Whether you are talking about a fantasy mmo, a space mmo, or any mmo for that matter, there’s nothing better than increasing the lifespan of one of your games. In this article, we’ll look at a number of mods for Torchlight which do just that. I will also explain how you can mod your copy of Torchlight even if you have absolutely no experience with computers or modding whatsoever. My personal aim when modding a game is to keep it as close to the ‘vanilla’ experience as possible, but improve on aspects that I find frustrating or imperfect.
The very first thing you want to do is download TorchLeech 1.5a, and extract it using an unzip utility of your choice. If you have none installed, I would recommend 7-Zip.
You can save TorchLeech anywhere you want – but I would recommend you put the program somewhere you can find it easily. Now run the program and you will see a screen that will look roughly as follows:
TorchLeech is essentially a Mod Manager, a program which shows you a list of mods available for Torchlight, and what each mod does. It then allows you to install / uninstall mods, set the order in which they load and various more advanced features. It’s by far the easiest and most painless way of modding Torchlight and it works with all Torchlight installations, including Steam.
The default overview is a list of all mods which are available. Usually, you will want to list mods by installed/available (F5) and you can do this by clicking on ‘List (F2)’ and changing it to your preferred overview, or by simply pressing F5.
You can change the default overview by going to Extras -> Options -> Mods & Colors, and ticking ‘Start with group style’, followed by your preferred overview in the drop down. You will find various other options there, including the option to make backups of Torchlight if you are the more paranoid and/or cautious type, but that falls outside the scope of this article.
It is impossible for me to know which mods each individual person will like, so I’ll list the ones I’ve been using and provide a brief description of each. Hopefully that will help you in deciding which mods you would like to use. Installing a mod is incredibly easy – simply select a mod and hit the ‘install‘ option in the top menu. I would also recommend right-clicking a mod and clicking on ‘show details‘. This opens a window with more details, so you can browse the mods at your leisure and find out a little more information. Once the details window is open, it stays open – so just left click on mods in the list to see their details. No need to right-click and select the option each time.
We’ll go through the mods in alphabetic order;
Additional Gem Availability
Increases the availability of gems, both on vendors and as drops. Even with this mod active, it still takes very long to develop high-level gems, this is very well balanced with vanilla and makes things just a little less frustrating.
Bee Swarm!
Enables the Bee Swarm spell to drop in game (rarely). Teach it to your pet for extra fun! Bees are most effective against large groups. This is an ‘official’ plugin by Runic Games.
Better Balanced Sale Prices
This mod offers exactly what the title says–better balanced sale prices. Vendors now offer more gold in exchange for your items, so selling rare and unique equipment no longer leaves you feeling like you’ve been kicked in the teeth. This is very well balanced but ensures that selling epic loot is a viable option vs. disenchanting.
Better Random Quest Rewards (Exp, Fame, Gold)
Re-balances the experience, fame and gold rewards that quests give to ensure that they are always worth doing.
Better Random Quest Rewards
This mod improves the quality of items received as random quest rewards by forcing them to be either Rare or Unique items. This is very important, as the quest rewards quickly become so poor that you hardly want to bother. This mod ensures that it is occasionally actually worth coming back to town especially to hand a quest in.
Brighter Map
This mod makes the mini-map brighter. Once you’ve played Torchlight for a while, you will know how lovely this simply mod actually is as the map can be rather hard to read sometimes.
Enchant Never Wipe
This prevents enchants from wiping your item. Some people will find this a cheat, so this is something you have to decide for yourself. This mod also prevents you from getting the achievement related to failing enchants, since you cannot actually fail with the mod on.
Arithmancy: A Transmutation Overhaul
Arithmancy overhauls Torchlight’s Gem Transmutation system with 135 new recipes, designed to make the system operate more smoothly and intuitively.
In Vanilla (un-modded) Torchlight, Gems can be combined in sets of two or four identical gems. Arithmancy expands this system to allow the transmutation of any combination of up to four gems that are algebraically equivalent to the original system’s combinations. For example: Two Cracked Flow-Embers and a Dull Flow-Ember will combine to create a single Discolored Flow-Ember, while Two Cracked Flow-Embers, a Dull Flow-Ember, and a Discolored Flow-Ember will create a single Flow-Ember.
Geomancy
This mod fixes a bug in the transmutation system and is a prerequisite for the other Transmutation mods.
Thaumaturgy
Thaumaturgy expands Torchlight’s Gem Transmutation system by adding 90 new recipes, enabling players to convert gems from types that they do not want into types that they do. Place four different gems of the same grade into the Transmuter, and if they are a valid combination, you will get a gem of the next grade of an entirely different type.
Ferret Pet (by Runic Games)
This mod adds the ferret pet to the game, both as a permanent transformation fish and as a pet selection when making a new character.
Fish Mash
This mod gives you the ability to combine a stack of 5 fish via transmutation, to create fish of a larger size. It also adds a new size of fish between Normal and Big, to help cut down on the massive jump between a 120 seconds and 3600 seconds effective time.
Gem Icon MOD
This MOD makes the gem icons bigger thanks to Archonyx’s MOD, and adds roman numerals beneath each gem so you can tell what level it is at a glance.
Gold Sharing Service
This mod allows you to transfer gold from one character to another of your characters. Just use the portal near the shared stash, use the deposit desk to receive a special scroll and put it in the shared stash. Then with your other character take it to the withdraw desk to receive your gold back.
IHateFishing
This absolutely fantastic mod adds fish to the loot tables of monsters, so that you will never have to fish again. Absolutely genius mod as I can relate to the mod’s name.
More Maps
This mod adds additional map scrolls to the game for level 20+.
New Stashes and Telekineticist
This mod is brilliant in it’s simplicity. It adds, 2 additional stashes near the central pillar in town, but more importantly it adds a stash next to the transmute vendor. Needless to say this is the only stash I ever use. It also adds an NPC called Telekineticist, which allows you to access your shared stash. Brilliant as you can essentially access your stash, shared stash and the transmute vendor from the same spot – which cuts down on running around like a headless chicken trying to sort your loot.
Potions Stacksize Mod
Increases the stack size of health potions, mana potions, identify scrolls and town portal scrolls to 200. It is hard to describe how useful this actually is. Get it.
Respec Mod
This enables you to purchase a respec potion from the general vendor which, surprisingly, allows you to respec.
SkillsLeech
In vanilla, health and mana leech effects on your weapons do not work on special attacks but only on your base attack. (left click) This mods corrects that by correctly letting your weapon use it’s leech effects on your special attacks as well. (right click) Basically, if you play as Destroyer or Vanquisher you will want this mod.
Small Floaty Text
This mod reduces the size of the text floating above your character when hitting other mobs, taking damage, etc.
Starch the Monster Hunter
This mod adds Starch, a monster hunter who stands near the bridge just outside the Shadow Vault. He gives monster kill quests, meaning that he asks you to kill 3 to 7 of a type of monster on each floor of the infinite dungeon.
Rewards from his quests include map fragments. Transmute 4 fragments and you get a new map to The Briny Reef and a unique boss fight: Leviathan! This giant tentacle monster is a boss found in the game files that was not implemented in the final game.
Stop All Skills: The Skill!
Although every buff, aura, and summoned minion is beneficial to the player, it would be nice to deactivate your skills when you feel like it, especially if you use any duration mods. Stop All Skills adds a skill to all characters (new and existing) which deactivates all buffs/auras/minions with one click.
Tier-3 Ancient Items
This mod adds an item set for the later levels of the game (60-90). All of these items have a prefix of Ancient as apposed to the “Tier 2″ items (which came with the game) which have a prefix of Epic.
Whitecloak Vanquisher
A complete re-skin of every Vanquisher armor, as well as two optional body skins. Mostly inspired by the Whitecloaks of the Wheel of Time series by the late great Robert Jordan.
If you’re as lazy as I am, the first thing you will want to know is how you can find and install these mods even quicker. Luckily, TorchLeech has something that will help you with that. In the top menu – click on the icon on the far right. It sort of looks like a wine glass.
This will open the Multiline fuzzy search option. Simply copy/paste the list below into that box and hit the search button. The tool will find all mods for you, and enable you to tick which ones you would like. It couldn’t be easier – so go and try a few mods out for yourself – it will enhance your Torchlight experience significantly!
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