Yes, Veteran is indeed a good starting place. Because of the aforementioned problems, I ended up putting in a lot of stick time solo, but got in some co-op last night/this morning. Here, have some pictures.

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Because I could not decide between an Embermage and an Engineer, I ended up going with an Outlander as my first character (:p). Mostly using Glaive Trow and passives right now. Been in a couple of tight spots, but I have manage to avoid death....so far.

Still on act 1, though.

I would not have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out. :meh:

Also.....

Firefly, my zombies are getting one-hit killed by champions. Is this because of the difficulty setting? Or are summon creatures naturally weak against them?

Both my sons went ahead and bought it yesterday (#1 lives with me, #2 lives in L.A.). They stayed past midnight - thumbs up so far from both. Right now they're just trying out different things and haven't settled on a character yet.

#1 son notes the respec only lets you correct the last 3 choices so.... "choose wisely" :)

You might be confusing them with their TL1 counterparts; summoned zombies now charge the nearest tango and detonate. There is one exception you might not have found yet.

Oh, that explains it. :meh:

Yeah, but you are not forced to use skill points when you get them; So you actually have all the time in the world to test a skill before you turn it into one of your last three. :)

Either way...

I entered a challange in Act 2, where I have to fight three Tar Slimes and dear god! :uhoh: That has been the longest fight I had had until now. Gained three levels fighting them and almost got killed once. >_<

Well, bought this game without knowing anything about it (it's becoming a bad habit).

Played for around 15 minutes and i am so hooked, its faced paced and extremely satisfying to play.

But like i said, i know nothing about it and since google doesn't say, i guess i have to ome here for information. Do i have to be careful with my stat and skill point allocation, else risk permanently ruining my character? Or will it be like Guild Wars 2 where points are abundant and you can do whatever you like with them.

EDIT: Turns out i did everything wrong :heh: And gold isn't sharable between characters so that sucks really bad...

Gold is not a problem. Keep playing with any character, and you are going to end up with plenty of gold. Just remember to toss stuff into your pet's inventory when yours gets full, and then send the critter back to town to sell it. Only in the very beginning have I found myself ever suffering from a lack of cash.

I'd suggest a certain degree of caution. I doubt you're going to be able to get everything. In my case, though, I'm finding that every class has a fair number of skills that I'm pretty sure I would never want, so it all balances out.

You get 5 AP and 1 skill point per level... but the stat points give diminishing returns the more you invest into them with each level up.

Skill points can be respecced, but I think there's a limit to that as well; the last three SP you used can be refunded for a price.

Which class is everyone playing? I think this is the first time in a game where I actually made a character for each class, my favorite being the Engineer.

Another thing you may want to consider is that the second tier bonus of each skill doesn't get unlocked until Lv. 40 (at least that's the case for the Outlander).

Oh, and I managed to start the Robot parts quest almost by accident while farming first act bosses, btw. :p

Played 2 Engineers, each focus on different usage of weapon/skill (I wish there was a full respec option even for a high price). I like how the game is generous in drop rate/quality and amount of boss/special, although it's kinda easy even on Veteran.

What I don't like is the stats allocation with hidden attributes. Took me a quite to figure out how are stats affect Amber Mage's damage, since Focus increases your elemental damage, but the skill's damage is based on weapon's damage, while Strength is aslo increasing your weapon damage. In the end I just went with common sense and put everything in Focus.
Another one would be the Fumble attack, since I have roughly 40% recovery, but there are instances where I deal 1 damage from the usual 100+ damage attack, and there is no way to see what are the fumble chance of weapon, as I was told different one has different fumble number.

The game is fun and all, since there are a lot of event and thing happened for each run, although admittedly I didn't even bother to read any part of the story, but at least it doesn't force me read them.

Yeah, i'm also a bit confused by the stats system. They don't provide you with any guide at all so i guess it's up to intuition? As a berserker, common sense dictates i put everything into strength, but at level 9 or so i started putting everything in dexterity instead. I'm hoping to gain around 25% crit and dodge chance before i stop putting in dexterity.

The skill system is nice and new for me, though the only reset last 3 points thing is annoying, to say the least. I spent too much into the tundra tree before realizing i would have preferred the hunter one instead, but too late. But nothing says i can't mix it up, so my aim is to have all the passive across all 3 trees and just the ice related skills in the tundra line. There should be enough, if my calculations are correct. Still hoping reset all points thing will come out one day though.

They are working on the respec mod for this game, so I guess we will have to wait until they finish their project. The bot tree of Engineer is kinda underwhelming. I thought we are going to have an army of machine units to wreck havoc everywhere.

Fired the game up this morning .... I'd forgotten how much I liked Torchlight to begin with. Created a character in each class though I currently either trend to the engineer or the outlander.

I marvel at what they've accomplished in character design with so few polygons :)

Interestingly, after you beat the final boss, you have a couple of (I believe) non-exclusive options. One is a map room similar to what Grinding Gear Games implemented for Path of Exile; the other is New Game+ (restart with all your gear and stashes, with enemies scaled appropriately).

That said, here are a couple of late-game armor styles:

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Hmm... the first thing it reminds me of, actually, is a set of armor in Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning. However, it's been several months since I played that game, and I lack the interest to start it up again now just to check and see if my memory is correct.

There's a lot of people complaining about the veteran (and higher) difficulties back at the official site; With the majority saying it's very hard because monsters do a lot of damage very quickly.

It obviously depends on the character and build one's pick, but that hasn't stopped some from requesting a change in either the difficulty or the way defense and resistance works.

There's some things I find to be classic Torchlight, for instance:
1) The loot drops always seem to suit whatever class I'm not (which leads to lots of "shared stash" trades and relogging back in town).
2) The ranged fighter's curse - just as you fire your pistol, monster moves and the game dutifully runs you over to the spot you clicked where the horde and boss onnomnoms on you.

Shift + click is your best friend for 2. I found that one out after playing through 75% of TL1.

:twitch::twitch::twitch::eyespin: And the stupid thing is I could have looked it up, I played 100% of TL1 that way.

I always have this problem with uniques, which is why I have been farming them from the chimera boss in act 2. He has yet to let me down on this; killed him some 14 times or so already and always got a unique from him. In some cases, even the mate and the treasure chest have given me some.

Got two unique pistols just doing this :p:

http://i.imgur.com/QEymOl.jpg