Quite likely. But Iron Lore was working for THQ and I assume they had their own ideas of what they wanted and when they wanted it done by. After all I doubt THQ would have been prepared to wait 4 years for the game to be fully released as the GD fans were after the Kickstarter. Okay, slightly different circumstances as GD is download and TQ was box only at the time, but even so another video game company back then wasn’t going to want to wait that long to get the game out.
I have a question to anyone experienced with TQ:AE. I need your advise , which 2-3 mastery combos (2-3 so I could pick one I like most 
) in TQ:AE are newbie-friendly enough to start playing easily without dying too much and not to be too gear dependent? thanks! Please, do not reply if you don’t know about TQ:AE changes/buffs/nerfs…
Generally casters are super easy early on but fall behind melee builds later. E.g. we started playing with my friend nearly at the same time, but I was a dream caster and blazed through the game, and he was a conqueror and struggled quite a bit. But once he got a few legendaries he started to speedfarm bosses in 10 seconds, while it took my caster 30-40 seconds for the same boss. Also while casters can go around in a very bad gear on normal they require more attention to defensive gear later on.
If I wanted to pick a fresh caster I would get either Storm or Earth or maybe Dream and then add Spirit for Ternion, which more or less makes up for lack of spell scaling.
If I wanted to pick a fresh melee I would go Defense, esp. in 1.43, since they finally fixed Batter interrupting the attack sequence, according to change log. It’s a very mana-intense build, but mana pots are dirt cheap. More or less feels like melee Amarasta’s Blade Burst build.
Warfare also became slightly easier to level, but still lacks early AOE, so first 15-20 levels might be slightly boring.
Overall nothing much changed about starting out in TQ:AE compared to TQ. The underdog here is Rogue, because for some reason Nordic decided it’ll be a good idea to give undead 75% poison absorbtion and 100% bleed absorbtion. As if this wasn’t enough they gave ghost subtype 60% physical and 60% pierce absorbtion in addition, so these are almost immune to the whole Rogue’s kit. And that’s not even the end. Constructs are 100% immune to poison, bleed and pierce. Sure, there’s a Disarm Trap that gives +120%-ish bonus damage against constructs, but who cares about how much damage it adds when enemies are still immune to that damage type. It’s more or less the same for Spirit, but at least Spirit can get a Liche and watch how it plays instead of you.
Warden is not very gear dependant and is quite tanky. It basically combines the defense of, uh, Defense and the offense of Hunting. And besides, bashing enemies with your shield is so awesome. Makes me wish GD had a mastery with Shield wps skills.
If they made TQ 2 and it had an act focusing on Norse Mythology, i would be all over that shit because i love that mythology.
Stupid Dragon, glad I just read your post about the difficulties of poison/bleeding damage types. That is valuable information for me to know, because I have been contemplating a poison/bleed caster. Is that possible?
I was just about to ask in this thread if there was some kind of DEE/Bloody Pox/DOT casting “Witch Hunter” (Plaguemancer) equivalent in TQ. If it isn’t possible to make a caster like I described, I might look into building something focused around melee poison/bleed damage with a spear. Sucks that so many mobs are resistant to poison/bleed. :undecided:
There’s so much stuff about TQ I’ve got to learn. lol I’m so used to Grim Dawn, and I’m always looking to “transfer” my Grim Dawn playstyles into TQ if/when possible.
Thanks for the replies! If I play Warden which is best AoE skill around lvl 20-40 and what weapon type is more preferable - bows or spears or anything else? And I think Dream made a bit less useful for casters since Lucid Dreams now give 10% PHYSICAL damage at lvl 1 instead of %10 total damage. And I can’t understand how do I see what types of damage does my skill do?
See the Warlock in my signature? That’s my progress with poison/bleed caster. He uses Poison Bomb with Shrapnel from Rogue, or whatever it’s called. What I wrote in a post above was written based on this experience. It’s not terrible, but it’s the first character of mine that just had to skip most of Minos Palace and Labyrinth due to automatas and wasn’t able to even flinch Alastor (I dare you to make a guess on how I killed him) due to him being a fucking ghost with lifeleech skills. Act 2 also had it’s fun moments, starting with ghosts and ending with summoning obelisks, which are - surprise - constructs. I got tired of it so I had to tune my staff for elemental damage, so it got easier after than, and even more easier after I maxed Ternion.
If you want a proper DoT caster similar to DEE WH look at Dream with Electric Burn.
Lucid Dream was always like that.
When it’s said “Damage” it means physical, otherwise the damage type is explicitly written.
Shield Warden easily uses Batter and Shield Charge for AOE. If you happened to start with Hunting then use bow for some time. Bows ofcourse use arrow piercing and Scattershot for AOE.
Question… How does pets do in TQ? As gear dependent as it is in GD? I am told there’s no Pet Attack button, so… Do I have to get hit before the pets do anything? Will they attack on their own like they do here on Aggressive, or is it going to be janky to get them to do what I want?
The only AoE skill you’d have would be your bow or Shield Charge. Neither Hunting nor Defense provide anything else. Hunting does have the Monster Lure which is okayish, but unfortunately can’t be thrown, only dropped, so you have to get fairly close to foes, drop it and then run away so it can start attracting their attention.
If you want a plaguemancer then you must have Nature. You’d also get 2/3 wolves and the Nymph to help out.
Haruspex (Hunting/Dream) is another strong combo.
Lucy, main poison/bleed mastery is Rogue so you’d need to look at pairing it with Storm, Earth, Dream, Spirit or Nature for a caster. Paired with Dream it’s more likely to be a melee, but a caster would be possible.
Irma2 has a whole bunch of different build ideas for the original game so may be worth a look to see what may appeal to both of you.
http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/41939-Mainstream-TitanCalc-class-compendium
May need some adjustments, but you can play around with the AE version of TitanCalc to see the differences. 
Nssheepster, pets can be set to Aggressive as they are in GD, but there aren’t any icons to tell you what they’re set for. But set to Aggressive they’ll charge right in. Gear-wise it depends on what class you’re playing. Tyr’s Wanderer’s guide is still one of the best for that mastery and he’s updated it for AE plus it gives several class options. Also depends on your playstyle, he recommends a full pet-based set of jewellery and staff, but I often prefer to go for a Wanderer’s staff and necklace to get the extra 2 skill points to be able to have 3 wolves out all the time. If you can get other stuff to get the +2 to Nature skills then you can go full pet set.
Pets are more or less okay, or at least that’s the impression I had when talking with ppl on steam community forums. Unlike in GD, TQ doesn’t have that weird situation when you need that exact piece of legendary items, moreover since you can’t socket into epic/legendary items the endgame is biased towards good suffix/affix combos of green items.
You was somewhat misleaded. While TQ doesn’t have Pet Attack button the buttons for ordering pets to move to certain point are still there (I think it’s present in GD as well, just ppl don’t use it much anymore). Once they move towards enemies they aggro on each other.
Keys F2 to F6 for individual pets or F7 to move all of them. Personally if I don’t have them set on Aggro I simply left click on a pet’s icon and then click where I want it to go.
Guys how do you manage and keep your items? I tried using TQVault 2.4.1 (the only tool for TQ:AE available) but it too buggy. So many errors and now it can’t start ,saying ‘corrupted save files’… 
Try this one.
http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/55706-REL-TQ-Collector-v1-0-TQ-IT-amp-AE-compatible!
TQ Collector? Isn’t it for tracking items but not storing them?
it might suck at first but once completed isn’t so bad…I just made lvl 1 mules with names that stated what was stored on it i.e. (Epic Set 1, Epic Gear, Epic Relics, etc)…and fed them every single yellow/green and purple ring / amulet I didn’t need which gave them 600k very fast to unlock the stash potential to it’s fullest…
like I said…sucks at first but once done…easy to find what you need and never have to worry about buggy mods.
Well, this version for TQAE works for most people: https://github.com/EtienneLamoureux/TQVaultAE/releases/tag/2.4-alpha2
Just don’t remove any items that are currently equipped to a character and you should be golden.
And yes, you can tell pets to attack specific enemies with the buttons Medea mentioned.
Oops, my mistake. :o There’s also this one.
http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/56067-REL-TQVault-XL-Xtra-Large-and-Xtra-Light
this one is good! thanks. Found a newer version 1.1.4 from a german website
I like how they still pumping patches for it
Hopefully they or someone else will take the mantle and get TQ2 going.