YMMV / Torchlight

• Anticlimax Boss: Sometimes the Alchemist's imps/golem/pet will go charging into the Boss Room before the pre-boss cutscene is triggered, causing the boss to explode at the beginning of the fight from all the damage dealt before the cutscene even started. Kind of makes them skippable bosses.
• Demonic Spiders: Each class has its own Demonic Spider in the last area. For melee specialists, the Dragonkin are major threats, as their fire-breath is short-ranged, constant and very damaging. They often come in groups and can take a lot of punishment. For ranged specialists, we have Dark Zealots, who throw down enough damage to one-shot anyone who is even slightly squishy, and they can do it in two different elemental flavors, just in case you're thinking of bulking up your resistance to their attacks. These attacks scale in power with your level, which means that a lucky shot can kill a Squishy Wizard even after they have leveled up enough to shrug off anything else. Oh, and they are also Mook Makers. They can summon a Zerg Rush of "Enslaved" skeletons who out-DPS you, even if you're tanking.
  • Stabber Pygmies in the Estheria sections, which usually show up in groups often accompanied by a Chanter Pygmy who can revive them. They are fast and have strong spear attacks, and can easily kill the unprepared.
  • The dwarf fortress sections have Crawlers, small spider-like robots which fire electrical beam attacks which like the Dark Zealot's electrical attacks deal a lot of damage and are nearly impossible to dodge.
• Difficulty Spike: The Black Palace, the final area of the main quest: not only is it filled with Demonic Spiders, but enemies spawn in much greater densities. (Sometimes you'll run into rooms with like five Dragonkin and five Dark Zealots. Just one of those ten is totally enough to kill you, if you're not careful.) The whole point of the area seems to be adding as many deaths to your record as possible before you beat the game.
• Fan Nickname: The game has been called "Diablo 2.5" by fans, because it has three playable characters and the setting resemble a lot like Tristram.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Vanquisher "Trap" skills are basically sentry guns, and they fire really fast. While the damage on bosses is negligible, you can spawn enough of them to whittle him to death, and they'll eliminate the Mooks he comes with too. Plus they make Kiting viable, which is almost the only way to survive in the Black Palace and bonus areas based thereof.
  • The Vanquisher's Explosive Shot has good damage, a good firing rate, a huge blast radius and knockback. It also travels farther than the player's view radius and blind spraying into a suspicious unrevealed area can snuff out entire groups of enemies plus a boss or two before they appear on-screen (which prevents them from reacting). The damage scaling isn't too spectacular at higher levels but at the same levels mana consumption becomes less of an issue.
  • Even the Vanquisher's standard Ricochet ability is pretty powerful to start, and can easily plow through many of the enemies of the first section.
  • Certain gemstones for use in the game's Socketed Equipment provide Regenerating Health at a rate of ###-HP-per-second. Combine this with life-drain and you're set for, well, life.
  • The Alchemist in general is fairly broken. So much that some of his skills, like the Ember Lance, had to be nerfed, and he's still very, very powerful. The only balancing factor for him is that he's squishy, and even though you get potions by the tons, they go down lightning fast when things start getting hectic.
  • The Alchemist's Lightning skill can hit anything on screen and shoot through walls, in addition of bouncing to other nearby creatures. If you can mouse it over, it can be hit!
• Good Bad Bugs: If you were equipped with a ranged weapon and encountered a Chest Monster, instead of moving to the chest, your character would simply open fire. For good or ill, the sequel fixed this.
  • If you press Escape at the right time during the cutscene where Medea is introduced, it's possible to skip the fight with her entirely, aside from a couple Blood Disciple flunkies.
• Sacred Cow: Combined with a bit of It's not as popular as Diablo, so it ROCKS. Do not say ANYTHING negative about Torchlight if you don't want to be flamed with the fury of a billion suns.
  • Bemoaning the lack of multiplayer is usually safe, if you're willing to hear a chorus of 'Torchlight II adds it!'