I wouldn’t. You will want materials from all 4 acts, and once you get into some higher difficulties (esp T6+), the drop rate of legendaries in the boxes goes way up. So if you don’t get one on the way, it should be quicker to get one later.
You can start crafting earlier than 20. Check blacksmith every few levels after 8, the usual thing is to make 2-handed axe for damage. I just made one at level 14 or so that blows away the damage of the legendary sword I found minutes earlier. :/
If you start getting gems and don’t yet have Leoric’s Crown, play Campaign until you kill the Skeleton King (which guarantees you one first time you kill him if you’re between levels 5-65). It multiplies any slotted gem by 75-100%, so put in your best ruby for a big XP bonus. You should be able to pretty much run through to him on Easy. The other stats on it won’t matter until you hit 70.
Agree with @Profanicus here - I have the blacksmith make me a new two handed weapon every four levels or so, and less I find it super good one. Just got a weapon with the socket at level 32 so that was nice.
Funny thing about Leoric’s crown, that was the first unique that dropped for me this season, at around level 20.… Before gems even drop. I’ve gotten about five unique’s so far, and two of them are crowns. The game really wants me to get extra XP!
Hehe yeah last season I played I was swimming in Crowns too!
Got my Season Necro to 70. Even got two Paragon points! Tomorrow going to craft some crap after I run the bounties to get more mats I think.
My bad, this is not accurate. It’s a fast cast, but it’s not straight up no-animation like Devour is.
I followed your advice. I got as far as rescuing the Templar. And guess what? When I rescued him, he disappeared and didn’t follow me down the stairs. So I portaled to town, and guess who I found there? All 3 companions! Woohoo!
I always chose the Enchantress, it seemed like her ability to turn enemies into chickens constantly is the best companion ability in the game. But now that I’m looking at the Templar’s choices, I guess he’s got the ability to heal you, so that could be very useful when playing Hardcore. In Softcore, no one cares about healing, right?
People generally take templar for the resource regen, which is usually very important depending on your build.
Pretty much this. :) All the left-hand skill choices.
It’s funny, because normally you’d briefly have two templars at that point - your season companion and the one you rescue in the campaign - and I love how they’ve written specific dialogue between them for that circumstance.
Cool. I didn’t know about that ability. That does sound cool for every build.
But I’ve noticed when you’re an intelligence based character, you generally tend to find 99% of loot that’s got intelligence boost. So when I hand that down to my follower, that helps them only if it’s the enchantress. This time I’m a monk, so I’m going to want to hand down equipment I’m no longer using that’s going to be +dex. It will be rare for me to find +strength equipment for the templar. How do you guys handle that?
rowe33
5995
Easiest way is just to share some loot from another of your characters. But if you’ve only got the one, you can reroll the Intelligence boost at the Enchantress on some high level gear until you get Strength instead.
The bonus you get from stats is completely meaningless for any of the hirelings really. It will make so little difference in what they do. They are really just there for the skills, and can be used in various ways to help distract mobs. The only thing that’s important on the templar is health and armor, and even that not so much once you get the ring that makes them incapable of dying.
There are a few pieces of jewelry that really can be important on your hirelings where you’re pushing the bleeding edge, but as far as stats go, don’t worry about them.
Yep, the damage your followers do is meaningless, ergo making sure mainstat matches your followers is not important. They are there for their skills and as extra slots for legendary items. Legs work on them just fine, so the idea is to kit them with legs that support you, which is typically anything that provides additional crowd control or regen. The most important peice is the legendary relic that prevents your followers from dying - otherwise nothing you have on them matters as they spend all their time dead. Easiest way to get that relic is crafting rare relics and upgrading them to legs with the cube. There are only three leg relics so upgrade chances to get the right one is very good.
Templar with Thunderfury, Stormshield, never die relic, Ess of Johan ammy, Wyrdward and Oculus rings is usually where it is at. Or a Unity ring for mitigation if your toon’s build can spare the ring slot.
Kadath
5998
Going slower than I wanted due to IRL stuff but still nearly finished Season step 3 tonight. I have gotten all trash rolls and Kadala hates me. Hope to have my set tomorrow.
Don’t be mad, Kadala hates everyone.
Good advice! The Templar is a heal/regen bot; in HC there is literally zero reason to use any of the others IMO. I’ve tried, but there’s no replacing that heal and regen. And yes, oh yes, he will be dead so often once you hit even GR 25 or so without that legendary artifact.
Also, if you really want some goofiness, and are a pet class, outfit him with legendaries that summon pets…
Ok, so now I’m starting to understand, and I mean to fully grok, what you guys were talking about upthread. After getting Leoric’s Crown and putting a ruby in it (and taking it out four times and putting it back in), I went back to adventure mode and did the bounties for Act 1 and 2. And as a reward I got multiple sets worth of plans!
Holy shit. So this is where the loot really comes in this game, huh? I mean, I know you say it really comes in the Greater Rifts, but first it comes in these bounty rewards in Adventure mode. Not only that, but unlike the plans I had with my level 70 character, which all required a bunch of ingredients I didn’t have, so those didn’t really feel like plans as much as theoretical aspirational documents, these actually just required normal ingredients, so I crafted them all.
I crafted Cain’s set, and had two items from some other set.
Now granted, both of these sets are kind of lame. It sucks that Cain’s set doesn’t even give you a bonus for wearing all 4 pieces. You get the bonuses if you wear 3 out of 4 pieces. And the bonuses themselves aren’t all that great. And each piece of Cain’s set replaced a yellow piece of equipment with better stats.
But hey, my first set in Diablo 3! And it all came from doing Bounties in Act 1 and 2 for 2 or 3 hours. 90% of that time was spent doing one bounty in Act 2 that told me to “cleanse the waters” or something vague like that. There was no quest marker, so I just wandered in that area for a long time, killing all the enemies, then killing all the enemies in adjacent areas, and then areas adjacent to those areas. Finally I went back to the area I started, and it turned out I’d missed a little corner with an elite enemy there that I needed to kill. *Facepalm. Oh well, at least the reward was worth it, even though I’m not setting any speed records here. Plus I earned a lot of experience, reaching level 31 last night I think.
vyshka
6003
It usually does a good job of pointing you in the right direction with an arrow on the map when you aren’t making progress.
Poor Kadala, no one appreciates her. I love you, Kadala (now give me the damn goods!)
Buddy just took the US conquest leaderboard for the Masters of the Universe conquest (master 8 set dungeons). I helped him master his last set dungeon by clearing trash mobs! :)
He reckons his chat went nuts - 100’s and 100’s of messages of congratulations from randoms!
