Starts at 6 PM PST (a bit more than 3 hours from now). Who’s in?
I’m thinking I might make a hardcore character this time around, since that’s where I’m missing the most achievements. Going to be tough to decide whom to delete, though.
What does a season entail? I was thinking about picking up RoS next time it’s on sale. Would now be a good time to get into the game?
During a season (there are officially about four per year), you can make brand-new seasonal characters, that can’t interact with non-seasonal characters. This means they won’t get any hand-me-down gear, but they also get good new drops before nonseasonal characters can. At the end of each season, that season’s characters become normal characters, and that season’s new items start dropping for everyone (while some new bunch of items become available for the next season).
I finally got a Gem of Ease up to level 25* So I put in into an Ancient Legendary 2-handed weapon.
Then I started a new character. I started with a Crusader. However I soon discovered that his skills all require a shield. So I made a monk. Putting this weapon on him bumped his damage from ~5 to ~5000. I hit a mob and they melted and I jumped from level 1 to level 10 immediately. Another hit took me to 18, then 23. Then I started dying all the time. I had a handful of skills that I didn’t know how to use and I couldn’t stay alive.
This all happened within a minute of playing with this weapon. IDK how long it would take to get a character to lvl 70 with this gem, but I recommend you play with a character that you know how to play.
- You can put this into any weapon and it reduced the level requirement to 1. This means that you can put the best weapon on a brand-new character.
As always with Diablo, I go through phases, where I play the hell out of it, then get bored and stop playing… I’m currently in a not playing phase, is there anything in the new season that should bring me into the “Play the hell out of the game” phase?
I’d wait until patch 2.2, which looks a lot more interesting than the current season … though this being Blizzard that might take anywhere from 2 to 4 months.
The Gem of Ease is probably a pretty good backup plan for a hardcore character. If your main dies, you can make a new character who gets the gemmed weapon from the stash, and quickly levels back up as a replacement. The key would be to retreat to the blacksmith at every level-up to craft appropriate gear for the rest of your slots, and not to go too crazy with cranking up the difficulty.
I’m going to guess about 4 hours, since it took about 3 to get to the low 60’s. Less if you have a hellfire ring. If you really want to go all in with leveling your 2nd character as fast as possible you would level 7 gems to 25 (Wreath of Lightning and the new one that gives life per second would be 2 of my suggestions) as well as a Hellfire ring. I bet with those you could get a new character from 1 to 70 in 3 hours of playing.
Well… you’ll have friends that will help you get that first character leveled really quickly. Other than that all I can say is that I’m liking it.
Yeah, HC or not, you need to go back and upgrade your gear often. The Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in really quickly when you’re gaining multiple levels per kill.
So the gist of seasons is that you start fresh with new characters and only play with other people who started fresh, and you can’t just use all your super high level gems to make your newbie characters absurdly powerful and since everyone is on a level playing ground, you won’t be useless because you’re a new player unable to twink, right?
I have a level 53 Barb from before I stopped playing, but I decided to run through the game again so that I’d see the changes of the game gradually from the perspective of a newly levelling character rather than bite off too much at once. So I started a new Witch Doctor. But I didn’t know what seasons were, really, so I just made it a regular nonseason. I’ve played about 2 hours on it and got to level 20 or so. Did I make a mistake? Should I go back and reroll a new character as a season character? Or should I just forget it and wait for season 3 to roll around anyway since that’ll be in about 2 weeks?
Also, the difficulty level seemed to imply that new characters should use the normal difficulty and only with some gear from the expansion should you move up to hard. But I started at hard, with no gear help at all, just a naturally developing character, and I’m finding the game to be very easy. Should I be playing on expert with my “natural” unassisted character?
Yeah, basically.
I’d say just stay with the NS character for now.
Play at the highest difficulty you can where it’s not taking an inordinate amount of time to kill things, or you’re not dying all of the time.
To answer your in-game question about leveling very quickly: I can get a 2nd seasonal character from level 1 to 20 in about 2 minutes, and to lvl 40 in about 15 more, and to 60 in less than an hour more. How? With several (SEVERAL) hours of newbie gear preparation.
The Gem of Ease allows a new character to use a lvl 70 Ancient Legendary weapon, and gives extra exp. A Hellfire ring gives extra exp, has lvl 70 stats, but has no lvl requirement. Gems also have no level requirement, nor do Hellfire amulets. So, with all of this gear, you start out at Torment 6 (more bonus exp), and you run roughshod through lvl 1 monsters. You will gain multiple levels at a time. Then after a couple minutes you get around lvl 30 and you start dying all the time because, other than your weapon and jewelry, you’re wearing level 1 gear, so you have to go to town to upgrade. (Why you don’t play campaign mode in this situation: You haven’t earned Town Portal yet).
A single bounty run will take about an hour and get you past level 60. At that point the law of diminishing returns really starts to kick in, so you’ll either need a level 70 friend to carry you limping to the finish line, or lower the difficulty level a notch every time you gain a couple levels.
And that is how, with weeks worth of preparation, you can make a new character and level it to 70 in one evening.
Again, what I said above refers to your 2nd or 3rd, etc. seasonal character. Your first has to level the old fashioned way (ie. They EARN it.)
So, for my first character in season 3, if playing with others, I’ll advocate for doing campaign mode until killing the Skeleton King, then switching to Adventure mode.
BTW, I wasn’t very happy with how short season 2 was. It kinda makes me regret all of the work that I put into leveling those gems and saving up reduced level requirement equipment and hunting for keys to do uber runs and everything else required to quickly level up a 2nd character. If I had known it would only last a couple months I would have just focused on my primary character.
Seasonal characters aren’t really entirely from scratch, since they can access Adventure Mode instantly. On a truly fresh account, that’s not possible until you beat the campaign.
And keep in mind that, within 24 hours of the start of Season 2, there was already a group that was completing the hardest content in the game (a level 30 Greater Rift). So there’s not really any such thing as eliminating the gap between haves and have-nots.
I started a season 3 thread hoping to recruit some new people or at least get some of the regulars on voice chat so we can be social during playing.