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Happy Holidays Torchlight friends!
We hope you are keeping warm this winter season (or cool, for those in the southern hemisphere)! We are so excited to finally bring you the ‘Snow & Steam’ update, which is full of feedback, suggestions, bug fixes, and improvements that we know you have all been waiting for!
This spicy update is sending chills down my spine... With a complete revamp for Forged and Fazeer, a whole new limited-time contract, and a slew of amazing new features and quality-of-life updates, this patch has something for everyone.
This update will come alongside a forced respec, so please remember to spend your points before you dive back into the frontier after updating to ‘Snow & Steam’.
WINTER THEMED CONTRACT, PETS, & FORT DECORATIONS
This Holiday tree will bring some festive feelings into your snow-covered forts!
We’ve added a new, limited-time, ‘Snow & Steam’ Contract with a large assortment of winter-themed pets and fort decorations! Among the list of items that can be obtained are snow based decorations for your fort, an Ugly Sweater Cat variant, and an assortment of consumable and currency based rewards. During this update, the recently added spooky pets will become unavailable to find on the frontier, but may return again after the ‘Snow & Steam’ season has passed.
You can view a list of all the newly added winter-themed fort decorations and pets down below in the detailed patch notes.
FORGED REWORK
Steam raises Movement speed and is spent on Basic Attacks and some skills.
The Forged class has received a major rework in this update. Not only will you notice new elements for the HUD, but several skills have been changed and the general approach for Forged has received a bit of a makeover to make it a more interesting and viable class.
“After reviewing feedback in Discord and our internal metrics, it was pretty clear that Forged was our least popular character.” Torchlight III Game Designer Michael May explained, “All the feedback, alongside our player data, painted a picture that showed us that the Forged low level skills felt solid, but the secondary higher level skills were lackluster.”
The team went back to the drawing board, reviewing the current mechanics and skills and how to improve the overall feel of the class. “Skills like Slug Shot, Uppercut, and the ‘half venters’ didn’t have a strong place in the Forged’s overall kit like we had hoped, and players often just use a Heat builder, a Vent skill (possibly both), and fill the rest with Relic skills.”
With a new HUD and mechanic designed based on increased movement speed, the team reworked several skills in order to accommodate the new resource for Forged, appropriately named “Steam”. Steam raises Movement speed and is spent on Basic Attacks and some skills. This has effectively expanded the capabilities of Forged, providing for more versatile builds, including those based round melee/basic attacks.
NEW LEGENDARY GEAR
Which cool new weapon brings chills to your spine, Glacier's Edge or The North Mace?
The winter season is also blowing in additional ice-sharp legendary weapons to the game. A new Mace, Sword, Shield, Focus, Staff, and armor set will be available to players to find on the frontier. These new Winterweave items are permanent additions to the game and can only be found by characters at end game levels (47-60).
This Forged is ready for the winter frontierland
In addition to all this new legendary gear, we’ve added a couple of new rare helms that will get you into the spirit of the season. You can find the entire list of new items and gear improvements/changes in detailed patch notes below.
FAZEER DUN’DJINN IMPROVEMENTS
Welcome to your Throne Fazeer!
Many improvements have come to Fazeer’s Dun’djinn including more variety of affixes, a revamped quest system (no more missing quest items!), and increased rewards/difficulty. Here are a few key takeaways from the big updates we have made to this end game feature:
- Fazeer now appears in front of his lounge in your fort.
- There are now Fazeer's Dungeons based on some of our hub areas: Firebelly Village, Acrid Plains, and Machineworks.
- Most Fazeer's Dun'djinn checkpoints now have a greater variety of bosses: about 45 instead of 8 possible bosses, though you'll still need to fight the big bad bosses to earn the new trophies for progressing in Fazeer's Dun'djinn.
- The gear that you get as you delve deeper into Fazeer's Dun'djinn will have a Challenge Bonus applied to all affixes, so there is better level 60 endgame gear the deeper you go, and you'll need it, as…
- Damage from monsters increases the further you go into Fazeer's Dun'djinn, both increasing faster per level and stopping at a higher value than before.
- Fazeer's Dun'djinn "set" affixes now apply to bosses, in addition to their own affixes.
- Add new Dungeon affixes and five Fazeer Dun’djinn Trophies that are now obtained when reaching level 39, Level 83, Level 133, Level 191, and Level 251.
Additionally, we have revamped the way quest completion/drops work and besides a few quests that may need balance tweaking, this should resolve most (if not all) of the quest issues that have been plaguing Fazeer’s Dun’djinn.
STYLE STATION & FORT UPDATES
This Forged is ready for their big style update!
The Style Station will be available once you have unlocked your fort and will be able to transform your drabby, last-season duds into a fresh, new fashion statement. For a small fee of Gold you can now transform your gear to appear as other items found on the frontier. You can acquire new styles and dyes by picking up gear while out on your adventures to complete a large library of fashionable transmog options.
What will you hide down in your new fort basement?
Fort basements have been added to expand upon your current setup; now you can enjoy the extra space without worrying about having to cram everything you own all on the top floor. And while we are on the subject of forts...
Who is that giving us a chilly stare over the wall?
In addition to forts having new storage via the basement, you can now move your fort decorations vertically, which means you can now place objects on top of other objects with ease. No more candles just laying all over the floor!
Which favorite pet will get to sit on your pet perch and rug?
Another amazing update is that your pets can now be displayed in your fort! Use a pet bed or pet perch to display your favorite frontier friends in your fort!
PET ENHANCEMENTS
Goblin’s know I’ve desperately needed this feature in my Ridiculous playthroughs.
We’ve made improvements to pets including a potion fetch system, impressive pet cages (which guarantee a rare or better pet), and several more pet skills...
Which new pet skill is your favorite?
Five new pets have been added to the game (2 new species, and 3 variations):
- Frost Owl
- Ugly Sweater Cat
- Red-Nosed Retriever
- Jolly Ferret
- Reindeer
Additionally, these five new pet skills have been added to the game:
- Assemble!: Your pet summons the spirits of a legendary owl, alpaca, wolf, and cat that deal 50% of your weapon damage, have 50% of your health, and have a lifespan of 12s.
- Wet Kisses: Your pets attack have a 50% chance to slow enemies attack and movement speed by 30% on hiy got 6s.
- Zoomies: Anytime your pet kills an enemy they get an 50% attack and movement speed bonus for 8s.
- Dasher: Anytime your pet takes damage they gain 40% evasion for 6s (12s Cooldown)
- Land Mines: Your pet does their business, leaving behind a surprise that taunts enemies to it. On death it explodes for 150% weapon damage in a small area.
ACT 1 IMPROVEMENTS, A NEW HIDDEN AREA, AND MORE!
Act 1 has received some updates to make it feel more diverse and unique.
There is also a large number of other improvements, including an Act 1 environment overhaul, Phase Beast revisions, performance updates, new colorblind and custom aspect-ratio settings (for widescreen users), and a new hidden area (with new enemies and boss). We’ve also fixed a large list of bugs (detailed below), some of which address itemization issues, skill problems, and other feedback that players have reported.
We will be keeping our eyes open for bug reports and feedback for this update and will prepare/release hotfixes for each platform as needed. In the meantime, we are extremely excited to finally see your snow-covered forts and fashion-forward frontier frocks! Until next time, see you in Trevail soon and remember, there is no secret alpaca level...
- Echtra Bean
Read all of the patch notes at: https://www.torchlight3.com/en/news-article/11481873
