Crows Corner Q&A Recap: Pre Aeterna

Last Updated:September 1, 2023

Welcome to the Maxroll Crows Corner Recap: Pre Aeterna edition. Crows Corner is a podcast-like livestream that occurs every other Tuesday at 11 PM EST inside Torchlight Infinite's official Discord Server. The hosts are GG-Lawren (XD Community Manager) and our own Xtra37. Together, they answer questions submitted by the community, the livestream's audience, and even each other! If you'd like to ask XD developers a question about Torchlight Infinite, you can do so here.

For this Crows Corner Q&A Recap, we're covering everything that was asked, answered, and discussed during the 13th and final Crows Corner of Torchlight Infinite's 3rd Season: Cube of Rapacity. You can find our last recap which covered the 10th, 11th, and 12th Crows Corners of Season 3 here!

Discussion Recap

Much of the best information to come out of Crows Corner is unplanned. Below, you'll find everything we've learned from the discussions between GG-Lawren and Xtra37.

Massive Legendary Drop Rate Buff

3.5x more Legendary drops, coming soon to a Torchlight Infinite Season rapidly approaching your location.

GG-Lawren casually mentioned this massive bit of news during the Pre Aeterna Crows Corner. News of this didn't quite make it into the Season reveal stream, but it can't be overstated how awesome this buff is. This is XD's response to the wonderful feedback the community had for their Season 3 / SS1 x5 Legendary loot event.

Co-op is Probably Coming in the Future!

Torchlight Infinite's most requested feature was projected to soon be upon us. A recent Crows Corner confirmed this to not be the case. This Crows Corner brings brighter news ahead of Season 4 / SS2's City of Aeterna launch.

GG-Lawren explained that a beta-like co-op event may release in the middle of the upcoming Season, to test the feature out. This is still highly up in the air, and if it doesn't happen, it's still likely that co-op will release in the following Season. Co-op may still be delayed further, players should continue to stay tuned for further announcements on the matter.

Torchlight x Maxroll Q&A Incoming!

Mark your calendars for September 3rd, 9 AM PST, because Maxroll's own Tenkiei, Milkybk_, Palsteron, and Crouching_Tuna will be holding an awesome Q&A session with XD Developers over on Torchlight Infinite's Twitch Channel!

Torchlight's City of Aeterna Launches Soon!

Torchlight Infinite's 4th Season, the City of Aeterna launches of September 7th, 5 PM PST. Season 3 / SS1 will end at this time, and all characters made for that Season will be transferred to the Permanent Server.

Season 4 / SS2 looks great, and we hope to see you all slaying the endless hordes of Leptis alongside us. We have some resources ready to help you prepare your expeditions to the ruined and ancient City of Aeterna.

Out of the loop? Check out our recap of the City of Aeterna reveal stream!
Want to know what's new and what's changed? Check out the new Season's Patch Notes here!
Itching to give Torchlight Infinite a shot in the new Season? Check out our Getting Started Guides!

Community Q&A

Every week, Torchlight Infinite's community submits many questions to ask XD. Every week, XD presents answers on Crows Corner. This section of the article features content from the 13th and final Crows Corner of Torchlight Infinite's 3rd Season: Cube of Rapacity. Below, you'll find:

The Community's questions
GG-Lawren's answers to those questions
Xtra37's live commentary
Editor's Notes that add context when needed.

Note that duplicate questions are not included and that all questions, answers, and discussions are paraphrased for your reading convenience.

Crows Corner Official Transcripts

Crows Corner: S3:13 August 30th 2023

What happens when your Divinity Slate has an affix that matches a Medium Talent you have allocated? Will they stack together? Ie: +1 all Skill levels from Warlock.

Editor's Note: GG-Lawren initially misunderstood this question. Medium Talents stack together, but duplicate Major Talents don't stack.

I was wondering about the philosophy of the development team. Do you guys tend to lean towards nerfing things that are overtuned, or try to bring things up to similar power levels?

GG-Lawren: We do both.

The Korean translations seem to have quite a few errors. There are incorrect words, inconsistent naming schemes, and some descriptions are left entirely untranslated from English. These issues cause a ton of confusion for both new and existing players. Therefore, are you considering recruiting users to help with translation?

GG-Lawren: Please report any translation-related issues you encounter in our Discord's translation-feedback channel. We regularly collect player feedback on these issues.

Editor's Note: Xtra37 and GG-Lawren held a discussion over the viability of the Discord translation-feedback channel, agreeing that more needs to be done to allow players to contribute translation help. Lawren said that he would talk to someone about this.

You've recently said that Demolisher Skills are not up to par and will be tended to in Season 5. Though, Terra skills have a similar mechanic and are in a similarly bad spot, being powercrept by Spell Burst. Can we expect changes for Terra Skills as well?

GG-Lawren: We are not satisfied with current Terra Skills, though we don't have time to optimize them for the upcoming season as we have a lot on our plate. We will take a look at them in SS3 (Season 5).

1. Will you ever add a third trait for an existing Hero?
2. The Trait System confuses new players, they often think that another trait can be selected by a leveled hero after purchasing. Please explain this system better, or allow us to switch between them like PoE's ascensions.
3. Relics and Memories reference Hero Specialization instead of Trait, is this a mistake?

GG-Lawren: 1. Gemma now has her third Trait. 2. We don't have any adjustments planned for the time being. 3. This a translation mistake.

Editor's Note: Xtra37 gave some feedback on the subject of the second question, GG-Lawren agrees that this should be explained better and said that he would talk to someone about it.

Players can see twitching numbers of Command rating due to its large Decay. Adding more Command per second feels like throwing stones in a pond: There are some waves, but the water level is the same. Could you provide us with detailed info on Command decay calculations?

GG-Lawren: I really like your metaphor for Command. We will explain this in depth in the help manual in game in the new Season.

Using Bow Attack Sentries on Rehan: Anger triggers Burst which removes the Darkchaser. Burst is a triggered Skill, thus it isn't used and it shouldn't be counted for Darkchaser.

GG-Lawren: We checked this out and it is a bug, we're working on fixing it now.

With next season's changes to affix calculations and stacking, it is unclear if this also applies to affixes like +30% additional evasion from chest armor from Talents and Slates. If I were to have 4 Slates with this modifier, will the bonus be a 1.3^4 = 2.85 multiplier, or 30% x 4 = 120% multiplier.

GG-Lawren: They will be additive.

Hi. I have a few questions about the upcoming changes.
1. How will the changes to additive versus multiplicative additional multipliers affect the following, A: Affixes with +X% Additional stat per Y Layer. B: Identical affixes on different items, like two Divinity Slates with the same Talent. C: All Additional bonuses to the same stat, like multiple affixes that grant +X% additional damage to Life.
2. What changes are being made to counteract the massive buffs to items like Dumb Voice and Skin of Malice.
3. Will enemy armor now reduce the player's elemental or erosion damage?

GG-Lawren: 1. Within the same affix, it is additive. For the same name but different affixes, it is still multiplicative. Most damage reduction affixes are multiplicative and we will add explanations for all affixes that still use multiplicative stacking.

2. We will control the scale of these attributes. With Evasion for example, we changed the Additional % Chest Armor Evasion to be an Increased modifier, thus making it additive instead of multiplicative.

3. Enemies have the same armor mechanics as players, so their armor will now also mitigate elemental and erosion damage. The highest level monsters have 50% damage reduction for all types of damage, with that physical damage reduction coming entirely from armor, and the elemental and erosion damage reduction coming from resistance.

Editor's Note: While monster Armor is getting buffed alongside player's armor, monsters do not have Evasion Rating, so they're not getting doubly buffed.

There's a statement In Balance adjustments that says: "In the previous version, these two skills could summon a total of 6 Machine Guards, but now they can only summon 4." Does this also mean that the overall default Maximum of synthetic troops is reduced from 6 to 4?

GG-Lawren: No, the default overall maximum of synthetic troops will remain 6, but in the coming season, if you place two same minion skills, like Summon Machine Guard, these two skills will share their summon maximum. For example, the summon-able number of the first skill is 5, then you could only summon at most 5 minions with these 2 skills, or you change the skill summon-able minions number into 6.

In this season, players could summon 6 minions with Mechanical Modification by using 2 summoning skills ala “3+3”, but in the coming season this will be impossible. For compensation, we will buff some other aspects of minions.

There's this new system with Soul Candles. How many Soul Candles can we socket into our Skills overall? In the live stream there were only shown 2 Sockets for 1 Skill. Is it overall only 2 Soul Candles? Is it 2 sockets for EVERY active skill slot? Or is it even 2 sockets for EVERY active and passive skill slots?

GG-Lawren: Players can have up to two Soul Candles total.

I Find the "Overload Buff Removal Affix: +30% Attack and Cast Speed, +10% Chance to Deal Double Damage" part of the patch notes to be very unclear. Am I correct to interpret this as Minions now lose these stats whenever Overload expires?

GG-Lawren: No, this means that Overload will no longer inherently have these bonuses. We will be adding new effects to it to compensate.

There is a showcase of new Netherrealm changes in the announcement stream. Can you share more about the Netherrealm gameplay loop? It is unclear what's going on with the cards on maps during a round of confrontation. Are there only 3 Confusion cards being dealt to a region? How do we get more confusion cards on the plane? How do we exactly gain Confusion cards to progress? Do we need to complete the exact map with this confusion card to +1 progress on it or do all cards get +1 when we complete ANY map on that region?

GG-Lawren: At the beginning of each region, 3 Chaos Cards will be dealt. Each Chaos Card has its own progress requirement to take effect, with 3 types: 2/4/6. For example, if you play a Chaos Card that requires 4 progress, the remaining two Chaos Cards will disappear first, and the played Chaos Card will randomly appear in another level. You can only continue to play this type of Chaos Card until its progress is completed, and then the round resets and 3 Chaos Cards are dealt once again.

It is worth noting that before the progress is full, the Chaos Card will only have the drop quantity bonus take effect, but the additional effects will not be activated. Taking the previous example, there is a Chaos Card with a progress of 4, and its additional effect is that N treasure chests appear in the level. So, for the first 3 times you play this Chaos Card, only the drop quantity bonus will take effect. When you play it for the 4th time, the additional effect will be triggered: N treasure chests will appear in the level.

The main purpose of this design is to reduce the burden on players. We hope that players will not think too frequently but instead have a slight thought every few levels.

I have 3 questions.
1. Regarding the new Gemma's branding mechanic, does the live removal from Reap Purification get recorded?
2. Regarding the new Archery Bond Skill, can it also buff Sentry Skills that use projectiles like Frost Core?
3. The Patch notes state that Fine and Precious embers are being removed. Besides Ultimate Embers, will we still use Embers in crafting?

Editor's Note: GG-Lawren initially misunderstood the first question. He did not have an answer for it.

GG-Lawren: 2. As long as it is a Projectile tagged Skill, it will apply.

3. There is also Truth Ember, which isn't changing.

The Drapion Lady Pactspirit focuses on Spirit Magus, granting +40% Origin of Spirit Magus buff effect. The new Spirit Magus focused Hero, Iris, cannot be buffed by Origin of Spirit Magus, making the Pactspirit useless. Do you plan to change this Pactspirit to be compatible with Iris?

GG-Lawren: There are no plans for the time being.

I have 4 questions.
1. I know that blessings are being added as affixes in crafting, can I use multiple of these modifiers on the same piece of gear, like the previous Chaotic Ending?
2. As of Season 3, only one Skill Level affix could be applied to an item via Precious Ember. In Season 4, we know that Ultimate Ember affixes can be applied without limits. I wonder if you can now have multiple of these Skill Level affixes at once, despite them being in the same category. (Ex: +1 Summon Level, +1 Lightning Level on the same item).
3. Can we know the costs of crafting on an item as its number of affixes increases? Currently, more Flame and Embers are used as the item gets more modifiers, and footage from the reveal shows that increasing costs seem to still exist.
4. Do Ultimate Affixes interact with Ultimate Ember, if so, when targeted processing for those affixes fail, do we lose the Ultimate Ember?

Editor's Note: GG-Lawren misunderstood the second question. Xtra37 is pretty sure that Affix categories still exist and will prevent items from having multiple differing + Skill Level modifiers.

GG-Lawren: 1. There can only be one +1 maximum Blessing affix on a Ring at a time.

3. Reforging costs 3 FE, and the cost of targeted crafting does not increased with the number of affixes the equipment currently has.

4. The function of Ultimate Ember has been completely redone, and will only be used in T1 to T0 upgrades. The success rate of upgrading is 100%, but doing so will remove a single random affix from the item. All prior Ultimate Affixes have been added to the regular affix pool (except for a few that we found to be very weak), their strength has been rebalanced and they can now selected with Targeted Processing.

Only More From Us, at Maxroll

The next Crows Corner is set to air on September 12th, after the City of Aeterna's launch. If you haven't already, head over to our Discord and select the Torchlight Infinite role in #roles to stay up to date with our content development. Keep up the fight, Hunters!

Did this Crows Corner make you interested in the upcoming Season, the City of Aeterna? Find out more about what's to come with these other articles.