Torchlight III: Legendarium – Legendary and passive skills guide

Torchlight III has a special in-game feature called the Legendarium. It’s a panel that you can access to grant you legendary skills or passives. Here’s our mini-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: The Legendarium’s legendary skills and passives

Throughout your adventures in Torchlight III, you’ll unlock several of the Legendarium’s legendary skills and passives. However, you can only equip up to three of these. The first slot is unlocked at level 3, and the remaining ones at levels 20 and 40. As mentioned in our beginner’s guide, you’ll likely only grind up to level 35 or so since the game’s final act (and enemies that provide more XP) won’t be out until June 30.

Now, let’s say that you have unlocked a few slots already, how, then, will you equip legendary skills and passives via the Legendarium? Well, first, you’ve got to construct an Enchanter’s Altar in your personal fort. This is part of a short tutorial sidequest early on in Torchlight III‘s campaign.

Once you’ve done that, you can start enchanting your gear or breaking down items to turn them into essences. But, that’s not all. The Enchanter’s Altar also lets you obtain the legendary skills associated with legendary items that you break down.

In turn, these passives will be made available via the Legendarium panel. These will have multiple tabs depending on the types of passives that can be selected.

Note: All the objects you’ve constructed in your fort, as well as the Legendarium passives you’ve unlocked, have account-wide progress. Your alts will be able to make use of them.

Class-based passives

These are specific to the class you have selected and, more often than not, will require you to break down legendary weapon and armor pieces for that class. For instance, the Dusk Mage’s legendary skills can’t be equipped by a Sharpshooter and vice versa. Below, you’ll find some examples of the items that you need to disenchant in order to gain their respective effects.

Dusk Mage:

• Arc of Light – Casting Holy Bolt has a 50% chance to cast Absolver.
• Brilliant Herald – Radiant Blast gains +500% weapon damage; has a 6-second cooldown and no longer infuses enemies.
• Celestial Boots – Casting a cooldown skill grants you mana-infused, restoring 5% of your mana every second for 3 seconds.

Forged:

• 3C#7R4 Repeater – Rapid Fire’s weapon damage bonus is increased to 20 stacks.
• Blight Maw – Poison Dart fires an additional 2 darts in a spread.

Sharpshooter:

• Musketeer Robe – +1 skill level to all Adventurer skills.
• Musketeer Pauldrons – Using a potion restores a charge of your Ghost Visage movement skill.
• Lil’ Drake – Sacrifice to Goose skill leaves a burning area after impact; does 50% weapon damage that lasts 6 seconds.

Weapon-based passives

Although weapon-based passives still require you to dismantle legendary weapons via the Enchanter’s Altar, these aren’t necessarily restricted to a specific class. Here are some examples:

• Frenzi’s Blade – Hitting an enemy with your basic attack increases your attack speed with basic attacks by 5% for 5 seconds; stacks up to 10 times. This is a decent skill for early-game leveling in Torchlight III just in case you want to avoid some of the starter skills and don’t want to refund points later on.
• Firestarter – Casting your relic skill earns you a Fire Charge. Using your basic attack expends a Fire Charge to cast a fireball that does 40% weapon damage. With Firewall equipped, casting your relic skill nets you two Fire Charges.
• Firewall – Blocking an attack allows you to counter with a fireball that does 75% weapon damage; empowers the Firestarter legendary item. Both the Firewall and Firestarter synergize well with the Flaming Destroyer relic.
• Snecko Stick – Using your basic attack launches 3 poison bolts that do 40% weapon damage.

Armor-based passives

Much like the weapon-based passives, these require you to dismantle legendary armor pieces to gain their effects via the Legendarium. These are also not locked to a specific class. Here are some examples:

• The Wanderer’s Hood – +1 charge for movement skills; gain movement skill charges 20% faster. This is one of the most useful legendary passive skills to have since you’ll likely want to move around often. For instance, Sharpshooters rely on Ghost Visage not just to evade enemy attacks, but also to boost their critical hit chance stat. Pick this one as soon as you have a movement skill to increase your survivability and utility.
• Headhunter – When you kill a unique or legendary monster, you gain a random shrine effect. This is partially useful, insofar as just leveling or while still scrounging for other legendary skills. It’s mostly just to help you clear the remaining mobs in an area assuming you’ve already eliminated the boss.
• Arc-Powered Chest – Killing voltura or automaton enemies grant you the Lucky Adventurer buff for 30 seconds. This buff gives +20% item luck and +10% movement speed which is ideal for dungeon delves and opening chests.
• Skittering Chest and Woodsbeast Top – These give you the Lucky Adventurer buff as well, though it comes from killing hyvid and goblin foes respectively.

Pet passives

The final tab in the Legendarium panel concerns passives related to your pets. These are obtained after disenchanting pet-specific items (ie. collars) and will confer the bonuses listed therein. Here are some examples:

• Dryad’s Neckband – Whenever a pet hits an enemy, recover 3% health for both your character and your pet.
• Token of Contagion – Your pet poisons nearby enemies, dealing 40% weapon damage every second. This synergizes well with the Bane relic due to the poison effect.
• Token of Rapid Bartering – Your pet returns from town 90% faster. Normally, sending away your pet will require you to wait a couple of minutes until it returns. The massive cooldown reduction will have your friendly companion return within a few seconds.

In the end, Torchlight III‘s Legendarium feature is there to give you additional boons via legendary skills and passives. Most of the customization you’ll do will come from your chosen class’ skill selections as well as the relics you’ve leveled up. The Legendarium, meanwhile, provides a bit of flavor that can, hopefully, synergize with your playstyle. Since you can only equip up to three of these (and the last slot won’t become available until you focus on grinding higher-level enemies), very few would become extremely integral to your progression (ie. The Wanderer’s Hood).

At best, you’ll want to do the following:

• Sacrifice items you don’t need (except for legendaries) to your Luck Tree until it’s fully-grown. This will permanently increase your Gear Luck stat by a little bit.
• Low-level legendaries or those you don’t need should be broken down using the Enchanter’s Altar. Not only will you gain legendary essences for enchanting purposes, but you’ll also be able to select these perks via the Legendarium.

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