1661

Yes, as long as you don’t do “Reset quests”.

1662

Ok, I just preordered digitally and will be dropping my boxed preorder off with a friend tomorrow who forgot, all so I can play right at launch until they go down due to issues. I have a problem.

1663

Just finished the game for the first time last night, having started a new character when the patch came out. Used a Wizard on Hard difficulty and had a blast playing through solo. This patch made all the difference in the world for me - on the initial release I never got past Act 2. Really looking forward to the expansion now.

1664

Ha, I did the exact same thing Vesper (never bought originally though as starter didn’t grab me). Only difference is I played on Expert (and I died a lot too).

1665

There really is no reason to play on expert. It’s much more difficult than hard and you only get 25% more xp. I can’t figure out why they set up the rewards in such a weird way.

1666

Good to know now. I did struggle until the very end, once I hit 60 and got a nice legendary drop, it became pretty easy. Diablo was no problem.

Edit: If you wanted to start hardcore, what do you do? Start on normal and then move on to higher difficulties, or do you go straight to the higher ones?

1667

Maybe I am an outlier, but I am not really grabbed by the update. Loot 2.0 is a hell of a lot better, and grinding paragon levels is kinda nifty, but it feels soulless as I have played all of the content for hundreds of hours already. I really expected to be hyped for the expansion at this point, but I’m just, not. I get that Diablo is a loot chase, and they seem to get it finally as well, but when all the abilities and content are already played out, it feels stale.

This is truly what Diablo should have been when it was released, but I played it when it was released and for a good long while afterwards. I am envious of the folks that are looking at D3 with fresh eyes as you guys are getting a much better product. For me though, I can’t seem to find the amount of amnesia needed to be excited about playing act 1 to 4 for the 9000th time for bigger numbers when I already played them for the 8999th time for bigger numbers.

I truey hope adventure mode, Act 5, and the Crusader bring enough fresh to the table to let me enjoy this Diablo 3 over its comparatively anemic release day cousin.

1668

See, I jumped in after this new patch, tried the starter edition, LOVED IT, can’t wait to see the rest open up for me. I’m shocked how much I’m loving this game.

1669

I don’t play hardcore, but normal is so easy that I would start on hard.

1670

The diminishing returns from difficulty are pretty consistent although the drop from hard to expert is a bit bigger jump relatively than the others.


Difficulty	Damage	Health	XP	XP/HP ratio
Normal		100%	100%	0%	100%
Hard		130%	200%	75%	88%
Expert		189%	320%	100%	63%
Master		273%	512%	200%	59%
Torment I	396%	819%	300%	49%
Torment II	575%	1311%	400%	38%
Torment III	833%	2097%	550%	31%
Torment IV	1208%	3355%	800%	27%
Torment V	1752%	5369%	1150%	23%
Torment VI	2540%	8590%	1600%	20%

The only reason the higher difficulties are more profitable even though Normal gives strictly the most XP per monster HP is that on low difficulties you end up overkilling mosters (i.e. doing more damage than they have HP) and with very short fights you spend comparatively more time walking around than fighting and gaining XP. Playing on Expert can make sense but the window where it’s more efficient than either Hard or Master is rather small.

Of course, there’s also the point of finding more challenge enjoyable in itself even though you are making slower progress from a min/max standpoint.

1671

I’m kind of having a bit of the same, even though I did not play it all that much earlier either (I think I got a Monk to 40ish and quit). I played heavily over the last week or so and got a Demon Hunter to 60 plus a few paragon levels. I’m just not really feeling it.

It may seem strange, but I’m also finding that the ability to jump into random multiplayer boss hunts is not as convenient as I remember from the past. They’ve done some strange thing with the multiplayer, hiding it in the option menu such that I find myself having to do multiple clicks and scroll through various acts to find people. Even if I click on find any quest for multiplayer, I generally only find 10-15 people total, and I usually get stuck in some random crap mid-act.

I remember Diablo II, and basically being able to do boss runs over and over. While stupid, it was at least more entertaining than randomly looking for some goat staff in the middle of Act 2.

I wonder whether I’m just getting a bit burned out on this type of game in general. I’ll admit, I see something nifty drop and kind of have a, “Oh, it has another X points of Dexterity, Y points of Vitality, and something that will add 12% to one of my skill types. Yay.”

1672

That’s really the key. I find Expert to be the most suitably challenging while leveling, though I will occasionally up it to Master if I’m getting lucky with the gear.

1673

The replacement of the standard Normal/Nightmare/Hell progression with “Choose Your Own Difficulty” (with rewards for bumping up the difficulty) is something that seriously needs to be implemented by every ARPG going forward. It has made a massive difference in my enjoyment of the game.

1674

Agreed - it’s so much more enjoyable to roll up a new character now just for fun, I’m especially excited about the Adventure Mode (roguelike mode, if you do it in hardcore?) and leveling up not just a Crusader character that way, but getting some of my other lower level characters maxed out, too, that way.

1675

You can start on hard if you’re willing to lose several low-level characters as you get a feel for it–which is perfectly fine, as it doesn’t take long to level up and the only drawback is the mind-numbing boredom of Act I. I found low level hard difficulty pretty risky for Hardcore characters, in that you have a much higher chance it seems of running into the sorts of mobs you really don’t want to have buffed, like the frozen types (responsible for most of my hardcore deaths it seems). This is especially true without twinkage, either from stuff or cash.

For newbie HC, I’d recommend normal and then bump it up if you feel good. Hard is risky in particular for low-alpha types like the starting DH IMO.

1676

Its getting close, so I gotta ask: What is your plan for RoS? Beat act V immediately with your favorite character or roll a crusader and start at the beginning? Or something else?

I’m probably going with beating act V with my barbarian as soon as the clock rolls around to 9 PM Blizzard Time.

1677

So higher difficulties do not give better loot drops? If that is true, then for loot hunting, you want a difficulty where you can kill fast. For XP, then it would you need balance kill speed vs the xp bonus. If you need to work on a pack of zombies for several seconds and a blue pack for several minutes, then you might not be efficient even though they are worth more xp.

1678

As someone who is only level 20, a friend is “level 240 paragon” can someone explain what that even means?

1679

Im planning on doing very similar to you. Will use my monk to go through the new content on torment then start to level a crusader up.

1680

I’ll probably play my barb until I get enough red lvl 61+ gems, five or so. Then I’ll switch to crusader, powerlevel him to 15 and equip the socketed dagger I bought just for this purpose :).