In this update, we want to share a little information about our masteries. In Titan Quest II, just like in the first Titan Quest, you will be combining two masteries to form your own class.

In the initial Early Access release, you will have access to the Earth, Storm and Warfare masteries, with many more coming as we drop our updates. You’ll be picking these early in the campaign, as we want you to experience the possible synergies between them without much of a gap between the two unlocks.

Our overarching goal is to make you feel like you’re a hero blessed by the gods themselves, possessing superhuman powers. Improving and growing your powers will be a perilous journey, but this will be necessary in order to survive against Nemesis.

As for the actual mechanics, you will be able to equip a maximum of 10 skills in your ability bar. This will allow for a wide range of playstyles, such as ones where you focus on a primary damage skill and a handful of support skills, to builds where you utilize several alternate primary damage skills with several support skills. Titan Quest II will greatly reward you when you work out skill synergies, but will also cater to those who heavily invest into a more limited toolkit.

In past blog posts we already mentioned that we will be offering separate active and passive points within skill trees, and that your active abilities can be customized via modifiers. So this time, let’s talk a bit more about what’s in the masteries instead, and we’ll also show some modifier examples.


Combine fire and earth magic to leave the battlefield in ruins.

• Many of your abilities and modifiers revolve around setting the battlefield ablaze and engulfing your enemies in flames.
  
• Utilize fire in a controlled manner, or completely let go of any regard for safety and sacrifice your own health in favor of maximum destruction.
  
• Cause enemies to burn over time.
  
• Trying to not get burned, but still tempted by this mastery? Take control over earth and rock to shake things up a little, such as with earthquakes

Fissure is a line AoE skill where you break the ground open in front of you, dealing strike damage. With the Lava Fissure modifier, the fissure gets filled with lava, now dealing fire damage as well, at the cost of extra energy.

Adding in the Additional Fissures modifier will reduce your damage, but spawn extra fissures, helping you cover a much larger area.

Take control over the battlefield with the powers of ice and lightning.

• From area of effect abilities that regularly deal damage, to modifying abilities to also electrocute enemies on hit, fighting with the power of Storm will result in a battlefield full of thunder and lightning!
  
• Use ice abilities to chill or even freeze your enemies, giving you total control over what happens in the next few moments.
  
• Utilize lightning to shock and electrocute your enemies, locking them in place.

Cyclone is a static circular AoE skill where you create a whirling storm, dealing cold damage. With the Blizzard modifier, more damage gets dealt, and Chill/Freeze has a chance to be applied to enemies.

The Personal Storm modifier puts a smaller version of Cyclone around your character, following you around, allowing you to either stack the cyclones, or to hit more enemies at once.

Display your expertise in combat, becoming the ultimate warrior.

• Warfare features attacks for all weapon types, giving you significant freedom to design your build.
  
• This even includes abilities specially designed for ranged weapons other than magic staves. A warrior can be a juggernaut wading into the fray or one who specializes in attacking from afar.
  
• Support abilities help with getting into and staying in close combat, such as via leaping into battle, or stunning enemies nearby with a powerful stomp.

Leap is a versatile mobility skill, allowing you to jump into combat, or out of trouble, while dealing some strike damage. The Cooldown Charge mod allows you to cast Leap twice in a row, at the cost of a longer cooldown.

Seismic Leap will increase your damage on landing, while also dealing damage at your launch position.


When picking your abilities, we want you to think about how to form interconnections between your two masteries. We are ensuring this via global mechanics that all masteries will feature in some form - sometimes via base abilities, other times via modifiers. For example, you could build up status stacks with a Warfare ability, and then consume the stacks with a Storm ability for a more powerful effect there.

Different masteries will be offering different global mechanics, allowing for unique interactions between specific mastery pairs that not all others can cover.

We will soon be sharing some more gameplay footage, so stay tuned--you will get to see all of this in action!

By now, some of you have already had the chance to play a demo version of Titan Quest II at Gamescom. But even if you haven’t, we want to use this month’s update to give you a look at the content included in the demo and what it means for our approach to quests, narrative, and exploration.


Introducing the Story
In Medias Res
The Gamescom demo starts in the middle of the action. In the full game, you will play a short prologue chapter before washing ashore at the point where the Gamescom demo begins. This is a more narrative-driven section of the game, as it introduces the player to two major characters, their main quest goal for a new chapter, and the overall chapter conflict.
The player character wakes up on a strange shore, crawling with monsters, having just narrowly escaped Nemesis’s wrath. They have a mission to seek the Moirai, the goddesses of Fate, to learn how to defeat Nemesis, but with little idea where they are or how to find the Moirai, they first have to explore their surroundings.
It soon becomes clear that all is not well here. Evidence of recent destruction litters the beach, and there are ichthian battle parties on the prowl.
An Ally
Fortunately, the player discovers that they are not entirely alone. This section of the game introduces the player character to the divine horse Areion for the first time. Areion is the son of Poseidon and Demeter, and he once belonged to the mighty Herakles. But currently, he is trapped in a small charm.
Areion acts as the player character’s guide to the world of Titan Quest II, seeking to advise and protect the player on their quest to defeat Nemesis. He features heavily in this section, where he is first introduced, but takes on more of a supporting role as the game goes on.
A Missing God
With Areion’s help, the player learns that they need a god’s assistance to open the gates to the Moirai temple. Fortunately, Areion has an old friend in the area: Glaukos, god of seafarers. Unfortunately, it seems Glaukos has gone missing. The demo ends before the player can find out what happened to Glaukos, but the search for the god is a major element of the main questline of this chapter of Titan Quest II.
The Ichthian Threat
In addition to the player character’s personal goal to find Glaukos and reach the Moirai, this section of the game also introduces the central conflict of this region. The ichthians, monstrous fish-men, have managed to sabotage a dam and flood the farmlands below. Pyrgos village, the main settlement in the region, sits high atop the cliffs, but still needs protection from ichthians coming up from the beaches. The player character is pulled into helping with Pyrgos’s defenses by an eccentric old man named Philon.
Quests, Events, and Exploration
The Gamescom demo shows off many of the different content types featured in Titan Quest II.

Fated Quests
We call our main questline “Fated Quests,” because they are destined to be completed, and they tell the story of the player character’s battle with Nemesis.
These quests tend to feature the bigger narrative moments of the game, but also some of our most exciting gameplay. Big boss fights, dramatic escapes, tricky encounters, and one-of-a-kind events serve to make these quests memorable and fun to play.
In the Gamescom demo, the quest “A Strange Shore,” in which the player is introduced to Areion and Philon, is a Fated Quest, and it acts as the backbone of the demo. But there’s much more in store for players who wander off the beaten path.

World Quests
The Fates do not dictate everything. The world of Titan Quest II is full of opportunities for heroism, glory, or personal enrichment. World quests are discovered both through exploration and talking to NPCs you encounter on the way.
Players who reached the end of the Gamescom demo were able to find the world quest “Cages in the Dark” and free some of the very important citizens of Pyrgos from the ichthians.
World Quests can take a lot of different forms. They can focus on a mechanic, a mini-boss, a character, a twist, piece of mythology, or the central conflict of the chapter. You might find yourself tangling with a treacherous naiad, fighting the ghost of an ancient war hero, or saving someone’s life from a Gorgon snakebite.
Our World Quests are designed to be exploration-friendly. For example, if the player finds the cave full of prisoners in the Gamescom demo before they find the official questgiver, they can free the prisoners right away; no need to wait for a questgiver to ask them to.

Exploration Events
One of our big goals for Titan Quest II is to encourage and reward exploration. So besides our Fated and World Quests, we’ve included Exploration Events throughout the world. These are small encounters--a talking jar, a statue of Herakles surrounded by mysterious offering bowls, an encounter with a battle-hardened ichthian commander--which do not get tracked in your quest log and which are designed to be found and completed while exploring. Paying attention to your surroundings pays off, as each of these events has a unique flavor and rewards you for completing it.

The Gamescom demo features four of these Exploration Encounters. Which ones did you find?

We hope you liked this look behind the curtain of the content featured in our Gamescom demo. See you next month!