Torchlight Infinite's 6th Season: All Past Heroes Free, Massive System And Reward Changes, A New Hero, And A New Gameplay Loop

How's this for an interesting new way to play Torchlight: Infinite? Any good ARPG lets you explore levels, fight bosses, and gain loot. That's pretty standard, and Torchlight has offered that loop for a while now. With the launch of Season 6, The Frozen Canvas, there's not only a new hero, but also a new way to play.

How? Collect snow paper in the game's new zones and make sure to loot up some paints along the way. Combine both in any way you like to create your own paintings. Why would you do that? The painting becomes a map with procedurally generated areas for you to take on. Higher level paints placed on the canvas yield higher level adventures and better loot. 

It's kind of neat and means that the way I experience some of the season will be totally different from how you experience it.

The new hero coming is Selena, the game's first shapeshifting hero. Toggle between Bard mode and Loud Song mode to deal with challenges in two entirely different ways depending on your needs. Selena isn't the only one bringing new skills, though. The game's existing skill system is getting a massive overhaul. With a myriad of skills being added, and some core skills getting buffed, the combinations you can explore in the new system are vast and open up a slew of playstyle options.

Core gameplay is getting a bit of a revamp, too. Player feedback has pointed towards each season creeping up the power of the game and also the complexity. However, rewards don't feel worth the complexity. To address these issues, the team has overhauled core mechanics, issued an attribute rebalance, and closed the gap between overpowered builds and other builds. Crafting gets new features as part of this balancing, too. These changes are a bit complex, so you'll want to check out the patch notes (which the team says should be better translated this time).

It seems like every system has been touched by this rebalance. Hero traits, attributes, hero memories...it's all been made less complex.

Changes are all well and good...but making it worth playing? New daily boss challenges and the rewards from all content have been increased. This includes the Netherrealm and its high timemarks. These really weren't worth running at high timemarks due to poor reward scaling. This has been adjusted with a change to the high timemark levels and rewards. Now higher difficulty nets you better rewards.

In big monetization news, this season, all previous heroes released in the game can be unlocked for free. This doesn't include Selena, the new hero, but all others are available. The season pass has undergone a revamp (what hasn't at this point?). You'll even be able to exchange points for past season rewards and the pass only goes to level 50 to get the "big" reward, too.

Literally, there are so many changes you should watch the stream reveal. I'll add it below with Selena's trailer.

The Frozen Canvas launches on October 24th.