Thread: Tips and advice for newbies

When playing there are some basic rules that can make it easier for you to get the most out of the game and your builds. In general you will find tons of helpful info in this forum, but you will have to spend some time finding it. That's why i've post this "Get started well" guide, so that you can get started quickly. My idea is that everyone with good newbie advice can post in this thread.

Choosing Masteries:
When playing the game you choose a mastery at level 2 and a second at level 8. You could stick with only one mastery, but for newbies i suggest that you choose a second aswell.

Choosing a class:
When deciding what class to choose, there are some classes more suitable for beginners than others. What you want is a class that is more of a allround class in defence, offence and surviability. A overall good choice for melee builds includes Defence mastery and a good choice for caster includes a strong pet class. Without a pet you'll have a hard time playing caster as a newbie. Strong pet classes are (Earth and Spirit). Nature provides average pets, but good defence from extra health. Also look for classes that compliment eachother in skills. One mastery might grant a skill that boosts Stun length and damage, where another mastery has many skills with stun effect. Combining those will make these skills more powerfull.

Distributing your attribute points:
If you're choosing Psysical damage (Melee:Swords, axes and clubs), you should focus on strength. There are some lesser requirements in dex for swords, so checkout this before spending your points.

If you're choosing Piercing damage (Ranged:Bows, Melee:Spears), you should focus both on strength and dexterity. Strength provides your psysical damage, and dex provides piercing damage which is the % of the psysical damage that bypasses enemy armor. So rule of thumb is that without high strengthbased damage, your piercing damage will not get high either.

If your choosing Elemental damage (staffs), you should focus all on Intelligence. Intelligence boost elemental damage. Just end up having 150 in Dexterity as this is the maximum requirement for caster gear.

Choosing skills:
Get skills that combines good defence and good offence. If one is to weak you'll take too much damage or do too little. Too little damage meaning getting hit too much from the long fights and finally take too much damage anyway. Try to have skills for different purposes, so that you have a balanced character.

Think of having: Overall defences, Close range defences, Ranged Defences, Specific damage type defences and Lifesaver skills, Lowering enemy resistanceses, Boosting own resistances and damage.

A character missing out on some of these will have problems in certain situations. Match the skills before combining masteris to see if there are some big gaps in the build you're thinking of.

Distributing skillpoint:
Alot of newbies make the mistake to max out some single skills, at the start of the game. This way you only have few strong abilities, and lack some others. Another thing is that maxing the mastery gives you alot of extra health, strength, dexterity or intelligence. This is just as important as skills. The way i play i only choose to 1 point the good defencive and offencive skills in the first 25-30 levels, and spend alot of points in the filling up the masteries. An example could be that with the first 1 point you could get 10% to damage, second point you get 12%. That way you only get 2% extra damage from the second skillpoint spend. If you choose instead to 1 point another skill giving 8% to dodge attacks, you that way get more for the money, both in % and you also combine both offence and defence. Another thing is +skills equipment. If you have +3 to all skills this means that you get 4 points in a skill by spending only 1. My advice is to spend 1 point in some skills, and get alot of free power. The second point spend only raises the skill by 1 instead of 4...

Good and bad skills
Rule of thumb in seeing if a skill is worth the spending, is usually if it is calculating the bonus in % or just in numbers. If you take Defences "Battle Awareness" skill you see that it gives 72 in defensive ability and 40 armor when maxed. My Templar at level 50 has 759 in defensive ability and 1426 in armor, so the bonus from Battle Awareness is totally insignificant compared to that. So most skills not using bonus in % will flatten out later in the game. If it had given 10% to armor, the bonus would keep getting bigger as my armor class from better gear would get bigger. So pretty much stick to skills with % in bonus and avoid spending more than 1 point for the synergies in the skills only giving bonus in pure numbers.

Damage vs. Resistances and armor
Alot of newbies are choosing insane damage per second (DPS) instead of survivability. Remember that you don't deal alot of damage if your dead after one hit. Offcourse, dealing high damage kills faster and that way you get hit less as well...But still use gear and skills that makes your character more resistant along with raising the DPS.

Attack rating
Your attack rating (attack speed) is more important to some skills than others. You could take Volley or sheild passive (Sheild smash, Disruption & Pulverize), these skills trigger more often, the more hits you make. Thats why abit lower damage with a high attack rating actually can deal more damage because it triggers bonus damage skills more often. The same way with Onslaugth, Calculated Strike, and Psionic Touch. All these skills are dependant on a number of attacks before triggering. High attack speed helps them trigger more often.

Speed limits in the game:
Dual wield - 199%
Bows and staves - 244%
All other weapons - 222%
Casting speed 300%
Run speed 166%

Figthing hard opponents
When figthing hard opponents there are some important rules:

1. Have good resistances (Bosses have special attacks so watch the type of damage they do and raise your resistances to it)

2. Lower their resistances (Some classes can lower bosses resistances with skills like Plauge, Squall or other skills)

3. Move around (Staying in one place often gets you killed. Learn to read when the special attacks are coming and move away)

4. Store special equipment (Store things that are powerful against specific types of monsters or damages. Apply before specific figths)

5. Pop potions just before clashing into the enemy, that way the first seconds of attack you'll be regenerating health fast which gives you time to fire your spells without getting slain doing so.

Monster Resistances
Along with game progress monsters will be more resistant to different types of damages. Using skills that lowers monster resistances will help you when using those types of damages. Some of the skills that lower monster resistances are: Squall, Plague, Study Prey, Trance Of Wrath, Deathchill Aura and more...

Staying Alive
Most common reason for dying alot is to loose health too rapidly. Main reasons are:

Killing to slowly. Solution: Get faster and more damaging weapons and skills that boost either single target hits or multiple target hits. Also high resistant monsters need to have lowered their resistances to certain damage types.

Having to little health. Solution: Max out masteries before spending to many points in skills. Get +health gear and VERY IMPORTANT GET SOME CONVERT % OF ATTACK DAMAGE TO HEALTH gear !!!. This is especially important for dual wielders as they get hit alot. With % of attack to health you'll gain health for every succesful hit you make. Even the most open defensive characters (Assassins, Warlocks etc.) can actually be quite viable with this...

Having too bad gear. Solution have some higher level characters send your low level characters gear through the Caravans transfer area.

Planing your build
When planning your build you can go as far as level 75 with the expansion Immortal Throne. The standalone game Titan Quest goes to level 65. You should note that levels from 65 to 75 is extremely hard to to reach since you need tons of XP. The rule of thumb is that if your charracter isn't very survivable when entering Legendary difficulty (around level 52-56), it will never be. You should for that reason plan your builds to have the needed skills before reaching the highest levels.

The Titan Calculator
To make sure that your characterbuild is gonna be ok, you can use the Titan Calculator. This small program helps you visualize the build your thinking of making. At the bottom of the Calculator page you'll find the link which you can use to post your idea of a build to other, so that they may comment on your idea. Good idea is to only depend on how your build is at level 65, since leveling after 65 is very slow, and also people without the Immortal Throne expansion can use your calculations on the build. The link to the Titan Calculator:

The Titan Calculator

Dont just speed through the game
Take time to kill everything on your way, or you will be too low in levels for the later game. You'll find less gear aswell.

Leveling beyond the end of the game
Know that at normal speed through the game (Abit of farming and abit of extra going through areas), you're still gonna end up after the Immortal Throne exspansion at level 60-65. So the levels from 65 to 75 is only reached by going through already explored areas and bossruns in Legendary difficulty. So plan your character to the point of ending at level 60-65. The rest is going back for more xp in already explored areas, and not part of the going through the last part of Legendary difficulty for the first time...You can use +% to experience gained gear if you want to reach higher levels faster, but you have to wear it from early on in the game to get a larger effect on your XP.

Just ask for help
Dont be affraid to ask for help. In this forum there is alot of patient people spending alot of time helping others. Just remember to look for related posts before asking and keep the tone friendly. People who is spending loads of time on helping others should have respect for offering their free service...

View my second post in this thread for Pet and Bosskiller skill analyzes

Nice work, this gets a sticky.

Pet analyzes:

I made this section so anyone starting the game would have an easier choice on pet and what skills could be used as bosskillers. Note that between every difficulty your pets gain extra damage and health.

Lich King: (Spirit)
This is the most powerful pet in the game. At level 5 he gets Soul Blight skill, which lower enemy resistances greatly. Death Nova is a powerful synergy that reduces enemy health and leeches health for the Lich King. Wraith Shell makes the Lich King highly damage resistaned and almost impossible to kill. The last skill Arcane Blast is not needed for the Lich King to be the best pet of them all.

Core Dweller: (Earth)
The migthy Core Dweller is the second strongest pet. Strong on health, strength and the ability to provoke enemies to attack him and not you. The Inner Fire skill increases Core Dweller speed, health regeneration and dexterity. The Wild Fire skill gives to little output in damage and is almost useless. The Metamorphosis skill grants high health, damage absorbation and resistances and makes the Core Dweller the perfect tank. In legendary the Core Dweller is loose ground due to a more insignificant developement compared to his enemies though...Note that in legendary difficulty he is losing terrain due to his slow developement between difficulties, where pets like wolves gain real devastating power.

Wisp: (Storm)
The Wisp itself gives insignificant damage, but for characters dealing in elemental damage it has one of the best boosters in the game. The skill Eye Of The Storm grants 100% to elemental damage and high resistances to Cold and Lightning damage. A perfect pet for damage boosting.

Nightmare: (Dream)
Again as the Wisp, the nightmare is weak on damage. It gets abit more edge after level 5, but the reason to pick this oddlooking fellow is the synergies. Hypnotic Gaze spreads confusion amogst you enemies and works fine even with just 1 point in it. Mastermind is superb if you have other pets as it raises the damage and the regeneration of health and energy greatly to other pets. Without other pets the nightmare is more or less useless.

Wolves: (Nautre)
Wolves can be great or just suck big time. This depends on your character. At level 7 you get 2 wolves and at level 18 you get 3. The skill Maul is useless due to the extremely low damage output, but in IT expansion they gain % to reduction of enemy health from this skill. This skill should be maxed in legendary as it makes wolves one of the most powerful legendary pets. Survival instinct grants extra damage and damage absorbation when wolves go down to 15% of their health. Since wolves don't deal much damage a % boost to damage is almost insignificant later in the game. I personally just 1 point this skill and recast wolves if they die. This works fine throughout the game. What you want from your wolves is the Strength of the pack skill (And Maul on Legendary). Strength of the pack boostes all allies psysical damage greatly and adds a bit to speed and armor. Superb skill but the pets them self are just boosting meatsheilds until Legendary where they weaken and totally rip your enemies apart. If playing melee with wolves they are great pets.

Sylvan Nymph: (Nature)
Weakest of all pets, but since she stays out of the harms way she has some survivability. All skills are abit below average and her synergies are fairly weak too. Owergroth gives a little defence and retaliation and Nature's Wrath gives some elemental damage to her bow attacks. I useally put 1 point in her skills and stop there. If your playng Druid or Ritualist she will get some boosts from Nightmare and Wisp pet and get abit more usefull.


Construct analyzes:

Traps: (Rogue)
Traps are great. They work as nonbiological pets and do great damage. They also draws the attention of enemies which is very useful. Rapid Construction skill makes you able to create traps faster and cheaper and is a good skill if you rely much on your traps for defence/damage. Improved Firemechanism gives extra projectiles and adds to damage. All in All a great help playing rogue based characters.

Monster Lures: (Hunting)
Monster Lures are not that great. Best thing is that they are cheap and have the provoke ability. Traps do provoke aswell and are much much better, just more expensive. The Detonate skill is useless unless you playing an Avenger in which case Detonate is boosted by Earth Enchant Aura. If not the Monster Lure is a pretty weak alternative to Traps.


Timelimited summonings analyzes:

Outsider: (Spirit)
Now this guy is awesome. Dealing very high damage both psysical and elemental and having very much health. This is the best timelimited summoning in the game. Worth every one of the 16 skillpoints needed.

Ancestral Warrior: (Warfare)
With the Ancestral Horn skill you can summon 5 Ancestral Warriors. Their damage is not that great but you get 5 clowns running around and this makes the skill average for 16 skillpoints. All in all a good skill.


Bosskiller skill analyzes:

Collossus: (Defence)
Spend just 1 point and get 30% damage absorbation, 50% damage, 30% strength and 30 health. This skill is awesome just with 1 point. The skill does not get much better spending more than 1 point, so this is a great bosskiller skill and it's only 1 point spend. This makes it the best bosskiller skill in the game.

Phantom Strike: (Dream)
Awesome Bosskiller and also a mob destroyer. With all 12 skillpoints it gives 190% to damage and your teleported directly into the attack. No damage taken getting close to your opponent. With the synergy Dream Stealer you get your mob attack and dealing 360 arc damage, 382 psysical damage, 405 energy leech over 4.0 seconds and 4.5 seconds stun to 6 targets at a time.

Lethal Strike: (Rogue)
This skill is evil. With all 12 points spend it gives 500% to psysical damage plus 390% to piercing damage. This totally rips your opponents apart. The synergy Mortal Wound is only for characters focused on bleeding/poison as it adds to % in thoose damage types. Considering how much psysical and pierce damage is deals this is not even needed. Maybe just 1 point in it for the 3 second stun to very hard bosses.

Study Prey: (Hunting)
The skill is a perfect bosskiller. Lowering both damage and pierce resistances on enemies by 50% imaging it with Lethal Strike. Double overkill beyond your imagining. The synergy Flush Out lower defensive ability and elemental resistances. The skill is not a must, but if dealing elemental damage or just having enough skillpoints in spare choose this synergy.

Some Classes are easier for newbies than others. Offcourse the change with your gameing experience, so list is for newbies. Some might say that a class belongs on a lower difficulty, but just starting the game it would look abit like this:

Easy classes:

The Spellbreaker: Dual Melee/Pet (Warfare/Spirit)
The Spellbinder: Melee/Sheild/Pet (Defence/Spirit)
The Champion: Melee/Pets (Warfare/Nature)
The Conqueror: Melee/Shield (Warfare/Defence)
The Guardian: Melee/Shield/Pets (Defence/Nature)
The Warden: Spear/Sheild (Defence/Hunting)
The Ranger: Bow/Pets (Hunting/Nature)
The Diviner: Melee/Sheild/Pets (Dream/Spirit)
The Ritualist: Staff/Melee/Sheild/Pets (Dream/Nature)
The Templar: Melee/Shield (Dream/Defence)
The Conjurer: Staff/Pets (Earth/Spirit)
The Harbinger: Dual Melee (Dream/Warfare)
The Summoner: Staff/Pets (Nature/Earth)

Medium Classes:

The Corsair: Melee/Sheild (Defence/Rogue)
The Juggernaut: Melee/Sheild/Pet (Defence/Earth)
The Elementalist: Staff/Pets (Earth/Storm)
The Avenger: Bow/Pet (Earth/Hunting)
The Oracle: Staff/Pets (Storm/Spirit)
The Druid : Staff/Pets (Nature/Storm)
The Brigand: Bow/Spear/Sheild (Rogue/Hunting)
The Warlock: Staff/Pet (Rogue/Spirit)
The Soothsayer: Staff/Pets (Spirit/Nature)
The Haruspex: Spear/Bow/Pet (Dream/Hunting)
The Evoker: Melee/Pets (Dream/Earth)

The Harder Classes:

The Assassin: Dual Melee/Traps (Warfare/Rogue)
The Slayer: Dual Melee (Warfare/Hunting)
The Thane: Dual Melee/Pet (Warfare/Storm)
The Battlemage: Dual Melee/Pet (Warfare/Earth)
The Paladin: Melee/Sheild/Pet (Defence/Storm)
The Sage : Bow/Spear/Pet (Hunting/Storm)
The Bonecharmer: Bow/Spear/Pet (Hunting/Spirit)
The Magician: Staff/Melee/Pet (Rogue/Earth)
The Illusionist: Staff/Melee/Pets (Rogue/Nature)
The Sorcerer: Staff/Melee/Pet (Rogue/Storm)
The Dreamkiller: Melee/Spear/Sword/Traps (Rogue/Dream)
The Prophet: Melee/Pets (Dream/Storm)

These are just overall guidelines, so some may find this different depending on their playstyle.

Originally Posted by SkiDesignS

yay, haha, i didnt even know the battlemage was a harder class...although i did find myself using TQDefiler in the Immortal Throne quest, with the spider. i was really angry when i found out i cheated for an optional quest.

but great guide, it is a great help, even to some older player, i am sure congrats and thank you

Well, the battlemage can be abit tough to play in the late game. Due to the fact that Earth dosen't provide any defence except Heatshields 15% damage absorbation. Offcourse the Core dweller has the Provoke ability, but beign meleebased, you'll draw the attention to yourself every time you attack enemies while standing within the range of their attacks. Also your fire damage will not get a great boost from Int since you are melee and spend your attributepoints in strength. This means this class isen't a great damage dealer (Except from Brimstones 21% to psysical damage). So a battlemage takes some more trainning to play before having a decent survivability...

Originally Posted by krazykatana

@shadowshire
oracle medium ? i'd like to know what are the points that makes you think its not an easy class.
and umm... I understand that a bow/pet haruspex might be medium but at least put the spear/shield version in easy, phantom strike whit the high piercing power of hunting is just awesome and it doesn't require twinking and is pretty easy to play (1st char ever for me).And dream offer a lot of crowd control /defence for melee and require few hotkeys/buff management

Well, i compared the classes in a fast and overall way to eachother. So what i mean is that there are easier classes than the oracle and the haruspex. The game itself is really easy IMO. The first 15 levels and Legendary difficulty is where you'll find some challenge (Except a few bosses and crowds offcourse).
The reason i put Oracle as medium is due to the few defensive skills. I don't figure that you would spend the high amount of skillpoints in Deathchill Aura line beign a ranged caster. Second it's the low amount of hitpoints that makes the class vulnerable to crowds and high damage bossattacks. Other caster classes has either Heart Of The Oak, Core Dwellers Provoke or Heatsheild/Stoneform as lifesavers and defernsive buffs.
Anyway, the Oracle is a pretty easy character to play, but still there are more newbiesafe builds to make IMO.

The Haruspex is a strong build aswell. As defensive skill you have Find Cover and Temporal Flux giving almost total immunity to archers. That said, you don't have anything else the Attackpower. No buffs for dodging, blocking, slowing enemies or resistances. Offcourse a fast killer won't have to worry about beign hit when everyone is dead, but still for a newbie you'll be caught flatfooted a few times.

The real hard characters to play are Sage, Illusionist, Magician and Thane. Oracle and Haruspex are still in the buttom of the difficulty scale, just with a few easier builds to play...