Diablo III

It’s a very strange game compared to other ARPGs, since it’s so hard to compare skills. Everything is tied to your primary stat, and what weapon you carry doesn’t really matter because all you use is your skills, you don’t actually swing a sword or an axe unless that’s what the skill is. But given the same weapons, with the same armor, I just feel like Elite bosses go down much faster with my poison skills, even though I don’t have any poison bonuses on any of my equipment. I know that’s a very subjective thing, since I haven’t actually sat there with my stop-watch and timed it.

Different topic: last night I tried to get my Crusader as far as I could through the game. He finished Act 2 on Expert at level 50. I was hoping to get farther than that, but I can’t help watching some of the story. I do love the guy who made the Black soul stone and his dialog. I can never get myself to skip it. It’s the one part of the game where the story always draws me in.

That’s why when I finished the game, and started Adventure mode for the first time, I was laughing my ass off when there he was again, waiting for me in Adventure mode, saying “Hmmm, oh, right you killed me, but you didn’t do a very good job”, or something similar. I love that guy.

Zoltun Kulle, the sort of dead but not quite wizard dude? Yeah, he’s the best NPC in the game, bar none.

What? No way dude, Covetous Shen all the way!

I started playing this on the console with my daughter a couple of weeks ago. We were trying to finish story mode before the season hit, but it looks like we’ll be a few days behind. :( She’s super excited to run through the adventure mode. Co-op on the ps4 is just awesome. Well except for when she spends 20 minutes decorating her character… :)

Covetous Shen would be my second favorite, even if he is dangerously close to a pastiche of a couple of ethnic stereotypes.

I will admit that I mostly like him because of James Hong’s voice work, but I also liked that whole “is he/is he not a god” thing, though they pretty much resolved that in the add-on act.

Hong is brilliant as Shen, for sure. Kulle wins for his classic avuncular-chuckle-while-disappearing tactic, though.

I always wanted the option to side with Kulle, as I think he makes the best case in the game for the position he holds.

Yeah, I actually did sympathize with his whole “you know what, fuck heaven AND hell” thing.

A coworker of mine asked me yesterday what game I’d been playing lately.

“Diablo 3”.

“Oh? Is that good? So, what, you go fight in Hell in that one?”

“Actually, you go fight in Heaven, believe it or not, we already fought in Hell in Diablo 2”.

Definitely, Kulle makes the best case for his side, much better than any of the others, really. Tyrael means well, at least.

Love the melodramatic villainous voice acting on Kulle.

This is my first season, and my first Monk. Adventure mode is kind of crazy when starting from level 1. The craziest part was the 5th bounty in Act I: Killing the Butcher. Trying to take on the butcher at level 15 was really tough. The fight lasted about 30 minutes. But now I’m done with Act I bounties, but with no companions. How do you get companions in adventure mode? Are they in the same spots as in Story mode? It feels weird to be traveling alone.

Your companions are waiting in town - just go say hi!

Yeah, in Adventure mode, remember to hook up with the Templar (really, does anyone use the others? Not in Hardcore that I can tell), and level up your crafters. You still have to journey to Szechuan Chicken or wherever to unlock the Cube, though.

In adventure mode the first thing I do with a new character is go say Hi to the Templar, steal his weapon to equip it, and then hire him.

Does D3 not make you feel evil? I do that.

Also, on most areas stuffed with refugees, the first thing I do is destroy ALL their supplies, for a speed buff.

Yes, Diablo III, like most games, teaches you valuable life skills:

If it’s better than what you got, take it.
If it’s breakable, break it.
If it’s a grave, loot it.
If it will benefit you in any way to kill it, kill it.

Sounds like the difficulty was just too high. Remember, you can lower it all you want in-game - the benefits of higher difficulty fall off a cliff and drown if you are spending 30 minutes killing one boss instead of 30 minutes killing thousands of enemies/elite packs and gaining 5 or 6 more levels, even if that means playing on Hard or Normal instead of Expert, or whatever.

My rule of thumb is how long it takes to kill normal mobs. More than 2 or 3 attacks from my weak/resource generator type abilities and I’m working way too hard for the equipment I have. Once I get a sweet new Legendary that triples my damage output I finish what I was doing (bounty run mostly for the materials post-70) and then up the difficulty, dropping it back down again if I outlevel myself before getting another weapon upgrade.

Nothing before level 70 matters, the journey to 70 is entertaining but the Season doesn’t really start until 70, so there isn’t any reason to force harder difficulties on yourself until then.

I thought about that 15 minutes into the fight. But I had him down to half health by that point, and there was a lot of momentum and pride invested by that point.

Besides, I’m already playing on the second lowest difficulty, so there’s not much farther down I can go.

I thought all enemies would be scaled to me, but it does seem like when I go to the harder areas in Act I, the fights got tougher and tougher and tougher, and the enemies took longer and longer to take down, culminating in the Butcher who took forever.

Where are they compared to where they normally stand? Like in story mode, they stand near the waypoint after you rescue them. They are no longer there in adventure mode in a fresh season, so if they are in town, which part of town? I confess, I’ve only looked near the waypoint.