Titan Quest

Isn't he great? I've made it to Egypt and thank the gods I found a great blue bow because no merchant has any. I'm sitting on 38mil and really want to blow it on something!

Meriones' Bow
100-108 Damage
25% Piercing
Speed: Very Slow

31% Pierce Resistance
+36 Dexterity
+272 Health
+15% Attack Speed
+2 to Marksmanship
+1 to All Skills in Hunting Mastery

Required Level: 35
Required Dexterity: 333
Required Strength: 129

I got it off a random jackal guy tucked in a corner. I missed them the first time around but got lost in the slums of Athens as usual and saw 3 stragglers and poof!

Thrasher, I recently started TQ myself and was totally overwhelmed at first as well. You want to make sure that you have a well thought out character that does well in the game, but the lack of information has you staring at the screen and clicking fansites for literally hours before you even get to play. I almost turned around and played something else, almost… instead I hung w/ it and actually am enjoying what I now consider one of the best games in the action-rpg genre.

I wish that I had a solid answer for you, but in reality there really is no concrete "classes" in the game that make beginning char progression a simple slam dunk to STR/INT/DEX and SMASH/FRY/SNEAK, and the abilities arent really officially documented. Whether you should sink all into the master progression first, or veer off into the myriad of skills is a very tough question as well. The common wisdom seems to be to get the mastery progression maxed out as soon as possible, as it comes w/ increase in vital core character stats, plunking some points here and there into individual skills. Crowd control is huge in the game, the more mass-damage abilities that you can get going, the better you'll do. Pets are very valuable damage-sinks and eventual damage dealers.

Even more confusing is that you get two masteries, which leads you into some pretty nebulous character decisions. There is a character planner online, but when you have no fucking clue what anything does or the advantage of picking one thing over the other, it's pretty useless.

My ultimate advice for you is to pick your mastery, then do a search on it and see what the hardcore TQ geeks are saying about it. Like all games, there's a pretty solid community of hardcores that have done the math, tried everything, and you can learn from their work. There's skills that look great but are total wastes of time and you want to avoid wasting points in them, and there's valuable skills that look like no big deal but are actually huge.. that said, as undesireable as it is, you can re-allocate your skill points via an NPC anytime you like in some cities.

Titan Quest is an action-rpg that takes a little more character-planning than the usual click-n-kill, but I think it pays off in the end and turns out to be a pretty good game.

consult the TQ geeks, benefit from their bazillion clicks of experience..

Thankfully though you can redo your skills, which is what I had to do at one point. I was kind of using a guideline and didn't realize you have to build up and then fill out. My tree was way too bushy at the bottom :lol:

I agree on the Titan Calculator though. You can plan but for what?

I'm glad several of you started it because I'm really enjoying myself in Epic so far. It was just the action fix I needed and personally (Diablo fans will shoot me) I like it better than Diablo. Then again I majored in Ancient History hehe.

Thank you both for your kind advice.

I dived into titanquest.net per Magerette's suggestion, and have tried to get a feel for what it's like to play each of the masteries. Still not clear to me what's more fun; the geeks make it clear what is most powerful though. I'd prefer a build that has lots of options for tactics (and may be required to actually use them all) rather than an overpowered one dimensional attack based build. Variety is what inured me to my DII assassin flashdancer build all the way through the end of Hell difficulty. She was a hoot, but also very challenging to play, although that was partially because I had neglected the fire line of traps, making her weak against lightning&physical immunes.

I thought the funnest part of this game was once your character leveled up quite a bit you could go back to the beginning and just launch those goat looking warriors with every swing, they would literally fly right off the screen, It was a riot.

That was about it, but if you are big into Diablo clones for 4 dollars you can't go wrong.

@Thrasher: I agree the manual for TQ leaves a lot to the imagination. Just from what you've said about your assassin in DII—one of my favorite builds, also—I'd say you might have fun with one of the rogue builds. You can play around with some of the trap and poison skills as opposed to just bashing everything in sight. I've started several, but they are probably the least 'overpowered' so I haven't gone as far with them—except for my Brigand(Hunting/rogue) which I built with more emphasis on the hunting skills. (Monster lure + traps is actually kind of a twisted pet build that takes a lot of hotkeying and thought)

The problem with TQ is similar to the 'any build can make it through normal' in DII; builds that seem overpowered in normal often only reveal their shortcomings in higher difficulties, so almost any design will require some use of tactics and/or can get you in trouble at some point.

@Celeste: I like the history angle, too, not to mention the graphics are just so much easier on the eyes than DII—trivial, but when you play for hours you're grateful for those little details. Just now got my Ritualist (all pets) through the last act of Epic—man! a total struggle to find good gear. And I've got my hunting/dream girl almost all the way through to the last telkine in Legendary and she's totally wussed out on me. I've tried tweaking her damage and tweaking her health/regen, but she's now constantly getting one-shotted by those dragonian things, not to mention the actual telkine…sigh. Back to the drawing-board, as they say.

We should probably move this discussion to the Titan Quest thread...

Couldn't really find much info on FUN builds, so I just read up on skills and what seemed interesting.

What I was looking at is dream with spirit/storm/hunter (diviner, prophet, haruspex).

I suppose I should have taken a closer look at rogue builds… But I became a bit tired of all the research. Therre really aren't that many well described dream builds, just a lot of Q&A on specific aspects.

So I settled on a Diviner. And am now playing (yay!) with this build in mind, that starrts with spirit and then adds the dream mastery (rather late I may add). Not sure if that's the best approach since you get all those health/mana/attribute bonuses by leveling up masteries.

http://www.titanquest.net/forums/spirit/26587-guide-pwning-spirit.html

Although he is supposedly built for staff damage, it's about half of what I get with a good spear or cold enchanted short sword (assuming the DPS calc on the character sheet is correct). So he ususally switches to spear on close melee.

This guy was going great until he hit the centaur boss in Sparta. His attacks couldn't keep up with damage. Had to quaff a bunch of health potions (the first use in my playthrough). Using the spear was the only way to make a dent in the centaur boss (staff attacks were too weak).

I am a little worried that his damage output vs. his health may be insufficient for bosses, but we'll see….

I started getting tired of picking up the ton of broken items, and am now leaving them all behind for the measy few gold each, unlesss they are a new type of item. Is that OK?

Diviner's a pretty fun build, Thrasher. I took one into Epic with no problems at all. You'll get better weapons as you go along that will help with damage. You can be a fairly good melee artist with Death Chill aura, so using a spear or sword and shield isn't a bad idea at all. The shield will help up your protections til you get some levels. Ternion at the low levels takes masses of mana so I'd wait til you find a good staff to start boosting that one. I'd go ahead and get your dream mastery before level 27 or act 3 though if that's what the guy's recommending—just for the health boosts (and get a few points in one of the trances—I like convalescence for the regen, but empathy isn't bad either.) You can still keep putting most of your points in spirit. My method is two points in mastery one point in skills at levelup, but that's just me.

And on the items, picking up too much gets old fast. Eventually you'll just want to pick up yellow or better or you'll go completely bonkers hauling yourself back and forth to vendors. You can set the filter to just show yellow + with the alt key.

Have fun.

Thanks for the advice!

Are you saying that I should look for a staff that boosts mana? It doesn't look like intelligence boosts help that much with damage.

Does 1st level ternion do less damage than a regular staff attack (3 attacks all at only 25% damage). So it seems that to make ternion useful you really have to add lots more points to it (at least to get it over 33% damage). Or am I missing something? Maybe having leech on my armor will help compensate?

My storage/inventory is loading up with uniques etc i want to save for other builds.

So I may start a new Haruspex, since I've got some good armor and bows.

Thrasher said:

Thanks for the advice!

Are you saying that I should look for a staff that boosts mana? It doesn't look like intelligence boosts help that much with damage.

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Intelligence does help some with damage; I think I'm getting 3 points damage for every 1 point in int on my conjuror; but that wasn't what I meant. Your best staffs(staves??) will be like a lot of equipment, green ones you can socket with runes. It's the Diablo-style affix and prefix you're looking for here—a Blazing Funky Staff of Flame will give you pluses to fire and burn damage, a Thundering Staff of Lightening or whatever will give you extra lightening damage, etc—tailor the staff to whatever style of elemental damage you're doing the most of, socket it with a relic like Prometheus' Flame for fire or whatever, and you get ungodly potential.
This will come down the road a bit though—everything in the beginning is extremely wimpy.

Does 1st level ternion do less damage than a regular staff attack (3 attacks all at only 25% damage). So it seems that to make ternion useful you really have to add lots more points to it (at least to get it over 33% damage). Or am I missing something? Maybe having leech on my armor will help compensate?

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yes, 1st level ternion does less damage total but it is three bolts as you note—so it's not dismally underpowered, but the more points the less it costs to use and the more potent it is. I used it in only one build though—I think it's an all or nothing kind of skill. I haven't found leech to be nearly as useful on *anything* as it ought to be, but it does help in some cases.

My storage/inventory is loading up with uniques etc i want to save for other builds.

So I may start a new Haruspex, since I've got some good armor and bows.

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Ah, the addiction begins. ( Hunting is one of my more favorite trees, personally.)

I added three more levels to Arcane Knowledge and am using a cold staff with 3 or 4 more extra cold points damage and PRESTO! the staff DPS is now equivalent to the spear! So now I have graduated to mainly using staves.

EDIT: oops, that was SIX more points of damage. Haven't found anything as good since...

Cool, glad youre having fun w/ it ='.'=

Thrasher said:

I added three more levels to Arcane Knowledge and am using a cold staff with 3 or 4 more extra cold points damage and PRESTO! the staff DPS is now equivalent to the spear! So now I have graduated to mainly using staves.

EDIT: oops, that was SIX more points of damage. Haven't found anything as good since…

Click to expand...

Well, I decided to test Ternion out with my conjuror, and put a few points in it and Arcane Lore, and I like it a lot. I had to tweak my energy regen a bit, but it's quite the improvement in area affect slaying. Glad you mentioned it, and have fun with your new gear--better stuff will be coming down the pike.

Cool!

It looks like this build does best running into the thick of things and blasting away in a large ternion cone at enemies, the more close and closely packed the better. Needs a lot of mana though and mana regeneration. Health regeneration will be useful too since he gets walluped taking this approach. Not much finesse there.. LOL! So maybe this build will get boring. I need to take another look at dreamkiller.

In the meantime, he needs excellent defense and/or lots of hitpoints and anything that helps in close quarters. He really isn't a ranged casting build that runs away to avoid getting hit (although I play him that way when he can get away with it just to be safe).

So I'm thinking the best additional spirit/dream skills are ones that help with defense, health, regeneration, sharing/reflecting damage, or crowd control (not sleep though, since the ternion attacks would wake them up). Still not sure if the skills that leech work with staff attacks… Anything else to increase defense/dexterity/health are a big plus. Don't think he needs other sources for doing damage except maybe reflect…

OK, I started a new character! This one is taking dream as her first mastery. I was thinking of turning her into a haruspex, but her offense and defense is abysmal. Leveling the dream mastery increases her intelligence and strength, but her dexterity is stuck at 50. She actually misses sometimes and gets wacked pretty badly. Maybe dreamkiller would be a better match.

Slowing the enemies with Distortion Wave is almost a must, and even so, with better armor and heavier (but slow) weapons she gets beat up more than my spirit eventual diviner. She can only use the weakest bows/spears/shortswords. But she can use the heavy maces and cleavers, and heavy armor. I'm getting the feeling that spears and bows are more powerful (at least at this stage in the game). Sleep only affects a single enemy, for not I am only putting one point into a few skills until I can get the regen aura at higher mastery levels. Maybe I should sacrifice the mastery level for more skill levels….

Funny that the dream mastery that has been described as best for melee characters, is actually worse than the sprit caster mastery at low levels. Not sure I really grasp the game mechanics yet…

Interesting builds…

However, when I played TQ and TQ:IT in 2006/2007, all builds involving magic users were too easy, because magic was very overpowered. They were no challenge during the first two difficulty settings, only starting to be one halfway through the third difficulty level.

Edit: In particular using pets is very overpowered IIRC.

So I played that fighter/defender build (IIRC the only two classes not using magic) in order to have some fun during the first parts of the game.

Have they done a massive rebalancing since then?

Haven't tried a defender or fighter build yet, but I would assume they would be better at melee. I was hoping the dream class would be good for melee - if it had emphasized dex rather than strength it would be more suitable one would think since offense and defense are all keyed off dexterity. Strength increases damage and lets you wear heavier equip and use heavier weapons, but it doesn't increase chance to hit or dodge, unlike dex.

Thrasher said:

Haven't tried a defender or fighter build yet, but I would assume they would be better at melee. I was hoping the dream class would be good for melee - if it had emphasized dex rather than strength it would be more suitable one would think since offense and defense are all keyed off dexterity. Strength increases damage and lets you wear heavier equip, but it doesn't increase chance to hit or dodge, unlike dex.

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You are right, the other classes are not better in melee. Their property of being overpowered consists exactly in being able to avoid nearly any melee.

Yeah, I was TRYING to avoid OP builds. They are usually very repetitive - spamming the same OP'ed tractic over and over again....

Looks like the dreamkiller has lots of options, but is fragile and somewhat weak. We'll see...

Well, let me tell you Miss DK is quite tough! Of course it helped that I got the Traitor's Shiv and Brimstone ring drops, but more importantly the Dream mastery rocks! The Rogue skills seem somewhat so so. I think she's just gonna ignore the poison and traps lines since I've read they aren't that effective on Legendary, and focus on the skills that add bonuses to weapon damage. She is now much tougher than my Diviner, who has to guzzle a bunch of potions during Boss fights. Once the Diviner gets some more mastery levels, and more dream skills, that may change.