just not being fun for me with a mouse. I had some fun doing that with a rogue in the original Diablo, especially against those enemies that telegraphed their charges, and you could click out of the way. But that was a lot more forgiving of how often and where you clicked.
I’m just frustrated that I read people think this game is easy, and yet no matter what character I make, where it’s in 2010, 2013 or 2016, I always end up dying a lot. And dying a lot in a game where dying doesn’t mean much is just demoralizing. So dying isn’t important, but in a perverse way that actually makes it more important to my motivation to keep playing.
That’s why I usually like to play characters with decent melee and decent spellcasting, so I can stay out of range of enemies with massive damage if I’m unable to wade in. I don’t usually care for bows because they’re so plinky and clicky, potent one-click spells are more my speed! I didn’t find that I needed to do much clicking with any boss though; I tend to hold the mouse down, circle around it while my health recovers and my cooldowns… um… cool down, then fire off a spell or two and/or get a few hits in, then getting the hell out of there and recovering. There were definitely a few fights where I needed quite a few health and energy potions, but TQ was never shy about encouraging you to do this. It’s not like there’s a shortage of them. My first TQ build was Warfare / Storm, and while Cyclops was quite a bit tougher I still took him down within a few minutes. I just lost a bit of experience (and lots of health vials!) doing so.
[edit] typing fail, jeez.
I get it. Games that make me repeat things over and over because of dying aren’t even remotely enjoyable and are more often than not the games that I quit. That’s a big enough penalty for me to want to avoid death at all costs, because I don’t want to tire of a game. Wears you down.
One thing I didn’t mention was how important I found health/energy regen to be in TQ. My Haruspex (Hunting/Dream) was a monster in health regen, IIRC. Does wonders for going toe-to-toe with your enemies, so to speak, without worrying so much about the dodging every last thing that comes your way. Great if you’re feeling brittle. I’d choose health regen, in particular, over some DPS enhancement for that reason.
Daagar
2988
A nice Haruspex build for those playing along at home: http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/39585-Immortal-Bow-Haruspex-Guide
I find I enjoy TQ more than many of the other diablo-likes, mostly due to theme. Having an updated version to enjoy nicer graphics is just wonderful. I’m quickly getting into ARPG overload though. Van Helsing in the last humble monthly, TQ Anniversary this month, Grim Dawn in the next humble monthly, plus the ever present D3/PoE/Marvel should I lack options…
And yet I’m playing the 10 year old one…
Rock8man
2989
I found my old saves from when I played a year or two ago. I wonder if copying these into my current titan quest savedata folder from the anniversary edition will let me get at the old characters somehow, or more importantly, my shared stash. I wonder what will happen to my current shared stash if I tried that?
Hmmm.
EDIT: I emptied my stash from my new character, the shared section, and then I copied the old save directories on top of the new one. Hey presto, old characters are back, and the old shared stash is back too. I gave my warrior much better stuff, and now I’m kicking butt. Phew. That’s much better. I took your advice @Equisilus and gave her a bunch of health generation stuff (as well as other things), and it makes a huge difference. There’s no way I would have found all this equipment on a clean run though.
LMN8R
2990
FYI if anyone was having the same problems in TQ as I had (mouse cursor not showing up on high-DPI devices), they have a fix out. There’s a new Win10 compatibility mode which fixes the issue for me.
I’ve never played Titan Quest, but now have the Anniversary Edition and am thinking of giving it a go. But I just finished a 30+ hour run through Grim Dawn, and I’m not sure I want to jump into something which is essentially more of the same. I’m up for some more ARPG fun, just not for Grim Dawn in Greece. Is TQ nearly identical to GD, or are there different enough mechanics to make if feel distinctive, beyond the setting obviously?
Daagar
2992
Most people seem to say that TQ will feel like a step back from GD, just because of all the quality of life things they added in the newer game. So, I’d say that if the theme doesn’t immediately grab you as a reason to play maybe put it on the backburner for now to avoid burnout (but do indeed come back to it someday).
Funny, I was just thinking today how well TQ has held up and how I enjoy playing it more than GD (which I played through a couple of times). It’s a slightly different pace, less about slamming you with opponents. However, if you’re a little burned out on ARPGs in general, you might want to give them a break so you can go into TQ fresh when you get to it.
I also enjoy Titan Quest more than Grim Dawn because I prefer the setting of the former, but you’d definitely recognise its DNA in Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn is certainly much improved overall, but TQ has a purity I like. TQ also has a much slower start, and takes quite a bit longer before you start to feel powerful. But once you do, smashing opponents and seeing them arc gracefully through the air only to smack into a cliff wall and get tangled in a tree on the way down never, ever gets old. I never found Grim Dawn’s combat to be quite as satisfying, although I only played it for several hours. But I agree that the correct advice is to come back to it after a break.
Rock8man
2995
I reached Act III last night. Act II was pretty much a breeze compared to Act I. I only had one death, and that was to a worm hero thingie that poisoned me to death. After which I switched out my gear to more poison-protected gear and never had that problem again.
It certainly is much tougher to get your resistances up in this game compared to Diablo 2. But it also seems more effective at lower levels. Even a 50% resistance to an element is pretty huge in Titan’s Quest.
After I got to max level as Warrior and had the skills I wanted, I finally started investing in Dream, just to get the passive bonuses and aura. At least for now.
I’m most of the way through Act III at the moment. Let me say that Act III is far tougher than what’s come before. Those tigermen captains and heroes hit really, really hard, and their sorcerers don’t mess around either. I’ve died quite a few times by getting in over my head and wham! I had to retire some long-beloved gear to up my armour to stand any chance of survival.
On the flipside, seeing a tigerman sorcerer twirling his staff above his head is about the best image I’ve seen so far in the game. ;)
Rock8man
2997
Do you use Phantom Strike? It seems so hard to use. So you click the ability, then left click on the enemy, and then you disappear, and then reappear and then something happens? Is it best put on right click or one of the numbers? I guess if you put it on right click, you have to right click and then left click and then, do you have to left click again when you reappear?
I use Phantom Strike quite often yes. I have it bound to 1, then right click on the target, it’s great for closing with ranged foes without taking any damage. Once you hit, you need to left click to hit, assuming it’s still alive that is. You need to put a few points into it before it gets really good, but it does get really good and can one-shot most non-hero enemies. When you start putting points into Dream Stealer as well, it can one-shot several enemies if they’re standing in close proximity.
The other monster skill is Distortion Wave + Chaotic Resonance which is basically a kill button, you’ll send lesser enemies flying into the air, and lining up half a dozen of them at once is very satisfying. Even better, once you add Psionic Immolation to the mix, you can fire and forget, wander off and hear the screams of your dying foes as electrical DOTs them all to death. At least, until you reach Act III when suddenly it kinda stops working! Or rather, you need a double shot at least, and combination with other skills, so it’s certainly a lot more challenging.
I have Distortion Wave set to right click.
Phantom Strike on right click is really easy, just right click and you’re all set, that’s what I use on my Harbinger.
Rock8man
3000
God, this game sucks. I spent all this time getting to the end of Act 3, and now I just spent over an hour trying to defeat the boss at the end. Every other enemy has been cake, and suddenly this character I created is pretty useless against this boss. I did get him down to half health once, just by shear patience and persistence and just running around in circles and hitting him once with phantom strike, and then circles, and then something else.
What really rankles is that there’s no cronies, so I can’t build up my onslaught attack, which means my main attack advantage from my Warrior skill tree is worthless against this guy.
Oh well. You beat me Titan Quest. Again. Well done. You win.
