As the name suggests, Halls of Torment isn’t a particularly forgiving game. Your early hours in the titular Halls will be spent desperately scrabbling to survive against unrelenting hordes of isometric evil, seeking out every small advantage you can get like shelter in a swirling storm.
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In the game’s Item selection, you’ll find one of the best defenses against the Torment of the Halls. Many offer effects so powerful and game-changing that they totally alter how you play, taking your chance of success in a given run from low single digits to high double digits just by putting them on. When you next venture down into the dark, keep a quivering eye out for these exceptional Items.
10 Quickhand Gloves
One of the very first Items you’ll have access to, as soon as you’ve freed the Wellkeeper from his fiery prison, the Quickhand Gloves are easy to overlook given the abundance of flashier options available later. To do so would be a grave mistake, however, as within their simplicity true power lies.
A 20 percent boost to attack speed makes a huge difference to the survivability of every character in the game, since more attacks mean more damage, which means less monsters swarming you to death. It also scales exponentially with any improvements to damage, critical hit rate, or status effects you pick up across your run, greatly improving the effectiveness of many of the best endgame builds.
9 Echoing Band
While physical attacks do become less common the deeper into Halls of Torment you delve, the characters who make use of them are some of the best in the game. The Swordsman, Archer, and Shieldmaiden all put up solid performances throughout, and they all use physical attacks, which the Echoing Band makes much, much better.
Every physical attack you land with this ring round your finger has a 20 percent chance of hitting again, for 40 percent of the original damage, in a splash around the original target. While this doesn’t sound too impressive on paper, in practice it greatly increases your damage output, particularly against dense crowds, which you’ll grow very comfortable with as you progress in your runs.
8 Invocator’s Grasp
One of the few absolute must-have items in Halls of Torment, the Invocator’s Grasp is near-mandatory if you want to play as the Warlock. In exchange for a single equipment slot, the Invocator’s Grasp gives you a 40 percent boost to Summon Spawns and Duration, as well as a 20 percent boost to Summon damage.
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For a character whose primary attack is a Summon, this is a huge amount of value, not to mention the additional benefits it can provide if you make use of the Necromancer’s Clutch, Demonic Bond, and the Summon Golem Ability. Most Items don’t enable an entire character and archetype by themselves, but Invocator’s Grasp is the happy exception.
7 Firewalker Boots
There are enough Items with Fire synergy to fill most of this list, but among that spicy selection, the Firewalker Boots are probably the most universally useful. With these equipped, your every step will leave a trail of flames in your wake, which will damage and burn any fiends who make the mistake of chasing you down.
Alone, these are a great addition to any build, letting you rack up extra damage against Elite enemies and swarms alike, and at no real cost since competition in the Footwear slot isn’t particularly fierce. They really shine when paired up with other Fire-boosting Items and Traits, however, letting you Firewalk your way to an easy finish without breaking a sweat.
6 Shadow Cloak
An Item that can play both offense and defense well, the Shadow Cloak creates pools of darkness randomly around you, which damage enemies and give you a huge boost to your Block Strength if you stand in them yourself. Wearing it encourages an interesting playstyle in which you constantly move around to keep up with your shadow pools, creating a dynamic that really mixes up your run.
If that sounds like too much work, then you’ll be glad to know that the payoffs for adapting to this new style of play are well worth it. Not only will you be able to easily absorb many enemy attacks, thanks to the ten extra Block Strength you’ll have more often than not, but you’ll also rack up a lot of incremental damage from an Item slot that typically doesn’t get to do so.
5 Collar Of Confidence
In all aspects of life, confidence is key, and playing Halls of Torment is no exception. The Collar of Confidence gives you the extra esteem you need to face the baying hordes, granting you a five percent damage boost for each enemy within your Pickup range, to a maximum of 50 percent.
Given the sheer volume of enemies you’ll be facing throughout most of the game, the Collar of Confidence will be giving the maximum 50 percent boost in nearly every scenario. This is a significant bonus, equivalent to five levels of the Strength Trait, and one that pairs particularly well with close-range fighters like the Shieldmaiden and Exterminator. It also gives an extra incentive to pick up the Long Fingers Trait, sneakily one of the very best in the game.
4 Hunter’s Garb
The idea of a ‘no movement run’ is a recurring one within the burgeoning Survivors-like genre, challenging players with completing a run when their one mode of interaction, moving around, is taken away from them. Halls of Torment leans hard into this emerging tradition, encouraging such runs not just through its achievements, but through the inclusion of Items like the Hunter’s Garb.
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With the Garb equipped, your damage will increase by eight percent per second, up to a maximum of 40 percent, as long as you’re standing still. This is a sizable, easily accessible boost that you can take advantage of throughout your run, and it's quick enough to reassemble that you don’t even need to fully commit to a no-movement playstyle to get a lot out of it.
3 Jade Amulet
If you’re going after the ‘reach level 100’ achievements for each character in Halls of Torment, then the Jade Amulet is an essential Item to bring with you, but its 50 percent boost to XP gain is useful enough for any character, on any run, to make use of. Since the XP required for each new level increases exponentially, you won’t get 50 percent more levels out of this, but you will get a solid 20-30, depending on how many quests you’ve completed.
20-30 levels add up to a lot of extra Traits and Ability upgrades, and allow you to dip into defensive Traits that you wouldn’t normally have room for, thus improving your chances in a tight spot. Once you’ve unlocked the full suite of available Traits in the game, the Jade Amulet becomes one of the best, most flexible Items you can find.
2 Ring Of Fire And Ring Of Thunder
While the Ring of Fire and Ring of Thunder are technically two different Items, their use in-game is the same: each changes the element of your main attack to either Fire or Lightning, then grants a 15 percent chance of inflicting Burn or Electrify, respectively. For any build not looking to take advantage of a specific damage type, such as Physical or Summon, these rings are essentially a straight upgrade.
They also let you tap into other synergistic Items, Traits, and Abilities that match the new element they grant, including the powerful Fire and Lightning Affinity Traits. Whether you’re looking for more debuffs or more damage, these two rings will get the job done.
1 Wind Crown
Appropriately enough, the Wind Crown is king among the Items in Halls of Torment. It temporarily increases your attack speed by one percent each time you kill an enemy, stacking up to 50 percent with consecutive kills.
This is a huge boost, and one that can turn even the lumbering Cleric into a speedy spellslinger. Killing lots of enemies in a row is trivially easy for most of each run, meaning that the Wind Crown will rarely be anything less than 100 percent effective, giving you the extra damage necessary to blow your enemies away.
NEXT: Halls Of Torment: Beginner's Tips
