It’s been about a month since Torchlight Frontiers concluded its second alpha test, and the devs have been hard at work making changes based on players’ feedback. Project Lead Tyler Thompson and Perfect World Community Manager Jared Browar aka Sofech sat down yesterday for the first dev livestream of 2019, over the course of which they gave players a look at what’s been going on behind the scenes since the end of alpha 2.
There’s a lot of information to unpack over the course of the one-hour stream, but the high points include the addition of a new gear and progression system in which players have separate level progressions for each of the game’s different frontiers, which in turn determine the level of gear players can acquire from the associated frontier. However, this new system effectively means that players will likely have multiple different sets of gear for each frontier, so the devs have also added new wardrobe items, which are statues that can be equipped with item sets, thus serving as both functional gear storage as well as fashionable fort decor.
The stream also shows off some of the redesigned UI elements, such as a tweaked minimap and adjusted UI scaling, and the devs also reveal that each class has received some new skills to try out. Fans of the pets from the original Torchlight games will also be pleased to hear that pet gear is making its return in Frontiers, with each pet having slots for two talismans and a collar. Thompson says that players should expect the game’s next alpha test to begin in the next few months, at which time players will get to try out these new features — as well as others that will be added in the interim — for themselves. In the meantime, however, to get all the details on how Echtra has been working to implement players’ alpha feedback into the game itself, you can check out the full stream video just below.
