Tag Archives: gameplay

How to successfully waste money with Blacksmithing in Diablo 3

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You got too much gold, too many crafting mats lying around and wonder how you can get rid of them as fast as possible without any chance of profit? Of course you can always just throw it on the ground (well actually you can’t, but I’m sure you get the image), but it’s much more fun to waste it while thinking you got a chance to make it back. Enter: Haedrig Eamon, the blacksmith. Here’s what you do:

I – Level up your Blacksmith

Level your blacksmith to max level. It’ll net you a nice achievement and cost you a good bunch of gold, pages and tomes.

II – Visit the auction house


There’re a few one-hand weapons available to you. You want one that offers six affix rolls. Not cause they offer the highest chance of actually giving you a few useful stats on your weapons, but because those are the most expensive
 ones. Right now a sword seems the best option. It doesn’t only offer the fastest attack speed, but is about twice as expensive as the other weapons.

III – Craft

Log onto one of your mule characters and create as much swords as you can. If you have more gold than base material, buy some more on the auction house. The more swords you build, the higher your chance’ll be to get a roll that allows you to sell the sword for a tenth of what you paid to build it. Probability and stuff.

IV – No profit

You got it! By now you should’ve burnt several million gold to see, if crafting six affix items to get rich in Diablo 3 is viable and you can – through your test data alone – be absolutely sure, that it’s not.

So yes dear diary, that’s how I spent the first part of my day. But maybe I was just unlucky. Maybe you’ll have to create much more items to make it work. Maybe I can just put another few millions into… wait! Let’s do the math.

D3Inferno has a nice database providing me with all possible variables that go into creating a Conquest Sword. Unfortunately the whole item creation process isn’t really well documented, so I’ll have to make a few assumptions to make my third grade math calculations work. But I don’t really mind.

I – The naked sword

A best “naked” Conquest Sword has a max DPS of 216.3 DPS, doing 93-216 Damage with 1.40 Attack per Second. I can work with that.

II – Adding affixes

There’re four affix groups the sword takes its stats from. It looks like it always chooses one damage modificator from “Swing” (with a few exceptions) and one mainstat from “GenericSwingWeapon”. This leaves us with four random affixes. To get maximum DPS (and let’s be honest here – that’s what counts, if you actually want to sell your weapons) we’ll need the “Attacks_Per-Second_Item_Percent” and “Damage_Weapon_Percent_Bonus” mods – as high as possible. At item level 62 the maximum values of those two affixes are 9% and 40%. The highest additional damage we get from “MinMaxDam” or his elemental friends is +224-298 damage.

III – Do the math, Part 1

Thankfully we all know how to calculate weapon DPS in Diablo 3. We take our basic stats and add the additional damage, bringing us to 317 to 514 damage per hit, averaging at 415.5 damage per attack and 581.7 damage per second. Well that’s a fairly small number. Let’s add 40% additional damage to that. Our new sword does 443.8 – 719.6 damage, 581.7 damage per attack and 814.4 dps. Now that’s not too bad. And let’s not forget we got a last ace up our sleeves: increased attack speed. Now, after we add 9% increased attack speed, our final item looks a little like this:

Conquest Sword
887.67 DPS
443.8 – 719.6 Damage
1.526 Attacks per Second 

Ok. That’s cool. It’s not top of its class, but this sword can definitely sell for a few hundred thousand gold on the auction house. Perfect. Let’s visit my blacksmith and… wait! Those stats are for the best possible Exalted Grand Conquest Sword you can craft in Diablo 3. But how high is the chance you’ll actually get those stats on the sword?

IV – Do the math, Part 2

Like already mentioned, we take the Swing and GenericSwingWeapon Affix Groups as a given. This brings us down to four rolls. Ignoring the “ResistFreeze”, “ResistRoot”, “ResistStun” and “ResistStunRootFreeze” groups D3Inferno lists, but I’ve never seen on a weapon, brings us down to 20 possible affix groups on our sword. Now with every roll this group gets smaller, adding up to a 21.71% chance of having one of the two affixes we want (+Damage% and +AttackSpeed%) on our item. But we don’t just want one. If we assume that one affix slot is used by the already present first affix, we get to a 16.71% chance for the second affix to be on our item – and a 3.62% chance that both affixes appear on our item. That’s not so bad. It means that if I craft 1000 items, an average 36 of them will net me around a mill. Let’s go over to my blacksm… I said wait!

V – Do the math, Part 3

It gets more interesting. We all know that Diablo 3 is random times random to the power of random. Here’s the catch: It’s not enough for us to get the two affixes we’re looking for. We want the highest possible roll. So how high’s the chance here? I’ll make it quick. Our chances of getting the best possible roll on the affixes is 3.33% for damage percentage, 5.55% for the attack speed increase and 0.01% (rounded up) for the additional damage. If you multiply those with each other, add Pi and swirl them through a few years of not listening to your math teacher, you end up with the probability of a perfectly rolled Exalted Grand Conquest Sword, which is still only a measly below 900 DPS weapon.

It’s roughly 0.0000006690303% 

There you have it. Bigger than your chances of winning the lottery. So go ahead. Try it. ;)

In Depth Analysis: Cemetery of the Forsaken

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After the months I spent running around the first part of Act 1 during the beta I was sure I’d never want to go back there again. Turns out I wasn’t as fed up with it as I thought. That might be partly because this first part is one of the easiest, but also coolest parts of the game. So when I go back to farming Act 1 cause I’m too tired to do harder content or just want to chill, I pay a visit to the “Cemetery of the Forsaken”. Its predictable layout, easy mob types and high ratio of rare and champion packs, makes it one of the finest locations in Diablo 3. Especially, if you’re looking to build up your five stacks of Nephalem Valor, quickly refresh the buff duration after a break or have a few minutes to kill between activities.

I – Welcome to the Cemetery

The layout of the cemetery is always the same. There’re four possible locations for the three crypts you’ll have access to – one in every corner. There’s a high chance of at least one rare pack spawning at the cemetery. If you’re lucky, you’ll get both a champion and a rare pack. As the cemetery’s only inhabitants (except for a few very rare bosses) are skeletons, the pack will always consist of skeletons, which are fairly easy to beat. You can kite them around in a big circle around the gazebo in the center. After you cleared the cemetery, it’s time to check out the crypts. There are four types of crypts you’ll find.

II – The Quest Crypt

There’re two basic layouts for the crypt you’ll be searching for, if you’re trying to assemble Leoric’s crown. They vary a bit, but end either in a horizontal (see screenshot) or vertical doorway. If you’re not questing through Act 1, don’t bother going deeper into the dungeon, after you cleared the first level. Both bosses you’d meet on your way are already dead. After you’re done with the two to four champion packs you’ll find on the first level, simply teleport back to town and use the waypoint to the cemetery again.

III – The Small Crypt

With not much room to navigate, the up to two packs you usually meet in this straight forward layouted crypt can become challenging. The Retched Cadaver’s spit attack, a pack of fast imps with fire chains or Scavengers in every form and flavor can kill you easily, if you’re not careful. You get a teleport stone at the end, which’ll bring you to the cemetery again.

IV – The Event Crypt

Now for the third crypt you can get two different dungeons. On the screenshot above you can see the basic layout for the “Jar of Souls” event crypt. Just like the “Bones of the Matriarch” event you can see below, there’s an achievement connected with it. While touching the jar starts a timed horde mode type event with mobs spawning until the time’s up, the matriarch quest starts after talking to an NPC and touching one of the bowls afterwards. You can cheese the jar event by simply running around in circles, dodging the skeletons until the time’s up. If your build consists of a few evasion skills, you can easily blitz the matriarch by clicking all the bowls in a row and touching the sarcophagus afterwards, ignoring all enemies. In both events the mobs spawned will disappear once the event’s finished.

V – Developer Hell

If you’re running the cemetery for a while, you’ll find a special easter egg the designers implemented. There’s a very rare chance one of the crypts will be the “Developer Hell”. Although you won’t see any champion packs here, it gives you the chance to hang out with the designers of Diablo 3 – and kill them. Almost through, you’ll run into the chief designer Jay Wilson, whose demise won’t just net you a nice feat of strength, but also the fulfillment of kicking the big boss’ ass.

Save 30,000 gold per session in Diablo 3

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Repair costs have gone up by a bunch with the new patch and now more than ever, I prefer to chuck back a few more health potions instead of dying and racking up my bill. But at 610 gold a pop those drinks can get expensive pretty fast. Especially if you’re pretty much perma chugging them back like me. But don’t worry. I got you covered. On one of the runs we made through Act 2 we found a guy that hooks you up with primo health potions at half the price. Yeah. That’s right. At 305g per pot you save 30500 gold per stack. Granted – it might not be a fortune, but it adds up. But ’nuff said. Here’s what you do:

Step 1 – Select a quest that gives you most of the waypoints in Act 2 Inferno

Step 2 – Teleport to “Path to the Oasis”

Step 3 – Run east until you find the Rotting Cellar

Now. The part where you can find the Rotting Cellar is a random one – so it might not always be there. It’s either a free space, a Ransacked Cellar or the Rotting Cellar. After a few tries you should get lucky. There are two possible spawns right next to each other. There might be others, but they’ll be harder to look for.

 

Step 4 – Help Javad the Merchant and get access to his inventory

Another random element here is Javad’s inventory. He only offers Mythic Health Potions half of the time. So like before you might have to try a few more times. Oh and he sells some dyes for half price, too. If that’s your thing.

So that’s it. Do yourself a favor and buy a few stacks and stash them so you don’t have to run back to Javad again tomorrow.

Balancing Diablo 3

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I managed to crack the 60k DPS on my wizard. Yay. Well – that was two days ago. Today was patch day and Blizzard implemented the changes to increased attack speed on items. So uhm… yeah! I managed to crack the 40k DPS today!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m totally for balancing. And I can see the upside of today’s changes  in the long run. Buffing multiplayer can only lead to more people playing with their friends and that will most definitely lead to people sticking around longer. And IAS – well yeah. It was totally imbalanced. The damage gain from it stood in no comparison to the one you could get from other stuff. Progression felt more “gimmicky” and less based on actually killing stuff and progressing step by step. But seeing your damage drop to two thirds of what it was just hurts. I’m sure it’ll go by though.

Now – a change i really love is the whole “five times the old repair bill” thingy. Oh. You pay stupid amounts of gold cause you keep dying while trying to progress?  Bohoo. Try getting better gear, try finding a few friends to play with, go back to content that doesn’t own your ass clockwise, stop watching porn while you’re playing and concentrate, optimize your build – and grow a pair. Yes it hurts – but it’s a good pain. Like the one you get from working out all evening (or more than five minutes in my case). There are many ways to avoid dying. Try them.

Anatomy of a Diablo 3 run

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Those of us who played Diablo back in the days, when internet connections cost a lot of money and things like maphacks seemed totally normal, remember them: boss runs. From endless hours of Meph runs, over to Baal runs, cow level runs, Andariel runs – you name it. With the introduction of the Nephalem Buff and the way loot on champion/rare packs and bosses works it seemed like those days were over. Luckily they’re not. They just changed from being a tedious chore to actually being interesting and challenging.

Why runs?

But why do runs? Why not just start up an Act and play through it? There are a few things that make runs attractive.

Controllable Frame

Aside from the way between the last waypoint to the location of the boss, you pretty much decide on which areas to tackle. And if you encounter a champion pack you don’t like – just move on to another area. You don’t have to bite your way through lots of content or die over and over again. Simply move on to a different waypoint. Another positive side of a run is time. After getting used to a route, you’ll have an idea of how long a certain run will take you. Just have a few minutes of lunchbreak left until you’ll have to go back to work? Do a quick previous content single boss run. Got an hour to kill and a friend to tag along? Go for the normal content 2 boss run. Looking for a challenge and some meaty rewards? Do a progression content run and farm some champs afterwards. It’s your choice.

Maximized Reward VS. Time vs. Fun

There’re other ways to spend your time in Diablo 3. But boss/champion runs are pretty much what the game is build around. If you’re looking for the best way to spend your time, looking for upgrades or stuff to sell in an comprehensible time frame without feeling like having another job – runs are your thing. And they’re a perfect group activity. Not every one of your friends might find the time to play through an Act, but who doesn’t have half an hour for a quick butcher run or two?

Basics of a run

It’s fascinating really how similar all the runs you can do (that actually make sense) are to each other. We’ll go into more details in the next few days, but for now I’ll give you the basic framework every type of Diablo 3 boss run seems to follow.

Step 1 – Find a Boss that’s accessible and killable

Luckily those are most of the bosses in the game. A few of them have random dungeons between the last waypoint and their entrance. Other bosses place you right in front of their crib. Getting used to the area before the boss will give you a feel for the run and after a while you’ll get through them without any orientation problems, instinctively choosing the right way through the area.

Step 2 – Clear the way to the boss

I don’t like to waste time on a run. Fighting more than five packs before visiting the boss might net you a few more items, but if you’re aiming to do those runs as fast as you can, you don’t want that. Most of the times you’ll get a few stacks of Nephalem Valor on your way. Don’t waste those. Clear the way to the boss and teleport back to town. As soon as you got your five buffs later you can use the portal to place yourself in front of the boss again – and hit that Piñata.

Step 3 – Get to an easy to farm area

Play styles vary. While my buddy Sapphirus likes open areas, I’m more of a dungeon guy myself. Different enemies inhabit different areas - presenting you with different flavours of champion packs. Find an area that suits your play style and fill up those NV stacks. Use the waypoint back to town afterwards.

Step 4 – Farm some more

Once you downed the boss you don’t have to stop there. On the contrary. With 1.0.3 and its changes to how rare drops with Nephalem Valor work, boss kills are really secondary to killing champions and rares. If you got some more time to kill go back to areas you haven’t been to before and grab some more shinies.

That’s it for today. In the next few days I’ll show and analyze the most popular runs and add a few thoughts and tips.

Guest Post: Diablo 3 Warden / Butcher runs

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I gotta admit that from time to time I’m quite the lousy boyfriend. Especially when it comes to letting my better half write a guest post from my blog. But about two weeks ago she wrote a decent post on one of the first farm runs we did in inferno, so I decided to finally put something of hers up. It just took me like… 2 weeks. If you’re full on progressing through inferno this might be pretty outdated for you, but if you’re new: try this nice and easy two boss run. – cash

We’ve finally gotten into some farming in inferno. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Well – it’s just Act 1 but the route we got is absolutely awesome. Five Stacks of Nephalem Valor and two bosses. And all that in just a few minutes.

You’re probably asking how.

First thing I have to say is, you need at least some equip to get that far. We all know by now, that inferno isn’t the easy-peasy stuff we’ve played through in normal mode. So please keep in mind, that without the proper gear to start you will need longer and it might be a bit harder. And if you die too often, it would make sense to go back to hell and get some better items. But in the end, you need to farm inferno to progress in inferno.

I have to admit, it was all cash’s idea. But hey – that’s what the big boss is good for, right? So here we go.

Start Act 1 with the quest “The Imprisoned Angel” part 2 “The Cursed Hold”

Use your waypoint to the Halls of Agony, Level 2 and start hacking and slaying. Normally you should find two (if you’re lucky three) champion packs on that level. If you really found three of those nasty little bitches go ahead with the questline – no need to waste more time on that level. Time to cross your fingers now so you’ll get the extra quest for killing Dargon.
No loot with this Pack but still one stack for your Nephalem Valor (and Dargon actually gives you some bits and pieces).

Now enter the prison

Good area for kiting your champs – just clear one or two circled routes. You’ll find two to three packs – that finally should add up to five stacks of Nephalem Valor.
Mobs down there are quite slow and easy to kite – so if you don’t have that many hitpoints or damage: be patient. The important thing is to live longer than your opponents.

If your luck doesn’t kick in – this is the moment to use your town portal and the waypoint to the Cemetery of the Forsaken. Yeah – you probably hoped you’d never have to go through those crypts again? But don’t worry. You won’t be here for long. There’s a good chance that you’ll find an Elite on the Cemetary and lots of Champs you can kill inside the crypts.

A little sidenote: Don’t go to Level 2 – it’s faster and easier to start again with the other two crypts. As soon as you’re up to 5 stacks, use the waypoint back into town and you’ll still see your town portal back into the prison.

Time to kill the Warden now. Oh.. don’t forget to collect your loot. Enjoy the moment when you pick up all that useless blue stuff and suddenly – out of the nowhere – something yellow appears. Ok. That was fast and hopefully good loot. And a lot of it. But you can still top that if you go

Down to Level 3 of “Halls of Agony”

And now? Easy thing: Go directly to jail. Do not pass “go”, do not collect… Well i think you get it: Just visit our big friend the butcher and help him to get rid of all his heavy items.

Did i forget something? Do you have good route for Act 2? Leave us a comment.

D3Inc – Three weeks after release

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It’s been a little more than three weeks since Diablo 3 got released – and we’re on our way to set up a good baseline for when the real money auction house comes live (hopefully) next week. So – what have we been up to?

Progression

Aside from leveling to 60 within the first week we’ve progressed slow but constantly. As one of our members is only available during the weekends we’ve moved Inferno progression to those times and spent our weeks farming content we’ve already mastered, building up our regular, magicfind and goldfind equipment. While we were doing mostly Act 1 Jailer/Butcher runs two weeks ago, we switched to Act 2 Maghda and Kulle/Belial runs last week. During this weekend we plan to progress through Act 3 and hopefully finish it. Our focus here was not to die our way from quest to quest, but to actually tackle the various champion and rare packs and be able to kill those.

Thuata

Our female crew member spent most of her time buying raw materials and crafting various items – selling them with big success. With commodities back online competition has been rough the last few days and so she started researching the gem market and flipping gems with increasing success.

Triple

Being one of our part-time members, he played from home most of the week. He’s been doing some testing on Nightmare gold runs, tinkering around with +gold find and pickup range equip. In his free time he likes to do solo Belial runs and crying for help once he realizes that the Lord of Lies eats melees for breakfast.

Saphirus

I have an incredible amount of respect for people who are able to switch off their brains and spend the day doing repetitive work. Saphirus is one of those guys. Watching reruns of his favourite TV shows he spent the last week doing one champ/boss run after another and found us a lot of set items and legendaries.

Mike

Being the only one who has a full-time job and isn’t on site, it has been hard to integrate Mike into our routine. He managed to get to 60 about a week ago and has equipped his witch doctor since. Hopefully we’ll find a smart way to merge him into our crew more in the next few weeks.

cash

I’ve spent the last week with my new best friends – spreadsheets. I’ve tracked market movements on specific markets and made most of my money doing big-ticket flips. I’m excited to see how the real money auction house will influence the markets I’m playing at the moment. For next week I plan on getting an overview over the weapon market and start flipping mid to high dps weapons.

What have you been doing? Any specific markets you’re playing? Found a super rare item? Leave me a comment. ;)

How to select skills freely in Diablo 3

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It’s another month and like clockwork Markco over at the Diablo 3 Goldguide has another one of his Diablo 3 Blogging Carnivals. This time around he’s asking us to answer a question we got from Diablo 3 players. As I’d already planned to cover the topic I’ll be writing about in one of my posts, that one’s a no brainer for me. The question I’ve by been asked (or told about) the most by now is: “Can I choose my character’s skills freely?”

Short answer: Of course you can! To streamline the whole skill thingy, Blizzard introduced the concept of skill categories halfway through the beta.Naturally people were instantly angered by the fact that their choice in skills would be limited by this. What most didn’t see, was that at the same time the Diablo 3 developers introduced an option called “Elective mode”. Elective mode allows you to freely choose which skill goes into which slot. And here’s how you activate it:

I – Press Esc and select “Options”

II – Go to the “Gameplay” tab and check the box “Elective mode”

III – Switch through the categories and choose skills freely

So there you have it. With this little change to Diablo 3 you can have as many mantras on your monk as you want (although you still can only have one active), play your demon hunter without any (or just) hatred generators, have just defensive cooldowns for your barbarian, take all your pets on your witch doctor’s journey, or play your wizard without any secondary spells like Arcane Orb. Especially once you reach Level 60 and don’t want to lose stacks of your “Nephalem Valor” by changing skills, this one might come in handy when creating the perfect all-round build.

As with a lot of things this one seems pretty trivial to people who’ve been playing and following Diablo 3 for some time, but even some of my crewmates didn’t know about this until they started wondering how they could copy builds posted on sites like Diablo 3 Builds. Enjoy the choices this’ll give you.

I actually like creating small guides like this. Do you have questions I could try to answer or stuff you’d like to see small guides about? Leave me a comment.

D3INC – Day 9

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We’re slowly settling into a more normal rhythm. Have a good weekend ahead of us. I’ll go watch a football game and meet with some friends, Daniel’s gonna chill out at a wedding, Caroline will go shopping and Rob will take some time to unwind at his apartment. I think, after being stuck with each other for such a long time, we all are looking forward to some time alone. I hope we’ll get back fully recharged and with new energy.

Diablo 3 real money auction house release is six days away. They’ve been tinkering here and there, but I’m still worried about the general state of the auction house and not fully sure if we’ll be able to carve our niche. With the prices dropping like crazy everywhere around, it looks like supply is far higher than demand. Maybe this’ll change, now that we get into regions that take far more dedication than just clicking your way through a few dungeons. We got through Act 1 Inferno today. Butcher was a serious bitch, but we had some nice progression and were able to beat him after changing some skills and finding our rhythm. Act 2 was… deadly. We got owned hard by the first mobs we met – and each one afterwards. Went back to Act 1 and it gets easier and easier with every piece of gear we get (duh!). Hopefully we’ll be able to switch to MF soon to get some more upgrades before we hit Act 2 Inferno again.

Plans for the next week:

- Do some more group farming tomorrow morning

- Say goodbye to the guys and do some solo farming

- More solo farming, a few blog posts, etc. on Friday/Saturday

- Weekend on Sunday/Monday

- Get the gang together again on Tuesday and maybe tackle Act 2 by Friday

So yeah. Blog posts. Was thinking about some FAQ style newbie guides, detailed character focused things, opinion pieces on the auction house and maybe a few zone breakdowns for Act 3 / Act 4 Hell and Inferno Act 1. Mob types, tactics, etc. What do you guys think? The comment section is waiting.

D3INC – Day 8

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So apparently there’s a reason a regular work week just covers five days and lets you relax for two days. After about a week of spending almost every single minute with Diablo 3, I suffered a mild burnout today. Come Thursday two of my crew members will be out-of-town for a few days and I guess I’ll use the time to recharge my batteries, clean up our apartments and get some well deserved “me time”. Doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything though.

- Been reading up on strategies, builds and what people are thinking at the moment

- Went a little further into Inferno. Especially liking the “Weeping Hollow” and “Fields of Misery”. Nice variation of rares, champs, events and dungeons and a lot of space to kite and evade your enemies.

- Managed to crack the 20k dps, although I get two shot by everyone and their grandma now

- Sold some more stuff, did some sales analysis, got a few million gold by now

Liking the group dynamics of our little crew. Spending more than a week in one apartment could’ve been stressful, but somehow we complement each other. Still happy to get some time away from them and have our apartment for ourselves for a few days though.

How’s your past week been? Are you playing with others or solo? Feel free to leave me a comment.