Titan Quest: Immortal Throne

[DeeBye]

There have been a few Titan Quest threads here, and with good reason. Titan Quest is a hack 'n slash isometric game, played much the same way Diablo is. I had a good bit of fun with it for a few months when it came out.

There is now an expansion to Titan Quest called Immortal Throne. It's a really good upgrade to Titan Quest. I've been playing it for a little bit and I'm impressed. It seems that Ironlore has listened to suggestions from the community and added a bunch of great stuff.

• An entire new Act, set in Hades<>
  
• New Mastery, called "Dream"<>
  
• Caravans, which allows you to store and transfer items<>
  
• Artifacts, which are powerful equippable items<>
  
• The ability to separate socketed items<>
  
• Tons of new items, like one-time use Scrolls<>
  [st]
  

[NiteFox]

I've heard good things about the expansion, actually. Even from reviewers that were dismissive of the original.

Ironically though, the one time I saw the expansion as a standalone on the shelves was the one time I had my budget planned out for other games. Since then, I've only seen Titan's Quest Gold. Bah.

[Maitre]

Must be nice to play with the graphics settings up. I live with low on all my settings, but the expansion was nice enough to introduce the "Off" option for shadows which helps a little with maintaining an acceptable framerate.

The other thing that the expansion introduces is a few humorous easter egg type items. Mostly in the form of scrolls which drop from some hero enemies. I recently found one entitled "Welcome to Undeath!" It reads like the introduction to a how-to book on getting by in Hades. The topic list includes: Paying the ferryman, or what to do with those coins over your eyes; The three judges, or why kicking that puppy wasn't such a good idea after all; Haunting the living, or how to say "Boo!" I've got another titled "Gronk's Apology." Personally I like it when game designers realize that they shouldn't take themselves so seriously.

Overall, I'm liking the expansion, though I haven't tried the dream mastery yet. I'm much more comfortable as a melee player, and I haven't looked at the dream mastery enough to see how it complements a melee style. Plus, I'm still working my old characters though the last act. At the moment, I've worked my conqueror (full melee, warior + defense masteries) through Hades on normal and epic, and I'm working through act three in legendary. I've had to re-distribute my skills a little to concentrate more on the skills I use and let go of some of the ones I wasn't using often. And I picked up battle standard which gives me some damage absorption in addition to colossus form, so bosses hit a little less hard than that used to.

[Frag]

Enjoying the expansion when the mood strikes me. My favorite 'hardcore' character that I beat the game with deathless was "rebalanced" into oblivion, which is a good thing. Also my perpetually dead melee'r was seemingly doing a lot better.

Started a Earth/Dream caster to play around with he's... 27 now I think.

Cheers,
~FragB)

[DeeBye]

Overall, I'm liking the expansion, though I haven't tried the dream mastery yet. I'm much more comfortable as a melee player, and I haven't looked at the dream mastery enough to see how it complements a melee style.

I haven't done a melee Dream character yet, but I hear that Dream+Defense is a wicked combo. You get all kinds of defensive bonuses and health regen it isn't even funny. It might not be the most powerful offensive build, but you never die. I'm going to try one soon.

Right now I'm doing a dual-wielding Warfare+Nature character. I'm about halfway through Epic Orient, and I'm just cutting though enemies like a hot knife through butter.

The Secret Passage in IT is quite fun and rewarding :)

[Maitre]

The Secret Passage in IT is quite fun and rewarding :)

The problem I've found with some of the quest items for Hades is that they don't get consumed. I've hung onto my Soul Warden key since normal, though it hasn't done me much good, since you have to go through the warden of souls to get to the third crystal fragment anyway.

I've been farming to get access to the passage, but haven't had a run yet. I'm looking forward to it, but who knows when I'll have a chance to get in.