Torchlight III – Update 10 Overview

A few days back, Echtra Games revealed that their free to play co-operative action-RPG Torchlight Frontiers is no more, and instead, we’ll be getting a proper premium title in Torchlight III. With that in mind, you might be interested in this development update that outlines all the big changes introduced by the rebranding and lets us know what to expect from the new game.

The update is fairly lengthy, so here’s just a message from Tyler Thompson, Torchlight III’s project lead, and you take things from here:

It’s like a new game.

In the last 3 months, Torchlight III has undergone some massive improvements. We’ve changed from F2P to premium; removed horizontal progression; supported a new, better story; added new bosses; dramatically improved the character leveling, monster, and environment pacing; added the 3rd Act – Echonok; dressed up the new Sharpshooter class; and so much more. We are so excited to share all of this with you.

This massive wave of changes represents both a ton of new content and several responses to the Alpha feedback. Since the day we announced, we’ve heard concerns about F2P and horizontal progression. Our shift to premium and a linear world structure brings us back to Torchlight’s roots. The new story, lore objects, bosses, towns, and cinematics bring in the narrative and world building that we kept hearing was missing – from you and large parts of our team. Personally, I’m most excited about the pacing changes to character levels, monster variety, monster spawning, and environment variety. The grind is gone. Everyone wanted another character class, and after over a year of work we’re excited to reveal the Sharpshooter – a powerful and nimble ranged character.

Finally, there are dozens of other changes that dramatically improve everything from Relic crafting to gold economy, from map UIs to party play, legendary items, and skill respec. All of this iteration and improvement comes from listening to our fans, playing the game, and doing the hard work. Thanks for your part in helping make it happen.

We still have a bunch of work to do over the coming months. Placeholder content and content holes can still be found in the game. We need to do that challenging “other 90% of the work” that comes after the first 90% of the game is done. There is also a massive horde of bugs to exterminate. Nonetheless, we are excited to share where we are – even if it is rough around the edges.

We’ve said that we hadn’t planned any character wipes, and that’s been true so far: we haven’t done any wipes in the Alpha since March, 2019. However, with the change in business model and massive changes to the game, we have to change our approach to wipes. Having a high quality game at launch is now more important to all of us than keeping our Alpha progress. This makes us all sad, but maintaining our progress while making big game changes takes resources we can’t afford. However, we also know that we need feedback across this large game, and it takes time to play to the end. Shortly after Update 10, we are also going to be providing ways for Alpha testers to jump ahead to higher character levels and later frontiers. We appreciate your patience with this and look forward to everyone’s help and feedback as we improve the game.

Our Alpha updates will be coming much more frequently from here on out. So for those ready to continue the alpha adventures, hop back in and continue helping us make this a great game. Thanks to everyone for joining us on this ride and let your friends know that Torchlight III is coming in 2020!

-Tyler Thompson
Project Lead