Game Log: Pirate101, Torchlight 2

I kinda remembered the Presidio battle from Alpha, but Arislyn on Google+ was saying it had gotten a lot tougher. I think I did it with someone else back then, but I didn’t remember it being TOO hard.
Basic plot is, you’re trying to get a favor from the Frogfather — the location of a notorious pirate you’ve been chasing — and to earn that, you need to do the Frogfather a favor — get some spices stored in the Monquista Presidio.

The game warns you that this instance will take a good amount of time. A witchdoctor player stepped into the entrance same time as me, so I had help going through it. It was pretty vital. She’d gotten the Boochbeard Bundle and had the cat companion plus a couple others I didn’t know, likely because of her different personal story.
We softened up some patrolling guards and did a minor boss battle before hitting the main boss. The box above warned us that the next battle would be EPIC, and for the first time, we could get to pick the companions that came with us! Usually they are randomly chosen. Lessee… how to pick the best three of my three companions… why not ALL of them?
Even with heals from the WD and the heal I get from the magic eyepatch that I think all headstart players get, I lost two of my three companions and was trying to keep out of the way of the remaining enemies. As P101 itself suggests, we took out most of the minions before converging on the boss. Naturally, the boss didn’t want to wait, and we did have to deal with him throughout — hence why I was losing my companions.
We did win, and I used my health potion to bring my dead companions back to life as we did one last battle to free one of the Frogfather’s henchmen, a giant crab.

I got a nice amulet for another class as loot, but without the auction house, it just gets sold to a vendor. Sorry. When I returned to the Frogfather, instead of repaying the favor with the location of the dog pirate we were pursuing, he transferred the obligation to some old rabbit, so now I have to go find HIM.
The huge crab I saved in the Presidio signed on as one of my companions, and the Frogfather, who’d been a friend of my parents before the whole Sky Squid incident tore them from my life, reminded me that their ship was still berthed at a secret dock, and unless I wanted to start paying the considerable berthing fees, should really think about bottling it up and taking it with me.
New SHIP! And here I was already at Jonah Town — the city built on the back of a monstrous whale (whose eye you can see at the top of the picture) — and the city where you can buy all sorts of ship gear. I blew almost all my gold on the best fittings I could afford, and went out to find some ships to cannonade.
Pirate level: 8, Nautical level: 3
I was happy to “friend” Eccentric Austen Oarsley, but Arislyn’s friend code didn’t work for me 🙁

Slowly making my way through Torchlight 2, killed the boss of Act I, the Grand Regent, and moved on to Act II. I’m playing an engineer, though my main gadget at this point is a small bot that follows me around, healing me. Next level, at 21, I start unlocking a turret bot that puts on the pain for a minute of every three.
I’ve gone with the two handed weapon skill tree, great for groups, hits really hard. I notice that the enemies don’t react as visibly to being hit as they do in Diablo 3, so that sometimes it’s whiff whiff whiff as I wave the hammer or whatever at an enemy, and then they fall over. D3’s animations are better, and their bosses, much more impressive.
However, the loot is definitely better with Torchlight. Back in the Diablo 2 days, completing a set of armor and getting the set bonus was something that could happen. Usually I’d be working on one or two armor sets at a time. In all my time on Diablo 3, I have gotten precisely zero items for any set, and, I think, three legendary items at all.
In Diablo 3, you’re supposed to be using the auction house for the vast majority of your gear. Bosses typically drop gear for the next lower tier; you sell that for money to purchase items for your tier from the people who won them in the tier ahead.
This works, and works quite well, and is possible justification for forcing you online in D3, since, without the auction house, you would have no chance of getting the gear you would need to survive. The perfect example is when we all started Diablo 3 hardcore. I used the auction house from the start and never died. Those that did not use the auction house died again and again and again.
They were still in the Diablo 2 mindset, where you could get the gear you needed by killing things.
Torchlight 2 has no auction house, and yet you can still easily gear up from the stuff you find while killing things. I typically have enough gear that if I decide to change my weapon, I have two or three good choices available. Often am working on two or three armor sets, though I level too fast for them to stay uber for long.
Just that loot has meaning again.
Aside from that, the Diablo 3 story is a bit more fun, even having played through the entire thing many times. Demon princes, the war in Heaven, betrayals, twists — it’s just FUN. The Torchlight 2 story is far more generic; I’m pursuing the Alchemist, a Bad Dude. The boss fights aren’t played up at all, and so far have not been all that difficult.
I haven’t even finished T2 once, so clearly it’s too early to come out and say D3 is better than T2, but, aside from the loot thing, which is a considerable advantage of Torchlight 2, I’m thinking, all in all, Diablo 3 (aside from the dependence on the auction house) is a better game. So far. For me.