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What a weekend!
If you haven’t checked it out, please read the Torchlight 3 Early Access State of the Game from Tyler. It has some great info about the current state of the game and what is coming up for Torchlight 3 during Early Access.
For those who are just joining us on the Frontier, these might not be as useful for you, but for our former Torchlight 3 testers, this list includes a bunch of fixes and updates from where we left off in Closed Beta.
The Railmaster class is getting an Endurance update. Endurance used to be a skill resource that would empty a set amount when a skill was activated. When you ran empty on Endurance you could not activate skills until your Endurance was replenished. Endurance is no longer a resource to activate skills, but will now activate extra effects. Per Torchlight 3 designer Michael -
“Over the years of iteration on the Railmaster, the Endurance resource had been used in fewer and fewer places. By the end of closed alpha, it was applied to just 5 skills, which in practice meant that builds were wise to just choose one Endurance spender since so many other skills were available that used cooldowns instead. It became apparent that the Railmaster truly favored 'time' as the resource that gated when skills could be used. Endurance, in a practical context, only served as the cooldown for whichever skill you were using as its primary spender. It became clear that there was an opportunity to improve the Railmaster's gameplay by accepting 'time' as the primary resource, converting the few remaining Endurance spending skills to have their own independent cooldowns instead of having Endurance be the effective cooldown. In doing so, we immediately opened up new possibilities for what Endurance could do for the Railmaster. After some deliberation and discussion, we landed on a mechanic that did not restrict skills in any way, since restrictions are already imposed by cooldowns, but instead offers pure upside bonuses. The Railmaster's resource gameplay becomes about A) choosing which skill's bonus is most important to you in a given moment, and B) trying to improve gains to that resource such that you can get more and more bonuses. Every time your resource is full, you can make a decision among the skills on your bar in the combat scenario you are in. Do you need a summoned ally, or a big burst of AoE damage, or perhaps a longer-lasting buff effect for sustained benefit? This creates a much more engaging core gameplay flow for the Railmaster than what was available before, and is more in line with the complexity of the Dusk Mage with their Dark/Light charge bars, or Forged with managing Vent skills and heat buildup.”
The Fort now comes equipped with a “Store All” feature, the Sharpshooter has more customization options, and there are a variety of Relic updates/fixes. Alongside some balancing to general gold drops, Fort resource refining times and prop cost have been drastically reduced.
We’ve also patched fixes for a variety of travel issues, skill point bugs, and non-functional items/skills.
Until next time, thank you again for continuing to test and providing your feedback / bug reports at https://tl3feedback.echtragames.com! Visit our Roadmap and Community Info board here for more details.
See you in-game!
- Echtra Bean
GENERAL
- Fixed issue where players would warp into an endless blue void instead of their Fort level.
- Railmaster warp pad issue fixed (crossing fingers).
- Skill point issues where you could get too many points, or get stuck unable to spend points, are fixed.
- Removed map vendors from town (this clears the way for [unrevealed post-game experience] to shine).
- Deactivated Contracts - to be unlocked later in Early Access.
- Reset settings should also reset video resolution (this is mostly fixed).
- Fixed an issue where changing a character's difficulty level to any other level puts the character on normal.
- Fixed an issue that made it possible to form a party with a player of another difficulty when inviting them manually using their name.
- Updated the following achievement descriptions ("collect" to "equip"):
- Legendary Set - Equip 7 different legendary sets.
- Celestial Garb - Equip the legendary Celestial set.
- Cosmic Garb - Equip the legendary Cosmic set.
- Woodsbeast Garb - Equip the legendary Woodsbeast set.
- Skittering Garb - Equip the legendary Skittering set.
- Musketeer Garb - Equip the legendary Musketeer set.
- Arc-Powered Garb - Equip the legendary Arc-Powered set.
- Mountain King's Garb - Equip the legendary Mountain King set.
- Fixed "Legendary Set" achievement to properly count equipped legendary sets.
- Fixed issue with “Equip Items with Trait Greater Than" task type does not recognize progress made for required achievement count.
- Fixed the following achievements that were not counting legendary set items: Arc-Powered Garb, Celestial Garb, Cosmic Garb, Mountain King's Garb, Musketeer Garb, Skittering Garb, Woodsbeast Garb
- Added additional internal statistics to help us track certain player progression points (Fort activity, item drops, etc).
USER INTERFACE
- Updated game start menu with Early Access details and other info.
- Updated in-game help menu info.
- Added icons for remaining wardrobe fort props.
- A non-functional "More Info" button prompt no longer appears on some tabs in the skills menu.
- Added Legendarium icon.
- Added Legendarium info panel.
- Fixed an issue with Players get an alert notification about New Skills Unlocked before they are able to access the feature in the Legendarium.
- Fixed an issue where the skill assignment bar could disappear permanently after going to the empty Relic tab or the Legendarium tab.
- Added "In Multiplayer " to the beginning of the description for the difficulty selection.
- Integrated player badges into the social menu.
- Added new lore speaker portraits.
- Players can no longer open menus or interact with the UI while the loading screen is up (other than modals that specifically ask to show over the load screen).
- Fixed item tooltip message about incorrect class or too-low level overlapping with luck points in the Luck Tree UI
- Fixed incorrect class messages not showing up and the item dimmer also not showing up for Forged cannons in the inventory for other classes.
- Fixed issue with options menu failing to scroll when selection pointer goes beyond what's shown on screen with a Gamepad.
- Fixed quest titles appearing in the wrong color.
- Exiting an option screen should now consistently bring the player back to the previous "Main Menu" screen.
- Fixed white square that appears in crafting buildings and removed an extra Arc website link.
- Fixed issue with incorrect area highlighted in the 'Frontier Map' for current area at multiple locations.
- We are removing the Damage over Time section of the item tooltips. While many weapons will give some change of extra damage to things happening, some elements do more indirect things - which isn't really damage over time. We think removing this part of the UI will make things less confusing.
- Added the social context right click menu to the party widget.
- Added a loading screen tip about the town gambler.
- Added loading screen tips about movement skills.
- Added loading screens should teach players about our character system.
- Fixed Fort props in the Contract screen not previewing the prop.
- Fixed an issue where focus could be lost in other screens after opening the Contract menu.
- Changed Hide UI keybind to F10 and exposed in the keybindings menu.
- Updated the character customization menu to provide more UI flexibility for options with varying amounts.
- D-pad is used for social options instead of X and A.
- Fixed gamepad with the difficulty panel; tt now gives focus back to parent when it is closed and also plays "hovered" animation when focused on a difficulty widget.
- Fixed problem with voice and text chat failing to function.
QUESTS
- Added Movement Skills tutorial at level 10.
- Added an account tutorial quest to introduce Gambler NPCs.
- Improved story quest rewards. Updated story quests with gear rewards starting after "Unearthed Evidence" to award lifebound versions of the items.
- Added an additional required task in "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" to defeat Algramath, Warden of the Falls.
- Fixed quest task in "Sadistic Sorcery" to complete after talking to Wolfram.
- The player no longer gets stuck casting when double right clicking the quest tracker.
- Added optional side quests to Hyvid Hatchery and Crystal Passage.
- Updated activating and deactivating tasks so that the Netherbloom can't be interacted with or spawn until players get the task for it.
- Quests with tasks for the current area are now sorted in the quest tracker before quests without tasks for the current area.
ITEMS & GEAR
- Smoothed out animations and added glow to the active shield.
- Reduced the amount of each gold drop by about 60%.
- Reduced how many gold drops that champions and bosses drop to about half of what they were.
- Standardized the gold drops from chests to be standard gold drops.
- Players now don't automatically pick up gold when the player reaches the gold limit.
- Fixed an issue where sometimes one handed weapons were spawning without a damage affix.
- Set the starting railhammer to be the Rusty Railhammer instead of some random other common quality railhammer.
- Bow remains visible during Targeted Strikes Triple shot.
- Increased the duration for Bleed affix at all qualities.
- Item affixes that affect the Slammer tree now refer to it by that name instead of Lineage.
- Dusk Mage basic Mace attack now progresses cleanly through two swings and Matches timing of all other players.
- Railmaster ‘Pistol Equip’ now plays properly.
- Forged basic staff attack with treads now progresses through three attacks cleanly.
- Fixed wrist click during staff fidgets when ball and snake Forged locomotion are equipped.
- Fixed a rare case where when we would attempt to drop rare or legendary armor, it could instead lead to you getting nothing.
- Fixed Rare and Legendary shields not being able to drop outside of the gambler (again).
- Added the ability to override visibility of armor pieces when another piece of armor is equipped.
- The 'Ebon Grasp' Legendary now fires a barrage of Unholy Bolts instead of a single one when Energy Spike is used while Dark Buff is active.
- Doompipe Legendary reworded to 'Mortar and Flamethrower always have their Endurance Bonus and do not spend Endurance', and Doompipe's effects becomes the Endurance Bonus.
- Shotgonner's Shield legendary reworded to 'Shotgun and Shield always have their Endurance Bonus and do not spend Endurance', and Shotgonner's Shield's effects becomes the Endurance Bonus.
- Snecko Stick - Rebuilt to be compatible with Legendarium. The item itself retains its natural ranged attack, but the affix lists only the poison bolts.
- Centrifugal Demolisher - Now also grants Hammer Spin some bonus damage.
- Berserk Crusher - Now grants an extra charge to Pound and Spike Drive.
- Blast Breaker - Now states 'Blasting Charge always gains its Endurance Bonus, and does not spend Endurance'.
- Stinging Wing - Now makes Flying Picks regenerate charges twice as fast rather than making it cost no Endurance.
- Tome of Zul-Tava - Fixed an issue where this was appearing with Doompipe's affix. The Tome is in development and is now not dropped.
- Storm Driver - Fixed this legendary affix never firing its effect.
- Fixed cases where the same lore item could drop multiple times in the same area from the "Curious Pneumatic Drum" gadgets.
- Fixed being able to get potions into "flippy lock" when you're full up on potions and the potion is at the very edge of your auto pickup radius.
- Fixed crash that occurs while attacking with the Snecko Staff legendarium affix slotted.
- Fixed problem with some item details showing up with just numbers.
RELICS
- Fixed issue with Relic stash not showing new relic after creating it.
- Changed Flaming Destroyer targeting to direction instead of location. It now rotates to orient before activating.
- Fixed an issue where Flaming Destroyer's activation smash didn't trigger procs correctly.
- Increased Bane active skill damage from 90% to 140% weapon damage, and indicated in the tooltip that it does damage on impact and with poison.
- Disabled rotation and get hits on frozen characters.
- Shocked no longer has a DoT component, only focuses on the damage. The ElementalDamage for Shock now is what decides the damage the Shock bolts deal, instead of them always dealing 70% Weapon Damage.
FORTS
- Updated default fort with the same layout but with less clutter.
- Created 'Clear All' Fort Function.
- Traveling to Trevail's Passage will now take you to the party leader's fort.
- Fixed an issue where players couldn't load into forts in Act 3 passages.
- Greatly reduced the resource refining times to a range of 5 seconds - 1 minute, depending on quantity.
- Greatly reduced the resource costs for fort decorations.
- Somewhat reduced the gold costs for Magic and Rare quality fort decorations.
- Fixed Wardrobe Statues to use normal maps properly.
- Fixed strange item behavior from occurring when swapping items from a wardrobe prop to the player.
- Fixed an issue where opening the customization menu in Fort for the first time upon entering gameplay causes the menu to close itself immediately after.
- Monument polish (textures and UI).
PETS
- Set the minimum level for poison pet defense (primary) affix to level 16.
- Set the minimum level for electrical pet defense (primary) affix to level 31.
MONSTERS
- Fixed some infrequent occurrences of spawning a couple monsters at the same time in the same place.
- Fixed an issue where Brall wouldn't respawn if the players were defeated in Painful difficulty or higher.
- Fixed Brall's Wolf, which hadgained the health bonuses Brall has gained in recent passes, which was unintended.
- Brall's health increased ~40%.
- Brall's phase changes now happen a little earlier, with her final phase beginning at 50% HP.
- Fixed an issue where Brall's illusions sometimes would spawn at full health instead of Brall's health percentage.
- Brall's Nether Well Arrow cooldown reduced to 5s (down from 10s), and the hazards it spawns now last 20s (up from 10s)
- Boss Health increased to a baseline of 70 (up from 32), +120% from prior. This is mostly as a reaction to Tyler's recent non-act boss videos which shows those like Kronch dying in sub-30 seconds on multiple characters and builds, and on Hard mode. A big swing is warranted. Exceptions to this are: Yapper who remains at 15, and Bruce Killis who stays close to where he was at 35. The 5 named bosses that are not act-end (IE Strongtusk) go up to 100 (up from 70). Brall and Sadista go up to 140 (up from 100). Ordrak remains where he was at 200. Experience is also going up - these had far lower ratios of TTK-XP than normal monsters did. They are now comparable, roughly 1.5x their health curve across the board.
- Reduced the minimum range that the Blazing Custodian Automatons need to perform their ranged attack.
- Shuffled around some hub boss encounters so that larger bosses have more space to maneuver.
- Fixed issue with monsters not immediately gaining the defense buff when spawned within the Hyvid Armor Crystal buff radius.
- Fixed issue with Skeletal Archers spawned by Lilly Bonebreaker being nearly immortal.
- Fixed Psora boss from being defeated effortlessly when standing outside of the boss arena.
- Removed two coils near Shriekbeak spawn so that players are not immediately killed.
- Moved Sadista’s Lobby for Arena.
ENVIRONMENT
- Fixed the imperial guard corpse that drops a lore item not appearing in Fields of Unrest.
- Fixed NPC animations that restarted whenever an NPC with a quip is clicked.
- Removed the problematic infested mapworks dungeon that ends in Frackmaster 2000.
- Fixed an issue where cutscene could become unskippable after using the gamepad button toshow in-game menu.
- Prevented the unneeded "Earth Ember Deposit" harvesting nodes from appearing in any dungeons.
- Refine Ropes for Character Create ship.
- Fixed spawn locations to prevent players from spawning under the play area.
- Increased the length of Sunken Ruins to get it closer to the target duration and give more opportunities/places for lore gadgets and for things to spread out a bit.
- The Gambler needed a better house in Trevail Point. He now has one.
- Moved General Graye a bit so it is easier to see her interact icons and rotated her storage chest into a more natural orientation.
- Removed playtest NPCs from all towns.
- Reduced jittering in player movement.
- Fixed an issue where players could get stuck and jitter in an open area where it looks like they should be able to move.
- Added swarms of triggered bats and flyers to levels.
- Fixed hard edges which were being caused by the player light.
- Fields of Unrest polish.
- Central Seal polish.
- VFX Updates/Fixes:
- Breakable Shadow Fading fix.
- Large rocks clip through the environment in 'Chop Shop'
- Sharpshooter Skill "Rizzi's Fate" Milestone revisions (work in progress).
- Revised the character select ghost materials so the transparency is a little less grainy.
- Added additional visual to fire hazards to warn players.
- Fixed warp locations in Firebelly Stronghold.
- Fixed a particle sorting issue.
- Fixing issue with leaf shadows.
- The game now renders inexpensive Blob Shadows in the lowest Shadow Quality setting, instead of no shadows at all. This is the default on lower-end PCs.
- Blazing Monster Affix update.
- Reworked Speed Shrine FX / overhead and lighting.
- Fixed extra navmesh is present on the broken bridge asset in Cave of Sorrows.
- Fixed extra navmesh located at the edge of the map in the Lost Woods.
- Clockwork Boss Arena: Converting Translucent floor into parallax mapped opaque material (work in progress).
- Fixed Phase Beast loses its material glow as it begins its death fade.
- Wardrobe Statues no longer have occlusion.
- Corrupted Crystal revisions.
- Fixed issue with overhead VFX can appear before monsters do on certain spawns.
- Texture cleanup on for_2k_locomotion treads.
- Fixed an issue where Harvesting animations would continue infinitely until another key was pressed. They now end when the harvest action is completed.
- Fixed an issue where Railmaster train car tops were offset horizontally from their sockets.
- Removed the train FX above the Railmaster's head when in Lay Track mode.
- Fixed Dusk Mage pop animation when stopping or starting moving when carrying a great weapon.
- Fixed Dusk Mage elbow that pops backwards while idling with a pistol and focus.
- Fixed issue with Sacrifice the Goose having a big orange polygon.
- Fixed idle pose mixes that start and end with walking animation on Forged and Duskmage when holding Great Weapon.
CLASSES
GENERAL
- Fixed client-server sync issues with Nether Wells.
- Adjusted all player-facing skills to use a new version of the "as percent" blueprint node, which should eliminate all instances of skills ever having more than two numbers after the decimal.
- Fixed other players getting stuck in their casting animation when they finish their portal skill.
- Fix for Servo-Driven Uppercut and mace skills (and other skills that are single-target) not hitting sometimes.
SHARPSHOOTER
- Added more Sharpshooter customization options (work in progress).
- Fixed issue with Ghost Visage Tier 3 bonus causing the Shasta's status effect icon to be displayed when the skill is used.
- Fixed Heartseeker’s Bleed status effect missing mouseover text.
- Onslaught Tier 3 bonus now deals 75% weapon damage with Explosive Arrow detonate.
RAILMASTER
- Fixed issues with the tier 3 bonus on Shocking Rounds.
- Blasting Charge now refers to Vulnerability by name, so the tier 1 milestone refers directly to a described effect.
- Endurance Update:
- Endurance becomes not a resource to activate skills, but rather one to trigger extra effects.
- Dealing damage causes Endurance to rise at a fixed rate (still increasing from affixes/items, so itemization hooks remain).
- When Endurance is full, any non-Train skill will consume Endurance for bonus effects. Endurance never decays.
- Skills can still be used as normal without Endurance, spending their cooldowns/charges accordingly.
- Endurance Bonuses:
- Pound (2s cooldown, 3 charges) - Endurance Bonus: Gain 50% attack speed and 50% damage with Basic Attacks for 10 seconds.
- Blasting Charge (4s cooldown, 2 charges) - Endurance Bonus: Throws a cluster of 3 charges instead of just one (Legendary that used to do this now states “Blasting Charge always has its Endurance Bonus”)
- Hammer Spin (same as current) - Endurance Bonus: Gain all charges of Pound, Blasting Charge, and Flying Picks.
- Flying Picks (4s cooldown, 2 charges) - Endurance Bonus: Summon an immobile Ancestral Spirit who throws Picks at enemies
- Lantern Flash (same as current) - Endurance Bonus: When the burn duration ends or the enemy dies, they explode for large damage in an aoe
- Torque Swing (same as current) - Endurance Bonus: A whirling hammer is sent forward (slow moving missile)
- Spike Drive (1 charge, does not gain charges naturally) - Gains a charge when you use an Endurance Bonus.
- Ghost Train (8 sec cooldown, 2 charges) - Endurance Bonus: 2 more Ghost Trains are cast following the first one.
- Shield Car Endurance Bonus: Heals you and nearby allies for 100% of maximum HP
- Shocking Rounds Endurance Bonus: Increases Endurance regeneration rate by 50% while active.