Torchlight II: Guide for Easy Harcore Elite with Engineer

As a summoner you main form of damage do not scale with STATS but only with LEVELS and MINION DAMAGE, so stat are mainly for more defense

Here are the most important stats you can find:

1. DAMAGE REDUCTION (cap 75%), reduce all damage but traps
2. +X% CHANGE TO REFLECT A MISSILE pretty self explanatory
3. BLOCK (cap 75%) doesnt work well with forcefield
4. DODGE(cap 75%) only dodge “normal” attacks and missiles

1. +X% PET AND MINION DAMAGE, you need nothing else

1. MP REGEN, quite important stats as mines consume a lot of mana
2. MP, not that useful but considering you regen MP at a 4% every second, 50 more mana means 2 more MP every second

• 4 VIT
• 1 DEX (until dodge cap)

Avoid FOCUS, it does nothing for your mines and it doesnt increase mana regeneration enough to matter (a piece with +10 mana give you more mana regen than 20 point in focus)

Always keep at max level

• HEALBOT
• FORCEFIELD
• SPIDER MINES, main damage skill
• IMMOBILATION COPTER
• GUNBOT
• SLEDGEBOT

Keep at one

• SHIELD BASH, optional, but it’s the only force of mobility you have early
• ONSLAUGHT, optional, but it’s the way better than shield bash, require you to switch to a melee weapon using W (REMEMBER TO ALSO PUT A SHIELD IN THE SECONDARY SLOT otherwise you are gonna die the very moment you switch weapons)
• STORM BURST, main mobility skill

• DYNAMO FIELD, the only charge generation skill you have, put as many point possible here
• CHARGE DOMINATION, optional, the chance is small, but 1 point here is worth

• COUP DE GRACE, doesnt work with minions
• FIRE AND SPARK, doesnt work with minions
• BULWARK, armor is worthless
• AEGIS OF FATE , doesnt work with FORCEFIELD
• CHARGE RECONSTITUTION

SHIELD + RANGED WEAPON is a must, both wands and pistol are ok,
You want to keep items that give you minion damage and that help you survive, like a said nothing else is gonna give your minions more damage

Extremely important in HCE solo, re-rolls are the only way for you to farm money/levels/items in TL2
Here is a quick guide on how to do a reroll:

START the game with your character > Choose LAN > Click on CREATE GAME > Select RE-ROLL

IF YOU ARE IN A BAD SPOT CLOSE THE GAME AND REROLL THE WORLD

A full RESPEC is not present in this game unless you mod it, you can only respec the last 3 skills you learnt.

This mean that the only way to respec without a mod is to going back to base before putting your third skill point, respeccing is not useful with this build because you can waste 3 points on SHIELD BASH without problems

During this time you wont be able to summons minions that do damage, meaning you need to use something else to do damage
The very moment you find a shield remove FLAME HAMMER for SHIELD BASH, always keep SHIELD BASH to 1-3 levels during this stage

Here the gameplay is boring and slow, just shield bash and do damage with your pet + your ranged weapon, the damage is low, but safe

REMEMBER TO NOT ENTER BOSS ARENAS WITHOUT SPIDER MINES
You need to farm to get to level 14 before attemping the temple steppe bosses, this is easy to do because if you dont kill the bosses the dungeons mob will respawn (if they dont just reroll the world)

At 14 with the mines killing Grell is easy, if you want you could start farming it by rerolling the world in so you can stack DAMAGE REDUCTION thanks to the EYE OF GRELL

Engineer already start with a 25% DAMAGE REDUCTION so if you are good enough at kiting you can avoid farming it

IF YOU ALREADY PLAYED ON ELITE FARMING GRELL IS NOT THAT USEFULL because you only die to traps anyway

AVOID TRAPS

That is all, JUST AVOID TRAPS, you are basically immortal if you just keep running around and throwing mines, but TRAPS STILL ONE SHOT YOU so just avoid them at all cost

AVOID EVERY SECONDARY DUNGEON, to keep the risk of dying to a trap at the minimun avoid secondary content, you should go farm grell instead if you want improve your character

Having a second casual character you use to learn the various room and traps in the dungeons you are running in HCE is a good idea, because like I said you need to focus on avoiding traps at all cost