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[Dev Blog #3] Talents: Every Decision Has Its Importance

7K View2021-12-16

In Torchlight: Infinite, there are many factors that may come into play in the forms and effects of every skill. Let’s take a look at one of the most important elements in the hero-building process - Talents.

The talents system was designed around three fundamentals that are interwoven to create the perfect ARPG experience. These three tenets are Directional, Progressive, and Strategic.

Directional

Directional design means that our talents system seamlessly guides our players into the direction they want to build their hero. Rather than wasting time finding talents that have no impact to your build, each talent is tagged. For instance, Chromatic Shot is tagged with “Projectile” and “Spell.” If you’re feeling like Chromatic Shot is that signature skill you want to buff, within the talent panel you can easily locate all the talents that will directly impact Chromatic Shot by finding talents tagged with “Spell” & “Projectile”. Sorry Bladerunner, that’ll be for another build.

Progressive

Don’t you hate it when that awesome talent you picked early game lost its impact by late game? We designed our talents to progressively grow with your character from beginning to “end”-game. Take for example two common stats for damage mitigation. Armor and Evasion are two different defensive options that’ll affect how you’ll approach a horde of mobs.

1. Armor: Lose the ability to evade, but every recent hit taken will increase Armor by 10%; up to 5 stacks.

2. Evasion: Gain a bonus 10% Movement Speed for each recent successful evaded attack.

These two unique talent nodes will empower you to tank a whole room of enemies or kite your enemies without a single opportunity to hit you. Play how you want to play and enjoy knowing that none of your chosen talents will go to waste.

Strategic

We wanted to build a game with endless theorycrafting possibilities. Our talent system philosophy is no different and we want you to make the tough decisions on how to strategically build your character.

Take for example talents like Stars Aligned which gives your elemental ailments a 100% chance to spread to nearby enemies and Feign which reduces the damage of your main hand weapon by 50% but increases the damage of your offhand weapon by 100%. These talents will radically change how you build your character, and that is only 2 out of X amount of possible combinations for your unique character.

By the way, has anyone noticed the clone of the hero in the gif above featuring Chromatic Shot? We’ll go a lot more depth on that and more in our next dev blog. Stay tuned!

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