And We Were Upset About a $10 Horse…

Where is Darren when we need him?

Surely this will bring him back for another post!

Yes, Blizzard has turned that corner at last and is now selling in-game items for real life money.  No more buying trading cards… well, actually, you’ll probably still have to do that if you want every possible item… the cash store is open, show us the money!

For Sale - $10 Each

For myself, I am going to again restate my indifference to buying items in game.  It is a PvE game, so my fun is generally detached from your fun regardless of how many trinkets you buy.  You want the $10 pet?   Knock yourself out.

Will I buy these pets?  I am going to say no.  $10 seems like a lot of cash for either of these guys, the panda’s contribution to charity fig leaf not withstanding.  Get back to me when there is a special mount for sale.

However, this evening my daughter will get to log into WoW and she is going to see that Panda on the splash screen and she is going to want it.

At that point I will have to start on another futile discussion about money and how it is not infinitely generated from the plastic cards in my wallet.  Then she will want to spend her own money on it (her saved up birthday, holiday, and tooth fairy money adds up to the low three figures, so she has declared herself “rich”) and I will feel compelled to nip that in the bud.

My big hope is that she’ll just zip through the splash screen the way she zips through quest text and miss it completely.

But at some point she is going to see it or see a panda in game and the question will come up.  Pandas have that effect on a sub-set of females in my experience.

In fact, you should have seen Ula’s reaction when I mentioned a panda on guild chat last night.  Sorry about that Skronk.

Torchlight Patch Ready This Weekend

Runic Games has posted on the Torchlight Forums that the first patch is for Torchlight is now ready.

This is a full installer so you have to uninstall and re-install the game to do the update.

You also must install the version available from the vendor from whom you purchased the game.  So if, like me, you purchased from Direct2Drive, don’t go download the version for people who bought direct from Runic.

Abstracts from the announcement:

NOTES ON THE PATCH! PLEASE READ!

SUPER-IMPORTANT! YOU MUST USE A PATCH FROM THE VENDOR YOU PURCHASED FROM! Each vendor has their own DRM solution, and none are compatible. If you purchased from Steam, you’ll need the Steam patch , and so on.

This if a FULL REINSTALL. The packaged files for the patch changed entirely to improve loading times, so a full reinstall is necessary. If you are patching, you’ll need to uninstall your previous version.

BACK UP YOUR SAVE GAMES! Your uninstaller may ask you if you want to delete your save games. Make sure that it is UN CHECKED! If you want to be extra safe, you can manually back up your saves – I’d recommend this. Better safe than sorry!

Start->run

%appdata% and press return

Then browse to Runic Games\Torchlight\Save – and back up all the files there.

———————————————————————————–

Torchlight 1.12 Patch Notes –

* Fixed several issues which could overwrite saves, and protected against possible save loss. Save backups are now also generated.
* Much reduced load times for many users
* Some minor ingame performance improvements
* Fixed Needle Arc XP exploit
* Fixed Shadow Armor stacking effects
* Fixed vendor dupe bug
* Fixed various fullscreen startup issues
* Fixed broken Brink cinematic on subsequent plays
* Fixed merchant ‘thief’ exploit
* Fixed right clicking in inventory casting certain spells
* Fixed console not activating on Steam builds – this also fixes the fact that subsequent characters didn’t see the random dungeon unlock after the first completion
* Fixed issue with Syl’s cinematic not being “skippable” during first boss fight
* Fixed some DOT deaths not dropping loot
* Quest items no longer allowed in stash
* Several level fixes for a few places where things overlapped, or collision was missing, or stuck-issues cropped up
* Fixed texture/mesh/ replacement issues with mods
* You can now change difficulty level on the fly from the console without being branded a Cheater ( UNLESS you’re playing hardcore )
* Fixed pet minions not awarding fame
* Fixed slow load times when mods were enabled
* Pets inherit your spell masteries
* Magic find takes the max value between you and your pet when pets or pet minions make a kill
* Visible/increasing chance of stripping enchants via enchanter. Price based on # of enchants. Variables tunable in globals.dat
* Troll pet is properly invincible
* Tree Boss could be charmed – fixed
* Fixed issue – Returning to town if you died during Ember Colossus or Medea would make them dormant on return
* weapon + shield doesn’t count as ‘dual wielding’
* Shimmering Scale ( and 2 other socketables ) now work properly when socketed
* Ember lance slight nerf
* Ember lightning slight buff
* Aloe Gel summon provides better healing
* Equippables properly provide bonuses to passive skills
* Fixed display issue where multiple skill bonuses on the same item would collapse into a single display
* Hardware skinning settings respected properly for pet paperdolls
* Fix for potential bad state in the henchman battle
* Enchantments at level 100 now work
* Relabeled difficulty levels, and added tooltips explaining each
* Fixed ‘free spell purchase’ exploit
* Socketables cannot be heirloomed
* Fix for masteries not updating certain spell bonuses until logout/login
* Summon Blood Skeleton has 11 levels now
* Various small grammar and spelling fixes

* ADDITION : Rimlights, HW Skinning, and VSynch can all be altered from the Settings menu now.
* MODDERS: Items can be set to ‘always identified’