YMMV / Torchlight II

• Awesome Music: Matt Uelmen composed the soundtrack using his signature distant guitar and drum snares. The best part is this soundtrack is free with the game and found in the installation folder and are arranged in a compilation similar to the official Diablo II soundtrack.
  • "Killbot", used for the major boss fights such as the War Titan or against the Siege Guardian at the end of Act II featuring some straight up rock guitar and a rather fast paced theme unusual for Matt.
  • "Ever Deeper", the theme plays when venturing through the caves to the Scrapworks, in the Forgotten Halls or Vyrax's Tower. The faint electric guitar never gets old.
  • Some of the songs didn't make it into the OST (or are drastically shortened) but are still found in the game files such as "Norske" which plays in areas such as Norsk Leiren, the Abandoned Sawmill, the Haunted Quarter or the second half of the Broken Mines and creates a very unsettling atmosphere for those areas.
  • The theme to the Mapworks. The area itself has no ambient sound so you're left to listen to the peaceful strings while you manage your gear and choose your next map(s)... It does sound familiar, though...
• Broken Base:
  • There are currently two major points of contention between series veterans and people who migrated from other franchises like Diablo and Titan Quest. Newcomers are especially vocal about what they feel are shortcomings keeping the game from true greatness while series veterans tend to fiercely defend Runic's design decisions.
  • The nature of multiplayer — Out of the box the game doesn't really support competitive multiplayer which is not a major issue for TL1 veterans simply wanting a co-op version of the single player game but is a major turn-off for those arriving from the old battle.net scene.
• Demonic Spiders: Most exploding enemies later on can deal incredible amounts of health via their death explosion. Explosive Swampwings stand out, as they can slow the player (see below), making it hard to run from it. Their explosion can do 1,500 damage, which is liable to be half or more of your health bar. Extra points for these Demonic Spiders also being, literally, Goddamned Bats.
  • Mirka Frostbinders have a ton of hard-to-avoid, hard-hitting spells, which freeze your character, turning them into a sitting duck for yet more spells.
  • Ezrohir Snatchers, as they will grab you with a hook shot with almost unerring accuracy, and reel you in from long distances, so their sword-toting buddies can beat you up. For melee characters, you probably wanted to do that anyway, but ranged characters have to be extremely careful. Their Dwarven counterpart, the Ironguard, is pretty much the same except its melee hurts even more. Also, both can sometimes get your character stuck inside terrain when they pull, which pretty much forces a map reset if you want to get out.
  • Similarily, Manaburned Ezrohir, which have a vortex that sucks you towards them, but much more slowly than Snatchers. Manageable when there are only a couple other enemies around but not with mobs. Sometimes, getting caught in their vortex is essentially a death sentence.
  • Dwarven Battle Turrets, specifically the ones that use machine gun attacks. The rocket launching ones can be rather painful with low fire resistance, but the gunners will chew through your health like paper, especially when encountered in groups. Tellingly, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is swarming with them.
    • Made worse due to the game's graphics optimization, which reduces load by reducing the draw distance. With the very long range turrets have they can sometimes get a volley off before they finish rendering on screen, leading to death by invisible bullets.
  • Trolls have a massive, slow attack that, however, may perform an One-Hit Kill on a character that may wipe the floor with every other enemy in the area effortlessly (that's usually from the miniature explosions of the overhead swing being centered on your character occasionally, enough to flatten an Enginner on Casual). It doesn't help that they have a pull ability and a leap ability to close the distance easily. Oh and said leap ability stuns you briefly.
  • Champion Varkolyn brutes using a claw weapon can make even the Engineer tremble with the fact it can drive it's claw into the ground to release several shock bolts where even one will deal a massive amount of damage and if you're right up against it when that attack goes off... Hey, isn't that orb on the left supposed to be red?
  • Infernal Ones, which are not very strong but very fast burning skeletons that often show up in groups.
  • Salamanders encountered in the second half of Act II can burn you for an insane amount of Damage Over Time that most healing potions at the current point in your New Game Plus cycle can not outheal.
  • Practically any mook that is normally a nuisance becomes this once you reach New Game+++. Ezrohir Shieldbearers and Tu'tara/Spectral Brutes will smash into you like a Kenworth, the Dwarven Battle Turrets with rockets will become extremely painful, Deathcaps will immolate your health orb if you don't avoid fires on the ground, and pretty much anything that reacts faster than you can cast your skill will flatten you if you don't have enough health to tank them.
• Ending Fatigue: Act IV consists of nothing more than venturing through the Broken Mines to kill the Dark Alchemist and then the Netherlord in the Clockwork Core. No side-quests or anything, just an eight floor dungeon. There's not even an act banner when you enter the Minehead.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Engineer's standard Flame Hammer skill starts off dealing over half of your weapon's DPS, which with the two handed weapons they are well suited for generally being the strongest melee weapons. The first upgrade to the skill increases the attack's range substantially making close combat effectively optional. It can also use Charge to become even more devastating.
    • Emberquake, Flame Hammer's bigger brother, is also good for different reasons. Unlike Flame Hammer, Emberquake transfers weapon effects through its fissure projectiles, making it great for Engineers wielding Hammers of Retribution (see below for more details). Despite their appearance, these fissures can reach across pits, allowing them to strike enemies that are outside Flame Hammer's range.
  • The Healing Bot is available essentially right away and periodically heals you, making potions pointless most of the time.
  • Spider Mines can be easily chucked down and above ledges where they can kill enemies without them ever having a chance of attacking you, and are very smart at seeking out out of range enemies.
  • None of these hold a candle to the unquestionably best skill in the game, Forcefield. What does it do? Oh, just acts like an extra layer of health against direct damage attacks and adds knockback resistance while active. Sounds pretty unremarkable until you realize that a max rank Forcefield can effectively more than double your health, which is a godsend in level 120 dungeons where enemies simply deal so much damage that you'll spend 75% of your battles in the red without it, and the other 25% just plain dead. And this is before the charge meter comes into play!
  • For the Embermage, Prismatic Bolt, essentially an elemental Spread Shot. Available right away, it has a good firing rate, homes in on enemies from long distances, and deals substantial damage in all four elements. Combine this with the Brand passives and you will be able to quickly slaughter almost anything the game throws at you.
  • The Outlander's Venomous Hail cause a flurry of poison projectiles to rain down on monsters for metric tons of damage. You can even snipe monsters behind walls! Combine with Poison Burst and Master of the Elements and the damage increase even more.
  • Certain equipment can be game breakers as well:
    • Asphyx, a level 92 unique set consisting of a helmet and gloves, each having a whopping five sockets, in a game where the maximum amount of sockets is normally two for armor and most weapons. The only drawback is that both the armor pieces and the set bonus itself gives a health loss debuff when worn, but those can be managed with other equipment that boosts health regeneration.
    • Hammer of Retribution, a level 100 one-handed mace with an absolutely ludicrous 25% chance to cast Glacial Spike (an instant AOE burst that inflicts 225% of weapon DPS as ice damage) on hit. That alone may sound impressive enough, but equip a second one and add four Eyes of Aleera, and that chance jumps to 70%! Equip this on a Berserker with rank 15 Wolfpack and watch the numbers fly.
    • Parma's Coal Burner, a unique shield that boasts a 45% chance to block, the highest amount among all other shields, and nothing else. With this shield, you can free up several hundred stat points from Vitality and still be able to reach the block cap.
    • Any wands, pistols, bows and crossbows while you take advantage of the Geo Effects. With patience, you can easily snipe down any monsters below or above you without worrying about retaliation. This also applies to Area of Effect skills such as the Embermage's Hailstorm and Infernal Collapse skill.
  • Vendor Boon Scrolls. These summon a vendor named Boon who sells rare and unique set items (Oddly, he does not stock belts or trinkets) scaled to the level of the area you are in. However, they are impossibly rare; they can technically drop anywhere that scrolls can be found but it may take hundreds of hours to find one, they can only be used once, and the items Boon sells are very expensive. However, it is possible to "pin down" Boon and prevent him from disappearing like the wandering enchanters by entering a Waypoint Portal before he disappears, allowing you to use him as long as the portal is active. By summoning Boon in a level 105 Mapworks dungeon or in New Game Plus+++ and higher, you can quickly assemble the majority of the items from the level 99 endgame armor sets for each class.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Swampwings (not to be confused with their explosive version above) have a sonic attack that will slow you down tremendously, both in attack speed and running speed. They're also all over the place in act III, so good luck getting away if you get shouted down by one of these during a fight.
  • Another literal example in the Skara. These will pop out in threes whenever the player passes by a Skara swarmstack (read: almost all of them you see in the Salt Barrens), and become temporarily invulnerable when they fly up to divebomb you for a pretty good amount of damage. The blighted ones will also cause a poison AOE to appear when killed near the player.
  • Yet another literal example in the Varkolyn (bat people). They are extremely fond of ambushing you from bushes or on bridges, the basic units run away when one is killed making it annoying to chase them down, the hurlers throw AOE gas grenades that linger, the mages can resurrect the others, and all of them have the ability to leap or teleport out of melee range making it more time consuming to kill them via melee.
  • And yet another literal example are Frost Screechers, which are very fast and have ice based attacks that slow you down. Sometimes you will encounter a Frost Screecher Alpha which summons swarms of these, and the Alpha is hard to pick out of the rest of the crowd. Just one hit from one of these can easily take over half your health and they often show up in swarms.
  • Estherian Shades spawn irritating Estherian Shadewisps, and buff the Possessed Ones to use a triple homing Spread Shot. They're not to hard to kill but will teleport backwards to avoid attacks, making them pretty annoying for melee attackers.
  • Mirka Slashers. They're somewhat fast, and while easy to kill, if they get near you they will use their frost breath which slows you down for a bit of time, which gets really annoying if you're trying to speed through an area.
  • Archer/ranged enemies that lob a lingering Area of Effect attack, starting from the Ratlin Archers in the very first area of the game. They force you to keep moving or suffer the Damage Over Time. Most notable are the skeletal archers, who either shoot a Spread Shot of 3 lingering poison AO Es that debuff your armor and damage output or a Spread Shot of 3 electrical arrows that split into multiple bolts of electrical doom each.
  • Roach Myrmidons. It's not their poison spit that's the problem, it's the fact that they fly when they're doing it, and they cannot be targeted when flying.
  • Enemy spawners that spawn Zerg Rushes of enemies, such as Desert Rat Nests and Roach Nests. They will often keep spawning a swarm of weak enemies and will keep doing so until destroyed.
  • From the Ossean Wastes onward, there will always be one particular type of Mook with a slowing or suction attack. Be sure to take these out ASAP as they can easily get you stuck in a nasty place despite being fragile and not doing any damage unless they're close enough to hit you.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • On release, the game had a gambling exploit where you click and hold on a mystery item, mouse over to the buyback tab and let go of the mouse to access the buyback menu without dropping the item. The mystery item can be placed there, revealing the item and substantially marking the price down.
  • Weapons with the chance to cast Charm on an enemy have a bug that enemies charmed before transforming (Sanguine Zombie shedding skin to become a Flayed One or Corpsefire Direwolf turning into a Corpsefire Werewolf) will remain permanently charmed, they still attack enemies but won't follow you and you can't kill it but it's interesting when it happens. It gets even better if you charm a Mook Maker, the mooks they summon will be permanently charmed and on your side despite highlighting as an enemy.
  • Wandering enchanters will start to walk away and then disappear after you exit from them, even if you don't enchant anything. However, if you open a Waypoint Portal and then jump in it before they disappear, they will never disappear as long as the Waypoint remains active. This also works with Boon the Vendor from the Vendor Boon Scrolls.
  • The Cacklespit's brew quest offers the health-draining Sweet-Aide potion, which lets you commit suicide in a town, allowing for all sorts of exploits. You can use this to cheat the gamblers by buying them out, memorizing their inventory and drinking the Sweet-Aide, quitting to main menu (which does not save your game) and now knowing what items they have. Additionally, changes to the shared stash are not reset even if you choose "quit to main menu" after killing yourself with the potion, allowing you to dupe items or otherwise farm useful items for free from merchants by saving your game, placing them in the shared stash, drinking the potion, quitting to main menu, coming back and ending up with a copy of the item in both your inventory and stash.^Explanation This is because the shared stash is, as you might have guessed, saved separately from your character and their personal stash. The shared stash is also saved whenever you store and take anything from it independent of your character's autosave.
  • Due to an oversight in a value, rank 15 Storm Hatchet instantly fills the Berserker's charge meter upon striking any valid target, including destructibles. This is because the charge gain is supposed to be 0.095 (or 9.5%) but instead it was entered as 0.95 (or 95%), allowing endgame Berserkers to effectively activate their Frenzy on command.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: As a Shout-Out, the game has a Minecraft mini-dungeon. Years later, Mojang created its own action RPG called Minecraft Dungeons.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Notably, some of these can be removed through mods, but that isn't an option for console players:
  • Fumbling, where an attack has a chance of doing massively reduced damage, takes precedence over and prevents Critical Hits, and ranged weapons seem to be hit particularly hard by this which is why the main page says the stat system favors magic Outlanders. Of course any scrappy mechanic can be removed with a Workshop addon.
  • Limitations on skill point reallocation — The base game only allows players to reallocate the last three skill points they spent, which has immensely frustrated those used to systems that allow full reallocation. Some Workshop addons allow a full respec of varying balance. One in particular allows you to respec the last six points spent and if you do so, you can meditate to regain all of your skill points to re-use. There is a hefty cooldown and you still have to pay for the last six points invested. Other addons (including an official Runic published one) allows you to buy the Potion of Respec without cheating (but modding instead) and a third-party tool named RapidRespec allows you to respec the attribute and skill points of your character with options to control the legitimacy of it, while the popular Synergies Mod pack allows you to freely respec all stat and skill points.
  • Active NPCs, which more or less act as XP leeches.
  • Any minion granted through Summon Magic (with the exception of the passive Healing Bot and Immobilization Copter) has a limited duration that is often less than the Cooldown. Even then in some cases like the Astral Ally, you have to remember to resummon them.
  • The endgame Legendary weapons and Unique armor sets which require an impossible to reach Level 101, forcing you to invest points into otherwise meaningless attributes to use. Even if you meet the minimum requirements for armor, you're still unable to use Legendary weapons intended for that armor's class.
  • One mechanic that can not be solved by mods is... Loading mods, as in the mod launcher has a maximum limit of ten active mods at a time, requiring you to either sacrifice mods in favor of others or learn how to unpack mods in the GUTS SDK and then compile them into a single mod to reduce the overall count.
• That One Boss:
  • Aruk the Cruel. Firstly, on top of being fast, he comes with pretty painful melee and a fast axe throw. Secondly, he comes with some flunkies and two Champion mobs, both of which spam spells all over and one of which can revive the flunkies. Thirdly, there are Tu'Tara traps all around the arena which will immobilize you if stepped on and must be destroyed to free you, giving Aruk and his goons a great chance to pummel you- and said traps only become active when the boss fight is triggered, so no destroying them prematurely. It is strongly advised that as soon as the fight triggers, one should kite Aruk out of the arena without his Champions following him, where he becomes much more manageable.
  • One of the Phase Portal challenges puts you up against three Tar Slime bosses at once. Not only are they Mook Makers, but they spawn tiny, tiny Tar Slimes which can be stomped on to kill (IE, just by walking over them) but are very hard to shoot. Additionally, stomping on them causes a movespeed reduction. Additionally, because the game's targeting system isn't perfect, you'll often find yourself attacking something when you actually wanted to move. All this during a Multi-Mook Melee where you're rarely facing less than 20 enemies. Better hope you have your Area of Effect abilities when you face them!
  • Grom the Murderer, part of the "Cacklespit's Brew" sidequest. The fight takes place in an extremely small and cramped arena, with undead minions that constantly respawn. The first two rounds against only Grom's minions are somewhat manageable, but the final round featuring Grom himself is quite tough, as the vents in the arena start to release fire (which will drain your health quite quickly), and with so many enemies in a small space, it's hard to directly target Grom.
• That One Level:
  • The Waterways area in the quest "The Brave Ones". It's not frustrating in difficulty, but it's the sheer number of Goddamned Bats that makes it annoyingly frustrating. The level is filled with spawners that spawn endless Zerg Rushes of small, weak cockroach mooks, and then there's the gates which constantly replenish Roach Myrmidons until the Manatoxin pump nearby is destroyed. Then there's the Roach Mages which will revive fallen Roach Myrmidons and the slimes that pop out of nowhere. The sheer concentration of respawning enemies will definitely make many players frustrated.
  • The Icedeep Caverns, which are cramped and absolutely crawling with Frost Screechers (and the occasional Alpha) and Mirkas who will waste no time in slaughtering you. The boss, Chillhoof, can also be a pain as he has a very strong ice shard attack that while easy to avoid most of the time, is still deadly. A Champion Mirka Frostbinder often shows up with him too, along with various other Mirka flunkies. Thankfully, he is a Skippable Boss if you just want to complete "Taking Notes" since you can scramble for the notes while Chillhoof is breaking free, you will miss out on the treasure chest and a convenient exit portal, however.
  • The Lost Hold is every players' nightmare come to life. Dwarves with shields, Rocket Mobile Turrets, War Trolls, Varkolyn with long-reaching spears populate the area and attack in massive numbers.
• That One Sidequest: One of the Phase Beast challenge is navigating a maze and recover 3 gems to open all the treasure chests. No problem, the game has an isometric view and you'll get a bird's eye view of the area...Wait a sec!! The boundaries of the maze only reveal itself when I walk near them!! And my map don't work in the maze?! Rage Quit.

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