Torchlight III: Forts guide – Building and decorating

Torchlight III introduces player-owned forts. These act as personal hubs for players, complete with several structures that can be built to provide additional bonuses or mechanics, as well as decorations to make your fort truly one of a kind. Here’s our guide to help you out.

Note: This guide is intended for Torchlight III‘s early access stage and certain mechanics may change in due course. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.

Torchlight III: Forts guide

Forts are accessed very early on in Torchlight III‘s campaign just after you’ve cleared the Edgewood Bluff area and once you’ve made your way to Trevail Passage. This will be the location of your fort, though it’s sparse at the beginning.

In most action role-playing games (ARPGs) a town acts as the central hub or destination, your one-stop-shop for everything you need. In Torchlight III, however, forts split this function completely. The town hubs in various acts will still have potion vendors or gambling dens (to get randomized loot). Meanwhile, the player’s fort will have several other functions related to in-game mechanics. An NPC named Sgt. Klive will then provide you with some additional sidequests to help you understand the various structures.

Note 1: Once you switch over to your other characters, you can travel to your fort directly. Progress is also shared account-wide so any objects, decorations, or structures you’ve built will be retained even when you play on your alts.

Note 2: Using the world map or portals will let you travel to your fort directly. Conversely, traveling to transition areas like Well-Trodden Path, Overgrown Trek, Foetid Footpath, and even Trevail Passage (those with directional signposts as icons) will let you visit the forts of random players.

Fort decorations

Torchlight III has a lot of stuff that you can customize in your fort (default “F” when inside your fort’s area). We explain these in detail below.

Arrange

This tab simply lets you drop pavers (stone pavement) on the ground.

Decoration

There are multiple tabs here related to beautifying your surroundings. You’ll find objects that you can place such as rock formations or planks:

And you can also find plants and trees:

Functional items and raw materials

The meat and potatoes of Torchlight III‘s fort system, however, are the functional structures that can be built. These provide you with a means of trying out other in-game mechanics.

In the Functional -> Crafting tab, you’ll find the following:

• Reliquary – Allows you to unlock and equip powerful relics.
• Enchanter’s Altar – Allows you to enchant your items or obtain legendary skills/passives for your Legendarium.
• Sawmill, Smelter, and Stonemason – These let you convert raw materials into processed ones that are used for building different structures. The Sawmill turns wood into wood planks, the Smelter turns metal nuggets into metal bars, and the Stonemason turns rocks into stone blocks.

Speaking of raw materials, you’ll need quite a lot of these for certain objects and buildings. All of these are found during your Torchlight III adventures, though some spots are definitely better for farming:

• Boulders are often found in outdoor, mountain areas, and in caves.
• Metal deposits are frequently spotted in caves (ie. Twilight Depths).
• Trees tend to be quite rare since they’re found in outdoor areas (ie. Edgewood Bluff or Polluted Plateau), but they’re not as common as boulders.
• You can log out to reset a location and farm the resource nodes once more.

Let’s go back to the fort customization tab. In the Functional -> Monuments tab, you’ll find the following:

• Crowning Worldgnasher – Allows you to sacrifice Goblin Fury (dropped by goblin mobs) to gain permanent Fire Defense bonuses.
• Forsaken Fortunauto – Allows you to sacrifice Automaton Gizmos (dropped by automaton/robotic mobs) to gain permanent Gold Find bonuses.
• Hyvidsbane Weed – Allows you to sacrifice Hyvid Paste (dropped by hyvid/insect mobs) to gain permanent Poison Defense bonuses.

The above mechanics are akin to planting your Luck Tree and sacrificing items to level it up and gain permanent Gear Luck bonuses.

You’ve also got the Functional -> Skill Stations tab. These allow you to refund your skill points using Respectacles, and these are dependent on the character and skill station that you use:

• Arcanum = Dusk Mage
• Arms Cart = Sharpshooter
• Automaton Shop = Forged
• Workshop = Railmaster

Storage and utility

Lastly, we’ve got the storage tabs. One of these has your Pet Shelter, allowing you to swap between different pets that you’ve discovered in Torchlight III:

And, of course, the wardrobe tab lets you build tiny statues of chosen characters so you can place your equipment therein. This is different from the shared stash since the wardrobe is just there for you to see what your gear would look like if placed on a statue.

Torchlight III is available as part of Steam’s early access program. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.