A Pretty Basic Guide in Playing Torchlight

It's what the title says. It will cover the basics, controls, menus, characters, items, and other things to look out for while playing. Maybe after I beat the game a couple of times in various classes and difficulties will I provide a more in-depth guide to this game. Some knowledge of which I will put here can be found on the internet. This guide is just a means to familiarize yourself with the game.
I hope you guys enjoy this guide :P

WARNING: Some sarcasm may be encounterd. If this happens, please understand and proceed with caution.

About Torchlight

Torchlight is a single player RPG game,

If you played Diablo 1 or 2, you'll notice some similarities. That's because it was developed with the co-designers of Diablo 1 and 2, and because its an RPG game. (-_-)

Well I don't want to bore you guys so that's enough for this section :P

*I'll be expanding this once I have something thoughtful to put in.

Starting Torchlight

Open the Steam client then click on the 'Library', Select the Torchlight game and find the button 'Play' and click it.

If you're reading this, you've probably started Torchlight already. Thanks...

The Menu is pretty basic, really. You can figure it out just by looking at it.
So I'll tell you some things you're probably looking for but won't find it in the menu.

• Modifiying Mouse Buttons (e.g. change what the other one does.)
  
• Changing Key Assignments - Just 'Shift' and Number keys mostly throughout the game
  
• More Graphics Tweaks!!! - Nope. It'll run smooth even on older machines.
  
• Mods Menu - There are 'Mods' out there but there is no dedicated menu for them.

There's a lot of great Mods out there that I'm sure you'll like. Mostly improvements on the game. I recommend not getting those when starting so you'll have an idea of what the game needs after you've finished it the first time :D

*Enough of that. I'll be adding a few things later on :)

Before starting a new game, I recommend you to check '√' the 'Show Tips' box in the game settings menu.

*I'll be expanding this section and I might add a few screenshots.

Characters

Start a new game and select one of the 3 classes.
Here's a brief description of what are they and what they do.

♥Destroyer - Its a melee character. If you like smashing things, pick this guy, but if you're planning to go for the 'Very Hard' difficulty on your first play, I wouldn't recommend this.

♥Vanquisher - Its a ranged character with good use of weapons and sort of a cross between the Vanquisher and the Alchemist. Its a pretty balanced character. Don't pick this one for the VH mode on your first play. Seriously.

♥Alchemist - OK, this you CAN pick for your first run-through of the game while at VH mode. This dude has a bunch of flashy skills that you're gonna love.

*When I say something like - "don't pick this for VH" what I mean is, it will be really realy difficult to proceed with that hero especially if you're playing the game just straight on without farming xp and items.

Take your time in playing each level. Revisit them if you must!

*Who cares about the 'Very Hard' mode anyway? - Well, let's just say there are 'special rewards' in playing in VH difficulty :P

There are mods that change/add to this :)

Game and Gameplay Basics

Basic Controls

• You move by left-clicking on the ground.
  
• You attack by left-clicking on a target
  
• The right-click is an assigned skill which you can change.
  
• Your skills can be activated via clicking the numbers on your keyboard assigned to them
  
• You can modify which skill/consumable is assigned to what number by clicking on it and selecting what you want.
  
• Most of your interactions are just you clicking on an object. You'll know if it is clickable when - it glows, it shimers, and the pointer changes icons.

Now that you're starting to play I'll tell you a couple of tips that'll prove useful..
*These are not yet arranged. I'll arrange it, but it still seems a bit random though. I'll add some if I find any more.

• Rather than clicking and clicking on where your character should go you can just hold the left mouse button to the direction where you want your character to go.
  
• Holding the 'Shift' key while clicking on items on the ground will allow your pet to take them...FOR THEMSELVES!!! - just kidding. It's useful when you already maxed out the allowable number of items on your inventory while playing.
  
• 'Shift' clicking also allows your character to attack without moving towards a certain direction.
  
• When you notice some items dropping but don't know where they are, hold the 'alt' key. It also reveals other objects on screen
  
• Don't be too attached to items. As you level up, more better items will become available.
  
• Item Quality(rarity) and illustration are as follows -
  (Purple/Violet) > (Gold/Yellow) > (Blue) > (Green) > (Whte/Gray)
  
• I suggest you keep those purple/violet and gold/yellow items for later use.
  
• If you know how hard it is to keep items you like, just like in Borderlands 1 or 2. Its the same here.
  
• There are two chests in the game that allows you to keep items stashed. One is at the center of town, next to the torchlight statue thing, and one is directly north of it.
  
• The stash in the north part of town is called the 'Shared Stash'. Why? - because you can share items there with your other characters.

♥When finishing some levels, some monsters you fought won't respawn anymore. Its tougher the first time, but revisiting some levels just to farm items and level up won't be a good decision. Throughout the game you'll find 'Map Portals', you can open these almost anywhere and will bring you to a different level and floor, some have number ranges which indicate the difficulty in that area.
The tip is, open them inside dungeons so the state of 'cleared' floors won't be saved and the monsters will respawn.
One more thing about Map Portals is, the enemies are a bit more challenging than normal and most often encountered in greater numbers.

♥If you really want to play on Very Hard, or even turn on Hardcore mode. I'll recommend you play through the whole thing on Easy or Normal difficulty first. From the first playthrough, store some good items you would deem as great or more useful than normal, then store those in your Shared Stash. You know where this is getting to so I'll leave you to that :)

♥Fishing! Why? - because fish, that's 'why?'. If you spot a sort of upwelling and brighter area in the water it is most likely a fishing spot. Click that thing to fish. There's a fishing pond on the south-eastern part of town too.

Most fishy you'll catch are meant for your pet - they change the appearance and skills of your pet for a limited time. You might notice they'll change your pet to monsters you've encountered. Its pretty cool. Some even change your pet permanently...really awesome. Your pet will still have the spells you gave it so don't worry :)

Some fish are consumable by the player. Most will give you timed bonuses and there's only 1, I think, that'll give you a permanent bonus.

The Gold Fish is only for selling :P Keeping them in your inventory will prove useless.

♥Pets (Yay!)
Here's some tips -

• Doesn't matter if you pick a cat or dog during character creation. You can change them to either using a Catfish or Dogfish.
  
• Do not give your pets supportive spells like heal. They'll be using it all the time :(
  
• Only give them offensive spells since they spam those like crazy in fights. (These spells have cooldowns though)
  
• Either set them to Aggressive stance when you need their spamming skills or Passive stance when you want them to not join fights because they will flee :(
  I find them irritating when they're fleeing and you want to make them pick up stuff. I mean, they're immortal so what's the point in them having health and fleeing when you need them! It sucks)
  
• Feed them fish during fights - so cool to watch.
  
• If you're full on inventory, your pet as well, you can send your pet to town to sell the items in its inventory even while you're in the dungeon (as long as your pet isn't fleeing of course)

Transmutting & Enchanting

♥Transmutting
What is it? - its what you should do to old items and some gems you find throughout the game.
Its the best way to clear up some space in your inventory. By the way, selling items won't give you much. Its a...delicate topic.

Where do you transmute? - From your personal stash, just head right. There's a guy on the left side of the Wizard dude with those goblins.

Mechanics - There are four boxes, you fill them with stuff, hit transmute and there you go.
But you can't transmute white/gray items. Green, blue, gold, purple, and some gems are those commonly transmutted.

Here's a little recipe list. You can find more on the internet.

• 3 rings = 1 ring with a random effect that's leveled depending on your character's current level.
  
• 3 necklaces = 1 necklace *same thing as above*.
  
• 4 green items = a random gem
  
• 4 blue items = a random gem with better quality than what you would get with 4 green items.
  
• 4 gold items = a random gem with better quality than *^above*.
  
• 2 gems of the same quality = the same gem of the next quality.

*Gem quality are as follows - Cracked<Dull<Discolored<Normal<Cut<Polished<Star<Flawless<Perfect<*whateverisnext*
*UPDATE: It seems they're giving random gems with either dull or cracked quality no matter if its green or blue items :(

♥MORE GEMS!
It is worth your money buying gems, especially if they have a quality higher than 'Cracked'. You can also buy cracked ones just to pair them with your other cracked gems.

If you're into socketing them right away, DO NOT PUT THEM IN UNIQUE ITEMS! You'll have to break items to get the gems back. You break them from the goblin merchants in town. So if you want to socket them, just put them in enchanted or even some rare items. Remember - you're gonna have to break those eventually.

HOWEVER, it might become an addiction - gem hoarding. I'm collecting gems myself :P

♥If you really want to spend some cash on weapons and armor, I suggest you spend them only on the guy with the dices icon on top of his head. He's located in the east-most part of town, just below the goblins that break your items.

As you check his inventory, you'll notice not any of them has a name and are colored white/grey but each time you buy, you are GUARANTEED at least an ENCHANTED item. I got some unique items here too. It is definitely worth the gamble and most of the items you'll get are leveled, some even have a higher requirement.

YOU'D BE BETTER OFF ENCHANTING ITEMS RATHER THAN COLLECTING GEMS AND SOCKETING THEM!

Enchanting is up next!

♥Enchanting Items!
While exploring around town, you'll notice a wizard who enchants items for a price. While you think it may be worth your money, since you can enchant unique items too. I suggest you don't do it, at least for the mean time until you have quite a lot of money.

Just play the main story, you'll encounter some levels that have a fountain with a gold glowing thing on top, much like the mana and health fountain. That my friend, is your FREE enchant upgrade :D You also might encounter a level that has two of these, which you can revisit!!! But you have to restart Torchlight each time to reset that floor.

KEY BINDINGS!!!

If you're really tired of hitting numbers on your keyboard because its a bit of stretch from the 'Shift' key you should try this!

As I said in the other section, you can't change this in the main menu soooo.....
Navigate to 'C:\Users\*YourUserName*\AppData\Roaming\runic games\torchlight' - it may be different from yours depending on what you did when you installed Windows but, blah blah, here it is anyway.

You are looking for a Text File named 'Settings.txt'. If it is not there you might want to check your visibility settings for hidden files and folders. The same could be said for the directory above, if you can't find it.

CAUTION!
You might mess up the whole text file so before you do something else, make a backup copy of that original file and store it somewhere in that directory in a new folder to make things a little more convenient.

Open the text file with notepad or wordpad or any other text editor and you'll see a list like this -

KEYMAP_1 :49
KEYMAP_2 :50
KEYMAP_3 :51
KEYMAP_4 :52
KEYMAP_5 :53
KEYMAP_6 :54
KEYMAP_7 :55
KEYMAP_8 :56
KEYMAP_9 :57
KEYMAP_0 :48
FKEYMAP_1 :112
FKEYMAP_2 :113
FKEYMAP_3 :114
FKEYMAP_4 :115
FKEYMAP_5 :116
FKEYMAP_6 :117
FKEYMAP_7 :118
FKEYMAP_8 :119
FKEYMAP_9 :120
FKEYMAP_10 :121
FKEYMAP_11 :122
FKEYMAP_12 :123

*AND SO ON

'KEYMAP_1 - 0' is assigned to the number keys on your keyboard. So we can safely say that these are the Skills and Items Key assignments in your game. These are all in Javascript key codes, the numbers I mean.

48-57 is currently the number keys 0-9 on your keyboard. Take note that these are different from your numpad keys. If you want to change it to any other key like alphabet keys, here it is -

Letters A-Z on your keyboard is 65-90. So set it to your heart's desire! Just be careful you might bind a key that is already assigned.
You know what? I'll put some letters here in QWERTY style so you wouldn't be bothered much.

Here are some keys that you'll be hitting most of the time with the fingers on your left hand

q - 81 ♥ Currently assigned to 'KEYMAP_QUESTS'
w - 87 ♥ Currently assigned 'KEYMAP_WEAPONSET'
e - 69
r - 82
t - 84
y - 89

a - 65 ♥ Currently assigned to 'KEYMAP_AUTOMAP'
s - 83 ♥ Currently assigned to 'KEYMAP_SKILLS'
d - 68
f - 70
g - 71
h - 72

z - 90
x - 88
c - 67
v - 86
b - 66
n - 78

*all of these are in lower case since upper case characters have different codes because you have to hit the 'Shift' key.

And here are some Numpad keys

7 - 103
8 - 104
9 - 105

4 - 100
5 - 101
6 - 102

1 - 97
2 - 98
3 - 99

0 - 96
. (Decimal Point) - 110

*I use numpad for the inventory and other menus

Reassign some of them if you don't like them in thier current key.
I don't know about you, but you might want to move the keys assigned to menus to your number keys instead. Then the skills, assign them to letters. Its more convenient for me but your preference is yours alone :D

THERE YOU GO!

The other key mappings on that text file is self-explanatory.
If you want more Javascript Character codes just go ahead and google them :)

You can find other key values here[www.oreilly.com]

WAIT!
You might encounter some trouble in reassigning keys, when that happens, its probably the game telling you "You can't".

After you're done modifying the keys you want, go ahead and save the text file :D



Here is an sample of what the key bindings will look like in-game. I've assigned them in '1,2,q,w,e,a,s,d,f,g'. As you can see there two of those have the NA in them, I don't know but maybe because it was of the default key bindings, however it still works.

MODS!

First thing's first, you DO NOT want to overpower your character and spoil the game!
Secondly! Finish the game first before you try these!

I'm gonna show you a few, some of which I would recommend.

These contain links to the mods respective download site :D

INSTALLATION
Put these inside the "Mods" folder - C:\Users\*YourUserName*\AppData\Roaming\runic games\torchlight
You need to unrar them first if they are. Then copy the entire folder of that mod to the directory above. Restart your game and... there you go :)

1st Better Balanced Sale Prices[www.runicgamesfansite.com]

- This mod adjusts the prices when selling your items, it bumps it up a bit. As you noticed through your playthrough, when buying items, you buy them somewhere around 3k-5k but when you sell them they don't even reach 1k. Sad, really. This mod however DOES NOT bump up prices all the way up. That's what I like about it.

2nd Udinbak's Pet Mod v2.2[www.runicgamesfansite.com]

- I don't know about you, but, cats and dogs seems to suck a bit. Don't get me wrong, they're fun as real life pets but not in this game.

4th Jarcho's Class Compilation[www.runicgamesfansite.com]

- Its a bunch of other classes. Includes genders :P

5th Respec Mod[www.runicgamesfansite.com]

- Ever want to respec your character? This mod

There's a bunch of OP mods out there. Try them at your own risk!
Also lots more mods on the Runic Games Fan Site[www.runicgamesfansite.com]

Haven't got to play in a long time. I'll try this again when I quit working lol.

Credits

I'd Like to Thank

• The Steam Community - especially those who make those wonderful guides
  
• You guys - who read this guide :D
  
• You guys - who made a comment :D
  
• Dota 2 - I got the game through some trades :P
  
• Runic Games - for this great game
  
• Valve - For listening to the community xD
  
• Google - for the fast search results :P
  
• My sister - for thinking this game is actually Dota 2
  
• My parents - for this computer :P haha

and GOD above all!

That's all for now. I'll be updating the guide in the near future :)
*This guide has been updated 7/7/14 12:38, GMT+8:00

If you guys have any suggestions or comments, just make a comment below :D
*Before you post some pretty harsh comments or anything related to that, be mindful that those are violations of what you agreed when you joined the Steam Community :D

[Aspireal]

Oh and about the shared stash. There are two shared stash. One for non-HC (all difficulties) and one for HC (all difficulties). You cannot farm gear in non-HC to help your HC characters, but you can farm on easy HC to help VHHC..

[Aspireal]

Farming : enemies respawn. You have to complete a number of other "maps" first. By that I mean floors. About 10. Floor 1 resets once you enter Floor 11. Re-doing floor 1 will then reset floor 2, etc.
Much safer than maps in VHHC.
The layouts are always the same, chests are full (different loot), shrines active, just the map is hidden again. (I love my Easy playthrough with THREE enchantment shrines on floor 2! too bad it's not HC) I personnally prefer to redo the same floors rather than exploring unknown maps even in non-HC.

Pets : You can feed it potion just like fish, by putting it on the bowl icon, Heal All spell works too.

Retirement : when you finish the game you can retire your character. They become unplayable (move stuff to shared stash beforehand!) but you can create an heirloom and a new char as heir. You pick your heirloom on your finishing equipped gear, it gets a bonus (and retains its requirements) and is given at the start of a game with the heir.

[PremiumG98]

what a wonderful guide

[sebas.babou]

well, it's mostly because it was used by the game franchise of FATE

when you retire, you give an item to your descendant, and once you create this new, descendant character, you get the item at the beggining of the game

think of it like alts, but with a better system than blizz did

[iceicewater]

@sebas.babou - literally had no idea about this xD

[sebas.babou]

you forgot about the retirement system in TL :)

[iceicewater]

@Gleichgewicht - You're welcome!

[Gleichgewicht]

Thank you so much for the keybinding. Normally I play with skills on the numpad and now I have the numbers to make that work.

[iceicewater]

@nathanrorke - Thank you! Hope you have fun and enjoy the game

[Natedogg26]

Thank you for the key remapping!