By farming certain phasebeast challenges at certain points in the game you'll be able to get heaps of gold as well as gear such as Limoany skulls, Rambren skulls, Riechliu skulls, full unique sets of any level and so on as fast as possible. By visiting certain areas in the game you'll be able to get the enchanters you need to create any lategame gear setup for any character.


Torchlight 2, like all ARPGs, is ultimately about the gear. And if you like an ARPG sufficiently, and want to try lots of different builds and characters, it's going to make sense to have a character with a dedicated farmbuild. After all, once the unique sets start flowing mixed in with the occasional legendary, you're going to get inspired to try out certain builds. The sky's the limit!

This guide will make it trivial for you to collect any unique in the game without gambling. It will also point to the best places and most efficient ways to harvest powerful socketable skulls.


- easy access to any unique in the game (though with emphasis on uniques lvl 40+)
- upwards of 80k gold per minute, legitimately
- if you are one of those who hasn't seen a legendary after 200+ hours of playing, this guide will fix that
- satisfies the itemcourtesan inside of you


- boring
- unchallenging
- may sap you of the will to play the game straightforwardly, as exploits are regrettably so much more rewarding


One commenter lamented that they leveled too far ahead and missed out on some important farming spots. To avoid their fate, read the career farming guide carefully!

Class

A farmer needs mobility, mobility requires teleport, and teleport requires a mage. This was true in Diablo II, and it's true in Torchlight 2. Except in TL2 teleport is called Frost Phase.

So pick an Embermage. I suggest a prismatic bolt embermage, since it's extremely easy/lazy. Kardfogu has the best guide for PB EMs out there, and I don't have much to add to it. I can tell you that his emphasis on 2000 focus is not as pressing since you're not making a character for NG+++++ Elite, but for obtaining cash and goodies on NG+++. This is important to mention since it will save you a ton on enchants.

Stats

I find that my mage can effortlessly complete Tarroch's Tomb on normal (again, its about the goodies, not the challenge) with:

- about 200-300 strength
- about 200-300 dex
- about 800 focus
- about 200-300 vit

This is not the most optimal per sé, but it's something that's light on the enchant/disenchant and therefore light on the wallet. Your goal is to invest the bulk of your hardearned resources into other characters, after all. One important note, however, is that you might find it wise to get like 99 raw strength and 101 raw vit (rest focus) to meet some of the gear demands before you reach lvl 100.

Skills

Again, this is almost entirely inspired by Kardfogu's guide.

Inferno skills:

• Elemental attunement: 4
  
• Firebrand: 15

Frost skills:

• Hailstorm: 15
  
• Frost Phase: 1
  
• Ice Prison: 15
  
• Frozen Fate: 1
  
• Ice Brand: 15

Storm skills:

• Prismatic Bolt: 15
  
• Thunder Locus: 15
  
• Death's Bounty: 15
  
• Prismatic Rift: 6
  
• Lightning Brand: 15

If you need motivations for these choices, I will have to refer to you to other guides. Again, this guide is here to help you farm, not kill things. You could make a frost or fire mage as well if you like, though I would suggest sticking with prismatic bolt as it seems excellent for high, fast damage.


Concentration: I can't really back this choice with any facts, it's more of a habit to use it. Could be that you sabotage your mobility if you opt out, could be that you will be fine..
Treasure Hunter: I shouldn't need to clarify this
Blocking: Helps survivability while you jump around looking for that blasted phase beast. Also helps in Tarroch's Tomb.
Adventuring: Another personal preference, mostly for the potion boost (once you hit lvl cap)

Put another Treasure Hunter on your pet. It has been confirmed by the developers[forums.runicgames.com] that this helps with your GF/MF, even if it doesn't show in the stats screen. Otherwise give your pet summoning skills (esp Summon Archers) as it will help vs goblins, animated swords and so on.

Gear is key for efficient farming. This is also its curse: it's going to take you some hours scrounging all of this together. You've gotta farm in order to farm! Farmception.

Ideally you will build up three separate sets of equipment: one for killing, one for items, one for cash.


The goal of the general gear is to get you through the non-farming areas. For efficiency's sake, use something that doesn't get you killed but lets you mow down monsters at a good pace. Writing this I realize this is the point of any ARPG gear ever, but keep in mind that Im talking about normal difficulty, so the bar is not set very high.

I use the Emberweave set[torchlight2armory.com], a lvl 70 unique set that you will be able to obtain in the course of your farming sessions. I use The Centerwing[torchlight2armory.com] for the cast speed as well as a wand with cast speed. I use some unique belt I found and have put zero thought into. I do not go into detail about the general gear because you can ultimately use whatever you like since you a) wont use it during the farming itself and b) it doesn't have to get you through the endgame content so it doesn't need too much thought/tweaking.

Incidentally, even though Emberweave's a lvl 70 set it will carry you to lvl 100 effortlessly, as well as through all battles in Tarroch's Tomb. This might have to do that I have socketed most of it with Riechliu[torchlight2armory.com] skulls (they give 1540 hp), netting me a total hp of 21,000. Combine the HP with 75% block and nothing will kill you on NG+++ normal. I also use some Chaos embers with movement speed. If you think this sounds prohibitively expensive, then know that both getting the skulls and the set is a trivial exercise if you follow this guide to the letter. You can have all that stuff in three or four lazy evenings.

Running up to the Emberweave set, you could opt to cobble together a viable variation of the Wildwood set[torchlight2armory.com]. Again, this is to taste. If you just slap on whatever you find that looks good, chances are you'll get through most of the content without a hitch. That's the power of prismatic cheese.


As a rule, your unique farming gear should be of minimum level 42. Reason is Kelton's Rock[torchlight.wikia.com], which by the way is the hardest item to farm in bulk :(

Item reqs can be really important here since you can't shouldn't rely on Borris or stat sockets to get you there (!)

Of note is that lucky dice[torchlight2armory.com] can outperform Kelton's, both by being able to be socketed into any armor, and by having a chance for slightly higher MF. The downside is that I have no suggestion where/how to reliably farm them. Maybe in the mines in the Frosted Hills, or at guaranteed Monster Shrines (I believe there is one in one of the Crow's Pass maptypes)


I'm adding this small section now that I've concluded that it isn't just a fluke: farming the lava phase beast on NG+++ with magic find nets you at least one legendary per two inventories.

I started writing this guide on sunday, and had found two legendaries at that point in this area. I wrote it off as unbelievably good luck, considering I've read so many people lamenting about playing 300 hours and never finding any legendaries.

It is now thursday and I have collected Clockmaster's Tooth[torchlight.wikia.com], Ribcleave[torchlight.wikia.com], Magus Scream[torchlight.wikia.com], Starfall's Command[torchlight.wikia.com], two Riftplane Destroyers[torchlight.wikia.com][/h1], Shards of Cobalt[i.imgur.com] and finally Dispatch[torchlight.wikia.com]. I can say beyond reasonable doubt that farming the way this guide suggests will most definitely grow your legendary collection.

UPDATE: Over a period of two hours, some screenies (the orange colour is due to cursor highlight):

Best in Slot

The table below assumes you already have a high level with your PB EM. Otherwise you can just adjust your stats as you level to accommodate for the different items.

If you socket all the eligible slots with Kelton's you get 20 * 4 + 81 = 161 MF. If you assume 5% magic find enchanted per slot, thats (20*4) + (11*5) + 81 = 216 MF. It can go higher if you are lucky/tenacious with Filip, but Im personally sitting on 156 magic find and Im already raking in a ridonculous amount of uniques.

Goldfarming is equally to or more important than itemfarming in TL2, as enchanters are both brutal goldsinks and essential for any high level build. That is why it absolutely pays off to invest time and effort into getting a goldfarming kit.


Like with Kelton's Rocks, you'll want to pick gear that can accommodate Nephanic Skulls[torchlight2armory.com]. Unlike Kelton's Rocks, absolutely no item below level 55 is going to be worthwhile for gold finding in the long run, though you can of course squirrel them up during your Nephanic poverty phase. (Note that the Armory entry for Nephanic Skulls is incorrect/outdated, they need lvl 55 items minimum)

Honesty forces me to mention Demoza Skulls[torchlight2armory.com]. There are a number of low level armors that have 30% gold find. If you socket these with two Demozas you'd get 42% GF, which beats the 40% from two Nephanic Skulls. The downside is that you'd have to farm a few Demozas (probably in Ossean Wastes / Tar Slime Challenge NG0) for a measly 2% increase per item. In the grand scheme of things, that's not going to be noticeable, so why invest extra time? Maybe if you're a perfectionist....


Best in Slot for goldfarming assumes you have a wealth of Nephanic skulls. They're a lot easier to farm than Kelton's, after all. More importantly, they drop at the exact same spot as Limoany skulls, and you're going to want upwards of 20 of those regardless of which characterbuilds you are planning to play for realsies. Limoany skulls are the gateway to endgame content, after all.

Happily, a goldfinding kit takes less sightseeing than a magicfind kit since only two or three items are really important for our Scrooge McDuck purposes. It will however involve so much Crystal Phase Beast farming that you'll stab yourself in the face after an hour or two. No pain, no gain.

Assuming 17% goldfind from Filip, two Nephies in each armorslot and the items from the table below, you're looking at a staggering 102+187+400=691% goldfind (or 759% with the Asphyx set[torchlight2armory.com] and a Rambren). To get an idea what this means in terms of profit, Im currently sitting on 433% gold find and I make 67k gold per minute in Lava Challenge NG+++. Enough to make your average Wall Street denizen look like a pauper! (Who am I kidding, those guys wipe their asses with 67k bucks)

When you google for Torchlight 2 farming you'll sometimes see people mention phase beasts in passing, but most of it is going to be about the Netherlord, Tarroch's Tomb or Maps. Apart from the Maps, which are hopelessly inefficient and unreliable, they are correct: Farming Netherlord or Tarroch's will net you uniques every time, without fail. It is very reliable, which is why most people will tell you to run them if you want to up your gear.

They are mostly wrong.

This is a tough claim to make, especially regarding Tarroch's, and especially since I haven't done systematic research. But one thing I can say with certainty: Gold and skulls are important, and Tarroch's does not deliver on either.

Consider that Tarroch's takes roughly 12 minutes and has about 16 blue chests (which behave weirdly), noting that blue chests are the only containers that can drop skulls[forums.runicgames.com]. The Lava Challenge Phase Beast has 13 non-weird blue chests that you can open within a minute. Assuming 20 seconds for loadtimes, an efficient farmer has ransacked 104 blue chests while a Tomber is stuck with just the 16 (though admittedly half an inventory of uniques).

Incidentally, the Netherlord isn't that good: you will get 2-3 uniques after maybe 1.5-3 mins of hopping around with frost phase (assuming very fast loadtimes). You can do about three phasebeast runs in the time of one Netherlord run; you'll get 39 blue chests, which apart from uniques have a good chance of getting you dem skulls, not to mention a very steady income.

By way of experimenting, I did 9 lavaruns and jotted down my ill-gotten gains. At 1 minute 10 seconds per run, with 433% goldfind, 89 magic find and 1,753,917 starting gold, I ended up with eight skulls, six uniques, one legendary and 2,361,999 (+608k) gold:



10.5 minutes well spent!

What's more, farming these phase beast levels allows you to wear gear fully specialized to farming, because the ones I will talk about below require little to no combat.


Those new to Torchlight 2 and/or Phase beast farming might wonder how this is actually done. Step by step:

1) Goto a large overland map, like the Saltbarrens, Frost Hills or Sundered Battlefield
2) Systematically clear out the map in combat gear (I recommend exploring the edge first, and then the insides).
3) Somewhere during this process, you will (always) find a phase beast. Phase beasts have a 100% chance of spawning somewhere, though you don't have a 100% chance of finding one even if you've been very diligent in your search. They spawn in the craziest, sometimes fully inaccessible places. Anyway, when you found one, kill it. It will spawn a Phase Beast Challenge portal.
4) before you enter the phase beast portal, consider swapping to your farming gear and leaving your combat gear in town.
5) Finish the challenge, but when you reach the end, do not enter the exit portal. Instead, quit the game
6) Resume your game in single player mode (not LAN!)
7) Return to step 5) until your and your pet's inventory are full of skulls and uniques. If you leave your combat gear in your stash in town, you will have more space for the farmables.

Inventory management is relevant, because what I've neglected to tell you is that finding the right Phase Beast challenge is a drag; it can sometimes take an hour before you get the one you want, so when you finally do find it, exploit it to the fullest!

In case you don't find the right phase beast on the map, quit the game and remake it on LAN, tagging "Reroll world" before commencing.



A farmer's wet dream, this challenge has it all: 13 blue chests, 4 normal chests, and zero combat to allow for the highest possible gold-per-minute or skulls-per-minute ratio in an unmodded game.

To find this challenge, goto the Sundered Battlefields in act III. You can encounter three possible challenges there: Survive the Attack, the Varkolyn gauntlet, and the Lava Challenge (so 33% chance per phase beast).

Most players who stumble upon this challenge will get 5-6 chests and possibly die due to the rising lava. But for some reason, the developers added hidden valves around the level that will stop this lava, allowing you to get every single chest with time to spare. Of note is that the top platform (with the portal) will never flood, which is nice if you want to sort through your inventory or something.

This challenge is important in three phases of the game: NG0, NG+ and NG+++. More about this later in the guide.


This beast can be found in the Frosted Hills in Act 1. It's easier to get, since the only other challenge is "Ignite the Braziers", a long time favourite for gold farmers, though I would argue that it's better to do the lava challenge for gold as it involves no combat and more uniques/skulls.

The point of this challenge is to kill the "goblin hordes" (there's only a few) before they destroy the crystals. After the 'tutorial crystal', you are thrown into a small area with four crystals, one of which is surrounded by about 8-10 of the nasties, and which will shatter in a second unless you use a worthwhile AoE attack like hail storm.

Defending all the crystals nets you four medium chests. This challenge is inferior to the lava challenge in every way (combat, less chests) but it requires a mention because it's the fastest way to farm medium chests in the level 55-62 segment, which is where the all-important Nephanic and Limoany skulls can be found. If you use Torchlight Rapid Respec it might be an idea for you to use it to reset your character to NG+ in order to get these goodies.


Both of these are Act II Saltbarrens spawns, competing with Dig for Buried Treasure and the Black Holes challenge. I mention these because they're a prime way to harvest spells and embers (which you could choose to collect in order to transmute some movement speed chaos embers). The best thing with either of these gauntlets is to move at top speed to the end, opening only relevant blue chests and picking up any spells/embers (might as well do both as they take up different kind of inventory spaces). I do not recommend running these gauntlets for uniques (even though there are interesting MF/GF uniques around lvl 30) because it's likely more efficient to run along the suredrop bosses, like Ezrah Khan, the Manticore in the Luminous Arena and the Siege Guardian.

Enchanters imbue your items with various bonuses at increasing cost per additional enchant. The worthwhile ones are only found in the wild. For general info regarding enchanters, I will refer you to this beautiful guide[www.dethguild.com], with a couple of important corrections:

- Filip the Lucky doesn't imbue weapons with critical chance/hit (anymore)
- Barter tome does not affect enchanting costs
- The "map chunk" in their picture spawns in Maps, Fungal Caves and the Middenmine. It will always contain Jurick the Socketer, no-one else. This is a good thing.

Of note is that on the bottom of their guide, there is an overview of area levels. You wouldn't believe how often I have had to refer to it when hunting for specific stuff. It's probably worth a bookmark!

Jurick the Socketer

Every item that you wear or plan to wear should have at least two sockets, and Jurick's the critter to see. The fastest way to get him is to goto mapworks and get yourself a Frostshorn or Fungal map. Just bounce around with Frost Phase until you find him in his designated area (see the enchanting guide linked above for a screenshot/description)


In addition to all the wonderful tips and recommendations from the enchanting guide, I should add that there's a place with a 100% chance of a random enchanter appearing: a certain version of Crow's Pass in Act I. Crow's Pass comes in four flavours, best idenitifed by the orientation of the level entrance. The entrance is either on the top, on the left side, in the lower left hand corner or in the lower right hand corner. What you are looking for is the right hand corner variation: this map will always feature a random enchanter in one of five set locations.

In order to farm this, you would have to repeatedly reroll worlds in LAN games and enter Crow's Pass time and again until you get to the right hand variation, and then the right enchanter. It is however recommended to quickly run through each Pass, as you can find Monster Shrines frequently (for lucky coins/lucky dice). Also, there is another version of Crow's Pass that often has an enchanter in a specific area, see the screenshot:

Ready to enchant?

Once you have scrounged together a nice collection of gold and GF/MF items, run Crow's Pass until you find Filip the Lucky, and, optionally, Jurick the Socketer. With Filip, keep enchanting your MF items until he "crits" with 4% MF, and then enchant two times more for at least +1 MF. Keep enchanting your GF items until he "crits" with 13% goldfind, and then enchant two times more for at least +5% goldfind. If you're really lucky you will crit your chosen stat twice or even thrice. I have 25% goldfind enchanted on one of my items because GF critted twice, and 8% MF on my shield because it critted twice and added a final 1% as well. As far as I can tell, Filip ignores item level for his enchants, unlike Borris.

Naturally, add sockets to every (!) worthwhile item you come across with Jurick. If you stash an item, your goal is to ultimately wear it on some character, so you'll have to socket it regardless. Socketing is relatively cheap since there's no need to reroll anything.

Assuming you're starting your farmy mage from scratch, I theorycrafted the following path for you.

Level 1-13: play normally. Wear anything that has GF or MF, prioritize MF.
Level 14: Optionally farm the Crystal Phase Beast in the Frosted Hills for low level skulls and certain uniques that add a lot of MF.
Level 14-30: play normally, wear as much MF as you can. You could try a hunt for argonaut items around lvl 20-24.
Level 30-35: Do itemruns in the Saltbarrens. That means running Luminous Arena, killing Ezrah Khan and Siege Guardian. Aim for some of the lowlevel items mentioned in the Best in Slot sections above.
Level 36-42: play normally, emphasis on MF.
Level 42-44: Run the Lava Beast Challenge in act III. Aim for the BiS items. Feel free to emphasize goldfind a bit (but not too much). Note that this is THE place to stock up on Skulls of Joskin[torchlight2armory.com], which can be very tasty to anyone looking to build a summoner.
---when you hit about 1.5m gold, consider seeking out Filip for an initial boost to your MF/GF.---
Level 44-52: play normally
Level 52-60ish: Consider running the Netherlord for Kelton's Rocks and assorted uniques.
Level 61-65ish: Run the Crystal Beast Challenge in NG+ Frosted Hills. Aim for some of the BiS uniques and, of course, Limoany skulls and Nephanic skulls. Socket the Nephanic skulls immediately into trash items and wear those, you can recover them later regardless. Set some personal goal, like "i will do this mindnumbing thing until im level x or I have y Nephanic skulls." You can also head for act III and come back later if you want to beef your wallet first. I should probably mention that MF does not affect skull drop rates, so there's no real reason to postpone farming this.
Level 65-70ish: Play until Sundered Battlefield Act III. Run the Lavabeast with gold or magic find, whichever is more pressing. Save up enough money for a second pass at Filip. I'd recommend 3m gold. Then run the phase beast some more, and when you've got enough embermage powerwares (I heartily recommend the Emberweave Set), visit Borris with about 4m gold. Enchant everything with crits, use all your money, and try to stay below 300 vit/str/dex and above 500 focus.
Level 70ish-100: When you're satisfied with both your Limoany and Nephanic collection, take the fastest route to both NG+++ Act III and charlevel 100. Ideally at this point you'll have everything you need to go all out farming. If you don't, consider using Rapid Respec to go back to NG+ or NG0, because that's likely where you need to get the items you've missed.

As a general rule, don't throw any items away that have more GF or MF than the item you replace them with. Try to keep a permanent collection in your stash of best gold or magic find per slot. Dont be afraid to mix MF and GF gear during Phase Beast runs, as on almost any level it is possible to find something temporarily or permanently useful.

You'll find a ton of 'trash skulls' like Macaberg. Instead of throwing them away, consider socketing them in temporary items (The Sentinel set?) for comfortable play in between farming sessions.


A crafty person such as yourself will easily be able to locate some stash mods out there that allow for nigh infinite storage space, but if you're an old Diablo player you probably won't mind creating a few stash characters. I have a "berserker set" char, a "lowlevel items" char, a "skulls" char and so on. Every time my shared stash is full I will run my stash chars by it one by one until it's empty again. It helps to categorize, because if you just make "stash char 1", "stash char 2" etc you will lose track of what you have where.

Well, that was my first game guide ever. I usually read/follow guides, not create them. It's been somewhat tedious having to cobble together all the bits of knowledge required, so I hope you won't have to do tread the same paths as I have, and this guide will satisfy all your questions about farming.

I've spent 160 hours on TL2 so far, mostly with my farm character, making all the bad choices and being ridiculously inefficient. This guide can spare you my learning curve.

As I am a human being I love confirmation of my worth, so putting something nice in the comment section will do me a lot of good! Even better are constructive suggestions and corrections.

Lastly, English is not my first language nor have I used a spellchecker, so please be merciful.

Thanks for reading, and happy productive farming!

This last section is a mix between credits and references. It contains the prime sources I've been using to educate myself on Torchlight 2

• Kardfogu's guide to everything - good for a quick browse
  
• Kardfogu's build for Prismatic Bolt Embermage
  
• Torchlight 2 Armory Item Database[torchlight2armory.com] - careful, some of the info is outdated.
  
• List of phase beast challenges[gaming.stackexchange.com] - some phase beast challenges are not mentioned; the author is not aware that Phase beasts aren't tied to acts but to areas; the "Avoid the Lava" phase beast is listed in the wrong act. Still the best kind of phase beast overview out there.
  
• Painfully awesome research into skull drops[forums.runicgames.com] by Redvex
  
• Useful overview of desireable sets for farming
  
• Useful info[forums.runicgames.com] about why PB EMs shouldn't bother with wand mastery or any on hit effects.
  
• Immensely valuable overview of socketables[torchlight.wikia.com]
  
• Excellent enchanting guide[www.dethguild.com]
  
• My video showing how you can get all the chests in the lava challenge