Torchlight 2 Review with Synergies (2014)

Sections: HomeContent, Economy, Mechanics, Gameplay, Community & Support, Technical, Conclusion, Resources


Economy

Gold, Items (Sockets, Sets, Identification, Augmentation, Requirements & Gems), Inventory & Stash, Crafting, Trading | No Auction House

The economy of TL2 is surprisingly well-done through a solid balance of rewards, item values, cost of enchantments and gambling. There’s always something you can spend your money on and it’s very easy to run out of money, even at level 100. This game features more item augments than I’ve seen in any other game, and with the mods mentioned herein, there is a ton of room to store items both on your character and in your stash.

Did somebody mention Gold?
Did somebody mention Gold?

Gold is the only currency in Torchlight 2 and it’s used for pretty much everything. While it may appear to be easy to accumulate, it’s more difficult than one may think. The primary means of making money in this game is to destroy and loot every destructible object, pick up every green, blue and orange item you see, and sell the items you don’t use by sending your pet to town. While you may have a few hundred thousand gold pieces after awhile, all of that can quickly disappear when you upgrade your gear and need to socket and enchant the items. Another huge money sink is the gambler, a merchant that sells unidentified items. You can quickly lose a hundreds of thousands by trying to find that awesome new weapon. Another money sink is that of maps, which allow players to run custom-built dungeons. And finally, the death system. While you can resurrect in town for free, it’s easy to forget a portal and just pay the 50,000 gold to port back to the entrance so you don’t have to run the whole way back again.

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The Synergies mod offers a wide variety of added enchantment vendors once you unlock the MapWorks. Be sure to check them out if you want enchantments that are element specific!

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Items are the bread and butter of TL2, and this game allows more modifiers on its items than either D3 or PoE; sometimes even to the point of being overwhelming. Each character has 10 “armor” slots and 2 sets of weapon slots the they can switch between. Weapons come as either 1H or 2H, all classes can dual wield, and there are also shields (blocking is a big deal in this game, and covered under gameplay). Each item can have up to 6 sockets and both in-town and wandering enchanters can add an additional sockets to an item as long as the total doesn’t exceed 6.  Items come in five flavors: White (Common), Green (Enchanted), Blue (Rare), Gold (Unique) and Orange/Red (Legendary). Items can also be a part of one of the 79 available sets, which range from level 7 to 99. Some items are unidentified when you find them and require a scroll of identification.  Some items also have an augmentation bonus, such as “kill 200 dwarves with this weapon to enhance it!”. Augmentations are usually found on Unique and Legendary items and are fun to pursue. Item requirements are either a level, or a combination of stats, and some are even class restricted. The level or stat requirement is actually very cool; for example, a level 23 character could find a level 31 sword that requires the character be level 28 or have 45 strength. If the level 23 character has 45 or more strength, they can equip the weapon even though they’re not level 28. This allows characters that focus on specific stats to gain access to more powerful weapons earlier on. There are a lot of gems you can find throughout the world to throw in item sockets; 150 in total. These gems allow the character to augment their items in numerous fashions ranging from extra damage to providing additional resistance shielding. Some of the gems even have highly unique traits such as calling down a meteor or healing all party members.

Now that's a lot of modifiers!
Now that’s a lot of modifiers!

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Vendors can either destroy an item and recover the gems within it, or destroy the gems and recover the item with empty sockets. There is no other way to remove gems, and it’s all or nothing. Choose wisely!

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The inventory and stash sizes are now very large thanks to the mods. The game also has a built-in sorting button which works great (separating items from gems). Each item in the game takes up 1 slot and there are 3 pages of 32 inventory slots. There are also three “tabs” or “categories”: Equipment, Consumables and Spells. The stash contains more than 400 slots and comes in two flavors; normal and shared. The shared stash fills up very quickly as a player begins to collect items for other builds. The only complaint is that sorting is not available for the stashes.

Crafting in TL2 was originally very limited to transmuting just a few items (namely potions). But now, it’s been expanded through the alchemist and has been greatly enhanced by the mods, allowing for set items and even legendary equipment to be crafted based on gathering certain components. There are currently 158 available recipes in the game for the player to discover and use.

Trading is easy between players in a party (for multi-player), just right-click and initiate the trade. Many players who run legitimate mods trade valuable items between one another, choosing to support the honor system that nothing was hacked.

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One interesting note is the D3 devs are stating the next expansion will go back to the “roots” of Diablo by foregoing a public auction system for more useful item drops players can use. TL2 already does this!

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There is no public market, trading system or auction house for TL2.