Torchlight III | Developer Update: Game launched, spooky updates, and giving back!

Developer Update: Game launched, spooky updates, and giving back!

A ‘sneak peek’ at the upcoming update, progress on ongoing issues and community concerns, and an Extra Life update.

A ‘sneak peek’ at the upcoming update, progress on community concerns, and an Extra Life update.


Check out our Discord, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch to get the latest development news and updates.


Good morning Ordrak obliterators!

It has been about a month since the launch of Torchlight III so we thought it was a good time to post an update about everything that has happened since then, as well as some of the things that are coming up for the next patch.
 

TORCHLIGHT III LAUNCH
 

October 13th was a big day for us; as a team we have been working on this game for more than four years and have watched it steadily, and sometimes quite rapidly, grow and change as a product. We are proud of the game we have created as we know we have provided countless smiles and hours of entertainment for many of those who have wandered into the frontier.

Max toasts the launch of the game while preparing to eat Alpaca butt.

And while we are delighted with what our team has accomplished, we have recently taken a step back to look at the launch and development of Torchlight III. Our internal teams have created thoughtful, but sometimes difficult post-mortems that will help guide us with future updates for Torchlight III. We understand that while many believe Torchlight III to be a great game, there are parts of it that have received critical, but fair feedback; we recognize that there is work to be done in several areas of the game to bring it up to a more polished level.

We won’t be able to completely placate all of the critiques in one patch, but as we move forward we are working on ways to simplify and better our internal process so that we can make better decisions for the community, the game, and for ourselves as a team. 
 

GEAR ‘N’ GOBLINS UPDATES
 

With the Halloween season in full swing we were excited to quickly turn around a spooky update to include new pets, legendary gear, fort decorations, Fazeer affixes, and a large list of bug fixes. We also sent out a limited time Gear ‘N’ Goblins Gift Bundle to Multiplayer Mailboxes to give players a trick-or-treat, depending on your luck…

The Gear ‘N’ Goblins update arrived as permanent content additions to the game.

Unfortunately, we realized a little too late that the spooky update was not dropping the new pets as expected. Although we have since hotfixed it, we did send out a pet to everyone’s Multiplayer Mailbox on Halloween to sate everyone’s spooky pet needs.
 

This spooky pet will expire from your Multiplayer Mailbox at the end of the year, so grab it soon!

The Switch received this update last week and it contained all the hotfixes the other consoles have received during that time, which officially brings it up to the most current version, alongside the other three platforms. The Switch players also received their gift bundle and spooky pet in their Multiplayer Mailboxes last weekend to enjoy the holiday, albeit a little late.

Additionally, in this patch we unfortunately missed a fix that should have been included which caused data to become missing from Contracts, removing a newly added Rare Gear Bundle from the game. Because of this, these items were no longer found in players inventory or stash. We investigated recovery options but ultimately could not find a feasible solution to do so. Because of this, we sent out five Legendary Gear Bundles to all Multiplayer Mailboxes to help recover the loss of those bags. We did revert Contracts back to the data it should have been at, but have made additional updates to prevent this type of issue from occurring in the future.

We do not currently have any plans to push any other hotfixes or updates prior to the upcoming update, which is expected to come sometime early to mid-December. This update is now in the testing stage and with the holiday week coming up, we want to allow our team to better prepare for this patch, including additional bug fixes and updates, some of which we address below.
 

“SNOW & STEAM” UPDATE
 

We are currently working on an upcoming update for the holiday season; we are still in the testing phases for this patch, but will be sharing more teasers and details as we get closer to its release. We expect the update to become testable to players on our Public Test Realm (Steam only) on December 1st, but as always, that is subject to change.

My pets and I couldn’t resist taking a sneak peek at some of the new features coming to Torchlight III in this latest update. Here is what we were able to smuggle out and reveal...

This amazing new functional fort decoration is something you have been dyeing to have.

This has been something our players have been asking about for a long, long time. We are so happy to finally reveal it and see how players will utilize this flashy new feature!

This new weapon is a pretty chill addition to the current collection of legendary items.

And this new weapon is as cool as ice! You will now be able to find a whole new collection of gear when the “Snow & Steam” update arrives.

My good boy is sniffing out all the best updates and is down with this latest update.

And by popular request, the above has also been added to the game. Go forth and expand up your current setup in new and creative ways!

There are a lot more things coming than what I have revealed today, but stay tuned to our social channels and Discord as we start to leak more of what will be contained in the upcoming “Snow & Steam” update over the next few weeks.
 

GAMES ISSUES / COMMUNITY CONCERNS
 

Drop Rates
Everyone loves legendaries. That sweet golden glow, those crazed Mayhem affixes. Of course everyone will always want more than they’re getting. We have always wanted legendary drops to feel special, to make an impact. In Early Access days, the drop rate was way too high initially and we tweaked it towards our initial goal of one legendary per hour (on average).

As we neared launch, it was clear that legendary drop rates were way too low across the board. We increased that rate and tweaked the sources so that you more often get legendaries from champions and bosses, putting yourself in actual risk, rather than farming lower level Gauntlet + Infamous Fazeer’s Dun’djinn levels and plowing through contract rewards. At the same time, we also created distinct legendary drop rate tuning values per difficulty, to tune it to discourage players grinding on lower difficulties to farm for legendaries to stash. It was all a bit rushed.

From launch, we built a gradual tapering off into the high end of our legendary drop rate curves. The intention for this was to offset the increased rate at which players in the end game were able to kill monsters (and even faster at higher difficulties). Between launch and “Gear ‘N’ Goblins”, we realized that this reduction at higher levels was too aggressive, so we reduced that decline and additionally slightly increased the drop rate overall for “Gear ‘N’ Goblins.”

In making our Greater Gear Bundle contract rewards less potent for launch, we may have made them not that great. We have heard you when you say that those bags just aren’t rewarding enough. In the Winter update, the legendary drop rate from these has been increased. Not astronomically. It’s not guaranteed, but the chance will be higher now than it was before, so there is that.

The legendary drop rate is currently a bit higher than our goal (around 3 an hour average), so in the longer term, we may tweak it back down, but only after players are happier with the actual items they are getting.
 

Itemization
After “Gear ‘N’ Goblins,” we have heard more clearly that it may not be that you aren’t getting enough legendaries (toss another Snecko Stick on the pile), it’s that you aren’t getting enough variety of legendaries. In the Winter update, we have two solutions for this. Previously, we were skewing all weapon drops towards class-specific weapons to help you more often get your class’ unique weapon type. The result of that was that you were much less likely to get legendaries that have class-specific affixes, but are not class-specific weapons. In the Winter update, we no longer skew by type, just toward legendary items with class-specific affixes, rather than the more general legendaries that can drop for any of your characters and then be stashed. Additionally, we realized that our armor item data was set up to provide thematically appropriate armor for each of our acts only while in those specific areas and while they were valid to appear at higher levels, some other logic was preventing them from dropping in mapworks in the endgame. That is fixed in the upcoming update.

We have also heard that when you do get legendaries, aside from the legendary affix, often the stats are not an improvement from a rare. The logic we use to assign affixes to items was built a bit differently for legendaries, to try to fit more rigid sets of affixes onto legendaries than the looser rules that we use for lower quality gear. In the “Snow & Steam” update, the logic is now the same, so you’ll more often get affixes on legendaries that are the affixes you might have had on a rare. However, just because an item is legendary does not mean that the affix rolls are always better. We believe that with the power and utility of the legendary affix, the affix ranges on the legendaries should be the same as the rare items (though with a +20% higher end to maintain viability compared to lifebound rares). Don’t forget to enchant!

One more great enhancement to endgame gear in the “Snow & Steam” update is that the affix ranges on gear dropped at the level cap creep up higher the further that you progress into Fazeer’s Dun’djinn. You wanted a reason to want to get gear from deeper in the Dun’djinn? Now you’ve got it.
 

Performance Issues / Long Loading
We have resolved some infinite loading screen issues for the upcoming update, but we are still trying to understand some recent reports for some players about performance. If you are experiencing any issues with lag, connection, crashes, or performance, please send us ( feedback@echtra.net ) any details of the platform, mode, area, and skills that you are using that could be causing issues and we will continue to investigate further.
 

Fazeer Quest/Mob Issues
After several bug fix attempts, we have decided to temporarily remove Gun Daddy as this boss has been problematic and we have been unable to resolve the bug that makes it not appear in Mapworks and Fazeer Dungeons.

Additionally, in the upcoming update we have completely revamped the way quest completion/drops work for the game. In this upcoming update, you should no longer have issues finding enough quest items in the game to complete quests. This is without a doubt, the most common complaint and bug we have and we hope this will finally resolve an issue that has been lingering for too long.
 

Pets Disappearing After Travelling
We are aware of reports of misbehaving pets that will often not accompany their owners when travelling. We are still investigating this issue, but we hope to have a resolution for this soon.
 

Game Time Outs/Instance Resets
We recently instituted a timeout feature that logs you out if it detects if you are inactive for 10 minutes. We are adding more feedback to better communicate to players which type of disconnection they have sustained so it is obvious that they have been disconnected due to a lack of activity or through another type of error so we can better troubleshoot with our players on all platforms. We are also reviewing to see if we need to increase the amount of time before the game disconnects you for inactivity and will adjust if possible.

As for instance resets, we are currently reviewing the current time that is set for instance resets, but would like to be able to implement an option instance reset feature in the future. While this is not something we are able to squeeze in for this upcoming update, we hope we can make this a more opt-in feature in the future so it’s a less jarring experience.
 

Movement Skill Controls
We have seen some complaints about movement skills so after completing an audit and grabbing some community feedback, we have made some updates to help improve their feel and usage.
 

Other Bugs & Issues
In addition to the few notable issues listed above, the team is also working on a large list of bug fixes that will accompany the update. Please continue to report bugs to feedback@echtra.net and http://tl3feedback.echtragames.com so we can collect and review them for the following update.
 

ECHTRA EXTRA LIFE UPDATE
 

Last weekend Echtra participated in Extra Life once again to raise funds for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals by streaming for 24-hours. This year’s goal was to raise $5,000 and as of posting this blog we’ve hit it!

Our community continues to prove just how completely amazing it is and we couldn’t have done it without all of you, so thank you so much for sending your money and support to such a good cause.

A really big shout-out to the community members and streamers who helped support the event and even streamed themselves - send these community members your love and support!

Papi helped support Bean and even co-streamed a bit of a different frontier. Check out his skill building tool at:
https://tools.torchlightfansite.com/tlfskillcalculator

Fox came in and saved Bean from impending keyboard, face-smashing sleep by streaming and showing off the new Extra Life inspired legendary staff with Torchlight III Game Designer Michael!
https://www.twitch.tv/torchlight_fox

Wochi streamed for an amazing four hours to help support our community’s fundraising efforts!
https://www.twitch.tv/wochitv

Struck saved us from having to start early morning on Sunday by streaming for 2 hours to help raise funds!
https://www.twitch.tv/struck_tlf
 

We are currently collecting all the donation receipt details and will be contacting you if we need to obtain more information like your in-game Arc ID. We will be sending these pets no later than November 30th, 2020, but hope to be able to get them out before than to your Multiplayer Mailboxes. If you have any questions about your donation or do not receive your incentives after we have sent them out, do not hesitate to contact us at feedback@echtra.net or in Discord by sending echtra_bean#3571 a message.

That is all the update I have for this blog, but we’ll be back with more updates and patch notes soon! Until next time, keep slayin’ those spiders and see you again on the frontier soon!

- Echtra Bean