Returning to TQ After 2 Years - What have i missed?

[Zardoz]

Hello there! I felt the near 2 year long pause from TQ was long enough to get me excited to play the game again. I will now probably get lost in it for a couple of months before i'll take another break.

I was aware of the Eternal Embers release but intentionally kept myself in the dark as much as possible, to make it more interesting when i go back to playing the game. However, now i can't find a lot of information on it so far... at least not the information i'm looking for I know it adds a new act, a new mastery. I know about the curses that allow you to farm a new type of currency that can be spent on yet more loot orbs. I know they have added some more epics and legendary items to the game... but what else?

I'm more interested in the following questions, so please, help me out if you know the answers:

Are there any new rebalancing tweaks done to the already existing skills or on the epic/legendary (even monster infrequent) items? If yes, is there a way to find out what exactly is changed?

Are there any new monster infrequent items? No need for specifics here, just yes or no will be enough.

Are there any new affixes for rare items? Atlantis added the Tinkerer, but i'm hoping for more possibilities to get interesting rare and magic loot.

Are there any new rebalancing done to the monsters? Are the pets AI and the way monster react to them changed. I think i've read somewhere that pet AI is improved, but how exactly? The major problem i have with previous updates was monster ingnoring the wolves at all times and chasing the player instead, which in my opinion is not how it should be. The enemies should prioritize the wolves, not you, since they are the bigger threat to the them, when you're focused on a pure summoner build.

How are the new electrum orbs different that the orbs you can gamble with gold in Atlantis? I''m sure they're better, but are they really worth all the frustration of playing with a severely nerfed character? Especially when the only viable way to farm electrum fast is to enable all the curses... but then how is it even possible to play with a total of -200% resistance penalty on legendary difficulty?

Is the speed you gather elecrum determined by the level of the monsters? Meaning, the harder (higher level) the area is, the better the electrum gain? Or is it just 1 electrum per kill/ for each curse, or a total of 8 with all curses? If yes, then what is stopping me to farm just the starter area of Helos, up to the shaman where i'll be safe once i'm overlevelled for the area? Doesn't seem like a very well thought out feature in my opinion.

Anything else new that i'm missing to mention? Endgame content, or interestig feature i don't know about? I've already noticed the 3rd stats tab in the character screen with the additional information. Really cool and useful stuff.

Thanks in advance!

[icefreeze]

...
Are there any new rebalancing tweaks done to the already existing skills or on the epic/legendary (even monster infrequent) items? If yes, is there a way to find out what exactly is changed?

- Yes! Check out the patch log when the dlc/update information released.

Are there any new monster infrequent items? No need for specifics here, just yes or no will be enough.

+

Are there any new affixes for rare items? Atlantis added the Tinkerer, but i'm hoping for more possibilities to get interesting rare and magic loot.

Are there any new rebalancing done to the monsters? Are the pets AI and the way monster react to them changed. I think i've read somewhere that pet AI is improved, but how exactly? The major problem i have with previous updates was monster ingnoring the wolves at all times and chasing the player instead, which in my opinion is not how it should be. The enemies should prioritize the wolves, not you, since they are the bigger threat to the them, when you're focused on a pure summoner build.

- Not much change. Nymph is more useless than ever because the last "useful" of her is cast Overgrowth's dmg absorption effect for character almost not casting now.

How are the new electrum orbs different that the orbs you can gamble with gold in Atlantis? I''m sure they're better, but are they really worth all the frustration of playing with a severely nerfed character? Especially when the only viable way to farm electrum fast is to enable all the curses... but then how is it even possible to play with a total of -200% resistance penalty on legendary difficulty?

- You can buy gears that drop from specific acts from specifics curse orbs.
- Play the game wisely and it will be ok. Game not that hard if you have good enough game knowledge and do it right.

Is the speed you gather elecrum determined by the level of the monsters? Meaning, the harder (higher level) the area is, the better the electrum gain? Or is it just 1 electrum per kill/ for each curse, or a total of 8 with all curses? If yes, then what is stopping me to farm just the starter area of Helos, up to the shaman where i'll be safe once i'm overlevelled for the area? Doesn't seem like a very well thought out feature in my opinion.

- I don't care about this much so i don't aware it. Some items you only can get from the Electrum orbs of new act.

Anything else new that i'm missing to mention? Endgame content, or interestig feature i don't know about? I've already noticed the 3rd stats tab in the character screen with the additional information. Really cool and useful stuff.

- There is Hardcore Dungeons that unlock in ac1 - Greek, act2 - Egypt and act3 - Underworld. There are specific items and special potions that drop only there, like reset all attribute/dex/str potions.

[Zardoz]

@icefreeze , sounds good, really good! Since there are no restrictions of where i can obtain the electrum, i think i'll do it the coward's way and only curse myself in areas that i'm feeling safe in. I have good enough knowledge of the game up to Atlantis, enough to play it semi-casual and plan my own builds, but i'll never claim to be an expert or feel confident enough to risk my character with these nerfes and in places that are tough even in vanilla. And i'm only being extra careful, because i'm always trying to compelte the three difficulties without dying... which usually almost always leads to a death somewhere in early to mid Legendary.

I guess for normal i'll farm enough electrum to open two orbs, one from Act 5 (becuse it has the best items for normal difficulty) and the other from Act 6 to see what the new world has to offer.

It's disapointing that the summoner doesn't get the attention it deserver... just one small tweak on wolves can make the Nature summons trully fun to play, but i gues kow they're only worth taking in combination with Core Dweller.

Thanks for the help.

[Medea Fleecestealer]

Anywhere.  You get it by killing monsters in the game, doesn't matter where you do it so long as you have a curse or curses on you.

Also, in case you don't know, Eternal Embers map content is Legendary difficulty only so you either play it when you've gone through the rest of Legendary or if you want to you can make a Legendary Hero (similar to the Accomplished Hero that Ragnarok gave us) and give straight into the EE map content. 

[Zardoz]

@MedeaFleecestealer, so no new act in normal and epic difficulty? Or do you mean the hardcore dungeons, mentioned by @icefreeze?

[Medea Fleecestealer]

You do have the HC dungeons and the new mastery of course, but EE's map content isn't available until you finish the rest of Legendary difficulty - either by killing Hades if you don't have the Ragnarok expansion installed or by killing Surtr at the end of Ragnarok. 

[Zardoz]

I see... well, thanks for clarifying that, because i would've been very confused by the end of normal difficulty, and be on the look for where to enter the new act . 

I guess this leads to the next question... How hard is the new act? Does it compare with the legendary acts 4 and 5, or is it much harder. I will be attempting another deathless run through the game, and if i reach it, i'll be going in blind, so i'm worried a little bit. But i also don't want to watch a youtube video and spoil it for me.

[Zardoz]

I've played for about 20 hours so far with no deaths and i'm loving it. Got to act 5 with a Melee Monk build that i'm improvising... if you can call it that, since the useful skills for that mastery combo are pretty obvious. Aura of Tranquility (with it's synergy) has to be one of the most OP defensive skills i've seen, but it requires you to play the game with your finger on the energy potion button.  In combination with Denfense Mastery tankiness, the build has potential to be very sturdy in later stages. Looking forward to making it work.

I also tried to farm some electrum and i quickly regreted it. The time investment is too severe and the return is not guaranteed. Especially when i only play solo self found and even if i drop these unique to the electrum orbs legendary items, if they're not fitting for my character i'm just going to sell them. Farmed about 10k electrum until i came to my senses and watched a video by Mr. Fae. When i saw that even the most expensive orbs only drop 1 legendary, now i know for certain that i'm never going to waste my time with them. In my opinion he electrum trade is not well designed and the amount gained needs to be updated, somehting along those lines:

- 1 curse - 1 electrum per kill
- 2 curses - 3
- 3 curses - 5
- 4 curses - 8
- 5 curses - 12
- 6 curses - 17
- 7 curses - 23
- 8 curses - 30 electrum per kill

It's ridiculous, that you have to nerf your character so severely, and sill have to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of monsters, just to be able to open all orbs. And all this while getting destroyed at every corner, because you're defenseless.

So at the end, i will stick to my usual style of playing TQ, simply going through the game, making the popular boss farming stops, while enjoying the quality of life changes and later the new act, if i can reach it.

[Zardoz]

Oh boy... i am never trusting the TQ Database for drop chances ever again. I'm tired of being lied to, and it happens so often. Two years ago it got me to chase the wind on the Amazigh Banner Stake, by spending over 40 hours farming it in its supposed "best place/enemy to drop it", in the Upper Atlantis ruins... it never dropped, made me quit on a character and a build idea i had at the time.

Then i spend over 300 runs on Epic Talos, with a Conqueror, to get a single Raven's Shadow recipe, which supposedly has 1.33% chance to drop there. The frustrating thing is, Talos has a bunch of lesser recipes in his loot table that all have the same 1.33% drop chance according to the Database, and of course, i got each one of them more than 5 times over, before i got a single Raven's Shadow. I concluded back then that it was just a bad luck, but now it happened again. This time i'm closing in on 400 epic Talos runs and i've got more than 5 of each lesser recipe he can drop, except the f'n Raven's Shadow, which is the only one i care about. I got the stupid Phylactery of Shadows 11 times... 11! I even got a Kingslayer which i was expecting to farm from either Aktaios or Typhon. This is not bad luck, this is wrong information. I'm chasing the wind again.

The funny thing is, i got pissed and now i'm not going to give up until i get it from Talos, it has to be from him, even though i won't need that artifact up until mid-legendary difficulty. And i bet that i can get it 10 time easier from epic Typhon, even though the database states that there the drop chance is 0.5%. It's a total bs it's what it is!

[Antar36]

Titan Quest, like all HacknSlash games, is based on random selection of loot and enemies. This means that usually farming for one specific item doesn't make much sense, because the game draws the monsters available in the location each time and drops the loot. Generally, all items have the same chance to drop. The random system has the advantage that the game is a little different each time, so you don't get bored so quickly. So it's best to let go of the search for a specific item and the frustration associated with it and just play. Sometimes what we get randomly is definitely more powerful than what we are looking for and will serve the character more.

[Zardoz]

@Antar36 i agree with what you're saying, and normally i don't farm for specific epics and legendaries. But i still farm some bosses a certain amount of time without any concrete goals, just to test my luck and whatever i get in these runs, i roll with it. But recipes are an exception, same with monster infrequent items, i like to target them as part of the pre-planning of my builds. For my current character i have a plan to use Talisman of the Jade Emperor later in the game, and i like to get all the components ahead of time. I don't like it when i'm in legendary difficulty and i want ot craft a divine artifact, only to realize that i need to go back and farm lesser and greater recipes in epic and even normal difficulty... once i'm in legenderaty, i like to stay in legendary. And this is a fun way to play the game for me, but only if i don't come across a faulty item database information about drop chances, that will make me chanse a recipe for 400 runs. Guess what? I gave up on Talos after my 15th Phylactery of Shadows drop, then got to Typhon, where the drop chances for Raven's Shadow are more than twice as lower according to the database, and i found two of them in the first 30-40 runs. I rest my case. I didn't get frustrated beause of my farming system... if that was the case i would have changed it a long time ago. I was simply deceived by the database and my stubbornness got the better of me. If the information about the Raven's Shadow were correct i would have found it within the first 50 epic Talos runs.

[Antar36]

@Zardoz I don't want to defend TQ Database. However, there is a detailed information that you have a chance to hit an item there. Unfortunately, even an item has a chance to drop, for example, 1%, it does not mean that even if we kill 100 monsters that are supposed to drop this item, it will drop out once. I would remove this table about odds altogether because it is only misleading. You just can't predict what you'll find in a game like this. Sometimes when playing on normal we can find an item that according to TQ Database should only be on epic. What the charm of the game.

[Zardoz]

I know you're just being helpful, but you don't have to explain to me how percentages and drop chances work. I've been playing Diablo style ARPGs for nearly 20 years, Titan Quest for more than 10 years. I don't think i've ever said that "if an item has 1% chance to drop then it has to be 100% guaranteed to drop within the first 100 runs". Making the assumption that i don't have a grasp on such a simple calculation is slighltly offensive to be honest. You must think that i'm some sort of casual dummy who plays TQ for less than a week. Sure, i don't consider myself a pro, but come on, this is basic ARPG stuff here.

Now read this again, carefuly - Earhen Talisman, Dwalin Simulacrum, Ebony Globe, Emerald Quil, Phylactery of Shadows, and a few more that i'm surely forgetting.. all these recipes are listet with a 1.3% chance to drop from epic Talos, but most importantly, that is the drop chance for Raven's Shadow as well, according to the database. In roughly 400 runs i got more than 5 of each of these recipes, some of them dropped up 8-9 times, and Phylactery of Shadows a total of 15 times by the end when i gave up. Yet not a single Raven's Shadow dropped. If the information in the database is correct, then i challenge you to calculate what are the odds to get 15 PoS and half a dozen of all other lesser recipes that are possible to drop from epic Talos without getting a single RS recipe. And let's not forget that this happened on another one of my characters two years ago... expcet then i got one RS between 250 and 300 runs while still getting half a dozen drops of the rest of possible lesser drops before that. You're going to tell me that this is just a bad luck and the database is 100% correct about every drop chance in the game? If so, then i dare you to farm Talos until your create an opposite scenario, getting 5 Raven's Shadow drops while missing one of the others... no need, i can tell you right now that such scenario is never going to happen, i can bet on it. And what about when most leg armor MI's in act 4 were bugged and were impossible to be dropped? I don't even know if they're fixed in this expansion, but that's not the point... The point is, the item database still had them listed with their original TQ IT drop chances, even though for most of them you had exacly 0% chance to ever see them. In case you're wondering, this is one of the earliest reasons of why i always take the information in the database with a grain of salt, because this was a proven case of false information being presented there.


And i 100% disagree with you about predictions of drops. You can absolutelly predict certain drops, but only If the the information about the drop chances is correct. A 1.3% drop chance is huge, totally predictable (again 15 Phylactery of Shadows... if only i was looking for that one, right?). The same way farming Sonebineder's Cuffs, Ichtian Stinger, Bramblewood Bow, or some other common MIs is predictable, the drop chances are on your side there... what is unpredictable is getting these MIs with godly affixes, then you have to trully gamble with your time, but that choice is up to the player. The point is, he's not being lied about his chances of getting these items, and this is how it should be. Other MIs like the Revenant Plate/Crown are unpredictable because of how rare they are, but you know that in advance and you can decide if you're willing to spend dozens of hours to maybe get one of them to drop.

[Antar36]

@Zardoz Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you or point out your inexperience. I just think that in games like TQ there is simply no way to accurately predict the loot. However, it seems that you have much more experience than me, so you probably know the methods to make it fall out for you what you need. For me, a very casual player, these odds calculations are a bit pointless. I know that there are specific character builds in which a given item is extremely useful. However, in the same situation, I try to replace it with something else. Another thing is that I'm not trying to create some super powerful character based on someone else's build. He often experiments himself and tries on different characters. I've been doing Pilgrim lately, but instead of Marksmanship I used Huangdi Favor and used some max speed bow enhanced with Prometheus fire. I know that there are probably stronger characters, but somehow I had no problem until Bloated there, unfortunately I died twice and started playing a new character. I wanted to go through without a single death on at least normal difficulty. Now I will try to play the Ritualist. Not a summoner though. Modeled a bit on the Templar. So Psionic Touch, Phantom Strike and Trance of Convalescence. Also from Natura Heart of Oak and Forest Nymph. You have more experience in the game and probably know the mechanics of the game better than me, so you will probably create much stronger than the characters. The best thing about TQ, however, is the enormous freedom of character creation. There are only two championships to choose from, but everyone can make any character.

[Zardoz]

Hey, no problem. Like i said, i understand that you're trying to help and i'm happy to have a discussion.

There's no magical way to find exactly the stuff that you need for your character, but with some research you can do some pre-planning in advance. That at least is my way of playing a new character. There was a time when i wasn't doing it, but back then i wasn't trying to beat all three difficulties without dying, so my approach was much more casual. In time i got bored with playing like that so i tried the next challenge of attempting deathless runs, and always being extra careful at every step.

The monster infrequent items are perfect for planning a build, especially for melee or bow and arrow characters, because there are so many really good MI's that are super easy to get, and you know you'll have them as part of your arsenal even before you start your new character. So these items become a part of your plan. That's what i meant about the predictability. Recipes are also fairly easy to find. For example, the Talisman of the Jade Emperor recipe is almost guaranteed to drop from Legendary Hydra if you kill her a few dozen times, and if you character can handle that boss, you have no reason not to farm there, because you'll also get a ton of legendary items in the process. The Raven Shadow should have been easy from Talos with that drop chance, that's why i so shocked when it refused to drop and it got under my skin, so i kept doing runs in sheer stubbornness. 

Of course it all depends on what type of player your are. If you play without ever farming bosses or MI ietems, or vendors, then you have my upmost respect, because this game is insanelly difficult without any farming... at least for me, i cannot handle it if i don't farm at least a little bit. I will beat normal at best and then get destroyed in epic. So i like to take my time with it, do a few Telkine runs here, a few Typhon and Golden Boar runs there, and then repeat on higher difficulties by adding Talos and the Hydra to the mix. I farm them as long as i'm having fun, and then use whatever items i have from them, but i never target specific legendaries or epics, because that will be a sure way to frustration.