Titan Quest

Titan Quest or Immortal Throne?

Immortal Throne is the only expansion for the game. It brings many seamless enhancements to the original campaign and works as an add-on; therefore, the original Titan Quest must be installed. Immortal Throne is required for most patches and mods, as it's been adopted by the majority of the playerbase. Therefore a bundle of Titan Quest and Immortal Throne is the most desireable version for newcomers (sometimes bundled as Titan Quest Gold). Original version characters can be also imported into Immortal Throne, but the best option is to start a new game within Immortal Throne.

Fan patch 1.17a

The general consensus is to play the game using patch 1.17a, which is a fan-made community patch that fixes many bugs and technical issues left in the game after Iron Lore's closure (but does not alter its balance). This patch requires Immortal Throne. The patch is included with some mods, such as Underlord.

The usage of the fan patch is strongly advised if the player plans to choose the "Spirit Mastery" for his character, because otherwise important skills of this mastery are bugged and will not work.

Installation of the fan patch for Steam install

1. Save the 1.17a file in the Steam folder for Titan Quest Immortal Throne:

\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Titan Quest Immortal Throne\

Do not save the patch in the original Titan Quest folder.

2. Make sure you've run both Titan Quest and Immortal Throne (separately) at least once in the past. This will let the games create registry entires and config files that the installer will use to detect the installation.

3. Run the 1.17a installer.

4. Run Titan Quest Immortal Throne from the Steam client. The title screen should read v.1.17sd in the bottom right corner.

It's highly recommended to disable automatic updating in the Steam client for modded games. Iron Lore (creators of the game) closed down in 2008 and won't release any more updates, but a bug in the Steam client may force the program to download the game entirely again, with the GUI reporting it as an update. If the bug occurs, it'll reset the entire game installation, forcing you to reinstall the fanpatch and any mods you may have had.

To disable automatic updating, right-click the game in your Library, click Properties, then Updates, then choose the second option.

Recommended programs

TQ Defiler

A program with many features, such as some built-in mods, fixes for some known problems, the ability to skip the intro automatically, etc. It can also be used as a character editor, either to fix/restore broken characters or to cheat.

It's recommended to use Defiler to enable the RNG and slow casting fixes, as well as the socket error fix if this problem affects you.

TQ Vault

Acts as an external, independant, shared inventory. You can create unlimited Vaults, each holding whichever items you put in them. Useful for creating collections of rare items or "twinking" (giving characters items found by other characters, generally from later parts of the game and higher quality). It also has some item-editing features, such as the ability to change a relic's completion bonus, clone items or complete sets.

Underlord

Underlord is an extensive mod that raises the level cap to 85 (from 75) and introduces new content as well as balance, making the game more difficult overall but close to its original style. The installer includes patch 1.17a as well as a number of other mods.

• Underlord Primer provides an useful gameplay guide to Underlord for newcomers.

Multiplayer issues

Fan patch multiplayer fragmentation

Copies of the game with the fanpatch installed will only be able to connect with other copies that also have it. Otherwise, a different version error will be shown.

Steam

There may be an error with searching and joining multiplayer games online through Steam. Launch Steam in admin mode to fix the problem, or enable the "socket error fix" mod within the Defiler.

Skip introduction cinematic video

The introduction cinematic video is unskippable the first time you view it. Alt-tabbing or switching window will only pause the video. After the first run, you can skip the video by clicking or pressing some keys.

It's possible to skip videos by renaming the video folder, or changing the names of individual video files. These are located in:

\Titan Quest Immortal Throne\Videos\

Using the Defiler to disable the intros may be an easier solution.

Borderless fullscreen windowed

Native: no

ShiftWindow: yes

Save game cloud sync

Save game location

Windows XP/Vista/7 and Steam:

\My Documents\My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne\

Caravan storage is not transferred in the same way as save game data, as it's incompatible with Windows profiles with a different name. TQ Defiler can be used to fix this problem. TQ Vault can also backup or transfer data, or sync this TQ Vault save folder:

\My Documents\My Games\Titan Quest\TQVaultData\

Simply transferring caravan storage data without the appropiate fixing will result in the storage being completely and irreversibly wiped once it's loaded the first time.

Cloud sync

Steam Cloud: no

Dropbox: yes

Windows Live Mesh 2011: yes

GameSave Manager: yes

Where to buy

Titan Quest Gold is the version that's the most desireable, since it includes the original and Immortal Throne versions of the game.

Retail and digital versions do not register onto Steam.

Steam sales

Titan Quest regularly goes on sale on Steam:

• 24/01/12 - 75% off
• Christmas sale 2011 - 75% off
• 11/10/11 - 75% off
• Summer sale 2011 - 33% off
• 19/04/11 - 66% off
• Christmas sale 2010 - 50% off

Demo

The demo of Titan Quest is extremely buggy and not indicative of the quality of the game (especially once it has been patched and modded).