I started a Barbarian for my new Season 4 character - I’ve not played one before. They’re kinda fun! I snagged a nice early legendary Mighty Belt - it gives Frenzy every rune! That’s fun! It should make the leveling quite speedy! As always, my seasonal characters are Hardcore, so it’s nice to have this power boost for safety reasons too.
So, based on the power of this thread, I buckled and bought the expansion off of Amazon, and it should arrive in time for the weekend, when my wife coincidentally, is going out of town for a yoga/meditation retreat.
Now then.
I haven’t played since long before the auction house was removed so it’s been some time. What do I need to know jumping back into Diablo III this weekend? I’m thinking I may roll up a witch doctor, since theyre getting a lot of good press, but I also like meleey characters a lot (played a barbarian primarily last time around). Don’t know if I will go HC right away, since I don’t really need that kind of pressure. I’m thinking I will probably do the season, since I don’t know if I have anything anyway, and would kind of like to start from scratch. What difficulty level should I use? What are the major new systems I need to be aware of? What, for example, is Torment and what do the numbers mean?
Finally, is there a Qt3 guild or something I can join. I believe my Battlenet ID is IkeV#1236.
Kisses,
Ike
I’m on my second season character.
My Monk is 70 and I have a 65 wizard.
The wizard is a bit more fun right now.
Ike,
I have played Barbarian, Crusader, and Witch Doctor (and Wizard) all the way to 70, and while the Wizard is my favorite, I prefer the Barbarian to the WD. So really, if you like melee characters, go with that. Also, you’ll probably play them all eventually anyway. :)
For difficulty, start off on normal and after you get a few equipment (especially weapon) drops you will notice the enemy is like paper. That’s when you go up. Master difficulty is your goal (I don’t think it’s unlocked quite at the start though, you may have to go Expert for a bit) - it’s the most efficient in terms of your time and XP, but if you get lucky and have the damage and items to support it, swap to Torment 1 as soon as you can (once it’s an option, that is, I think around level 60). Really, the rule of thumb for difficulty is just “is this too easy? Yeah it is, time to bump it up” but if you are in the middle of a bounty run, finish the bounties.
You might wonder what bounties are though. Adventure mode is a “free form” playing with no story/cutscene and all the things (blacksmit, mystic, companion characters, waypoints and Act maps, etc.) unlocked at the start, so you can just open a map, waypoint to where there is a bounty icon, and do 5 out of 5 bounties that are randomly generated when you start the game in each of the game’s V acts. Complete all 5 bounties in an act without quitting the game (to change difficulty, for instance) and you get a cache you can open and a ton of cool stuff drops out. It’s awesome, and running bounties is a great way to level up if you aren’t interested in the story (though I recommend the story at least once, all the way through Act V).
Don’t you still have to finish the campaign once to do adventure mode? If so, not a recommendation so much as mandatory. Also, I wouldn’t bother with Normal at all. Hard is not noticeably harder and is almost twice the exp and gold. But yes, beyond that, if you’re finding a given difficulty trivial it’s probably time to move up. Conversely, even if you can handle a difficulty it probably isn’t efficient to stay on it if you’re having trouble killing quickly. For example, if you’re struggling to do timed events, probably drop the difficulty.
I think you have to finish the campaign once, but only on one character. Subsequent characters can farm bounties from the start.
Right, I forgot about that. It’s worth noting if you have Adventure Mode unlocked in any mode, you don’t have to unlock it in Seasons.
KevinC
4128
It seems (at least for Season characters) they unlocked Adventure mode for everyone. I have a friend who hasn’t finished the game yet and was previously unable to start Adventure mode when Reaper of Souls came out, but he was able to start a new seasonal character in that mode.
Good, smart. I think AM should be open for anyone, honestly, and the story mode should always be optional.
On the plus side, you could play on Normal and literally ignore mot of the mobs from point A to B to C and speed run the story in like 60 minutes or so, I imagine.
Unless you’re playing hardcore, in which the case the rule of thumb is “is this too easy? Yeah, OK, I’m gonna farm some gear for awhile”.
True, though I suspect folks playing hard core don’t come here asking for advice. :)
I’ll disagree with Scott and recommend if you can skip the story mode that you do so. It’s boring, slow, and the story is so cringe-inducing embarrassing it made me question if I was actually enjoying the rest of the game enough to warrant continuing. If you don’t just run past all the badguys you come across you will quickly out-power the content without a means to up the difficulty to an appropriate level until you’ve finished your first play through, and that’s a solid couple hours of super-easy wasted time (if you don’t just run past all the badguys).
Adventure mode on the other hand is fun pretty much instantly.
Difficulty in story mode operates exactly the same as it does in adventure mode. You can select whatever difficulty you want and lower it freely while in game. The old “you must beat each difficulty to progress” thing went out the window shortly before the expansion dropped.
I ran through story mode on my Crusader for this season just to say I did it. It was as horrible as I had feared; on Hard, I finished at something like 52 or whatever when I waxed Malthy at the end, and there was never any challenge (except surviving the horrid dialog and “story.”) You do get some fair to middling gear tossed your way at various points as quest rewards but nothing that you won’t exceed from loot or crafting otherwise. And in Adventure mode, every time you kill a boss (like the Skeleton King, the Butcher, Azmodan, etc.) you get a “Diabolic Hoard” of goodies anyhow.
You can only raise the difficulty 1 level during a game. I started the game on normal not knowing better, now I’m on hard and still breezing through without any problems but can’t raise the difficulty.
KevinC
4136
That holds true for Adventure mode too, it just means that you have to do it from the game menu before you begin the play session. That differs in story mode?
Your ability to raise the difficulty while in game is limited, sure, but you can just leave game and change it if it’s unsatisfying. You aren’t locked into a boring difficulty. I mean, I don’t recommend story mode once adventure is available either, but difficulty is not why.
Hmmm, to be honest I’m dumb and never thought to try that. I guess I know what I’m doing tonight.
It could be a console specific thing, but when I recently played on PS4 you couldn’t raise above the Expert difficulty (I think? Could have been Master) until you’d finished the story. If that’s not an issue on PC that’d make the campaign much less painful.
The only reason to go through campaign mode, if they’ve now unlocked adventure mode for everyone, it’s to get Leoric’s Crown for the legendary power.
