Action RPGs offer plenty of customization to help you craft a mighty hero. You can choose your skills, adjust your stats, and find the best equipment to take on hordes and bosses in the Torchlight series. Even though a game like Torchlight: Infinite offers these possibilities, you may find the systems intimidating and confusing until you become used to them.
Even though the combat remains straightforward for anyone to pick up, you’ll have to master some details if you want to survive. Do your best to see what play styles work for you and learn the systems to succeed and thrive in this ARPG.
Torchlight: Infinite is currently in Early Access. That means the content, heroes, and systems can change, or new content can appear in the future.
Try Different Heroes
You can choose between five different heroes at the start of the game. Each offers unique skills and play styles, so you’ll want to see what they each offer as you tackle the game. You can pick whichever hero appeals to you, from gunslingers to sword wielders.
For example, if you want to get into the action with a melee character, you’ll want to play Moto or Rehan. If you prefer ranged attacks, try Carino, Gemma, or Youga. However, their differences go beyond ranged and melee: each character has different skills and abilities to make them distinct.
Some even have unique features, such as Moto getting minions to help him fight or Carino having an ammo system. You should try Rehan or Gemma for a beginner-friendly option. However, if you have more experience, Moto and Carino must work with their minions or manage their resources, making them interesting units. If you want something middle of the road, try Youga.
You can make multiple characters, so try out each one to see who you like. For example, even though Gemma and Youga are both mages, you may prefer Gemma’s fire and ice magic over Youga’s use of spacetime and illusions.
It never hurts to see which heroes you like, so play each and then work on leveling one up.
Move And Attack To Stay Alive
In an isometric game like this, you must effectively use your movement to stay alive. While some ARPGs are easy and let you stand still, tank damage, and focus on attacks, you can’t do that in Torchlight: Infinite. Instead, you must learn how to kite enemies to survive.
Kiting means you attack your enemies from a distance while moving away from them whenever they get close to you. Ranged heroes usually excel at kiting, while melee heroes must tank the hits and survive.
Melee heroes can still kite by running away when they get low on health, and attacking the enemies when their moves come off cooldown. You’ll want to balance your movement with your attacking if you want to survive and avoid taking too much damage.
Kiting matters even more during boss fights. Since they’ll have powerful attacks designed to take you down, you must work around your abilities and movement to survive.
Adjust Your Skills
You’ll unlock more skills as you continue through the game. You only have access to two when you first start, so you’ll want to determine which ones you want to equip. Most people go with one offensive and one defensive ability at the start so that they can fight and survive. For example, Youga has icicles that deal good damage, but you’ll want to choose between the instant healing or healing over time potions as your second skill.
Torchlight: Infinite offers further customization by allowing you to augment your abilities with adjustments. For example, if you have Youga’s Ice Lance ability, you can equip the Multiple Projectiles perk to shoot three icicles. It deals a bit less damage but is better for many enemies and guarantees more hits. As you level up, you’ll unlock more adjustments for your abilities, so check them often to see what you get.
Your skills level up as you use them. However, they won’t upgrade until you go into the menu and choose to improve it once it gets enough experience.
You can also upgrade it quickly if you pick the icon at the top of the screen.
Plan Your Talents
While skills offer you tons of flexibility, Talents give you stat increases. Once you unlock them, you’ll have to choose a talent tree based on your preference. Ensure you take a look at the associated stats. Doing so will help you determine if the tree works for your hero. For example, if you play Rehan, you’ll want a tree focused on Strength to become stronger.
Once you pick a tree, you can look at it to see where you want to put your skill points. Since it’s a tree with branching parts, you’ll have to look through it and determine what you want to get. You’ll then continue down the path that leads to the stats you want. Each tree has minor and medium talents, so you’ll have to put points into the minor ones to get the medium version.
The game has a star next to recommended builds if you don’t know which to choose. That way, you can get stat boosts that involve your hero’s usual build.
Loot Everything
Action RPGs usually have a loot-based element, meaning enemies drop random items for you to collect. You’ll want to loot everything you come across when you first start in these games. You need to fill out your equipment and ensure you have something attached to each body part, so you’ll maximize your stats.
You’ll notice the game has different tiers for the equipment you come across that show their rarity. For example, common gear appears more often than the rarest one, legendary. The rarer the gear, the stronger the stats, so they can give you a major boost and improve your hero.
You can easily throw away any equipment you don’t want to keep, so feel free to pick up everything you come across and sift through the items later.
Just because you get a legendary item doesn’t mean you have to equip it. For example, it may offer you some good DPS boosts, but you may want to focus on defense instead.
Check the stats and compare them to your current equipment to determine which one you want to choose.
Balance Survivability And DPS
In this game, you’ll have to balance your survivability and damage per second (DPS). If you focus too much on survivability, battles will take too long. If you focus on DPS, you could die easily and have to restart fights. You should pay attention during fights if you want to balance your character. See if enemies deal tons of damage to you or if they take too long to fight.
Your stats can be adjusted by your skills, equipment, and talents. For example, you can make your skills shoot more bolts, but you’ll lower your damage a bit. If you find boss fights difficult, you may want to find a good single-target damage ability. Talents also help you to increase your defenses and strength, so see what works best. The same applies to equipment: they primarily increase your defense, but you can improve your offense if you have the right items.
Torchlight: Infinite offers plenty of tools to help you succeed and survive in the world. To make a powerful hero, you must figure out how to build them, get used to the combat, and find the best loot. Ensure you keep working on your character and play through the game. As you do so, you’ll unlock more options for your hero to design them based on your play style.
