It’s been several months now that I really played the closed alpha of Torchlight Frontiers. After going full bore into Guild Wars 2 for nearly the past two months, I’m at the point of hitting the wall with my revenant (and thus began trying out the mesmer, enjoying it, but really need to take a break since I’m feeling a bit burnt out from the pace I was playing).
I noticed that Echtra posted a preview regarding update 9 and remembered I hadn’t tried out the patches since update 5 where I just wasn’t feeling it with the game (plus there was a period of time where I couldn’t connect to the server due to an issue with my installation). Basically, I felt I was not getting anywhere in terms of drops which made progressing through the goblin frontier a slog on my forge. I tried out the railmaster but it just wasn’t for me (as was the dusk mage).
The current patch in place is update 8 which includes some QoL enhancements as well as bug fixes (along with all the changes made to progression, relics, and pets). So I logged into my forge and continued my questing from where I last left off. I finally got some key legendary drops that really helped get through the dungeons that I needed to clear in order to finally unlock the hyvid frontier (it was previously open during the initial alpha but closed off in a later update until some quests were cleared in the goblin frontier).
I hit character level 15 (goblin frontier level is 12) on my forge; which shows how little I progressed during the initial 5 updates. I’m still not a fan of the frontiers system and the way the game world presents itself (versus how it was in Torchlight II). Just getting better drops which helps with progression makes a huge difference; it incentivizes me to play more now (as this also is allowing me to begin upgrading my fort). And there are some key enhancements being added in this area with update 9 where more of the game seems to be coming together.
The game still has some pathing issues (several times my character got stuck behind some objects in a dungeon instance and in the open world) as well as my pet disappearing (I hadn’t dismissed it) when I got disconnected from a dungeon (it ended up in my pet shelter which I hadn’t built yet). Overall, this was really the first time that I felt a sense of actual progression (I know I am far behind compared to other players that also began playing alpha 3 since the initial release). As a result, I’m looking forward to giving this closed alpha more time once update 9 is released.
