Disenchantment

[Tadao Kou]

So I bought Torchlight and I really quite enjoyed it so far. I played on normal first and finished Ordrak in level 35. I retirered my character and moved on to a new one. Before that I put all of my equipment and some Alchemist equipment in the shared chest. I than started the new run as an Alchemist and it was...way less fun at the start. Could be because I like Alchemist a lot less than the female. Could also be because I played on hard.
Well, after getting used to Alchemist and getting a few good skills and specially reaching those Lv. 20 skills, it was really fun. Than I looked into my shared chest and saw that I put a staff in there with 730 general attack power. In comparison: my wand by that point was 320 (I was pretty unlucky with good weapon drops in that run).
Now I thought to myself "Okay, this is a good staff but I can make it even better at least once!"
So I walked to the enchantment-guy and tried to enchant it. It was 100% certainly my first try to enchant this weapon. 2% chance of disenchantment.
Well, you can imagine what happened next. The weapon got disenchanted dropping its general attack power down to 420 (which is worse than my wand because my wand is 1 handed).
I know people usually defend stuff like this but...in my opinion it is an extremly bad design choice to punish the player so hard for wanting to enchant. Removing 2 or 3 upgrades would be fine but all of it?
With bad luck and bad planing (because someone is new) this can destroy a whole character instandly.
I know that 2% is in actuality just a 2% chance of disenchantment. But why did it still happen to me? Now I am stuck again with my basic boring weak 1-hand-wand + shield combo...
It honestly frustrates me so much that I don't even know if I can continue to have fun anymore. 1 thing is certain: I will never upgrade any weapon in Torchlight 1 again.
This system is just so flawed and bad, it is insane...which is sad to say because I really love this game except for this 1 mechanic. It is just so unnecessary punishing.
And the funniest part about disenchantments: You still lose the money.
The guy is basically like "Hey, sorry I completly broke your weapon, but you have to pay me anyway!"

Now the point why I am writing this is:
Is this fixed in Torchlight 2? Because if not, I am not sure if I even want to touch Torchlight 2.

[HiFive]

I don't think there is any disenchanting at all in TL2. Instead, you will sometimes get really minor enchants, like 5 mana, or 20 health.

Yes, the enchant system in TL1 is really frustrating. I seldom ever try enchanting an item more than 2 or 3 times. Even then, I worry. I have also noticed that if the enchanted item is very OP for the character that is enchanting it, there is a tendency for the item to get disenchanted. If the character is playing in Hard mode, I can imagine the game using that as a factor, as well.

I prefer not to use the town enchanter in TL1. I use the enchanting pots that sometimes show up in dungeons, because the odds are better at those. The town enchanter in TL2 is also the worst enchanter on that game.

Also, TL2 is exponentially better than TL1. You really should try playing that game. It's my all-time favorite game, and when you are done with the vanilla game, there are tons of good mods to try. For your first run, I recommend playing on either Normal mode or Veteran. Casual mode is really very easy and tends to bore people. Elite mode is tedious for most people. Enemies can have a really high crit against you, so be aware of that if you want to play Elite.

[Tadao Kou]

Funny enough, I was really hyped for Torchlight 2. It was the reason why I even played Torchlight 1. :D In preperation for Torchlight 2.
Funny thing about this is: I really enjoyed Torchlight 1 more than I thought I would. I think the foundation is great and I always thought to myself "Man, Torchlight 2 must be so good if it builds on what Torchlight 1 does!"
Seems like I'm right about that. :x

It's really good to know that Torchlight 2 doesn't have this frustrating enchantment system. Usually I don't bother enchanting equipment more than once in Torchlight 1 because I always think to myself "Man, 2%? That's basically almost 0%!"
What I don't understand is....if the game factors in things like hard mode or how good a weapon already is, than why doesn't it tell you that? :/
Just feels kind of insulting to read "2% disenchantment chance" and still have your weapon break on the first try...

Well, anyway. Thanks for the answer! My hype for Torchlight 2 is restored now.

[HiFive]

I, too, find it frustrating that the game misleads us about how the 2% works. It's just my personal observation from years of playing the game that I've noticed the extra factors that I mentioned. I think the algorithm they used is fancier than just a straight 2%. I think that same algorithm is also used on TL2 for certain things, but I'm not a programmer or a modder, and I think the code for that is probably hidden from the modders, so I can't say for sure. Again, it's just personal observations.

[Tadao Kou]

I observed similar things, but...I always thought it was just dumb luck. ^^'

[HiFive]

In similar fashion, I suspect the game notices when you are low on a certain elemental protection. It will give you more enemies with that particular type of offensive capability. I've learned to keep all of my elemental protections fairly even.

[Tadao Kou]

Originally posted by HiFive:

In similar fashion, I suspect the game notices when you are low on a certain elemental protection. It will give you more enemies with that particular type of offensive capability. I've learned to keep all of my elemental protections fairly even.

Oh I'm doing that anyway because from what I witnessed they just throw basically everything at you on the higher difficultys. It is quite enjoyable but getting killed in seconds can be quite real if your armor is not balanced out. ^^'

[Tadao Kou]

Just a minor thing:
You didn't mention Torchlight 3. It that one hated by the community or something like that?
Because usually I only see 1 & 2 mentioned but never 3.

[HiFive]

Originally posted by Tadao Kou:

Just a minor thing:
You didn't mention Torchlight 3. It that one hated by the community or something like that?
Because usually I only see 1 & 2 mentioned but never 3.

Torchlight 3 is much different than TL1 and TL2, and yes, not considered a true sequel for the series. The original Runic team that created TL1 and TL2 lost some key members after TL2. Then the franchise was purchased by another company. The remaining team created Hob, which was a completely different game and a flop. Then that team was disbanded by the parent company.

One of the original people at the helm of the Runic team is the one who formed a team to create TL3. Unfortunately, it was originally designed to be a mobile online game. They finally got the idea sold to a large company so they could have the funds to develop the game further. Then the game evolved away from mobile gaming into a regular MMO. They lost the parent company, and finally listed the game on Steam instead.

TL3 is okay as a standalone game. It's not pure junk - just not at all what everyone was hoping for. I enjoyed playing the Engineer in beta, with a train skill, but I'm surprised that a lot of people didn't seem to like that skill.

Anyway, the thing I disliked about the game the most is one of its main features: You have to change gear to successfully traverse different areas of the game. For example, you need high poison-resistant gear to enter the poison realm. Then to go to another realm, you need to change to gear with high magic resistance. There is different gear for yet another area, and so forth.

People who are new to a game always collect a lot of stuff, because they don't know yet what is best to keep or not. TL3 gives you armor racks to store the different gear and a box or two to store more, but you always feel like there isn't enough storage space. This is the case on almost any RPG, though. Having different sets of gears just adds some anxiety to the whole thing.

On the plus side, if you like maintaining a spacious fort and decorating it to your liking, you get to do that. You can also visit other people's forts and see how they've decorated theirs. The game randomly rotates other people's forts into your path when you are travelling from one area to the next. I happened to stumble into the primary developer's fort when I was on the game. It really looked good. I feel I did a little bit of nice stuff on mine as well.

Nevertheless, all of this is what I experienced in the Beta version. I don't know how much has changed since then, other than the adverts they sent out about adding more classes and more pets. The game is not in my budget these days. I generally stick to older games that are on huge discount during a sale. If I spend more than a few dollars I do a lot of research to see if I think it's going to be a really, really good game.

[Tadao Kou]

That's a pretty interesting development story.
The spacious fort thing sounds really fun. But other than that these gear problems sound like the opposite thing of what I like about Torchlight 1.
What I mean by that is: I like it in Torchlight 1 that your gear is not really that important. I mean, obviously it is, but I really enjoy that it almost always is clear if new gear is better for your class or not.
Also you have the pet which can be easily sent away to sell all of your useless stuff.

I think it's really great design in Torchlight 1. It fixed almost all of the problems I usually have with loot games.

About only buying games on sale: I actually am the same in gerards to that.
I bought Torchlight 1 for 3€ and Torchlight 2 for 5€.
Was a really good deal. :D 3€ for easily 100+ hours of playtime!

[HiFive]

Yes, the deals on some of these older games are really great. The Van Helsing series also has really good deals when it goes on sale. Sacred Gold and Sacred 2 Gold are also good, as well as Two Worlds: Epic Edition. I'm very thankful for the Steam sales.