[Vanquisher] Treasure Hunter for beginners

The guide provides backbone template for a ranged vanquisher build, as well as general advices on farming. Intended for beginners.

Written with Very Hard difficulty in mind.

Intro

I was kinda upset when I haven't found any guides on character builds. I understand that this game is old and there were no steam guides in it's prime time, but still - people often come way back to this game after playing Torchlight 2, myself included. So I thought - why don't write a guide for those people?

This guide doesn't care well enough about spoilering content, be wary.

This guide is intended for Very Hard. On lower difficulties some of the advices and milestones will be irrelevant.
The build will work on Very Hard Hardcore (VHHC), but I seriously disadvice you from starting on this difficulty if you never completed this game on at least Hard.
This guide is also intended for beginners - veterans of this game probably have nothing interesting to see here.

Stat Distribution

Levels 01 - 10: 4 DEX, 1 DEF
Levels 11 - 20: 2 DEX, 3 DEF
Levels 21 - 30: 2 DEX, 3 DEF
Levels 31 - 40: 4 DEX, 1 DEF
Levels 41 - 50: 4 DEX, 1 DEF

Every point of DEX gives you +1% ranged damage bonus;
Every point of DEF gives you +1% armor & resistances;

First I prioritize DEX, to get some initial damage bonus and to satisfy DEX requirements of most weapons. Then I somewhat invest in DEF to satisfy DEF requirements of most armors - by level 30 I already invested a total of 70 in DEF, which is enough for most of armor pieces in the game (72 DEF is the biggest I've seen so far). Then I pump DEX for damage.

On Defense. Some say it's useless, some say it's necessary on hardcore and often advice a 1 DEX, 4 DEF stat distribution, or even all 5 in DEF at some point. I think that truth is in-between. Armor and resistances work like that: if you have 100 electrical resistance, and enemy does 200 electrical damage to you, then damage is reduced by 50-100 points. What if you receive a Dark Zealot's Red Lightning of Doom, dealing 5k damage and you have around 500 electrical resistance (which is quite high)? Those 5k are reduced to 4.5k at best, and 4.75k at worst. Not quite amazing - this basically makes armor some kind of additional HP pool when dealing with one-shots, and plain +HP affixes are typically come in bigger chunks, so you need over 300 DEF for them to at least be even. That's why I always prioritize HP-gear over resist-gear. BUT! Aside from one-shots there are your plain Armor, which is basically free, since items inherently possess it, and actually most monsters do physical damage - a pack of archers can be just as dangerous as infamous Dark Zealot. So, DEF is not about surviving one particular one-shot attack, it's about not being killed by random roaming goblin who managed to get close.

Some people even recommend getting some STR to satisfy gear requirements. I don't share that idea. Unlike DEF, STR is completely useless for a ranged character. Some items have over 50 STR requirements - I don't like the idea of throwing 10 levels worth of points into STR for an abstract piece of gear that may never come.

Passives

Ranged Weapons Expertise - 10/10.
A very important passive, since it will cut some slack on ranged weapon level requirements, as well as provide you with an equivalent of 4 points in dexterity per level of passive. It's not that good in a long run, but early in the game it's a game breaker.

Critical Strikes - 10/10.
Best passive skill in the game. Max it before anything else.



Adventurer - 10/10.
Another really important passive, even if it doesn't looks like one. Best potion in the game only restores you 2000 HP over 4 seconds, while you're expected to have at least 4k hp just over level 40. Around level 30 is high time you started investing in it.

Barter - 10/10.
Economics, bro.

Jokes aside, this one is questionable. Here's why:

At the very least, the part about reduced enchanting cost is a lie, which is, considering that enchanting easily eats up to 100% of your savings and asks for seconds, a real slap in the face. On the other hand, past certain point vendor enchanting becomes suboptimal (see Enchanting Tips). So this skill:

• gives you discount on blacksmith's and Triya's wares (which isn't that important);
  
• gives you discount on gambling (which is probably the best use of this passive later in the game);
  
• improves your selling price (which is important mid-game, but becomes obsolete later, because amount of gold drop scales better than item prices);

Bottomline, pick it and max it. Early, but certainly not top priority. Not because it's good, but because there's hardly anything better at one point.

Treasure Hunter - 10/10.
Our build's signature skill, sort of. The tooltip says it also improves potency of enchantments, but I won't bet a dime on it. When it comes to torchlight, you're better not taking their tooltips seriously.

The magic find part is questionable. If the system works the same way as in Torchlight 2 (chances are pretty high), then 25% increased magic find is quite good in theory but doesn't works well when it actually matters. Let's just say the game there suddenly gives you 50-600% bonus magic find when you open a chest, to augment quality of drop depending on a chest. 25% on top of that bonus would have been abysmal.
I know some people swear by magic find, but again - some people are just naturally lucky.

The gold find part is more interesting, personally I don't mind getting 25% more gold if I can't invest skill points into something more useful.

Defensive Spell Mastery - 1+/10.
One point as available, and others some time later, if ever. The reason for this one point is that it increases duration of Haste spell from 5 to 9 seconds. Next levels will increase duration only by 2 seconds.

Armor Expertise - 5+/10.
Mostly for the same reason as Ranged Weapon Expertise. Blacksmith sells items up to 7 levels ahead of your level, so to equip good items you got from him ASAP you invest in this passive. 5 points is enough, 7 points is sweet, more is overkill. Around 15 lvl is high time you think about getting it.

Charm Spell Mastery - 10/10.
If you decide to go necro (you should). I'd say going necro is better than going traps, because necro summons work as distraction, while traps only provide you with additional damage, and you shouldn't have issues with damage.

Pet Mastery - 10/10.
Same - pick it if you decide to go necro.

Arcane Archery

Ricochet. Vanquisher's starting skill. Typically one would pick either this or Explosive Shot as a main damaging skill. Personally, I like Ricochet more. It pierces enemies, it scales better than Explosive Shot (196% weapon DPS vs 164% weapon DPS), it's somewhat more quick, available early and consumes less mana. It's very useful in long corridors and chokepoints, and these are quite common in torchlight. If projectile Ricochets it does full damage, so, combined with piercing power, you can shoot a monster that is against a wall and reflected projectile will score a second hit - I often use this trick to kill slow enemies with big hitbox. This skill works well both against lots of monsters, champions and bosses. The only downside I can think of is that it's less foolproof than Explosive Shot.

Bottom line: if you decide to go for Explosive Shot - leave at 1/10, otherwise max. Don't rush to max it, prioritize passives like Ranged Weapon Mastery and Critical Hits. My personal rule of thumb is if I can cast this skill 12 times with my current mana pool, then I would add another point.

Frost Pilum. This is like a nerfed version of Ricochet - it also pierces enemies. It's worse than Ricochet in almost all aspects - does less damage, costs more mana, doesn't bounce off walls. It's freezing effect is interesting, but doesn't counts as crowd control in my book. Of things to note is that Frost Pilum converts your weapon damage to ice, even though it's not mentioned in the tooltip.

Bottom line: 0/10.

Seeking Shot tops the damage chart of vanquisher skills. The only problem is that, unlike Ricochet and Exploding Shot, and even underrated Frost Pilum, Seeking Shot is just a mid-range heat-seeking single-target DPS machine with additional weak enemies around just being in the way of realizing it's true potential as one. As of now I'm not sure I like this skill. It's not that powerful on per-cast basis compared to Ricochet when maxed out (3x72% = 216% vs 196% weapon DPS), which is, coupled with unability to snipe targets at distance, makes Seeking Shot a rather "meh" skill for me.

Bottom line: 0/10.

Explosive Shot. Usually presented as the main and only rival of Ricochet, sometimes even as a superior to it. Compared to Ricochet, it has greatly larger AOE, but does not pierce, which makes it impossible to snipe enemies if some weaklings are in-between. The nature of this skill also makes it worse in long corridors but infinitely better in a more open areas, especially in cases where you're overwhelmed by mob. With this skill you can often don't care if you miss your target (which is not the case for Ricochet), because a wall or some random object will detonate the projectile as well, causing massive damage in the area. Another interesting thing is that even if you don't hit anything, the missile will expire at max distance, which also will cause it to detonate.
This skill actually converts damage type to fire, even though tooltip fails to inform you about that.

Bottom line: if you prefer it over Ricochet, then 10/10, otherwise 0/10 (or wait up till 40-ish levels for some spare points to max both).

Arrow Hail. One point ASAP for any build, and others some time later, if ever. The key feature of this skill is that it doesn't require a passable line of sight, therefore could be used to damage enemies on ledgers, behind walls, etc. Yet again, tooltip fails to inform you that this skill does 4 waves of damage in 4 seconds, as well as has 50% DEX scaling (meaning every point of dexterity increases damage by 0,5%). You can cast multiple instances of this skill, stacking them over area to increase damage. The only downside of this skill is low damage - this game favors %weapon DPS skills over plain damage ones. Arrow Hail works incredibly well with crowd control skills, especially with Web.

Bottom line: 1+/10.

Other Skills

Wind of Justice - 1/10.
By the time I finished the main quest I had 5 deaths on my character. If I'd gotten this spell ASAP it shoud've been 3 deaths. Generally, as I advance further in level I find this one more and more useful. It's often faster to cast this one instead of kiting enemies.

Spells

Identify. A really great spell for early game, because it allows you to identify 100% of items you get (and you should - an identified "green" item will net you 4 times more gold when sold in the shop!), as well as allows you to sell identify scrolls you find without second thought. Our fund-raiser. Check Triya's shop for it.
This is technically a spell of Charm school of magic, but no benefits from Charm Spell Mastery.

Web is a best crowd control spell you can get, it's rather fast and will keep enemies still for the whole 3 seconds, providing time frame for you to set up multiple Arrow Hails, a Devouring Trap, cast Haste and maybe something else? If you see this spell in the shop - buy it immediately, it's rather rare.
This spell technically belongs to Defensive school of magic, but it doesn't have levels, so levelling Defensive Spell Mastery doesn't benefit it.

Haste is another great spell, especially for shrine runs (see Enchanting Tips). It belongs to Defensive school of magic, and benefits from associated mastery. Moreover, Defensive Spell Mastery will improve both duration and %movespeed effect of Haste, making levelling this mastery for this single spell alone quite worth it.

Town Portal is entirely optional, a perfect placeholder until you find more suitable spells later in the game.



Silence. Oh, I have a lot to say about this spell, mainly in a negative light. I know guides are supposed to ignore bad experience, providing only best practices, but this one is way too much of a pitfall. In theory, it's a very good spell. Range 11m at tier VI (it's huge - rifle starts autoattacking from range 9m and bow from range 7m), is of Defensive school of magic (which you take for Haste anyway), cooldown allows to keep enemies shut 100% of the time with Defensive Spell Mastery as low as level 5. But it's not instant (there is a cast speed + slight delay before actual activation) and it won't interrupt spells that enemies already began to cast - this, and the fact that enemy spells often one- or two-shot you leads to conclusion that Silence doesn't work at the times you want it the most. Also some things that look like a spell are not actually spells - most casters actually have spell-like attacks. So, this spell is mostly useful against casters that revive fallen allies. Does it worth a spell slot? Well, dunno. Certainly not for me.

Summon Archers - one of the necromancy major three, summons a pack of 3-8 archers at once. Extremely squishy - they die from a glance of their enemy, but cooldown is rather low, that's why you can even use them as a tactical meatshield when some projectiles are expected to fly at you. Damage is, well, lower than I'd wanted, but still enough for them to kill some non-champion enemies on their own (actually, damage from 8 of them can easily surpass your weapon auto-attack damage if you're not absurdly ahead of level in that).
It's a Charm school of magic and a minion spell, therefore Pet Mastery and Charm Spell Mastery benefit nicely.

Summon Zombies - second of the necromancy major three, summons three zombies. Not spammable like archers, but could somewhat move. Designed as tanks, but not that great as ones - their HP will hardly surpass half of your pet's HP pool at any given time. Still, they can take more beating than others. And for pets that are supposed to be tanks they do suprisingly good damage to enemies that don't stomach poison damage well.
It's a Charm school of magic and a minion spell, therefore Pet Mastery and Charm Spell Mastery benefit nicely.

Summon Skeleton - third spell of the necromancy major three, summons up to five skeletal warriors. Longest duration, lowest cooldown, but you only summon one at a time, which is probably it's first disadvantage. Good mix of damage, survivability (surprisingly, they are more tough than zombies) and recast potential, but doesn't work that well as distraction or meatshield, since you can't throw then in a fight - they always spawn at your position and follow you around - making them very close to pet with agressive setting in their behaviour. This makes them a perfect assault squad though - they will eagerly go behind the corners and engage enemies, carving a way for you through troublesome landscape.

Summon Blood Skeleton. Rare spell, personally I haven't got one, yet. Judging by stats in the editor, it's the same Summon Skeleton VI, give or take - it's not leaps and bounds ahead stronger. It has the same life leeching ability as Zombie. Can 100% replace Summon Skeleton - not Zombies, mind you - you can't launch skeletons ahead in mob to start a fight. You also can employ both skeletons and blood skeletons, but I'd rather not - this is not a pure summoner build, one want to spend most of the time shooting, not renewing your army.

So, my setup for early game would be something like that:




And once I had spare points for Pet + Charm masteries it becomes like that:

Pet

I won't go in detail about different pets, if you want more info - check that[forums.runicgames.com] and that[forums.runicgames.com].

Generally, the most popular pet transformation seems to be Burrower and Mimic, probably with Goblinhound being a more easy to get alternative. Pet spells gain benefits of your Offensive/Defensive/Charm Spell Masteries, but the spells themselve have different (generally seriously greater) cooldowns when they are equipped on a pet. The exceptions are (bugged?) Thorned Strider and Tattered Lurker pets - they have the same cooldowns on spells as if they were equipped on a player; so, despite their bad stats, those are quite interesting.

A spell choice for a pet mostly considers not only the spell itself, but how good pet handles it. For example, a Pet will use Silence as soon as there's some enemy in his range, even if it's a silly ratman that doesn't have spells. Another example is Web - pet uses it only once when fight starts, even if cooldown has already expired he won't care to throw another one. Most of the time people load up their pet with Heal All and Summon Skeletons. I don't think that it's particularly good choice, it's just pet handles those spells rather well - he will spam Heal All and he will prepaire his own army of skelles (although, I'm almost certain Pet Mastery won't work on summons that belong to a pet).

I myself don't have a static pet load up yet, trying different things.

General Tips

1. Check blacksmith often. Blacksmith is your number one gear provider. Don't expect good pieces to come at you as monster drops.
   Blacksmith's stock can be farmed, but the exact conditions of stock reset is not known (to me). It will be rerolled most of the time you go through loading screen (either by going to other location or exiting to title screen), but at some point it becomes stuck, sometimes for quite a long time.
   
2. If you're thinking about replacing item with less +HP, consider it twice. HP is important.
   
3. Look for this affixes on gear:
   
   • Of the Mammoth - biggest chunk of +HP
     
   • Of the Elephant - second biggest chunk of +HP
     
   • Vital - minor HP boost
     
   • anything else with +HP
4. Do not enchant gear with valueable affixes if you don't have an adequate replacement just in case enchanting fails. Don't think it won't fail you when chances are as low as 4-6% - it will.

Enchanting

When it comes to enchanting there are two major twists that one should be aware of:

1. There is vendor enchanting and shrine enchanting. Vendor enchanting is expensive, but always readily available at shop. Shrine enchanting is free, has twice as low chance of disenchant and, what's important, is based off your character level, unlike vendor enchanting, which is based off level of an item. Item level is often ahead of your character level during the first 40 levels, but then gear more or less stop growing in level, so past character level 50 shrine enchanting is more powerful (and safe, and cheap).
   
2. Weapons with fast attack speed somehow have more potential for heavy enchanting, probably because enchanting power doesn't scales that much (if even does) off the speed of your weapon. So heavily enchanted quick weapon would end up with more DPS than heavily enchanted slow weapon. That's not all of it - the game has five speed grades - slowest, slow, average, fast and fastest. I don't know if it's a bug or not, but "fast" grade is really narrow (I haven't seen an abundance of fast weapons) - and "fastest" grade is really broad. Weapons with speed 50 and speed 80 (editor values) both considered "fastest", while the actual difference is pretty huge - 2.7 attacks per second vs 1.7 attacks per second. On a side note - speed 90 is already considered "average". Weapons with speed 50-60 is like a class of their own, ultra-fastest, and therefore highly prized for enchanting. Among the rifles the absolute (ultra-)fastest ones are Organ Gun and Ribauldequin with speed 50. Volley Gun has speed 60, which is decent too. If you prefer bows for aestetical reasons - the absolute fastest one is Jagshard Bow, speed 50. Among non-unique bows the fastest one is Mounted bow, speed 60.

Because of the unique-ness of Enchantment Shrines (see above) they are farmed. I call this process a shrine run. This is possible, because shrines in the main quest sequence levels (i.e. not maps and hatch portals) are randomized once, and if enchantment shrine generated and level resets, the shrine resets with it, allowing you to use it again. Typically a level will reset if you visit X more levels (the game just remembers X levels you visited, and if you visit one more, it will replace the one you hadn't visited the most). I don't know the exact X, but it's not that big - around 5, I think.

Your goal is to figure out a loop - a shortest sequence of jumps between portals and shortcuts that'll allow you to constantly farm shrines. Ideal case is when shrines generated in the previous/next levels from a portal (shrines in-between will cause longer travel time). If there are two levels in a row that got shrine - the better.

What if you wasn't lucky with shrines? Well, consider founding a lineage of treasure hunters :)

Walkthrough and Milestones

Mines

Proceed into dungeon, shouldn't be too hard. Level your Ranged Weapon Mastery. Manage to get some gold and buy yourself a decent weapon before the boss. With ~100 DPS weapon you should kill him fairly fast. ~150 DPS will annihilate him.

Necropolis

Of new dangerous beasties are spectres - they can delay-teleport to your location. That's easily avoided, but don't even try to face-tank them. They actually hit like a truck.
This is probably a good time you became ahead of monsters level-wise and farmed maps or Hatch quest. You'll hit level 5 around that time, focus on upgrading Critical Strikes and Ranged Weapon Mastery. Proceed to upgrade your weapon. Around 250 DPS weapon for boss should be fine. Bonus points if you maxed both aforementioned passives by the end.

Esteria

Nothing particular to say about this level - this one is fairly easy for a vanquisher. A lot of web-spitting spiders here, so if you already grabbed Haste - kudos to you. If you got a free spell slot you can manage to grab Silence - it will help with shamans.
No boss, just some boss-wannabe champion mob at the end.

Primal Caverns

This is a breaking point when you can't get away with half-decent HP pool. Upgrade your gear - level up, grab Armor Expertise, shopfarm yourself a decent gear. If you haven't improved your weapon since Necropolis then fix this too. You need more than 450 DPS (bonus points if over 550 DSP!) and somewhat around 2000 HP.
Of monsters to be wary - Ember Mycons, they are mostly harmless when you keep them at bay, but their poison breath is deadly at melee range. Also melee variant of orange tutaras is somewhat annoying because of charge, but if you actually catch up with my milestones they won't be dangerous.
Protip: this is a very beatiful location with great soundtrack, don't miss it <3
Boss shouldn't be hard, kill his aide first while being constantly on the move.

Lava-sunken Prison

This is a single most unfriendly location to a ranged Vanquisher. A lot of corners, ladders, ledgers, curved bridges - all of that stuff makes lining monsters for your Ricochet into quite a creative task. Ideally, you should've already hit level 25 and grabbed Arrow Hail, which helps immensely in that terrible landscape.
Dangerous beastiary: Goblin Archers, their dynamite shot is deadly, walk away once they land it. Champion Goblin Stabbers also dangerous because they got Haste. Don't even try to tank them - kite to your best. There are also Goblinhounds, can be deadly, but if you keep up with my milestones then they are probably the least of your worries.
The boss is probably the first one that requires both good damage and good survivability. I beaten him with around 550 DPS weapon, and I have to concede that it felt a little low. More than 650 DPS is preferred. Bonus points if you upgraded your HP up to 3k.

Dwarf Fortress

Wide-open areas, big amounts of trash mobs cornering you and other fun stuff. Actually, scratch that. It's a rather easy one. Just in case pick Wind of Justice. Out of monsters to watch out for are Crawlers - their laser attack hurts, but it shouldn't be even close to one-shotting you, unless you engage a whole pack of them. Also be wary of casters that revive allies - they spam spells non-stop at you, those can hurt - try not to face-tank them if possible.
Boss is...ugh, personally I haven't seen anything even mildly dangerous from her. Kill her escort and then her.
If you manage to upgrade to ~800 DPS and over 4k hp while working on this level set - great job.

Black Palace

The most infamous location in Torchlight, lots of deadly stuff. If you can manage upgrade to 1000 DPS and 5k HP before coming here - well done, you're more or less safe. Dangerous beastiary...well, I can't even say who's NOT dangerous here. Dragonkin are probably the easiest to deal with - they are slow and not very tough. The most dangerous mob here is ofcourse the infamous Dark Zealot - a low hp caster that one-shots glass cannon characters with red lightning. With 5k HP you're safe when dealing with one, but if you manage to meet 3-4 of them - beware.
Boss felt like a joke. He casts a nasty shield that makes him very tough, but otherwise I haven't seen him do anything even remotely dangerous to me. Just keep shooting until he's done.
Before proceeding to next level finish Vasman's, Trill's and Hatch's quest lines.

Lair

Final boss location. The fight itself reminds of Lava Prison boss - tough melee boss, minions that heal him when they expire - either run around killing minions or just cut through it. I've easily won with 1200 DPS and 5.5k HP, but I think it was a bit slow and 1400 DPS would've been optimal.

After the End

Quite a few new NPC's appeared. Consider retiring your character - an NPC offering this service is standing next to Shared Stash. If you decide to keep playing - meet Shadow Vault - a new infinite dungeon, and a couple of new quest givers for it - a cutie Valeria and an eerie Gar are standing just outside.

Conclusion & Credits

That's all, the guide is more or less complete. It may receive minor updates as I become more proficient with the game.

Big thanks to:

• Runic, for the awesome game
  
• dreamrider and zekrom @ runic forum for awesome tips they posted

[Mokum]

Thank you for this guide
its exactly what im looking for

[Val]

@FurudoErika it's been almost 8 years since I posted this so I don't remember much detail.
My best bet is your gear is of lower level somehow. IIRC the loot isn't raining down in this game, so I had to do quite a bit of grinding to keep my gear up to my level.

[FurudoErika]

Thanks for the guide. The only question I have is how do you manage to get so much HP. I've reached the Lair with just 2.8k hp, and that's with HP rolls on all slots, most 100+, some higher...

[RottenPumpkin]

Thank you

[Stubenmuckel]

hello and thank you for this guide!

[Истраживач]

FUL BATO

[Grey]

Just now playing this game, and while some parts don't make sense to me (enchanting mostly), I'm glad it's here to reference. Thanks for the work!

[February]

Interesting, because I'm finding myself having a 130 DPS (50-60 Physical DPS for example) weapon and buying a 290 DPS (45-55 Physical DPS for example) weapon that turns out has a total overall lower character sheet DPS, which is extremely confusing and as confusing as I remember it the first time I've played it, haha.

[Val]

@February I used weapon DPS to compare things and it worked alright for me. Since your main skill is basically a replacement for your autoattack it should be more or less adequate.

[February]

Do you remember if Weapon DPS as a stat was more important to the actual DPS visible in your character sheet or was Weapon Damage more important (e.g. Physical or Electrical), which seems to always be lower than a weapon's displayed total DPS?