Diablo III

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.

No, they do scale to you, what was happening was almost certainly your equipment wasn’t keeping up with the rapid levels you gained. So for instance, you go into an area at level 7 and gain 6 more levels really fast, but none of them drop anything better than what you had. The same enemies are leveling up WITH you, so enemies are level 13 now, but still have (mostly) level 5-7 equipment.

That’s where you make sure to run back to down and salvage all your stuff and try to keep up with crafting. Every few levels I run back to town and see what new things I can craft, for instance. Or hit up a shop keeper and see if they are selling a weapon that’s 48% better than what you have, it makes a huuuuge difference.

It’s less of an issue in the level 30+ range, you start slowing down on gaining levels a bit and have more time to find gear between levels. Plus your crafting options are much greater.

That’s true, that sounds about right. And I did try to craft things, but options are very limited early on. And merchants that I checked didn’t sell anything better than what I was using.

Yeah, not much you can do until the mid-20’s and early 30’s when you start seeing a lot of crafting options for all types of weapons and armor, and you’ll have some gems by then too. Thankfully playing on normal is easy for even like a naked character though, so that’s always an option (though honestly Hard is probably the lowest you’d need to be, I think).

That’s what I was thinking last night when I was playing on Hard! :)

They’re in the same spot for me as Story mode so not sure what you might need to do. Hope they show up!

I always run bounties up to 70, since no drops matter in the slightest except the bounty bag mats (Khanduran Runes and the like).

Can you get your RoRG before 70, or is that 70-only? Eh, not like I’d grind a1 bounties exclusively anyway just from a variety perspective.