The Glade 4.0

Whoo, ok, nice updates all around. Took my monk from ~53-60 tonight, and got 4 legendaries along the way.

Question: Does the difficulty effect the quality of the drops? IE, if I drop down from Master to Expert, will I see lower "item level" drops?

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I don't see it explicitly stated after the change, but the difficulty generally only affected "magic find" as it pertained to drops. So same item level, just a higher chance of finding uncommons, rares, sets, and legendaries.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Nice. Things were just taking forever to kill in Master.

Not a lot of risk of dying, just not enough DPS.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

For me, it was different. I had the DPS, but if I took like 2 hits, I was dead...

Loaded it up, and wow, items I can actually USE drop like candy... made things a lot easier. Only played for about 30 min, but still, world of difference

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So much fun. It's amazing playing and actually getting upgrades!

Also looking forward to the Crusader class, looks amazing.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Fun so far. Enemies are tactically different than what we've seen so far, but I expected that. What I didn't expect was that the off-shoot caves/doors on the maps (the places to explore that have nothing to do with the main questline) are far more interesting than before. They make you earn those resplendent (radiant, now) chests.

The chests start out as cursed (once you find them). It appears as if you can open them while in the cursed state, but I have not attempted this. My guess is that the loot you'd receive is far less than what you'd normally get. To remove the curse, you have to solve whatever puzzle is surrounding it (so far, the solving involves murdering stuff). The most interesting chest was a gauntlet consisting of waves of baddies with 4 flame thrower traps spinning high-damaging jets of fire throughout the room, while finally taking on the named elite (with more packs of baddies).

The enchanting thing looks like it certainly has potential. I didn't bother spending crafting resources on it just yet. Maybe as I reach max level.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Some pictures of drops that people have found so far.

Good God






A freaking 2401 DPS weapon with 3833 Life per hit...useable at level 40?!?!

Also, I LOL'ed.

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

Yeah the level requirement mod is certainly a nice boon. Though by the time they get back to 70 it would be a useless mod they'd want to change.

I've seen quite a few higher DPS drops than my current weapon, but nothing that would give *me* an actual dps increase yet. My weapon is all about high crit rating (around 55%-ish total) and even higher crit damage (my guy is floating around 520% crit damage). When I crit, I crit hard. I expect to not worry about it too much until I am 70 and then I'll likely make good use of the enchantress.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I am loving Adventure mode. All story, dialogue, cutscenes (in game and out) are gone. It's just an all-you-can-kill buffet with missions and bounties to complete. Tons of gold and XP (and nephalem rift shards) for completion, as well as a "horadric cache" for completing all the missions in a given area (about 5). The cache contains lots of goodies, moreso than than resplendent chests. I've gotten 1 legendary from one, and a "forgotten soul" (what you get when you disenchant a legendary) from another.

The nephalem rifts are also challenging and fun with some nice rewards. Unlike the other areas in the game, these are far more randomized. The enemies you fight are pulled at random the game's entire cast of characters, so you could be fighting some "Wimsyshire" enemies in hell. You kill enough baddies, and the Rift Guardian appears. Kill him, and you also get a lot of nice stuff.

Adventure mode also includes Gheed's offspring, Kadala. It's D3's form of gambling. Instead of gold, you spend blood shards. These are acquired in multiple ways (I got 50 off of a Rift Guardian, for example).

This is exactly what I wanted out of a Diablo game. A kill-fest quest for better loot that isn't mind-numbingly dull (Bloody Hills runs, anyone?). I am sure I will eventually tire of it, but it's been a solid 20+ hours of just the Adventure mode and I am jonesing to get back in.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

It's even a fun way to level alts, since they scale with character level.

I really didn't want to run the campaign again (at least yet) on my new Crusader, but the EXP for bounties/rifts is amazing, and it keeps him in good gear.

Also, you can use the rift shards/blood shards on any character, so I can level alts and then gear up my main.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

You can do adventure mode with your alts once it's unlocked?! Wow. I've been having so much fun with my main barbarian that I never even looked to see if I could play it with alts (still haven't even created a Crusader yet!).

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Yup, even from level 1. Although taking a level 1 into Act V adventure mode on Master is.... fun!

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I bet. I just barely got to a point where I can survive Torment 1 at level 70 (definitely not something you can do upon first reaching the level).

Having leveled a few alts, the story can get a little tedious. It's not bad, but sometimes you just want to skip it. D3 is certainly starting to make giant leaps and bounds beyond the shadows of Diablo 2. I think it's getting harder and harder to remain loyal to D2 while poo-pooing D3.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

The only thing that sucks is getting the legendary you really, really want sub-70.

On the plus side, all the good "leveling" legendaries can now be re-rolled to get mainstats appropriate to another class- all the ones I used on my Monk have been re-rolled to STR for my Barb & Crusader.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Not sure I know what you mean. Practically every legendary is available at any level, unlike before when it was only available inside a very small bracket of levels. Or is that what you meant? That the legendary drop table was smaller for specific ones during specific levels?

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

No, it means that if I get one of the BIS legendaries at, say, level 60.... It will have significantly scaled down stats once I get that alt to 70.

Great for leveling, but sucks to have gotten a "lower level" version of it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

For D3's 2 year anniversary, last week Blizzard introduced a buff that increased Legendary drop rates by 100% (on PC and Mac). It was awesome.

Today, they announced something that the players were hoping would happen: While the buff officially ended yesterday morning, the 100% drop rate increase is now baseline. We suspected the anniversary buff may have been just a beta test, and it appears that may have been the case. Either way, I am not complaining.

The game had already gotten much better, and this past week has made it even moreso. Knowing that the legendaries will continue to flow in the future is nice (especially when you get to a point where you are looking for very specific set items, legendaries, and/or perfectly rolled items).

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

An old friend returns!

Have they added the awesome console controls to PC yet?