There needs to be a discussion about Torchlight

[Chesspiece_face]

I want to try very hard difficulty, but I think I'll stick with my current character on normal just to play through the story.

I've played through the story mode on the Very Hard difficulty as a Vanquisher. So far I've come to the conclusion that the greatest thing the developers did with this game was to price point it at $20. It fills a niche that is under represented at the present and most likely will be until D3 comes out. But there are a lot of gameplay issues that require polishing were this to ever be released as a full price game.

One of the biggest things I've noticed that needs tightening is hit box issues that arrise with the jump to 3d. As a gun using Vanquisher I'm lucky if I have a 50% chance of actually hitting something with a shot even if it is standing right in front of me. Often I need to take a step back and wait till they are walking directly towards me to garauntee a hit. This is exacerbated even more when stairs are involved. Getting into a fight on stairs generally equates to 0% chance to hit anything as my shots just zoom over their heads. This is even while i'm directly targeting an enemy. The Vanquishers "ultimate" ranged attack is often completely negated on uneven terrain as if you target a group of enemies on a floor lower than your position the rain of arrows will just end up falling to a point in mid air over the enemies and stopping at your characters height instead of falling to the enemies position.

Despite the annoyances this game just shows how much fun there is to be had in this genre. My Vanquisher is now about level 35 and I'm trying to find information about how the retirement and heirloom items work. I'm not sure if it would be better to continue leveling this character and using it as a Magic Find character or if I should retire it and start a new Vanquisher to Heirloom beef up my already 600 dps gun and some of my set armor. Has anyone who plays this chosen to retire a character already? And if so what were the results? So far until I can get more information I've just been running through Shadow Vault and trying to gather more set items.

[roguebanshee]

One of the biggest things I've noticed that needs tightening is hit box issues that arrise with the jump to 3d. As a gun using Vanquisher I'm lucky if I have a 50% chance of actually hitting something with a shot even if it is standing right in front of me. Often I need to take a step back and wait till they are walking directly towards me to garauntee a hit. This is exacerbated even more when stairs are involved. Getting into a fight on stairs generally equates to 0% chance to hit anything as my shots just zoom over their heads. This is even while i'm directly targeting an enemy. The Vanquishers "ultimate" ranged attack is often completely negated on uneven terrain as if you target a group of enemies on a floor lower than your position the rain of arrows will just end up falling to a point in mid air over the enemies and stopping at your characters height instead of falling to the enemies position.

I haven't had the targeting issue you're describing for ranged attacks in melee range. Stairs can be troublesome, but they can also work beautifully with Ricochet & Explosive Shot. Anyway when fighting at a stair, target behind your intended target(s) and you should have a much higher chance to hit. For now I'd call it a quirk of the game.

As far as Arrow Hail goes, I haven't used it much but the times I have there has been no issue with hitting things regardless of elevation differences. The only issue I have had is with it is efficiency compared to Explosive Shot (aka. I-WIN!).

Despite the annoyances this game just shows how much fun there is to be had in this genre. My Vanquisher is now about level 35 and I'm trying to find information about how the retirement and heirloom items work.

An item can be heirloomed (iirc) 10 times, each time grants a percentile bonus to every effect the item has.

Note that the Shadow Vault will scale enemies to the character doing it, so you'll get level apropriate drops which may or may not work out well for your collection.

[Chesspiece_face]

As far as Arrow Hail goes, I haven't used it much but the times I have there has been no issue with hitting things regardless of elevation differences. The only issue I have had is with it is efficiency compared to Explosive Shot (aka. I-WIN!).

I find Arrow Hail to be a much better investment for my play style. I use Ricochet as my main left button attack and Arrow Hail as my right button attack, summon zombies on both myself and my pet and when they get in a tangle with a big group of baddies layer 3 or 4 Arrow Hails over the group and Richochet through them. I destroyed the final boss by just staying near the stairs into the level and spamming Arrow Hail over him. I will say that using this strategy relies much more on putting points into the "magic mastery" ability to regain mana per second. 10 points in that and you can pretty much just spam your abilities and never use a mana pot. Edit: my Richochet on my old Vanquisher would crit about 50% of the time for 8k damage and the Arrow Hail would generally hit for about 2000 on all enemies effected per hit.

An item can be heirloomed (iirc) 10 times, each time grants a percentile bonus to every effect the item has.

Note that the Shadow Vault will scale enemies to the character doing it, so you'll get level apropriate drops which may or may not work out well for your collection.

I decided to retire my first Vanquisher the other night and not only does the weapon gain upgraded stats but it's requirements are lowered. My new Vanquisher has invested all her initial points into the ranged mastery and will be able to use the 600+ dps gun at level 12. If I were to Heirloom the same gun more I'll eventually be able to use it pretty much off a fresh character.

Another benefit of retiring your character is that for each time you retire the character down the chain the new character will start with 1 additional skill point from scratch. I will probably make a point to retire my Vanquishers at the earliest point possible in the future.