6005

This guy beat Kanai’s cube. One way to skip Kadala:

6006

That is what the cube gave me when I was reforging to complete the task for chapter 4. Not a ancient though, so not quite as nice.

6007

Lame? Cain’s is great! Grats on getting it. :)

It’s usually sought after for levelling to 70 quickly, due to the bonus it gives to experience. On the path to 70 all you really care about is damage and experience. Cain’s can stick with you for much of the way, even if you’re finding equipment with much better stats (as most armour doesn’t award damage).

Since you can skip one piece of Cain’s and still get the XP bonus, this means you can also wear Leoric’s Crown for its XP bonus. :) Post-70 when making your real build (probably based around the free set you’ll get chasing the Season Journey) you’ll be glad of set bonuses that don’t require all pieces. One of your most desired bits of equipment will be Ring of Royal Grandeur, which lets you wear one less piece and still receive the set bonus.

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.

Bounties are great for materials and plans (and a couple of the exclusive drops). Since these are all awarded upon bounty completion it’s quickest to do them with some help - open up your game to Public and set the tag to ‘Bounties’. Then start doing the bounty, and soon enough you’ll get people dropping in, and each player in the party will solo a different area completing the bounty much quicker.

Are you doing Rifts as well? They’re great for levelling and loot. Loot generally comes from Champions and Elites and Rifts have a good density of them.

6008

Thanks! I did notice the boost to experience, and was thinking that would help me a lot when I played tonight.

Ah rats. The head piece was the only piece of Cain’s set that improved my stats over what I was already wearing! (I love those green arrows in the comparison). But you’re right, if I’m going to focus on experience, I suppose the primary stat loss by wearing Cain’s is something I should just forget about for now.

When is a good time to do rifts? Between bounties in each act maybe? I suppose that’s as good a time as any. So I’ll start tonight with a rift, and then move onto Act 3 bounties.

I don’t think I’m going to get into a public game though. I often have to pause at a moment’s notice. It’s nice playing in single player for that reason, being able to pause in the middle of a tough elite fight and go take care of the baby or the laundry or something.

6009

All the time! Rifts have a higher legendary drop rate and also give blood shards, which you can exchange for ‘paper weights’ with Kadala. ;)

I don’t do many bounties at all in the early game, beyond the one that’s required for Chapter 1 of Season Journey and maybe hunting for those Act-specific items like the Ring of Royal Grandeur or set plans.

Rifts are the primary thing you should be playing up to 70, unless you are levelling using what’s called ‘massacre bonus’, which only works in bounties. I don’t bother with this as I’m not overly min-max focused but apparently it’s the fastest way to level.

I don’t think I’m going to get into a public game though. I often have to pause at a moment’s notice. It’s nice playing in single player for that reason, being able to pause in the middle of a tough elite fight and go take care of the baby or the laundry or something.

It’s quickest way to farm materials but yeah not essential. Most groups I’ve been in are pretty casual (and mostly silent) but tend to want to clear all five Acts. Which in a group takes about as long as doing one yourself.

Ah rats. The head piece was the only piece of Cain’s set that improved my stats over what I was already wearing!

Cains can last most of the way to 70 along with the Crown. There’s a choice to be made there between the 100% XP bonus from Expert difficulty, which is a good place to play at once past the first 15 or so levels (Master gives 200% XP, but can slow things down too much). If you can’t slaughter Elites quickly at Expert, then I guess that’s when you consider upgrading the primary stats so you can. So damage, XP, and the difficulty set as high as you can but where you can still mow stuff down. :)

If you haven’t already, press ‘Shift-J’ to check out Season Journey. This gives you goals to aim for and rewards to earn, and is the thing that got me hooked on playing seasons.

Good to see some life in the clan too!

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6010

One thing I did while leveling my Necro this time was do bounties and stash the Horadric Caches in my stash; I opened them when I was 70. Not really necessary but if you do get a cool thing it’s at least, well, level 70 then.

I find I can’t really do anything much until I farm bounties though, now that I’m 70, because I can’t craft or cube without mats that I need to get from bounties. And without those mats, I can’t advance to higher difficulty levels or really do GRs reliably.

6011

Yeah that’s why you do them in a group, it makes it much quicker to get mats. Maybe I should be doing more? Saving the stashes is a good idea, except the plans can be useful for leveling - I just got Borns and Cains plans in the same stash, and with Leoric’s it’s now up to 130% XP bonus, vs. 61% without that gear. Think I’ll save the rest!

6012

Ok, now for an embarrassing confession, about the perils of wearing bifocals, getting old, and playing games.

Remember upthread I was talking about my 70 Hardcore Necro for this season? The one I spent Thursday evening and most of Friday and Saturday leveling? Yeah. Well. I went to start a Wizard, while my wife caught up on her Necro. I created a new Wiz, and went into town to set my Cube abilities, check the stash, etc. Um. Nothing. WTF?

Well. After restarting and stuff like that, I realized the cold, awful, truth. All that time I had been leveling the Necro? I wasn’t in Hardcore. Just Seasonal. The two check boxes you check when you create a Hardcore Seasonal had somehow, to my age-addled eyes, become just one checkbox. Yes, that’s right, I just spent two days leveling what I thought was a HC character, but wasn’t. Doh.

Why didn’t I notice? Well, I only play HC. Never leveled a non-HC character. So while my hall of heroes is full of dead ones, those have become pretty few and far between (well, last week’s Necro was something of an exception). I generally don’t die, and in leveling this Seasonal character, I didn’t die. So there was no reason really to doubt I was, in fact, playing my usual HC mode. Up in the right corner there is the little leaf symbol by your character, and the HC symbol, but they are quite small and I simply never looked there. Again, doh.

Not that this is that terrible, really. I’ll just kill off the non-HC Necro to free the spot probably, and I’ve already started leveling a Wizard (can’t abide three Necros in a row right now). I do miss out on the Season rewards, as I completed Chapter I-III already on the faux Necro, so no Haedrig’s Gift stuff, but, meh, not a biggy.

Of course, while leveling the actually Hardcore Wizard I started on last night, Comcast went down…in the middle of a Rift. Luckily, when it came back up and I checked this morning, my Wizard was still alive. And yes, I double checked; she’s actually a HC Seasonal character.

Always gonna doublecheck from now on.

6013

Does reforging a sub-70 legendary change it to level 70? I don’t think it does but I wanted to verify.

6014

Don’t think you can, can you?

6015

Are you asking me if it’s possible to reforge a sub 70 legendary? I thought it was. If not though that answers my question!

My exhaustive Google research has shown that if you reforge a sub 70 legendary the stats get rerolled but the level does not. So it will still be whatever level it was prior to the reroll. That means you should only be gambling for low level legendary’s if you want to cube them.

I believe that means I’m answering my own question, and the answer is no!

6016

Yeah, I was thinking it had to be 70, but that’s for upgrading rares, not reforging.

6017

I noticed that my Bounty progress goes away each time I stop playing. So I have to start over. So one time, like I said upthread, I finished all the bounties for Act 1, then another time I did Act 1 and 2. Then another time I did Act 3. And last night, I did Act 5, since I had kill Adria and Mathael anyway for Season goals.

Is there a separate reward for logging on for a super long period and doing Act 1,2,3,4,5 bounties in a single session so that they’re all green-tick-marked on the big map screen? Any special rewards or bonuses or chotchkies given away for doing that?

My situation with the experience boost is quite funny now. With Cain’s set, I have such a huge experience boost, so just playing for short periods between watching my 3-month old, I was still able to get to level 66 I believe. However, against bosses like Adria and Mathael, while I do amazing damage, and earn beaucoup experience, my monk also dies with one hit. So after about 6 or 7 deaths from Mathael, I got tired of it, and said, screw this, and switched over to my yellow gear, which gives me “liveability”, i.e, the ability to survive hits. So I was able to easily beat Mathael. And then I switched back to my “experience boost” gear again to be a glass cannon again.

6018

That’s the nature of massively underlevelled gear.

There’s no particular bonus for completing all of the acts in one go. Just make sure you do all the bounties in a given act.

6019

Good plan. You can use the Armory to quickly switch between up to 5 saved layouts of gear and skills.

Though it does sound like you’re at the point where you’re outliving the old gear’s usefulness.

6020

So I noticed the seasons had finally made it to consoles over the weekend while I was working on my necromancer. My eyes kind of glazed over in the past when the PC folks were going on and on (and on) about seasons, is there a tl;dr explanation for why seasons are something I should try?

6021

Basically they give you a list of challenges to finish in order to get a reward. In this case, the rewards are cool sets for your character, and also a new pet, like a little green dragon thing for a pet. So it looks neat. And from what I can tell, your character turns into a normal character once the season is over, so you won’t lose the character after the Season is finished.

6022

Very nicely done! I am convinced, maybe I’ll run a second demon hunter after I get my necro up to 70.

6023

Level 70 is step 2 out of 9 in the journey. ;)

Here’s the tracker for the current season, showing the challenges and rewards. The challenges give you some structure and goals to achieve.

https://d3resource.com/journey/

6024

Those Portrait frames must be amazing rewards for it to be worth doing all those extra things after Chapter IV. Like Michaelangelo-quality level art on those portrait frames.