Titan Quest II is one of the in-depth Early Access games I have had my eye on recently. I love the style of “Diablo-likes,” and the idea of an ARPG in a Greek-Mythology-ravaged world just tickles something in my cold, dead insides. Last week, THQ Nordic provided a rather interesting update including a divisive topic: Crafting.

The most recent update, the “Spirit Mastery” update, introduced crafting to Titan Quest II for the first time. Rather than crafting cool gear from scratch, the developer’s focus is to make items you find even better. Here is what the press release says about the crafting in Titan Quest II:

“Last week, alongside the THQ Nordic Digital Showcase, Titan Quest II received a major new update introducing its crafting system. Today, we’re taking a closer look at how aspiring heroes can put their hard-earned loot to work and shape their equipment to better suit their builds.

Crafting offers several ways to alter and improve the items players find, but keep in mind: items cannot be created from scratch. Repeated crafting attempts will also increase material and gold costs, eventually making it more worthwhile to find a new base item to work with.

Additionally, crafting offers several ways to fine-tune an item’s affixes. Reforging an affix allows players to select one affix per item and reroll its values, with the possible range clearly displayed. Players can also replace an affix, exchanging an unwanted property for something more useful.

The available replacements depend on the prefixes or suffixes the item could naturally have rolled, so players won’t simply be able to choose any property they want! Another option is adding an affix, which lets players add another property to items that haven’t yet reached their maximum number of affixes.

Sometimes you find the perfect item while leveling, only to eventually outgrow it. The crafting system lets players upgrade an item’s level and postpone that painful goodbye. This one-time crafting option increases an item’s base properties as well as the tier of its affixes. There is a limit, however: an early-game item can’t simply be transformed into a perfect level 55 piece of equipment, as its affixes will eventually hit a ceiling.”

I am very eager to take the fight to Nemesis, Goddess of Retribution, in Titan Quest II. This crafting system will hopefully be a valuable tool in that quest, rather than something players look at a few times and then largely ignore until end-game. Either way, it is cool to see Titan Quest II evolving during its Early Access period.

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