Status: Still NEET

ENTERING SERIOUS MODE...

It's now coming close to three months since I kicked myself out of a decent job, and I haven't had a replacement job yet. I figure if I want to get back in the grind, it would be to do something I would enjoy doing - being an instructor. I feel that it is my calling to learn and experience tons of things in life, and to let people know about those experiences and knowledge - only if they ask, of course, or if they signed up and paid good money to listen to me ramble on and on.

In an ideal / dream world, I would be earning money by teaching people how to play Magic: The Gathering. I'd also work with pros, pitting their new creations against a lineup of whatever deck types they'd like to test their potential breakthrough on (think a paid sparring partner for a professional boxer or a MMA fighter).

Dream on, man of the waves and wind, dream on...

END SERIOUS MODE.

Now that we've finished being maudlin, I can now proceed to gush about Titan Quest and its expansion, Immortal Throne. The game came out in 2006, and I had recently just gotten hold of it myself, and I must say, I'm surprised I didn't get it earlier. Why did I wait 6 years? What was going on in 2006? Oh, right, I decided to end my stay in academia and decided to join the workforce. Great year, 2006. What was it like in gaming - ah, let me check.

A few minutes later...


Rise of Nations, Company of Heroes, WH40K: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, AOE 3: The War Chiefs, and the Nintendo DS Lite launch. Thank you, Wikipedia. Still, what was I playing in 2006 that Titan Quest escaped my radar? Ah, never mind, back to Titan Quest. What can I say - it's an instant hit with me. My Jonette shares the same sentiment, bless her. While I've made it my little goal to create each of the expansion's Dream Mastery classes and post my discoveries on GameFAQs, she's been steadfast with her Rogue, which she later upgraded to a Corsair (sadly, no parrot and ship and pirate hijinks). Wait, me try to make some sense by delving into the game mechanics features.

At its heart, Titan Quest and its expansion is a Hack and Slash game with RPG elements. Players create a character that starts as a generic tunic-clad soldier with a knife and little else, and is asked to rescue a horse and ultimately the Greek village of Helos from marauding satyrs, deranged boars and angry crows.

Essentially, left click to move or attack, hold down the left mouse button to continuously attack or to keep moving. Kill monsters, gain experience and loot. Soon, your generic character will hit level two, and the nine (eight in the original) Masteries become open to you. Choose one, and congratulate yourself for getting a character class / title when you pull up your character screen. And because people will ask, yes, you better choose a class, as upon level up, you're only given 2 points to distribute between your stats: Health, Energy, Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. When you level up though, you are also given 3 skill points to use, and their used in two ways: raising Mastery level, or upgrading existing skills.

Sounds confusing? Not your typical RPG skill progression, I agree. Let me explain by giving an example. The Nature tree, for instance has a skill that allows the character to summon wolves to aid in the fight, and it requires 1 point in Nature Mastery to unlock. So, when we hit level 2, the game gives us 3 skill points, and asks us to choose a mastery to spend them on. At this point, we are literally masters of none - not even an apprentice! Now, say we want to have our own wolf pet to help us fight. We choose the Nature mastery and lo! We are informed that we have 3 skill points to spend, we are shown the entire skill tree for Nature, and we see that there is a pre-requisite for our Call of the Wild skill - one point in Nature Mastery. We then put in one point in Nature Mastery, which not only unlocks the first tier of skills for our class, but also gives us extra Health, Energy, Dexterity and Intelligence.

So, yes, Smarty the Dumb-ass, you can choose not to take a mastery. Good luck getting the stats necessary to wear even the basic armor and weapons, though, without grinding for hours on low-end enemies.

Now, going back to our little model. We now have a point in Nature Mastery, which will allow us to pick a level in Call of the Wild, getting us 1 wolf pet. We take a level of CotW and now, what do we do with the last point? Do we improve the CotW skill to level 2, choose a healing skill (also available to Nature characters with 1 point in Nature), or do we improve the Nature Mastery level?

You  look at the skill tree and decide that you want a bow-slinging, spell-casting, bra-busting Dryad as a companion, eh? Too bad she's so far up the skill tree, requiring 16 points in Nature Mastery to acquire. But maybe we can dedicate our next five level ups to climbing the skill tree so we could get her by level 8. Or perhaps you should just sink all your points into getting tougher wolf pets and ignore the mastery?

If you're the sort who enjoys crunching numbers like this, you'll definitely enjoy this aspect of the game. And it gets crazier - when you hit level 8, you're offered a second mastery. That's right. A second mastery enables all sorts of skill combination shenanigans, allowing you to properly recreate any character archetype you can imagine. Fancy a dual-wielding axe-using beastmaster? Take the Warfare mastery and sink enough points to get dual wield! Want to imitate a World of Warcraft hunter? There's also a Hunting mastery available! Do you want a second long-ranged pet, assuming you already have a Dryad? Get the Dream mastery's Nightmare for a funny winged eyeball or Spirit mastery's undead Liche King.

As this handy permutation and combination calculator (http://www.mathsisfun.com/combinatorics/combinations-permutations-calculator.html) tells me, with the expansion installed the game offers a possible 36 final character classes (permutation of 9 masteries, 2 can be taken for any character, no repetition allowed), eight more from the original game's 28. I can only imagine how the development meeting for the expansion went.

Dev A: Why are we making a new mastery? Aren't 28 classes enough for you?
Dev B: Well, it we've been able to ape most of Diablo 2's classes, including the Druid from the expansion. But somehow the Assassin eludes us.
Dev C: I want a psychic character I can properly name Pyslocke!
The Money: Make it so!

There is so much to do in the game before your character hits level 75 (the maximum, sadly). You can hunt for and assemble monster charms, gods' relics, and finally formulas to combine charms, relics, and spell scrolls into artifacts. You can even re-allocate your skill points in-game (for a price, of course) and try different skills and strategies - though you would most likely use the NPC who performs this service to undo the mistakes in skill selection you've made earlier in your career.

That's it for now. Time to decide whether to take my Soothsayer's mini-army of 2 wolves, 1 dryad archer, and 1 lich blaster on a rampage with Jonette's Corsair, or to ask her Corsair to tank my fledgling Seer as I try to discover what the Dream-Defender is properly called.