Torchlight 2, like Diablo 3 and Path of Exile, has been around for a long time however I believe that we do not have the same strengths of builds that exist within D3 and PoE owing to the fact that these games have mechanisms of competition that expose weak builds. We also lack a lot of the online community that these games have of sharing knowledge that increases the strengths of builds, this guide aims to change that.

This guide will delve into quite some depth regarding various mechanics. They are there if you are interested but they are not mandatory for your understanding of the game nor is understanding them requisite for enjoyment of the game. They are there so that people can discuss the mechanics and make more educated choices about their items and builds should they wish to do so but if putting 1 point in every skill makes you happy, you do you boo. Feel free to skip sections that are very mechanics heavy if you just want something that tells you what is good and what isn't. This isn't a guide telling you how to have fun!

***Disclaimer: I play this game on PC. I do not own this game on console, nor have I played it on console. There may be some differences between the versions I am unaware of however if you bring them to my attention with the proper amount of evidence I am happy to add them in.***

In this section I'm are going to cover the basic mechanics of the game how they interract together and a lot of the common misconceptions within the game. Torchlight 2 has a lot of depth people don't realise it has.

Strength
Strength primarily does two things. It increases your weapon DPS by 0.5% per point and increases your Critical Strike Damage by 0.4% per point. it is important to note however that this does not tell the whole story. Firstly, lets discuss Critical Hit Damage. Critical Hit Damage obviously increases the amount of damage your critical hits deal. By default, i.e. with no strength, a character that lands a critical hit will hit for 1.5 times their normal damage. The CHD damage cap is +500% which means that theoretically you can deal 6 times as much damage (100% of normal damage +500%) as you normally would with a critical hit. However the amount of CHD you can gain from strength is limited to 399.6% or 400% just to make it easier for you which is the equivalent of 999 or 1000 strength. This means that if you are aiming to hit the CHD cap you won't be able to do it from strength alone. The Rambren Skull[tidbi.ru] gives +60% CHD and therefore you would only need 975 Strength optimally to achieve the theoretical max CHD however this is often impractical.

Dexterity
Dexterity fulfills two roles as both an offensive and defensive stat. It also however is somewhat confusing to newer players as neither the dodge component nor the Critical Hit Chance component scale linearly with the amount of dexterity you have. The formula they both follow is: ((0.2002-0.0002*Dex)*Dex). If you plot this you'll notice its actually a parabola and that your stats should actually start decreasing after you reach 500 dexterity. Don't worry, the game ignores your dexterity growth after 500 however it does mean that there is a hard cap from the benefits of dexterity for both CHC and dodge.

It also reduces the damage lost on fumbles at a rate of 2/7% per point or 0.2857% per point whichever you prefer. Don't ask me how they arrived at that number.

Focus
The mother of all stats. This stat is, quite frankly over tuned. There is a reason that there is a focus based build for every single class in the game that is elite viable. A single point of focus does the following:

• Increases your execute change by ((0.2002-0.0002*Focus)*Focus). (Hey there's that formula again).
  
• 0.5 Mana per point, rounded down.
  
• Increases Magic Damage by 0.5% per point*.

It should also be noted that after rigorous testing I've noted some other things. Your passive base mana regeneration rate is (YourManaPool/25). This does not change regardless of combat state. This means a couple of things. Firstly it means it always takes 25 seconds for you to replenish all of your mana from 0 assuming no other mana regeneration effects. Secondly it also means that if your mana pool is large enough, you don't need additional sources of mana regeneration, because your base mana regeneration rate will be so large that it will eclipse anything you could cast.

Regarding execution, you have a base execution rate of 9.8% don't ask me how the developers arrived at this number, maybe they have a fondness for gravity. Anyway with that taken into account the execution cap from Focus is 59.8%.

The most important thing is that focus is the least capped stat which is why it is the most overtuned stat along with how many things it affects.

Vitality
Finally we come with a bump to the unwanted, red-headed step child of stats, Vitality. I wish it weren't the case but Vitality is just so useless. At face value vitality might appear to be a good stat, maybe even a great stat. Here's what a point in Vitality gets you:

• Increases your HP by 3.6 rounded down.
  
• Increases your armour by 0.25% rounded up to the nearest 0.x% so 0.25% becomes 0.3%
  
• Increases your Block Chance by ((0.2002-0.0002*Vit)*Vit). There's that pesky formula again.

So then why is Vitality so bad? Well firstly armour is almost useless late game but I'll explain that later. Secondly the return on HP is very poor. For a single gem socket you can get 1540 HP just by using a Skull of Riechliu[tidbi.ru] which is the equivalent of 427.77 vitality. Which just leaves Block.

Block has a hard cap of 75%. Most of the Passive spells in the game aren't that useful which means using a spell slot to increase you blocking chance by 12% with Tome: Blocking VI[tidbi.ru] already gives you 12% of that. Then you have the shield itself. Most shields are actually not that strong realistically the only contenders are the Netherrealm Shield[tidbi.ru] and Parma's Coal Burner[tidbi.ru]. The Netherrealm shield offers 2 extra sockets and a couple of fairly minor buffs but Parma's Coal burner offers a whopping 45% block chance meaning that the player only requires an additional 18% block chance which requires a paltry 100 Vitality if we solve for x using the formula ((0.2002-0.0002*x)*x)=18 and round up.

I would provide references to a lot of these formulae however I orininally found them on the runic forums which have since been taken down and no sadly no archive of them exists anywhere I can find.

The following sections deals with the mechanics of dealing damage.

Auto attacks are actually one of the most simple mechanics in Torchlight 2. Unfortunately for me, most builds barely use them at all so their damage calculations are not that useful. Some weapons deal damage via physical damage and some via magical damage. Some weapons do a combination of the two. The way damage is calculated is as follows:

Damage = (Physical Damage * (Strength Bonus + % Physical Damage Modifers + Other Modifiers) + Magical Damage * (Strength Bonus + Focus Bonus + Other Modifiers)) + 1

Other modifiers are as follows:

• +%All Damage
  
• Elemental Damage bonuses such as +15% Fire Damage obviously only increase their respective element.
  
• +%Melee Damage (For weapons classed as melee weapons)
  
• +%Ranged Damage (For weapons classed as ranged weapons)
  
• +%Wands and Staves (Wands also count as ranged and Staves also count as melee)
  
• +%Damage bonus while Dual wielding (A shield does not count as a weapon for this purpose)

(the + 1 is clearly the most important part)

Now obviously every weapon (at least I think every weapon) has maximum and minimum ranges for their damage. How this works is that the game calculates the damage for the minimum damage you would do and the same for the maximum damage you would do and then generates a random number between those two values. Gems or enchantments that add Flat damage like +15 Fire Damage modify the weapon's base damage in effect and are not modifiers.

You may have also noticed that focus increases a weapon's magic damage while strength also increases a weapon's magic damage. This means there aren't times where strength is useless but it also means that on magic weapons you can choose to use strength or focus to increase your damage. Yet another reason focus is so strong. Also obviously if your weapon does fire damage fire modifiers will be added to the fire damage separately but not apply to the rest of the magic damage.

Fumbles are if you like, negative critical hits. Whenever you auto attack there is a 21% chance that you will 'fumble' the attack causing you to lose damage on the attack. I should mention that skills cannot be fumbled which is why most experienced players prefer builds based around the use of skills rather than builds based around auto-attacking.

The formula used for calculating fumbles is a little complicated because it breaks up each component of the damage and in effect "fumbles" it individually. This is made further more complex when you consider that in my testing a weapon that did 24-47 physical damage, 24-47 electric damage and 24-47 poison damage somehow had a differing amount of maximum damage calculated for the physical and electric damage by 1 but yet the poison and electric maximums were the same. Nevertheless an approximation is as follows:

Remember when reading this formula that Fumble Damage Reduction is a -% so adding it to things actually takes it away. YEAH MATHS!

Fumble Damage = Physical Damage * (1 + Fumble Damage Reduction) + Magical Damage * (1 + Fumble Damage Reduction)

Again like for the auto attacks the game calculates the minimum and maximum values and then picks a random number between them.

Splash Damage in Torchlight 2 is a bit odd and to be honest, generally not worth worrying about. Firstly it only procs off of auto attacks. Secondly ranged weapons, even those like shotgonnes and cannons which technically do "splash damage" do not actually proc splash damage the way it works nor can any ranged weapon proc spash damage. Only melee weapons can deal spash damage. Here are their profiles:

• 1H Axes, Maces & Swords - Range 1.1m, 25% Splash, 60° Arc
  
• 2H Axes, Maces & Swords - Range 1.6m, 50% Splash, 120° Arc
  
• Staves - Range 1.6m, 50% Splash, 100° Arc
  
• Polearms - Range 2.6m, 50% Splash, 120° Arc

Splash damage has no discernable cap or at least none that it is possible using normal itemisation. Why you would want to stack it is also beyond me, although it might be amusing to make a built around only being able to kill what you're not aiming at.

Regarding Shotgonnes and Cannons these two weapons do not actually have a standard auto attack but rather a template with which they use to attack. This is why they do not benefit from splash damage. Shotgonnes do 100% damage to all targets within an arc 5° either side of the initial target and 30% damage 10° further on from that. Cannons do 100% Damage within a 12.5° arc either side and 50% damage 15° either side of that.

The previously mentioned auto attack formula discussed is used to work out Weapon DPS.

WDPS = Weapon Damage / Attacks Per Second.

Now as per usual because nothing in Torchlight 2 could ever be simple that dual wielding weapons works slightly differently. Dual wielding only uses the DPS from your main hand weapon. What this means is that if you are Dual wielding and using 2 different weapons your main hand weapon should always be the higher dps of the two. Its also another reason why I don't really think dual wielding builds are very good but that is an opinion and who am I to tell you how to have fun?

In Torchlight 2 a Magic attack is any attack that does a flat number of damage rather than a % of Weapon DPS. Focus boosts all magic attacks. This results in some strange outcomes like the fact that the Engineer's Shield Bash skill which does 7.5/10/12.5 * Your Shield's Armour value in damage actually counts as a magic attack and is boosted by focus. This is yet another reason why focus is so strong because it affects a wide range of skills you normally wouldn't expect to benefit from.

Magic Damage is calculated as:

Damage = Flat Damage * (%Focus Bonus + Additional Bonuses)

Additional Bonuses are as follows:

• +% All Damage
  
• Each Element will obviously benefit from its respective +% Damage Type

As per usual the game calculates both the minimum and maxium possible damage and then generates a random value between that number inclusive.

I should mention that Damage over Time skills or DoTs are calculated identically however DoTs in Torchlight cannot critically hit.

In my belief, Critical Hits are one of the most poorly understood mechanics in Torchlight 2 and I think it stems from 2 factors. Most games allow you to have some aspect of control over your chance to critically hit but not usually your critical hit modifier, the second is the fact that spells are affected by an internal spell critical hit modifier but more on that later.

Firstly I'll rediscuss Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage here. The cap for CHD is 500%, you have a base 50%, 399.6% can come from strength which means if you want to hit the cap you need a further 50.4%. This can come from gear, enchantments or socketables. Next is CHC. Obviously having a CHC above 100% makes no sense but other than that there is no inherent cap to CHC which means you can have a 100% chance to critically hit, in theory. Again, more on that later. You can get 50.1% CHC from dexterity which means if you want 100% CHC you need 49.9% from gear, enchantments or socketables.

Regarding the formula each individual component of the damage crits individually. This does not mean that the chance to crit is calculated individually, either your whole attack critically hits, or doesn't, rather the increase in damage is calculated separately and then added together.

Critical Hit Damage = Physical Damage * (Critical Hit Modifier + 1) + Magical Damage * (Critical Hit Modifier + 1)

"What is SoakScale and why do I care?" I hear you ask, well SoakScale is an inherent modifier on every skill in the game. What it is meant to do, as far as I can tell, is control the amount of armour applied to a skill. i.e. If a skill has 50% SoakScale, only 50% of the armour of a target should be applied to the relevant damage. Its basically armour penetration value.

However it appears that there is a bug with SoakScale that has been prevalent since the beginning of the game. SoakScale also appears to modify the critical hit chance of a skill by the same amount. Don't ask me why. I don't know. I just know from testing a variety of abilities that it most definitely holds true. This leads to strange occurences like the Embermage's Prismatic Bolt skill, which has a SoakScale of 8, also having a Critical Hit Chance of 8% with a character that has 100% chance to critically hit. In other words, on Prismatic Bolt builds, CHC and CHD are not very useful stats.

I plan to show the ins and outs of every skill at a later date, including the actual critical hit chances of the skills, however for the mean time just know this; just because you have a CHC of x% does not mean the skill you're using does.

I will hopefully be getting around to a guide that discusses every skill and its ISCHM in detail at a later date. Just know that just because you have a critical hit rate of x% does not mean the spell you're using does.

So some of you might be thinking "I can see why the order of calculations matters for defence, but why damage?" Well its largely to do with fumbles. You see if you fumble in this game fumbles can't critically hit. This is one of the reasons auto-attack builds are so poor because you have an innate 21% chance to fumble an attack which means that even if you have the Dexterity cap, meaning that fumbles still do full damage, you still cannot crit on that attack basically lowering your CHC by 21%. The order of Damage calculations however is as follows:

• Initial Damage Calculation
  
• Fumble Chance
  
• Critical Hit Chance
  
• Splash Damage
  
• Status Effects

The normal Status Effects all characters are likely to encounter are the Burned, Shocked, Frozen and Poisoned effects for each of the elements respectively.

• Burn scales with level, Focus and of course the other modifiers that would normally affect fire damage. Burn also ignores armour. However it generally doesn't hit very hard. Some skills trigger higher power burn effects.
  
• Shocked causes enemies to emit sparks that bounce randomly along the ground. These appear to scale with level however they also appear to be affected by armour making it very difficult to discern their damage effects. Note they really don't do very much damage.
  
• Frozen causes enemies to start singing let it snow and your ears to start bleeding...of course I kid. I just causes a reduction in movement, attack and cast speed of 33%.
  
• Poisoned reduces both the armour and damage output by 33%. This debuff is particularly nasty if it affects you early on when you are dependent on armour for tankiness.

In addition to these effects there are other less common effects:

• Bleed - Bleed is much like burn but a purely physical effect. However being a flat damage effect it too is "magical" and therefore affected by Focus.
  
• Blindness - Blindness is one of the few effects that actually works differently depending upon whether it is cast on mobs or players. On mobs it reduces their aggro radius, on players it reduces their vision circle around the player.
  
• Draw - Draw pulls the target closer to the caster.
  
• Flee - Causes enemies to run away. I'm not sure if this has any effect on players.
  
• Immobilise - Immobilise forces the target to stand in place. You may not rotate during this period either. Immobilisation reduction effects reduce the duration of this effect. You can have 100% immobilisation reduction effectively granting you immunity to immobilisation effects.
  
• Knockback - Does what it says on the tin, knocks the target back. Knockback reduction reduces the distance you are knocked back and again you can have 100% knockback reduction.
  
• Stun - Again not much to say here. There aren't many mobs in the game that stun. Most Bosses have heavy resistance to stun which is why a lot of skills say things like "110% chance to stun".
  
• Slow - There are three types of slows. Movement slows, attack speed slows and casting speed slows. Some abilities do all three, some do varying amounts of all three and some only do one or two.

So the Conveys keyword adds yet another layer of complexity. Conveys however is special because unlike normal weapon effects Conveys weapon effects also propagate the effect, in full to any skills and splash damage. Basically any target hit by something, while you have a Conveys effect, will transfer the full effect to the target, regardless of the source of the damage. There may be exceptions to this however I currently haven't found any. If you find some, please let me know.

Now we move on to defence and why a lot of the systems that Torchlight 2 has to offer while complex are sadly near pointless.

One thing of note, your prioritisation regarding defence will be different depending on how seriously you take this game, how much time you intend to invest in farming and the difficulty level you have chosen. There is no point grinding for hours and hours to make some incredibly tanky character if you're playing on casual where the monsters largely hit like wet noodles.

Firstly we need to cover the order of calculations regarding defence which will help explain why some defensive stats fair so poorly while others, so well. The order is as follows:

• Missile Reflect
  
• Dodge
  
• Block
  
• Armour
  
• Damage Reduction
  
• Damage Absorption
  
• Health

Missile Reflect gets procced as this is obviously the logical choice. You'd be a bit annoyed if you had a high chance to reflect missiles and you kept dodging out of the way of them instead. It should be noted that for some reason despite just about everything else in this game stacking additively Missile Reflect stacks multiplicatively. Anyway its not on many items and its just kinda nice to have there aren't a huge number of mobs out there that use missiles I wouldn't go making a build out of it.

Next we have dodge. This is nice and simple. You dodge something, no damage. Your dodge chance is your dodge chance. The hard cap for dodge is 75%. Its a miracle, Torchlight 2 actually did something simple.The Formula is just:

Chance of being hit = 1 - Dodge Chance

Again block we've already discussed and works very similarly to dodge. The formula is identical. Not much to say here.

Next Armour, Ok, back to the land of complexities. So armour, in essence reduces the amount of damage you take from a source by between the amount of armour you have and 50% of your armour value. So if you get hit by 20 damage and have 10 armour you will take between 10 and 15 damage. The type of armour used is the type of damage dealt. Simple. Except its not that simple because nothing in this game is ever that simple.

The complexity occurs when you have complex damage types. Lets use an example. Say you have have an axe that does 10 Physical damage and 10 Fire Damage and another axe that does 20 Physical Damage. Lets also say you have 0 Focus for this example to keep things as simple as possible. The point is the 2 axes do the same damage. However lets say you're using them against monsters that have 10 of every type of armour. If the game just naively applied the armour formula as I just described you would end up with a situation where weapons that did mixed damage did less damage than their pure counterparts because in our example the 20 Physical Damage axe would only be tested against the physical armour while the axe with 10 and 10 would be tested against both the Physical armour and the Fire Armour resulting in the pure Physical axe having a Damage range of between 10 - 15 and the split damage axe having a damage range of between 0 - 10.

In order to prevent this the game uses proportionality to work this out. Basically first the game adds up all of the damage an incoming attack will do. It then divides each component by the total damage to get the proportionality of that component. This should be some number between 0 and 1. It then multiplies the corresponding resistance by that number before doing the armour calculation. Lets do an example:

I am hit by a monster that does 30 Physical Damage and 60 Ice Damage. I have 100 Physical Armour and 50 Ice Armour. Firstly the game adds the damage of the incoming attack together and then divides each component. 30/90 = 1/3, 60/90 = 2/3. Then we multiply my respective armours by these amounts. 100 * 1/3 = 33.333, 50 * 2/3 = 33.333. Finally we apply the armour formula individually and see that the first part of the attack will deal between 13.333 and 0 damage and the second part will deal between 33.333 and 16.667.

Now that all of that explanation is out of the way I now get to explain why that incredibly interesting and complex system is largely useless. It really does hurt. Damage Reduction is applied after armour is. Obviously this reduces the amount of damage you take up to a maximum of 75%. However it also therefore decreases the effectiveness of armour by that much too. I'll give an example:

Imagine you get hit by a hit for 1000 Damage and you have 200 Armour. Now lets say for a moment that your armour rolls for the maximum amount and saves you the full 200 damage its capable of. So you take an 800 Damage hit. Now lets say you have the cap of 75% damage reduction which is recommended for late game elite difficulty. This reduces the hit you just took to a paltry 200 Damage. However now lets look at the same scenario but remove the armour from the equation. You take the 1000 damage and this time it goes straight through. Now your damage reduction kicks in and reduces it to 250 damage. Notice how that 200 armour actually only ended up saving you 50 damage even when it max rolled? This is why armour isn't very good. Not to mention the fact that its tied to vitality and is hard to stack without sacrificing other much more useful stats. I wish they had thought about this more before choosing this order of damage.

I should also mention here that the two melee classes, the Engineer and the Berserker, have an innate 25% damage resistance. This stacks additively.

After this is Damage absorption effects like the Engineer's Forcefield. Incidentally this is why Forcefield is so strong while Aegis is so weak. Forcefield benefits from all these effects before it takes a hit meaning it stays strong for a long time. Aegis on the other hand requires a hit to go through everything before it even has a chance to proc. In short, never take Aegis.

Finally, after all of this you take damage, or maybe the hit never gets here because you have so many defensive stats. At least that's the plan.

Now we come to a part of the guide I've all been waiting for, a part that's not exclusively about maths...and its, yeah, largely about maths. Sorry. So farming in Torchlight 2 is a little different from games like Diablo 3 and PoE mainly because a lot of the gear you're going to want isn't necessarily located at the end of the game. This often leads to a weird sensation where you have to start farming for your final set of gear very early on in the game. The second and most important thing I can tell you is a lot of items become extinct over the course of normal playthroughs. I know this sounds like the end of the world but its more I want to draw people's attention to it before before they potentially make game altering decisions rather than after. I should mention, nothing is unsalvagable, but some things are more difficult to salvage than others.

Right, what have I just been talking about? Well if you have a look at the modding tools items have two particularly important attributes as described here[docs.runicgames.com]. They are:
These two particular values are of importance because they affect what dungeon levels an item can spawn from. Every dungeon has a level range that it can generate. This basically means that monsters will be around your level up to a limit and if you are a very high level and go to a low level area you will still find low level monsters and vice versa.

What this means for farming however is that if you're trying to find an item outside the level range of the level you're in it will never drop. While you might be thinking "Ok but I can just go back to an area where it can drop can't I?" Well not always. See with the New Game+ modes this increases the Dungeon levels of areas and you can't go backwards with regards to NG+ levels, nor can you join games that have differing NG+ levels. This means that if you want a level 50 item on your NG5+ character the only way to obtain it is through mapping or trading.

Some people may not necessarily think mapping is so bad however there are reasons why I would be hesitant to suggest mapping as a primary source for getting items. Firstly Skulls. Skulls are the best socketables within Torchlight 2 and definitely something you will need to farm for if you are building an end game oriented elite character. However skulls only drop from blue chests. Yes, that's right. Those boss chests, bosses themselves and golden chests in the game are actually worse loot generators than the blue chests. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not. What this actually means though is that the best farming locations for skulls are not those that involve killing anything, sadly.

This brings us to Phase Beast farming. Phase Beasts are beasts you can find in the large areas such as the Ossean Wastes which take you to a mini challenge. Some of them involve puzzles, or fighting a mini boss and some of them involve protecting objects or racing around looting things within a time limit. The thing is, the way you're intended to do them is you jump into the Phase Portal, complete the challenge then exit through the exit portal at which point the entry to the Phase Beast Challenge closes and you can no longer complete it.

The developers forgot one tiny thing however. Because the Phase Beast Challenge area counts as its own area, you can quit the game and your character is saved in the Phase Beast Challenge. This means that you can complete the challenge, quit to the menu screen, load your character again and repeat until you either have your items or you can't take the boredom any more. I highly recommend setting up a movie, TV show or stream on a second monitor if you can.

I have linked a youtube videos made by fireball1303 that shows the best challenge to farm.
The other location to farm is a Phase Beast in the Frosted Hills which involves protecting 4 crystals from goblin hordes. For every crystal after the first you protect, you receive a blue chest at the end of the challenge.

Alright, we know where you know where you're getting your items, now how many? This is where Torchlight 2's magic find mechanic comes in. Firstly, the sources; you can obtain it from items and socketables as well as from the passive spell Tome: Treasure Hunter I[tidbi.ru]. I should note here that you can equip this on your pet and it will increase your magic finding stat. (I should also note here that the Tome: Animal Handling I[tidbi.ru] does not work this way because it increases your pet's minion damage statistics rather than yours.)

Now what does the Magic Finding statistic actually do? Well its complicated. To be honest with this game it'd be easier to mention what's simple. Firstly what it doesn't do. It doesn't increase the amount of loot you'll find. What it does do is increase the quality of some of the items you'll find. Its that some that's really at the heart of the issue.

So basically if you go through GUTS and look at monsters and chests and what they can spawn you find they often have a series of items they can spawn. For example lets look at the famous blue chest or as it is known in GUTS, TREASURE_CHEST_HUGE. This can spawn a number of classes of items:

• TREASURE_SKULLCHANCE_FORSUPERCHESTS
  
• GOLD_PIECES
  
• CHEST_TREASURE_SECONDARY_GOOD
  
• CHEST_TREASURE_PRIMARY_GOODER

No I didn't make those up, I wish I did though....anyway. The interesting takeaway here is the Min and Max stats which control how many of each item drop but more interestingly still is the MagicFind stat. Each treasure source has a MagicFind stat which is a percentage and I can only surmise from looking at the values that the MagicFind stat changes which sources your magic find stat affects.

With this information in hand I can say that if you're farming skulls, magic find is completely useless for you as the only thing that drop skulls has a 0 MagicFind stat. However if you're farming for legendary items Magic Find might be just what you need. However when in doubt, ways of moving faster and clearing more efficiently always increase your farm speed so don't overlook them.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make, is simply getting armour that has a high ilvl because it has a high ilvl. Lets take a very common example I see. You want to build an Emberquake Engineer. Sounds good. You're choosing your rings and you immediately choose the highest ilvl rings which happen to be Mondon's Ring[tidbi.ru]. First, lets look at what this does:

Mondon's Ring
-94 to All Armor per hit
2% increase in magic-finding Luck
+12% Damage to secondary targets
6% chance to reflect missiles at 50% weapon DPS
All Damage Taken is reduced by -2%
Charge rate increased by 10%

Ok so right of the bat -94 to All Armour per hit is not very useful for an Emberquaker Engineer. Then we have a paltry 2% increase in MF. Which if you already have all your gear probably isn't going to be that helpful, but it gets worse. You get 12% damage to secondary targets which will do nothing for a well built Emberquaker, 6% chance to reflect missiles at 50% weapon DPS, again fairly meagre, All Damage Taken is reduced by -2%, not that useful when it doesn't add to 5% and you still need to waste an enormous amount of your item budget to get there and the only decent part of the item; Charge rate increased by 10%.

Comparatively lets look at Pandectos[tidbi.ru].

Pandectos
+50% to Fire Damage
+224 Health

Ok so the Health isn't great but wait...+50% to fire damage, which is your main source of damage. That is the equivalent of 100 Focus, to put that into perspective. Pandectos, for those that are interested are an ilvl 58 item. Now you might be about to say "What about the set bonus on Mondon's?" To be honest its pretty lacklustre. Most of the bonuses are. This isn't Diablo 3 where your class is made or broken by set bonuses.

So this is why I tell people that choosing gear is a little more complicated than simply "choose the one with the highest ilvl".

But wait, its gets more complicated. See there is some advantage to choosing items with high ilvls. Basically the strength of an enchantment is tied to the ilvl of an item. This means a couple of things. Firstly, items may initially appear to not be so great but because of their ilvl they have a much greater potential but secondly, potential is exactly that, potential. One of my teachers used to say that potential was just a fancy way of saying you haven't done anything yet. He was right.

Anyway, the point is that sometimes it can be very difficult to analyse the strengths of two different items because with ideal enchantments, one may become better than the other over time however sometimes you may want to keep both because it may be a very close run thing.

The formula used by enchanters to calculate the power of an enchant for stat enchantments is:

EnchantmentPower = ilvl / 3 + 1

Other enchantments use a different formulae. I am currently trying to work this out now.

A massive thanks to Steamuser ADEC Inc who figured this out through testing.

The game will then multiply the enchantment power by an enchantment modifier based on the enchantment chosen. Here is a list of the enchantments with their multipliers and weights below:

LEGEND:
Weight - How often this enchantment occurs. Bear in mind that this is calculated against all other enchantments in the enchantment pool. So an enchanter with a large enchantment pool has a low chance of having an enchantment occur with a weight of 10 whereas the same enchantment might have a very high chance of occur with a much smaller pool of enchantments.
[CRITICAL] - This simply indicates the enchantment is a critical version of the enchantment. Some enchantments do not have normal versions. No additional effects will occur outside of the screen flashing if one of these enchantments occurs.
[G] - Enchantments done by Garbahd the Enchanter, located at the Elemental Oasis in Act III.
[V] - Enchantment done by Vaneez the Poisoner, located at the Ship Graveyard in Act II and also randomly spawning with a weight of 25 or a 19.69% chance. Max Enchantments 2.
[Bo] - Enchantments done by Borris the Stout randomly spawning with a weight of 10 or a 7.87% chance. Max Enchantments 3.
[M] - Enchantments done by Mooritz of the Desert randomly spawning with a weight of 10 or a 7.87% chance. Max Enchantments 3.
[F] - Enchantments done by Farquez the Assassin spawning with a weight of 10or a 7.87% chance.

- Enchantments done by Panosh of the North randomly spawning with a weight of 10 or a 7.87% chance. Max Enchantments 3.
[T] - Enchantments done by Telsor of the Storm randomly spawning with a weight of 10 or a 7.87% chance. Max Enchantments 3.
[Fi] - Enchantments done by Filip the Lucky randomly spawning with a weight of 10 or a 7.87% chance.

• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Electric Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.09 - 0.12, Weight 5 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Fire Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.09 - 0.12, Weight 5 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Ice Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.09 - 0.12, Weight 5 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Poison Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.09 - 0.12, Weight 5 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Dodge chance, Modifer 0.03 - 0.05, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Dual Wield Damage, Modifer 0.06 - 0.1, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Electric Damage Taken, Modifier -0.04 - -0.06, Weight 5 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Fire Damage Taken, Modifier -0.04 - -0.06, Weight 5 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% chance to Fumble, Modifier -0.07 - 0.1, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Ice Damage Taken, Modifier -0.04 - -0.06, Weight 5 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Increases All Damage, 0.06 - 0.09, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Increases Melee Weapon Damage, 0.06 - 0.09, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Poison Damage Taken, Modifier -0.04 - -0.06, Weight 5 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Weapon, % chance to call forth the Skull, 0.03 - 0.03, Weight 1 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Increases Ranged Weapon Damage, 0.06 - 0.09, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Gloves, Helmet, -% reduced item requirements, 0.05 - 0.07, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant 1H Axe, Mace, Sword, 2H Axe, Mace, Sword, Polearm, Staff, +% Damage to Secondary Targets, Modifier 0.3 - 0.45, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Bow, Cannon, Crossbow, Rifle, Wand, % chance to Immobilise, Modifier 0.06 - 0.09, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Any, +% increases Charge Rate, Modifier 0.06, 0.09, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Boots, Pants, +% increase Movement Speed, Modifier 0.04 - 0.06, Weight 10 [CRITICAL][G]
  
• Enchant Weapon, % chance to Poison, Modifier 0.04 - 0.15, Weight 10 [V][F]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Poison Damage, Modifer 0.04 - 0.15, Weight 10 [V][F]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Poison Damage, Modifier 0.06 - 0.18, Weight 30 [V][F]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Poison Damage, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 6 [CRITICAL][V][F]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Poison Damage Taken, Modifier -0.06 - -0.18, Weight 10 [V][F]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Poison Damage Taken, Modifier -0.2 - -0.25, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][V][F]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Poison Armour, Modifier 0.06 - 0.18, Weight 30 [V][F]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Poison Armour, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 6 [CRITICAL][V][F]
  
• Enchant Armour, Poison Damage Reflected, Modifier 0.06, 0.18, Weight 15 [V][F]
  
• Enchant Armour, Poison Damage Reflected, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 3 [CRITICAL][V][F]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Poison Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.03 - 0.08, Weight 20 [V][F]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Poison Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.11 - 0.14, Weight 4 [CRITICAL][V][F]
  
• Enchant Weapon, % chance to Shock, Modifier 0.04 - 0.1, Weight 10 [T]
  
• Enchant Weapon, % chance to Shock, Modifier 0.12 - 0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][T]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Electric Armour, Modifier 0.06 - 0.18, Weight 30 [T]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Electric Armour, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 6 [CRITICAL][T]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Electric Damage, Modifier 0.06 - 0.18, Weight 30 [T]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Electric Damage, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 6 [CRITICAL][T]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Electric Damage, Modifer 0.04 - 0.10, Weight 10 [T]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Electric Damage Taken, Modifier -0.04 - -0.1, Weight 10 [T]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Electric Damage Taken, Modifier -0.12 - -0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][T]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Electric Damage, Modifer 0.12 - 0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][T]
  
• Enchant Armour, Electric Damage Reflected, Modifier 0.06, 0.18, Weight 15 [T]
  
• Enchant Armour, Electric Damage Reflected, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 3 [CRITICAL][T]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Electric Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.03 - 0.08, Weight 20 [T]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Electric Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.11 - 0.14, Weight 4 [CRITICAL][T]
  
• Enchant Weapon, % chance to Burn, Modifier 0.04 - 0.1, Weight 10 [M]
  
• Enchant Weapon, % chance to Burn, Modifier 0.12 - 0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][M]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Fire Armour, Modifier 0.06 - 0.18, Weight 30 [M]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Fire Armour, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 6 [CRITICAL][M]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Fire Damage, Modifier 0.06 - 0.18, Weight 30 [M]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Fire Damage, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 6 [CRITICAL][M]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Fire Damage, Modifer 0.04 - 0.10, Weight 10 [M]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Fire Damage Taken, Modifier -0.04 - -0.1, Weight 10 [M]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% Fire Damage Taken, Modifier -0.12 - -0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][M]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% Fire Damage, Modifer 0.12 - 0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][M]
  
• Enchant Armour, Fire Damage Reflected, Modifier 0.06, 0.18, Weight 15 [M]
  
• Enchant Armour, Fire Damage Reflected, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 3 [CRITICAL][M]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Fire Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.03 - 0.08, Weight 20 [M]
  
• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Fire Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.11 - 0.14, Weight 4 [CRITICAL][M]
  
• Enchant Weapon, % chance to Freeze, Modifier 0.04 - 0.1, Weight 10

• Enchant Weapon, % chance to Freeze, Modifier 0.12 - 0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL]

• Enchant Armour, + Ice Armour, Modifier 0.06 - 0.18, Weight 30

• Enchant Armour, + Ice Armour, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 6 [CRITICAL]

• Enchant Weapon, + Ice Damage, Modifier 0.06 - 0.18, Weight 30

• Enchant Weapon, + Ice Damage, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 6 [CRITICAL]

• Enchant Armour, +% Ice Damage, Modifer 0.04 - 0.10, Weight 10

• Enchant Armour, -% Ice Damage Taken, Modifier -0.04 - -0.1, Weight 10

• Enchant Armour, -% Ice Damage Taken, Modifier -0.12 - -0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL]

• Enchant Armour, +% Ice Damage, Modifer 0.12 - 0.15, Weight 2 [CRITICAL]

• Enchant Armour, Ice Damage Reflected, Modifier 0.06, 0.18, Weight 15

• Enchant Armour, Ice Damage Reflected, Modifier 0.2 - 0.25, Weight 3 [CRITICAL]

  [/list]

• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Ice Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.03 - 0.08, Weight 20

• Enchant Weapon, Conveys Ice Damage over 5 seconds, Modifier 0.11 - 0.14, Weight 4 [CRITICAL]

• Enchant Armour, -% chance to Fumble, Modifier 0.03 - 0.06, Weight 5 [Fi]
  
• Enchant Weapon, -% chance to Fumble, Modifier 0.07 - 0.09, Weight 5 [Fi]
  
• Enchant Armour, -% chance to Fumble, Modifier 0.08 - 0.1, Weight 1 [CRITICAL][Fi]
  
• Enchant Weapon, -% chance to Fumble, Modifier 0.12 - 0.16, Weight 1 [CRITICAL][Fi]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% increase in the amount of Experience Gained, Modifier 0.01 - 0.03, Weight 10 [Fi]
  
• Enchant Weapon, +% increase in the amount of Experience Gained, Modifier 0.01 - 0.03, Weight 10 [Fi]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% increase in the amount of Experience Gained, Modifier 0.04 - 0.05, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Fi]
  
• Enchant Weapon, +% increase in the amount of Experience Gained, Modifier 0.04 - 0.05, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Fi]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% increase in the amount of Gold Found, Modifier 0.04 - 0.1, Weight 15 [Fi]
  
• Enchant Weapon, +% increase in the amount of Gold Found, Modifier 0.04 - 0.1, Weight 15 [Fi]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% increase in the amount of Gold Found, Modifier 0.12 - 0.15, Weight 3 [CRITICAL][Fi]
  
• Enchant Weapon, +% increase in the amount of Gold Found, Modifier 0.12 - 0.15, Weight 3 [CRITICAL][Fi]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% increase in Magic-Finding Luck, Modifier 0.01 - 0.02, Weight 20 [Fi]
  
• Enchant Weapon, +% increase in Magic-Finding Luck, Modifier 0.01 - 0.03, Weight 20 [Fi]
  
• Enchant Armour, +% increase in Magic-Finding Luck, Modifier 0.03 - 0.04, Weight 4 [CRITICAL][Fi]
  
• Enchant Weapon, +% increase in Magic-Finding Luck, Modifier 0.04 - 0.05, Weight 4 [CRITICAL][Fi]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Vitality Attribute Bonus, Modifier 0.5 - 1.2, Weight 10 [Bo]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Vitality Attribute Bonus, Modifier 0.5 - 1.2, Weight 10 [Bo]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Vitality Attribute Bonus, Modifier 1.5 - 2.0, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Bo]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Vitality Attribute Bonus, Modifier 1.5 - 2.0, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Bo]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Dexterity Attribute Bonus, Modifier 0.5 - 1.2, Weight 10 [Bo]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Dexterity Attribute Bonus, Modifier 0.5 - 1.2, Weight 10 [Bo]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Dexterity Attribute Bonus, Modifier 1.5 - 2.0, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Bo]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Dexterity Attribute Bonus, Modifier 1.5 - 2.0, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Bo]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Focus Attribute Bonus, Modifier 0.5 - 1.2, Weight 10 [Bo]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Focus Attribute Bonus, Modifier 0.5 - 1.2, Weight 10 [Bo]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Focus Attribute Bonus, Modifier 1.5 - 2.0, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Bo]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Focus Attribute Bonus, Modifier 1.5 - 2.0, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Bo]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Strength Attribute Bonus, Modifier 0.5 - 1.2, Weight 10 [Bo]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Strength Attribute Bonus, Modifier 0.5 - 1.2, Weight 10 [Bo]
  
• Enchant Armour, + Strength Attribute Bonus, Modifier 1.5 - 2.0, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Bo]
  
• Enchant Weapon, + Strength Attribute Bonus, Modifier 1.5 - 2.0, Weight 2 [CRITICAL][Bo]

The remaining Enchanters not mentioned can draw from a pool from seemingly all of these enchants. I will mention them here.

Enchanter Malo found in the Estherian Enclave. Maximum enchantments 1.
Tulio the Enchanter found in the Imperial Camp. Maximum enchantments 2.
Shemp the Enchanter found in the Minehead. Maximum enchantments 2.
Greezo the Enchanter found in the Mapworks. Maximum enchantments 3.
Jurick the Socketer spawning with a weight of 5 or a 3.94% chance. He will always enchant items to increase the number of sockets with a maximum of 2.
Fondo the Master spawning with a weight of 33 or a 25.98% chance. Maximum enchantments 3.
Karkozi the All-Powerful spawning with a weight of 4 or a 3.15% chance. Maximum enchantments 3.

Note: All these chances assume that the game is fair when choosing. As ADEC inc and I have discussed it is entirely possible this process is not fair and that elements parsed earlier in the choosing process have a higher chance of being chosen than those later in the choosing process. However without backwards engineering the game this would be almost impossible verify.

The second thing that I would like to mention about enchantments is that because of the way enchantments work, you have to disenchant a piece of gear to re-enchant it. Sometimes the rolls you got on it weren't great or they weren't the right stats. Because of this it often helps to have two sets of armour for enchantment. An 'A' set and a backup set that you use for enchanting purposes. If a backup piece rolls a better enchant than your main set, you can swap the pieces around and then resume enchanting the backup set and continue to improve your enchantments over time.

This part will probably be more interesting for a lot of you. Obviously you're going to have to choose a playstyle to go with and I can't help there however where I can help is from then on.

Assuming you have chosen a playstyle and a class the very first place I see most people go wrong, in my opinion, is their priorities. As far as I'm concerned when creating a build your priorities should be as such:

• Survivability
  
• Damage
  
• Mobility
  
• Utility

Now bear in mind that this is the priority for a solo build. Obviously if you are creating a build for team play and you are creating some form of utitility based class designed around increasing the capabilities of those around you, Utility would be much more important.

Why is this hard and why do people go wrong then? Well, to most people dealing the big numbers is cool and so they want a build that does that. Which is cool and all I get that, unfortunately if you do one big number and then keel over dead, your build won't get you very far. The second reason this is hard is because sometimes certain aspects of a build are multi-functional. For example lets look at the Embermage's Frost Phase.

This skill, you would think, based on my list, would fit squarely into the mobility priority and be fairly low down. The problem is that this skill also allows for rapid defensive mobility meaning that it can be used defensively as well by experienced players, both to kite and to extricate yourself from bad situations. This is where some intuition is going to have to come in on your part and honestly, the best way to work out some of these things a lot of the time is to simply play test them. I would like to add here I am not overly fond of Torchlight 2's restrictiveness with regards to respeccing because I believe it greatly hinders creativity and would encourage players interested in making builds to look at mods that allow full respeccing.

So now we've discussed the overall theory behind build design, this is where a lot of builds really start to fall down. If you want to make a build good, or a good build great, I'm sorry to say that there is no magic secret that is going to help you avoid maths. However it isn't all doom and gloom for those of you who detest maths because with the power of computers you can make your life a lot easier.

Here are some numbers and graphs for my upcoming Engineer guide. I know it probably looks like a lot but its a lot simpler than it looks.

The first chart shows how Emberquake Scales with Strength assuming two key things. Firstly that I am using the max rank of Emberquake and secondly that I am using Arcgap's Vice[tidbi.ru]. This mace is by far the best mace for an Emberquake Engineer because it does purely elemental damage, meaning that 100% of its damage is scaled by focus. Under these two assumptions and all of the mechanics I've detailed above I then ran calculations for how much damage Emberquake would do if I had varying amounts of strength. I then repeated the process with Focus.

Finally I repeated the process again this time with equal amounts of Strength and Focus. The results pretty clearly speak for themselves. However it was only because I did this that I was able to confidently say that, for example strength was even worth using. I can also now say, with certainty, that equal amounts of strength and focus will give you higher damage returns than pure Strength or Focus alone. However, this does assume that Strength scales CHD and this does not have infinite returns. Once you have reached the CHD cap, pure focus is a better return for your investment than a mix of points.

Simply doing this however, which really didn't take that long, I now know what I need to be looking for in gear, and how I need to be itemising to increase the damage of Emberquake.

The exact same thing applies to defence. If you need a certain amount of block rate, for example, you look at the options available to increase your block rate and then look at how much each of those options is going to have an impact on your itemisation budget.

So having said all I've said, there are two items I need to mention, in vanilla TL2, that to my mind, are ludicrously OP. To the point where they should be included in every build, at all, ever. I can almost never find a reason to not include these items in a build, They are The Asphyx[tidbi.ru] and the Hands of Orlac[tidbi.ru]. Firstly what do they do?

The Asphyx
12.8 Health loss per second!
26 Mana stolen on hit

Hands of Orlac
12.8 Health loss per second!
135 Health stolen on hit

Set Bonus
2 Pieces: 12.8 Health loss per second!
2 Pieces: Charge rate increased by 30%

Now I know what you're thinking? "How is that good? It makes me lose 38 HP/s and all I get is 26 Mana per hit and 135 HP per hit. Well yes initially it may look bad. However they also have 5 Sockets...each. Let me first introduce you to my little friend the Skull of X`n!troph[tidbi.ru].

Skull of X`n!troph
Weapon: -404 to All Armor per hit
Armor/Trinket: 103 Health recovery per second

Yes that's right, you put one of these in one of those 10 sockets, not only are you now gaining 65HP/s but you still have 9 Sockets left. That's 5 Sockets more than any other piece of gear would normally let you have. The remaining two gems that make this just so silly are the Lovantine Skull[tidbi.ru] and the Wfuntir Skull[tidbi.ru].

Lovantine Skull
Weapon: -89 to All Armor per hit
Armor/Trinket: +40 Strength Attribute bonus

Wfuntir Skull
20% chance to Poison for 5 sec.
Armor/Trinket: +62 Focus Attribute bonus

With these 2 skulls you can either have 200 Strength or a whopping 310 Focus from the 5 additional sockets alone. From what I've seen there just aren't glove/helm combos that can outdo this sheer amount of stats and so these two items are in my mind, OP.

Reason's not to use them: you consider it cheesy/anti-fun and/or they look atrocious. If you don't want to use them in your build I won't judge and if you have a geniune mathematical reason not to, all the better, as I really dislike how universally powerful they are, but, at the end of the day, if you're after power, these are what you go for.

These are the references I used to gather this information, sadly some of them are defunt.

The Old Torchlight 2 Runic Forums, with particular mention to Armis' Embermage Handbook.

"The Deth Guild" who have an excellent enchantment guide:
http://www.dethguild.com/torchlight/torchlight-ii-enchanting-guide/

A great resource for all things Torchlight, Tidbi.ru
https://tidbi.ru/tindex.html

The GUTS Editor

Steam User ADEC Inc who Helped with the enchanting formulae. Discussion is contained within the comments section of this guide.