I played DII to death (mostly solo hardcore exclusively. Best I ever did was lvl 79, act II of Hell difficulty)
DIII was too easy, single player, up right until the end of Act I. Halls of Agony, if I remember them correctly. I’m playing a DH.
I basically breezed through most of Act I, then I get to the Halls of Agony, and I’m chatting casually with my brother when BAM 2-shot kill. That was a real :dubious: moment. “Oh wait, the game* means *it now?” The Butcher - playing solo, DH, killed me four times before I got him.
I’m a bit into act II now, and enjoying the game quite a bit more (I was in beta but thought it was too easy and boring). Even the random trash packs can get a bit dangerous, since they seem to be able to smack my DH pretty hard. The difficulty does ramp, and I’m already wondering how I’m going to do this thing Hardcore since stat increases on lvl up are set and I can’t just pump VIT (now they call it STA) like I used to.
But now I’m having fun like I used to. I’m really enjoying DIII and once I clear it once on normal I think Hardcore is going to be a real treat.
The gem crafter shows up about 3/4 of the way through act 2. Once you’ve found him, though, he’ll forever be available to all of your characters on that account.
And the cowbell doesn’t do anything by itself, but it’s one of a number of ingredients needed to go to the secret level.
I guess it depends on your playstyle when you get to the “oh, now they’re playing hardball” moment. I killed the butcher my first go (I was SO jazzed he was back) because the trick was obvously to stay off the fire.
But now looking for the headless wizard’s stuff or whatever the hell it is, I walked into a seemingly innocuous mob and bam, I was dead. No time to do anything about it. So middle of Act II, blammo. That was a wakeup call.
The barbarian nuclear option is, without a doubt, Earthquake. It is an absolutely crushing, game-changing ability that tears apart elites and normals alike. Frankly I’m finding the best approach is to just keep hanging back until it recharges - 120 second cooldown but it feel like ten minutes - and then hitting the next mob. If they’re easily dealt with no problem, move on; if not, Earthquake, and it’s a massacre and fifteen corpses little the floor in four seconds. It completely blows away all other abilities.
The Cowbell is an ingredient required to craft the staff that opens Whimsyshire, land of rainbows, unicorns, smiling sunny faces and various other cute things that will RIP YOUR TITS OFF.
I covet Whimsyshire, I crave it. My current play partner is being a bitch about trying to farm the mats required for the staff.
Just to repeat what others have said: things get real in Act II. I think I died twice in Act I, once because I just flat-out played it wrong and once because my wireless mouse went wonky at a really bad time. Act II, while not awfully difficult, has given me some challenges and I think I bit the dust 3 times last night. Yeah, it’s game on in Caldeum.
I couldn’t get past the boss in Act II without asking buddies for help last night.
Tough bastard, and I died at least 3 other times in that act, vs once in Act 1, and that’s cause I was taking a sip of my hot tea when I got jumped by elites.
ALSO:
Diablo 3 sales figures in. Blizzard says over 3.5 million units sold in the first 24 HOURS!
An additional 1.5 million picked up via the WOW subscription plan thingy.
Total for the week?
6.2 million units.
Analysts were predicting 3 million in the first year. Diablo 3 doubled that prediction in the first week
I think the pre-order numbers were mroe like 2 million.
The numbers above also do not include Korean numbers. They don’t buy games there like we do. The whole gaming culture revolves mostly around internet cafes where Diablo 3 has become the most played game (40% of total play time), so I guess that’s more profit for them.
Activision is really the behemoth of the industry.
It’s got the best selling multi-plat IP - COD.
It’s got the best selling PC exclusives - Diablo and SC.
It’s also go the most stable and popular MMO - WOW.
I just wish more of that money was going to providing more stable job environments for devs, and better paychecks for them too instead of you know… lining Kotick’s and investor pockets.
So are we doing any trading? I’ve got some rares that I don’t have any use for, but I don’t know how useful they would be for people above level 20. I’m at work, so I can’t remember what’s taking up space in my stash, but there’s at least a barbarian only axe that does something like 20.1 dps.
Also, what should I do with some crappy rare bracers. They’re like a 9 protection and have some features that aren’t worth anything to my character right now. Auction house? The in-game merchants won’t give me crap for them and salvaging them seems…wrong. Thoughts?
Get used to selling/salvaging the hell out of your crappy rares. I bought two more slots in storage to save up rares for alts, then came to my senses and started melting 'em down if I had no use for 'em.
Lol. I made a wizard last night to take some of the rares I had been saving for that class. I have to rethink my entire strategy for the game. I have 2 characters that I have gotten to act 2, a witch doctor and a demon hunter. I think I’ll just try to finish with my demon hunter before I do too much else.
Indeed. If you haven’t already gotten the blacksmith trained enough to make any rare items, you should do so soon, and then you’ll have a use for melting down rares: they give the component needed for crafting rares nearly every time (maybe ever time, I dunno).
Someone mentioned that the blacksmith stops taking the basic materials at some point, or rather won’t make the best items with them. I’d like to not have an inventory full of basic materials at that point, so can someone tell at what point he starts requiring new materials?
Dangerosa and I are just in Act II on our duo playthrough; we’re also playing solo when we don’t have time together, on different characters. So I don’t have a lot of playtime in, and only on two characters (aside from a few dozen hours of time in the Beta), but… I’m finding myself increasingly tempted to go with the free-form allocation of skills, rather than using their default allocations. I’ve been giving it some time to see how I like their version, but I’m really wanting both Grasping Hands and Firebats (for example) so I think it’s time to switch it up.
It’s whatever the level after Master is - the one that starts on Nightmare difficulty, and requires “Pages of Blacksmithing” (which only drop on Nightmare difficulty) in addition to money to advance your blacksmith’s level. Grand Master maybe?
I gather that there’s another step up at Hell level.
