This is just a public service announcement. To celebrate their 1 year anniversary, Diablo III is giving a 25% magic find buff and a 25% XP buff to anyone logged in between today and May 21st. It applies to all characters and it stacks.
Looks like I have some prospecting to do tonight. 
I haven’t played since I can’t remember when, so my sorc is a lowly paragon 30 or some such. Have there been any material changes to the game in the last six months or so?
A lowly paragon 30? I’m just about to get my first character to 60.
I just got back from a long hiatus too, so I’m not sure. I think they tweaked the power levels of some of the skills. So far my favorite thing about the patch is that you can keep gems and ingredients in your stash and the Gem Combiner/Armorer will use them from there.
Note, that’s paragon 30. As in, level 60 and then another 30 levels on top of that.
What I meant is there is nothing ‘‘lowly’’ about a paragon 30 character. I have not yet reached level 60 with any of my characters. (But I’m reaaaallly close with my Barbarian.) The farthest I’ve gotten is Act III of Hell. You RPG geniuses never cease to amaze me.
Oh, gotcha. It’s not a matter of “genius”, just time. Teaming up also speeds things along.
All of this is true. But I am also obsessively efficient. I tend to keep track of things like experience earned, have a large gold pickup radius, and optimize runs accordingly. I think I played last in December, but I remember that my Keep run takes 17 minutes and earns ~350k gold per hour. Maybe it takes three hours of solid play to level, tops.
It’s not rocket science, but in a game like Diablo, attention to small details really adds up over time.
Well, I’m downloading it onto my new computer and will give it a spin. The adjustments in mob density look very promising. One of the reasons I stopped playing because I just found it too hard on my hands. But now I have a mouse with tons of macros, so that should take care of my problem.
Yay! I reached Inferno! I’m a Paragon 1 now.
Has anyone tried adjusting the monster level? I’m curious how hard it gets.
Increasing the Monster Power is more a matter of “slower” than “harder”, unless you’re using the glass cannon defense (kill them before they have a chance). Monster damage increases a little, but monster health increases a lot, so anything you could stand up to before, you can probably handle now. It’ll just take longer.
I haven’t played Diablo III recently… It never really held my interest after I got to Inferno, died way too much to be worth it for me. Has the patches been worth it over the past year? Are dopers still playing regularly? Should I give it another try?
Hello out there!
After some basement flooding got between me and my PS3, I took up Diablo 3 again. I plunged all of $5 into the auction house to get some gold (actually, just a handful of high-end rubies - 1 for my helm, one for a weapon, and 1 to sell for 23m gold). I already had a demon hunter and a monk at level 60, and a witch doctor hovering around level 50 - but after about 2 weeks of dedicated play (~an hour or two a day, average), I have all 5 characters at 60, and even got my wizard through Inferno last night.
I remember back when I first started playing, hitting Inferno with my DH was like hitting a brick wall. Those weak corpses outside New Tristram kicked my butt, and I managed to get through the Butcher only because I was in a squad of well-equipped players who dragged my butt through Act I. But I gotta say - 23m in gold goes a LONG way. I now have a decently-equipped Critical Mass wizard who can handle pretty much anything single player or teamed up. I’ll now work on slowly equipping the rest of my characters to also get through Inferno - not sure if I care about Paragon levels or not at this point.
What’s everyone else been up to?