I have now played through up to level 60, Act 2 Ossean Wastes completed, still playing with my friend (wand chaos mage) and myself playing engineer using 2 handed weapons, same mods listed in OP.

I have to suggest that the prices for enchanting are once again rescaled back to normal. We simply cannot afford to keep our gear enchanted even on elite difficulty. We have at most 1 enchant per item (legendary items mostly, which are VERY expensive to enchant now).

The fact that you level up 2x as fast means you have to replace gear 2x as fast, so the bonus gold rates are nullified by the increased enchanting costs equalling out to essentially zero bonuses (relative to vanilla). We had to farm on other characters to buy our elite characters some top notch loot from the gambler in order to progress through the beginning of Act 2.

I suggest reducing enchanting cost back to normal or at MOST 1.5x vanilla rates.
And again I stand by my suggestion of increasing gem drop rates for the same reason - replacing gear frequently requires lots more gems.


EDIT: I just realized you moved gold drop bonuses to part 2. I guess I have to use that now. Wasn't sure if I liked the mob distance draw increase which is why I didn't use it in the first place. I will give it a try and update in the future.

I haven't read this, since now, sorry.
I really appreciate your efforts, and i'm really happy you are playing this with a friend.

I have to apologize for changes. I have done many and this because it's hard to decide what split and where.
After Part03, which has been removed for some bugs, i realize that making many parts is a real challenge. Indeed Part03 has minor conflict with Part02, and has a "core" role for the complete version.
I have to do many attempts and tests for complete version and repeat that changes in Part03 also and test it again. This process requires double time and double stress. Also because editor is a mess!
So for the moment i'm focused only on complete version.

My idea for Torchfun since the beginning was to enhance vanilla, not to change it drastically like a complete overhaul. Because complete version will feature also monster changes (they will be tougher) like lurker balance does (torchfun will do better i think), i bet you will enjoy it :D.

About monster changes i can give you some anticipation:
-champions' health has been increased by 100%
-damage done by player to bosses has been reduced by 20%
-many normal monsters have their life increased from 25 to 100%
-many monsters have their run speed increased (some monsters actually don't run, but walk).

In few words, champions are harder, some normal monsters are now more dangerous and tough too.

OK we have progressed through the Salt Barrens at this point, now we are about level 72-74. I have some more thoughts:

We are using "Bigger Inventory", "Diablo II Skill Tree Levels", and "LurkerBalance", as well as now incorporating Torchfun PART02.

The game has continued to be significantly more enjoyable than vanilla. The pace of the game is good. The difficulty feels right. Gear has become less of a problem now that we have some good pieces with stat enchants from Borris the Stout, and using TF2 we can combine gems which makes gem availability much better for high level items.

The difficulty of this game is extremely complicated and depends heavily on how you play your character and what skills you are using, and if you are playing multiplayer or solo. From my experience, the difficulty worked out PERFECTLY with the classes and specs we are using and the additional mods: LurkerBalance, BiggerInventory, and importantly: Diablo II Skill Tree Levels. The game was most challenging around the end of Act 1 and beginning Act 2. We had to save up our gold and farm some high level (70-90 lvl) items as well as enchant stats from Borris the Stout during early Act 2. As melee, I had to focus primarily on using damage mitigation skills and items. I had to use a ton of HP and armor items/gems to stay alive. Now around level 70 I am close to 6000 HP and 1700 physical armor with about 55% physical damage reduction as well - and bosses still hit me for 2-3k - but I have maximum healbot to provide significant health regen. I think it would be impossible to play on this difficulty without Diablo II Skill Tree levels - it balanced out the difficulty perfectly. Also playing with 2 people (rather than solo) helps a lot as well, since you get ally bonuses.

Important note on why I like LurkerBalance: The big increase to enemy mob HP is awesome. If we didn't have it, we would kill monsters sooooo fast. We have to pay more attention to avoiding damage, learning the attack mechanics of the enemies, and using our crowd control skills. It makes it much more rewarding to try hard on getting optimized equipment and skill builds.

Originally posted by IL_Giudice:

About monster changes i can give you some anticipation:
-champions' health has been increased by 100%

From playing LurkerBalance, I must say +400% provided for some epic battles! Although it was sometimes a little too much before we had good weapons.

Originally posted by IL_Giudice:

-damage done by player to bosses has been reduced by 20%

How will you modify the damage to bosses? Be careful because if it is modified before applying armor that could make high-armor bosses really hard. I would suggest a health increase rather than player damage reduction. Much cleaner.

Originally posted by IL_Giudice:

-many normal monsters have their life increased from 25 to 100%

After playing a lot of LurkerBalance, the +200% (-ish) on normal monsters seems perfect to me for Elite, even though it may be too much for some class builds and solo play (especially early on). You just need to optimize your gear, skills, and stats. More HP leaves some room for progression as well. (Start on Veteran, move to Elite when you have the right equipment)

In my opinion this is a key factor to the difficulty, replayability, and level of fun. Too much health can be boring because fights will last too long and even with challenging mechanics will get repetative. Too little health and enemies will die so fast you won't have to worry about mechanics and you can build like a glass cannon - which spoils the fun and the challenge.

My general take on this game is that the damage and armor mechanics are overly complex. It is hard to analyze what is going on and what the best way to optimize damage really is. Generally, for a player to mitigate damage you have too many options: Block, Dodge, Armor, Regeneration, +HP, and %Damage reduction. I wish it was simpler, like Warcraft III, where Armor is used to compute a %Damage reduction, rather than using Armor as 1 to 1 damage reduction and stacking % reduction stats on top of that, not to mention having 5 different armor and damage types active all at once. The way Torchlight does this makes for awfully challenging damage balance. Mobs with fast attack speed dealing lower damage would rarely cause a threat, and mobs that strike slow and hard would tend to 1-shot you. LurkerBalance helps a lot by reducing monster damage by 15%, since vanilla elite damage seems way too high, but we were still getting 1-shot by some heavy hitting monsters (especially if getting hit by more than 1) and Grand Regent Eldrayn (final boss of Act 1) was nearly impossible as melee even with a ton of good gear (his smash attach was always a 1-shot and very hard to avoid). Not sure if you can really fix this problem.

To balance player damage to monsters is a little easier because it's not quite as important how fast monsters die, as it is how fast your player dies.

Originally posted by IL_Giudice:

@Svenski: thank you for your feedback.
I'm working on Torchfun Complete, which will contain all parts and a lot of new features. One of them is gem fragment drop (which can be used to craft one random gem). A way to have a better rewarding drop and a way to have more gem available. I'm thinking about adding gems in fishing holes. What do you think about?

Gems in fishing holes sounds maybe too good unless you restrict it to low level gems (like chips or shards at the highest).
EDIT: Thinking about it more, fishing up low level gems seems like a good idea, with appropriate chances. Or you could restrict it to hostile fishing only and guarantee one gem per fishing hole. A bad sideaffect is it will cut into your probability for fish that you want. Another idea would be to guarantee gems from champion mobs - they hardly give any useful loot so that would be a nice motivator for killing them (aside from the fame).

Originally posted by IL_Giudice:

-many monsters have their run speed increased (some monsters actually don't run, but walk).

That sounds like a good way to balance the advantage range class builds have in vanilla. Just be careful of increasing "Fast" mobs which are already really fast.

I'll post more if I get more time! I want to think more about your previous post. (Done) I love giving feedback... I designed a mod for Warcraft III a couple years ago so I know how good feedback is.

Awesome, thank you for feedback!

Originally posted by Svenski:

From playing LurkerBalance, I must say +400% provided for some epic battles! Although it was sometimes a little too much before we had good weapons.

I usually play in Normal and i found that +100% works great for me. But maybe i can increase values for other difficulties like Veteran +200% and Elite +400%.

Originally posted by Svenski:

How will you modify the damage to bosses? Be careful because if it is modified before applying armor that could make high-armor bosses really hard. I would suggest a health increase rather than player damage reduction. Much cleaner.

The problem is that there aren't any graph that change directly boss' health. I guess they use the same champion's graph. So if i put +100% on champion i guess also boss will benefit.
I have just modified a graph called "PLAYERVSMONSTERDAMAGE_BOSS", lowering values by a little 20%. I'm not really sure how this is calculated. If that could be a serious problem for armor calculation i can delete changes. And just increase champion's health.

Originally posted by Svenski:

After playing a lot of LurkerBalance, the +200% (-ish) on normal monsters seems perfect to me for Elite, even though it may be too much for some class builds and solo play (especially early on). You just need to optimize your gear, skills, and stats. More HP leaves some room for progression as well. (Start on Veteran, move to Elite when you have the right equipment)
In my opinion this is a key factor to the difficulty, replayability, and level of fun. Too much health can be boring because fights will last too long and even with challenging mechanics will get repetative. Too little health and enemies will die so fast you won't have to worry about mechanics and you can build like a glass cannon - which spoils the fun and the challenge.

I don't really want to drastically increase health for normals. I want to keep them trash as they are. I prefer to tweak some of them, to make a little more tough or fast. For example the floating "fungal spore" in act 3 actually walks at a very slow speed. I have tweaked them increasing their run speed to a value similar to other monster, to keep balance.

Originally posted by Svenski:

Details on Damage Balance

My general take on this game is that the damage and armor mechanics are overly complex. It is hard to analyze what is going on and what the best way to optimize damage really is. Generally, for a player to mitigate damage you have too many options: Block, Dodge, Armor, Regeneration, +HP, and %Damage reduction. I wish it was simpler, like Warcraft III, where Armor is used to compute a %Damage reduction, rather than using Armor as 1 to 1 damage reduction and stacking % reduction stats on top of that, not to mention having 5 different armor and damage types active all at once. The way Torchlight does this makes for awfully challenging damage balance. Mobs with fast attack speed dealing lower damage would rarely cause a threat, and mobs that strike slow and hard would tend to 1-shot you. LurkerBalance helps a lot by reducing monster damage by 15%, since vanilla elite damage seems way too high, but we were still getting 1-shot by some heavy hitting monsters (especially if getting hit by more than 1) and Grand Regent Eldrayn (final boss of Act 1) was nearly impossible as melee even with a ton of good gear (his smash attach was always a 1-shot and very hard to avoid). Not sure if you can really fix this problem.
To balance player damage to monsters is a little easier because it's not quite as important how fast monsters die, as it is how fast your player dies.

About Grand regent, maybe i can try do reduce magnitude of his "regent big hit" skill, if is the one that one-shot you.

When Torchfun complete will be released you can try it and see if HP and damage changes will fit your tastes.
Otherwise you can still use lurker balance, but remember to put it before torchfun in load order.

Originally posted by Svenski:

Gems in fishing holes sounds maybe too good unless you restrict it to low level gems (like chips or shards at the highest).
EDIT: Thinking about it more, fishing up low level gems seems like a good idea, with appropriate chances. Or you could restrict it to hostile fishing only and guarantee one gem per fishing hole. A bad sideaffect is it will cut into your probability for fish that you want. Another idea would be to guarantee gems from champion mobs - they hardly give any useful loot so that would be a nice motivator for killing them (aside from the fame).

You have got a similar idea to what i have already implemented. I think one of the biggest feature of torchfun will be the rewards coming from drops.
Now for example normal monsters drop gem framgents which can be used to have a random simple gem, or they drop armor and weapon scrap which can be used to craft a random rare armor or weapon, they drop also resist potion that can be combined to have a resist all potion!
Champions and bosses will have their special drop too, like emblems which can be used to craft random unique or legendaries, or enchanting runes that can be used to give a set propriety to items, or again scroll of socketing which can be used to add a socket to items.
Everything will be balanced because i don't want a too much easy game.
About fishing i think it needs a little incentive, maybe i can add a low chance for gems, potions, spell and maybe a new specific unique items.

I'm testing now this solution for normal:

-Normal life increased by 50%
-Normal damage decreased by 50%

-Champion life increased by 150%
-Champion damage decreased by 25%

-Player damage done to boss reduced by 20%

Also with few tweaks on individual monsters' stats.
I have also verified that for armor there are separate graphs, so the reduced damage to boss should work fine ;).