A lot of people are picking up or moving over to the console version of Diablo III and are either unfamiliar with the genre, or are confused by the slight differences between the console version and the PC version.Hog and I figured it would be a good idea to consolidate all the information under one post to help keep everyone informed regardless if they just bought the game, or had an odd question and needed to track it down.I originally posted this over at the official console forums and since have had a live stream watcher suggest I post it here. Little formatting fixes here and there between the boards, and here we are. The first thing we recommend to everyone is to play the game for 30 minutes or more. Get a feel for things, try a couple of classes out, and gain a few levels. This will make this post a lot easier to follow as you will have at least some basic understanding of what we’re referencing.We’ll start with some basic info about the game that you might not notice at first to get things rolling. Next up is the move to intermediate level knowledge to help you get more from the game. Then we move on to advanced/end game details to show you what you’ll want to be doing once you’re level 60.1. The Basics a. Basic Stats There are 4 basic character stats: Dexterity (Dex), Strength (Str), Vitality (Vit), and Intelligence (Int).Each point of a stat does the following:
Dex adds to your dodge chance (on a sliding scale) and adds 1% damage for Demon Hunters and Monks.
Str adds one point of armor and adds 1% damage for Barbarians
Vit adds to your life. Under level 35, it adds 10 life/point. At 35 it adds (your level) -25. So at level 60, it’s adding 35/points of life.
Int adds 0.1 to all of your resistances (fire, poison, etc.) and adds 1% damage to Witch Doctor and Wizard’s attacks
The stat that adds damage for each class is called that class’ Primary Stat. This is the stat that you’ll generally want to focus on picking up for your character.We made a video that covers this info with some more in depth info as well: b. Loot System This is an important section. On the PC, you get more drops of less quality and with random stats. This was to encourage people to make use of the Auction House. By having more loot to offload, and good loot that you can’t actually use on your character, you were more likely to want to sell that loot and more likely to need to buy loot to suit your character.Since the Auction House does not exist on the Consoles, they had to do something different. So it was decided to drop less loot, raise the gold drop amounts, raise the overall quality of the items that do drop, and make the items that drop have your character’s primary stat.What this translates to is less junk items to sell, offset with more gold dropped, and the drops that do come, you’re more likely to be able to use. The system is not without flaws, but it would be a lot worse if we were stuck with the original system. The PC’s Auction House is going away, and they’re moving to the loot system the Console has been using since it’s launch.Loot quality is color coded from worst to best:Grey (broken)White (common)
Blue (Purple I say) (magic)
Yellow (Rare)Orange (Legendary)Green (Set items).Here’s a video that goes a little more in depth and shows some examples: c. Inventory & Inventory Management Now you’ve got your character going, and you’re looting things. Good good, now what do you do with all that stuff?When you pick things up, you’ll notice the left side of the screen near the bottom the item name and some upwards and/or downwards arrows. Those arrows are generalized indications of if it’s going to increase your offense, defense, and life. Early on, you can pretty much blindly go by those arrows. We suggest paying attention to the info on the items though, so you can see WHY it increases or decreases your damage, life, etc.There is a “quick equip” feature, but I’ve not found it all that useful. I like to see the items’ stats before I equip them. To do this, hit the back button and pull up your inventory. Your total inventory is split up between the slot they can be equipped in. If there is an item you haven’t looked at, that slot will have a gold ring around it. you can compare stats from there and decide if you want to change to the new item, or stick with the old.If you decide you don’t want the item, make use of the Junk system by highlighting the item and clicking down the right stick (XBOX). This will mark the item as Junk, which is handy when you go to the blacksmith or a merchant, as you can then bulk sell at the merchant for gold, or bulk salvage at the blacksmith for crafting materials. Of note, only purple and better quality can be salvaged. See the crafting section for more info regarding salvaging.Let’s say you like the item, but don’t want to use it right now. you can hang on to it, but it takes up space in your inventory. You’re limited to carrying 60 items so you may not want to carry around everything. You also might want to give things to a different character of yours.In each town you operate out of, you’ll find your “stash”. It looks like a large trunk or chest and can be first seen right next to the Inn in New Tristram. Your stash has a finite size and you can upgrade it via gold to a total of 210 slots. The stash is shared across all characters on your account, so it's a handy way to give things to an alt, hold on to things for later, or just to make room on your character.We cover all this in our Inventory & Inventory Management video: 2. Intermediate a. Options Menu You’ve gained some more skills now, and you’re starting to figure out what ones you like and don’t like, but if you’re like Hog and I were, you want more info and more options. Just so happens there are menu options disabled by default that will help you out.Pause the game, go to the Options, and from there select the Gameplay section. Most of these will be self explanatory, but there are a few that should be noticed.
Elective mode - This allows you to assign ANY skill to ANY button. That means you can have any amount of spells from any category; you’re not stuck with the default of one from each. This also allows you to fit the buttons to a way that fit your playstyle.Display Player names - This can help you keep track of your character and any friendlies wandering around. I like it on, but some feel it it clutters things up. Try it out and see what you think.
Display damage/healing numbers - Red numbers pop up on hostiles as you hit them, and green numbers pop up on you when you're healed by something. Hog runs with just the Damage ones, but I like to see how effective my self healing is.Show Advanced Tooltips - This is a must. This tells you exactly what each skill does including the actual damage numbers and durations. Without this you’re almost guessing which skills are better.See these changes in action in this video:b. Advanced StatsWhen you bring up your inventory, you’ll see a button listed at the bottom for “character details”. In that subscreen, you’ll see all the in-depth details about your character. Your core stats, how those affect things, other stats like Attacks per second, Critical hit chance, Critical hit damage, etc. Scroll through them and take a look. The details about each item are in the black box on the bottom left.Once you get the hang of things, and as you progress through the different game levels, you’ll want to make sure to pay attention to more than just your core stats. Here’s a few you’ll want to follow:
Critical Hit Damage - Abbreviated CD, it’s the amount of damage you do on a critical hit. Your base amount is 150% of normal damage and it can be increased with items and skills.Critical Hit chance - Abbreviated CC, it’s the chance an attack has to deal critical damage. Your base is 5% and you can increase this through items and skills.
In many cases increasing CC and CD will actually increase your damage output more than just bringing up your primary stat. As such, many builds focus on abilities that boost critical hit chance and damage.
Damage Reduction - This is a function of your armor. The higher this is, the less damage you take from all attacks.Elemental resists (fire, poison, etc) - This is brought up by skills, items, and Int. Increasing your resists allows you to take less damage from specific damage types in addition to your damage reduction.
Those are just a few of the stats in that screen and we suggest you take a moment to review them if you’re having trouble with an area. Often times players will focus purely on doing more and more damage and hit a wall where they can’t kill everything before it kills them. Resists, armor, and lifesteal play a big role later in the game.Here's the video covering some of the advanced stats and showing weapon speed differences:
c. Armor and Weapon Crafting You've stayed awhile and looted things, but you just can’t find an upgraded set of bracers. Or you’re running a new character and you hate that its not geared out early on. Fear not, the blacksmith is there to help!
As mentioned earlier, you can salvage purple or better items at the blacksmith. By doing so you will gain crafting materials. Early on, the blacksmith only has a few plans, but you can buy him upgrades and he will learn new plans. At first the cost is just gold, then once you’re on Nightmare Mode, it’s gold and pages of blacksmithing. Hell mode changes the pages to tomes of blacksmithing, and Inferno ups the tomes of blacksmithing to tomes of secrets. Each game mode adds those additional items to the loot drops, so don’t fret when at the end of Normal, you don’t have any pages of blacksmithing. You’ll be swimming in them by the end of Nightmare.
Also, when you’re upgrading the blacksmith, you’re not picking ONE of the plans listed there during the upgrade. I thought I was and was kind of freaking out that I was possibly ruining my future plans or that I had to coordinate with Hog to make sure we covered the items we’d need between us. You’ll actually get all the plans, they’re just listed there so you can see what’s coming in that upgrade.
To craft an item, talk with the blacksmith and hit the button with the anvil icon. Then select between armor and weapons. You can cycle around and pick out any weapon/armor you like. When you highlight an item, it will show you below the blacksmith’s picture exactly what’s needed and how much of it you have. You can also compare that item’s base stats to the item you currently have equipped in the matching slot.
Each time you craft something, it will be allocated a number of random properties. You can find the amount of properties listed in the compare screen, along with any attributes that are standard. Because of the random nature of crafting, you may want to craft a couple of times to see if one is better than the other. It’s essentially a loot drop, you just have a say in what type of item drops.
Of note, blacksmith plans are shared across all of your characters. So once you teach him a plan, your new guys can craft up stuff from the get go.
d. Gemcrafting Gemcrafting differs slightly in that you can keep upgrading gems by combining them with one of the same type and a page or tome of jewelcrafting, or tome of secrets for higher level gems.
Once you find the gemcrafter, he will be available in all of your main towns across all characters. And just like the blacksmith, his designs are shared across all characters as well.
Gems can be fitted into sockets on items to further customise them to your liking. Adding a gem to the helmet and weapons have different effects than adding them to any other item.
Emerald - Green
Helmet: Bonus Gold find
Weapon: Critical Hit Damage
Elsewhere: Dex
Ruby - Red
Helmet Bonus XP
Weapon: Damage
Elsewhere: Str
Topaz - Yellow
Helmet: Bonus Magic Find
Weapon: Damage to melee attackers
Elsewhere: Int
Amethyst - Purple
Helmet: %Life
Weapon: Life per hit
Elsewhere: Vit
The common opinion is to put greens in your weapons for big critical hits, purple in your helmet to boost your life (since there’s no damage boosting gem here), and primary stat everywhere else.
In both gem and weapon crafting, you will start looting plans later in the game which allow you to craft legendary items, sets, and top tier gems.
a. Nephalem Valor You may have noticed this happen, you might not have, but it’s pretty integral in the endgame gameplay, so we need to make sure to cover it. Once you’re level 60, every time you kill a pack of elites, open a resplendent chest, or complete an event, you’ll gain a buff called Nephalem Valor. On consoles this buff can stack up to 3 times, and each stack of it gives you an additional 35% Magic and Gold find. The buff lasts 30 minutes, and can be extended by killing another pack, opening a resplendent chest, or completing an event. You cannot gain more than 3 stacks though. Whether farming for loot, xp, keys, or ring parts, you’ll want to have “full stacks” at all times. Note: If you change a skill, a skill rune, or start a new game, your stacks will drop.
b. Difficulty levels You might wonder why this is down here in this section. Beating the game earlier on, you should be fiddling with the difficulty to your liking in our opinion. Burn through it on easy, or up the challenge every time you think an area is too easy, it’s up to you. But once you’re doing “farming”, this information is rather important. Here’s a chart breaking it down:
What this means is that once you’re trying to get better loot and better XP, you’ll want to be running higher Master Levels since it boosts your base XP, gold, and magic finds.
c. Loot and Paragon farming You’re now going to want to farm for more and better loot and raise your Paragon Level. Your Paragon Level is shared account wide, so all characters will receive its benefits. Each level you gain 3% bonus Gold and Magic and a slight stat boost. You can see your current Paragon Level as a blue number to the left of the XP bar, and the blue XP bar now tracks your Paragon Level. There are 100 Paragon Levels, each one taking more XP than the one prior to it.
To farm Paragon Levels, you want to be gaining as much XP as you possibly can, so you should be farming on the highest Master Level that you can handle. Loot is a bonus, but what you’re after here is big XP.
Loot farming is generally done by running through areas with large amounts of mobs so you can get as many kills as possible in as little time as possible. Difficulty wise, you want to be able to kill things at a decent rate, and they shouldn’t be killing you often. Hog and I stick with a rule that if you die twice on a run, you might want to back things down a difficulty level or check into your build’s resists.
There are various “routes” for these farming runs, always looking to maximize gains per hour played. Here’s the one we like taking currently (we'll add a couple more in the near future):
Route #2
d. Infernal Machine and Hellfire Rings On Inferno, there is a special NPC in each of the first three acts that is called a Keywarden. If you have full stacks of Neph Valor (3) the Keywarden has a chance to drop it’s key. In Act I you will find the Keywarden in the Fields of Misery. In Act II, the Keywarden is in the Dalhgur Oasis. The Keywarden for Act III resides in the Stonefort area. And Act IV’s Keywarden hides in the Silver Spire, level 1. The key will be a guaranteed drop on Master V, and the chance goes down as you decrease in Master Level. The Act IV Keywarden can drop any of the three keys as well as the plans to the device that uses the keys. This is device is called the Infernal Machine. It requires one key from each of the first three Acts to build.
Here’s a set of videos covering the Keywardens:
Act I - Act II - Act III -
Why do you want to make Infernal Machines? So you can make Hellfire Rings of course!
Once you have farmed the keys and made the machine you will need to go to Act I and select the last quest, "Return to New Tristram". Remember you need full stacks of Nephalem Valor before fighting the bosses, so head out and get three stacks and then return to town.
Behind the Healer in town is a closed door. If you attack that door, it will break and lead you to a new room. Using an Infernal Machine from your inventory while in this room will create a portal at random to one of the three “realms” that are a single room with two bosses from the game in it. Upon defeating a pair of bosses, there’s a spilling of loot and a chance for a part for the Hellfire Ring. After the fight, town portal back out and you can use another Infernal Machine in the room to generate a portal at random from the two remaining possibilities. You need one part from each realm, so having 3 machines to make a “Full Uber Run” is a good idea to make sure you get a shot at the part you are looking for.
You can purchase the plans for the Hellfire ring from Squirt the peddler right near Act II’s Hidden Camp checkpoint.
We recorded making the Portals and each of the battles here:
e. Whimsyshire No, it’s not the cow level. There is no cow level.
You’ll need to craft the Staff of Herding in order to access Whimsyshire. You’ll find it’s plans as a random drop chance from Izual in Act IV. If you are specifically farming for the plans, load a new game at Act IV, Chapter IV, Prime Evil. Make sure you’re at the start of the quest. Take the checkpoint to the Crystal Colonnade, and then to the Gateway to the Silver Spire. Run past Leah if you don’t feel like fighting, then look for the Gateway to the Silver Spire 1. From there, seek out the Gateway to the Great Span. Here you will meet Izual and if you’re lucky, he’ll drop the plans. The plans are account bound. So if you find them a second time while your buddy is still trying to get his first set, make sure to drop the plans so he can see them and yell at you.
On the consoles, you only need three parts unlike the five you need on the PC.
First off, the easy one, Wirt’s bell. Squirt the peddler in Act II’s Hidden Camp sells it for 25,000 gold. Boom, 1/3rd of the way there.
The other two items are the Black Mushroom and Gibbering Gemstone. The Black Mushroom has a chance to be in the Cathedral level 1 in Act I. It randomly spawns there and your character will actually make a comment if they “see” it growing. It’s a small level, so just keep running through it until you find it.
The Gibbering Gemstone is a tad more difficult. There’s a cave that has a chance to spawn in Act III’s Fields of Slaughter called the Caverns of Frost. On level two of this cavern there’s a chance that Chiltara will spawn, and when it’s killed there’s a chance it will drop the Gemstone. As you can see, you’re going to need some luck to get that drop.
Once you have all the parts and the plans and some gold, take them to the blacksmith and craft up your Staff!
But wait, there’s more. You see, that staff is only good for “Normal” difficulty. You’re going to want to run it on inferno, aren’t you? Well, load up the last quest in Act III on Nightmare difficulty and go talk to the quartermaster in the NE corner of the keep (right by where the followers chat with each other). He’ll have the Nightmare quality plans for sale there. They require some gold and the Normal staff to upgrade. Once you’ve done that, repeat with Hell and Inferno modes and you’ll have an Infernal Staff of Herding. It will work for all modes below Inferno.
Now to venture to Whimsyshire. Load up Act I, we suggest the last quest. Take the checkpoint to the Ruins of Tristram and backtrack North West. You’ll find a big crack in the ground with a bovine skeleton near it. Approach the remains with the staff in your inventory and have a little chat. After the chat is done, ride the rainbow to a magical land of loot pinatas, unicorns, and happy little clouds.
Unique Items in Whimsyshire:
Horadric Hamburger - Level 30 Legendary "dagger". Low damage, just for fun.
Only drops from the rare spawn: "Loot Piñata"
Spectrum - Level 30 Legendary sword with rainbow blade.
Can drop from:
Creampuff
Killaire (Team Unicorn)
Maisie the Daisy
Maulin Sorely (Team Unicorn)
Midnight Sparkle
Miss Hell (Team Unicorn)
Nightmarity
R'Lyeh (Team Unicorn)
Tubbers
Magic Find
(From the game guide section of the official site)
Magic find affects the quality of items you acquire from killing enemies (but not treasure chests, vases, weapon racks, or other environmental objects). It doesn't give you a chance to get more items on a given kill – instead, it increases the chance that an item you find will be magical, and more potent than it would be otherwise. When a monster drops an item, Diablo III randomly determines the item’s quality from a chart that includes item quality and the number of affixes present. The game randomly "rolls" on each property in the chart to determine which affixes your item will get. Your magic find score is applied as a bonus to these rolls. For example, if a monster has a 4% chance to drop a 6-affix rare item and you have +50% magic find, it now has a 6% chance to drop that item. Item quality is checked in the following order: Legendary6-affix rare5-affix rare4-affix rare2-affix rare1-affix raremagic itemUsing the above example, when your roll ‘misses’ a higher-level item quality, the item generator proceeds to the next lowest item quality in the chain (in this case, checking to see if you got a 6-affix rare, then checking for a 5-affix rare, and so on). Your magic find bonus applies to each roll. If the same monster has a 10% chance to drop a 5-affix rare item and you have 50% magic find, you now have a 15% chance to get a 5-affix rare item.
What that breaks down to is the more magic find you have, the better your odds of getting legendaries and/or high affix rares. What it doesn't affect is the roll on the stats themselves. So if an item could have 50-100 Dex, magic find will not give you a better chance at getting a high end roll. You also won't get more loot, just better quality. This can be nice though in that they should sell for more if you're in need of gold.
Dual Wielding
I was leveling a new character and I spotted this oddity and remembered my confusion from when I fist started playing: I was dual wielding with a Monk and I looted a legendary that was a BIG upgrade. When I went to fiddle with the old weapons to see which combo with the new gave me the best damage, I found using only the new weapon, or the new and a shield was actually better damage than the new weapon and one of the old ones.
So here's why that is. Your damage output is averaged between the two weapons and given a 15% attack speed buff. So a 200 damage weapon and 100 damage weapon average to 150 damage. times 1.15 = 172.5 damage. You're actually better just using the 200 damage weapon and a shield.
Now of course that doesn't take into account the weapon's stats, bonuses, and on hit properties from skills where the improves attack speed can do more. But, as a general rule, unless you're looking for specific property from that offhand weapon, you want it to be within roughly 15% damage of your mainhand weapon in order to get a raw damage boost.
Ruby vs Emerald for your Weapon?
Doing some reading, it's really a case by case basis depending on what your build and gear is. The rough rule being to go with what you're build's strengths are, to a point. An Emerald's Critical Damage bonus won't be applied enough to make a difference if your Critical Chance is low, so you're better off with a Ruby. You're also benefiting more from a Ruby if you have a weapon with the +%Damage stat. Emeralds really shine (pun intended) if you already have a build that focuses on Critical Chance and Critical Damage, since you will see more crits, thus the bonus comes into play more often.
In summary, I would advise using Rubies until you start getting +Critical Chance skills/gear and then switching out to Emeralds.
Wow, man. Good stuff right there. Nice way to introduce yourself to the community.
Very useful info, very well organized and edited and your voice is quite pleasant to hear. For someone just starting to play D3, or that wants specific info on the console caveats, I definitely recommend checking these out. Keep up the great work!
Do you also play on PC? And do you intend to make videos on RoS once it's released?
We don't play on PC. Which is a change for me since I played Diablo 1 and 2 on PC. The upside is I can easily relate to anyone trying to learn playing it on the Console and Hog had never played Diablo before, so we get a fresh perspective there as well.
Hopefully RoS will come to the 360 and if so, we definitely will be picking it up.
I personally play on the console version every weekend with 3 more friends. We got a group of a barb, a dh, a monk and a wiz. Pretty awesome to be honest. We are level 60, 23 paragon farming master 1-3.
We have more tutorial style videos there on the channel along with a couple funny ones from out livestreams. Not to be all self promotional or anything, but you can find us on twitter and twitch with the same goatnhog name.
I uploaded a video for the Co-Op Wizard build I use last night, Hog should be getting it all set up and live this weekend or Monday.
I've a couple things on Magic Find to add to the guide above, since that's another one that's not exactly straight forward. I'll add those tonight or tomorrow as I've got to head out for a few hours.
Thanks again or the kind words and I look forward to getting more involved here, this site has a lot more info than the official forums!
Added a small section at the tail end of post 3 regarding Rubies vs Emeralds. Didn't go deep into the math, just the basic guidelines.
Also added a second farming route video we did a while back to just spice things up, though for some reason I'm not seeing any of the videos. Ah well, if you want to see them, hit up http://youtube.com/goatnhog
EDIT: Oh, missed the forums upgrade. That explains the vids and formatting errors. Fixed things up.
In many cases increasing CC and CD will actually increase your damage output more than just bringing up your primary stat. As such, many builds focus on abilities that boost critical hit chance and damage.
Damage Reduction - This is a function of your armor. The higher this is, the less damage you take from all attacks.Elemental resists (fire, poison, etc) - This is brought up by skills, items, and Int. Increasing your resists allows you to take less damage from specific damage types in addition to your damage reduction.
As mentioned earlier, you can salvage purple or better items at the blacksmith. By doing so you will gain crafting materials. Early on, the blacksmith only has a few plans, but you can buy him upgrades and he will learn new plans. At first the cost is just gold, then once you’re on Nightmare Mode, it’s gold and pages of blacksmithing. Hell mode changes the pages to tomes of blacksmithing, and Inferno ups the tomes of blacksmithing to tomes of secrets. Each game mode adds those additional items to the loot drops, so don’t fret when at the end of Normal, you don’t have any pages of blacksmithing. You’ll be swimming in them by the end of Nightmare.
Also, when you’re upgrading the blacksmith, you’re not picking ONE of the plans listed there during the upgrade. I thought I was and was kind of freaking out that I was possibly ruining my future plans or that I had to coordinate with Hog to make sure we covered the items we’d need between us. You’ll actually get all the plans, they’re just listed there so you can see what’s coming in that upgrade.
To craft an item, talk with the blacksmith and hit the button with the anvil icon. Then select between armor and weapons. You can cycle around and pick out any weapon/armor you like. When you highlight an item, it will show you below the blacksmith’s picture exactly what’s needed and how much of it you have. You can also compare that item’s base stats to the item you currently have equipped in the matching slot.
Each time you craft something, it will be allocated a number of random properties. You can find the amount of properties listed in the compare screen, along with any attributes that are standard. Because of the random nature of crafting, you may want to craft a couple of times to see if one is better than the other. It’s essentially a loot drop, you just have a say in what type of item drops.
Of note, blacksmith plans are shared across all of your characters. So once you teach him a plan, your new guys can craft up stuff from the get go.
d. Gemcrafting Gemcrafting differs slightly in that you can keep upgrading gems by combining them with one of the same type and a page or tome of jewelcrafting, or tome of secrets for higher level gems.
Once you find the gemcrafter, he will be available in all of your main towns across all characters. And just like the blacksmith, his designs are shared across all characters as well.
Gems can be fitted into sockets on items to further customise them to your liking. Adding a gem to the helmet and weapons have different effects than adding them to any other item.
Helmet: Bonus Gold find
Weapon: Critical Hit Damage
Elsewhere: Dex
Helmet Bonus XP
Weapon: Damage
Elsewhere: Str
Helmet: Bonus Magic Find
Weapon: Damage to melee attackers
Elsewhere: Int
Helmet: %Life
Weapon: Life per hit
Elsewhere: Vit
In both gem and weapon crafting, you will start looting plans later in the game which allow you to craft legendary items, sets, and top tier gems.
See crafting in action, along with some tips not covered in this post here:
Embed Removed: https://www.diablofans.com/linkout?remoteUrl=http://youtube/embed/coSMzRtM4IM 3. Advanced/End game
So you’ve reached 60 and defeated Diablo on Inferno mode, now what?
a. Nephalem Valor You may have noticed this happen, you might not have, but it’s pretty integral in the endgame gameplay, so we need to make sure to cover it. Once you’re level 60, every time you kill a pack of elites, open a resplendent chest, or complete an event, you’ll gain a buff called Nephalem Valor. On consoles this buff can stack up to 3 times, and each stack of it gives you an additional 35% Magic and Gold find. The buff lasts 30 minutes, and can be extended by killing another pack, opening a resplendent chest, or completing an event. You cannot gain more than 3 stacks though. Whether farming for loot, xp, keys, or ring parts, you’ll want to have “full stacks” at all times. Note: If you change a skill, a skill rune, or start a new game, your stacks will drop.
b. Difficulty levels You might wonder why this is down here in this section. Beating the game earlier on, you should be fiddling with the difficulty to your liking in our opinion. Burn through it on easy, or up the challenge every time you think an area is too easy, it’s up to you. But once you’re doing “farming”, this information is rather important. Here’s a chart breaking it down:
According to this blue post: http://us.battle.net...c/9281758533#17
c. Loot and Paragon farming You’re now going to want to farm for more and better loot and raise your Paragon Level. Your Paragon Level is shared account wide, so all characters will receive its benefits. Each level you gain 3% bonus Gold and Magic and a slight stat boost. You can see your current Paragon Level as a blue number to the left of the XP bar, and the blue XP bar now tracks your Paragon Level. There are 100 Paragon Levels, each one taking more XP than the one prior to it.
To farm Paragon Levels, you want to be gaining as much XP as you possibly can, so you should be farming on the highest Master Level that you can handle. Loot is a bonus, but what you’re after here is big XP.
Loot farming is generally done by running through areas with large amounts of mobs so you can get as many kills as possible in as little time as possible. Difficulty wise, you want to be able to kill things at a decent rate, and they shouldn’t be killing you often. Hog and I stick with a rule that if you die twice on a run, you might want to back things down a difficulty level or check into your build’s resists.
There are various “routes” for these farming runs, always looking to maximize gains per hour played. Here’s the one we like taking currently (we'll add a couple more in the near future):
Route #2
d. Infernal Machine and Hellfire Rings On Inferno, there is a special NPC in each of the first three acts that is called a Keywarden. If you have full stacks of Neph Valor (3) the Keywarden has a chance to drop it’s key. In Act I you will find the Keywarden in the Fields of Misery. In Act II, the Keywarden is in the Dalhgur Oasis. The Keywarden for Act III resides in the Stonefort area. And Act IV’s Keywarden hides in the Silver Spire, level 1. The key will be a guaranteed drop on Master V, and the chance goes down as you decrease in Master Level. The Act IV Keywarden can drop any of the three keys as well as the plans to the device that uses the keys. This is device is called the Infernal Machine. It requires one key from each of the first three Acts to build.
Here’s a set of videos covering the Keywardens:
Act I - Act II - Act III - Why do you want to make Infernal Machines? So you can make Hellfire Rings of course!
Once you have farmed the keys and made the machine you will need to go to Act I and select the last quest, "Return to New Tristram". Remember you need full stacks of Nephalem Valor before fighting the bosses, so head out and get three stacks and then return to town.
Behind the Healer in town is a closed door. If you attack that door, it will break and lead you to a new room. Using an Infernal Machine from your inventory while in this room will create a portal at random to one of the three “realms” that are a single room with two bosses from the game in it. Upon defeating a pair of bosses, there’s a spilling of loot and a chance for a part for the Hellfire Ring. After the fight, town portal back out and you can use another Infernal Machine in the room to generate a portal at random from the two remaining possibilities. You need one part from each realm, so having 3 machines to make a “Full Uber Run” is a good idea to make sure you get a shot at the part you are looking for.
You can purchase the plans for the Hellfire ring from Squirt the peddler right near Act II’s Hidden Camp checkpoint.
We recorded making the Portals and each of the battles here:
e. Whimsyshire No, it’s not the cow level. There is no cow level.
You’ll need to craft the Staff of Herding in order to access Whimsyshire. You’ll find it’s plans as a random drop chance from Izual in Act IV. If you are specifically farming for the plans, load a new game at Act IV, Chapter IV, Prime Evil. Make sure you’re at the start of the quest. Take the checkpoint to the Crystal Colonnade, and then to the Gateway to the Silver Spire. Run past Leah if you don’t feel like fighting, then look for the Gateway to the Silver Spire 1. From there, seek out the Gateway to the Great Span. Here you will meet Izual and if you’re lucky, he’ll drop the plans. The plans are account bound. So if you find them a second time while your buddy is still trying to get his first set, make sure to drop the plans so he can see them and yell at you.
On the consoles, you only need three parts unlike the five you need on the PC.
First off, the easy one, Wirt’s bell. Squirt the peddler in Act II’s Hidden Camp sells it for 25,000 gold. Boom, 1/3rd of the way there.
The other two items are the Black Mushroom and Gibbering Gemstone. The Black Mushroom has a chance to be in the Cathedral level 1 in Act I. It randomly spawns there and your character will actually make a comment if they “see” it growing. It’s a small level, so just keep running through it until you find it.
The Gibbering Gemstone is a tad more difficult. There’s a cave that has a chance to spawn in Act III’s Fields of Slaughter called the Caverns of Frost. On level two of this cavern there’s a chance that Chiltara will spawn, and when it’s killed there’s a chance it will drop the Gemstone. As you can see, you’re going to need some luck to get that drop.
Once you have all the parts and the plans and some gold, take them to the blacksmith and craft up your Staff!
But wait, there’s more. You see, that staff is only good for “Normal” difficulty. You’re going to want to run it on inferno, aren’t you? Well, load up the last quest in Act III on Nightmare difficulty and go talk to the quartermaster in the NE corner of the keep (right by where the followers chat with each other). He’ll have the Nightmare quality plans for sale there. They require some gold and the Normal staff to upgrade. Once you’ve done that, repeat with Hell and Inferno modes and you’ll have an Infernal Staff of Herding. It will work for all modes below Inferno.
Now to venture to Whimsyshire. Load up Act I, we suggest the last quest. Take the checkpoint to the Ruins of Tristram and backtrack North West. You’ll find a big crack in the ground with a bovine skeleton near it. Approach the remains with the staff in your inventory and have a little chat. After the chat is done, ride the rainbow to a magical land of loot pinatas, unicorns, and happy little clouds.
Unique Items in Whimsyshire:
Creampuff
Killaire (Team Unicorn)
Maisie the Daisy
Maulin Sorely (Team Unicorn)
Midnight Sparkle
Miss Hell (Team Unicorn)
Nightmarity
R'Lyeh (Team Unicorn)
Tubbers
Magic Find
(From the game guide section of the official site)
Magic find affects the quality of items you acquire from killing enemies (but not treasure chests, vases, weapon racks, or other environmental objects). It doesn't give you a chance to get more items on a given kill – instead, it increases the chance that an item you find will be magical, and more potent than it would be otherwise.
When a monster drops an item, Diablo III randomly determines the item’s quality from a chart that includes item quality and the number of affixes present. The game randomly "rolls" on each property in the chart to determine which affixes your item will get. Your magic find score is applied as a bonus to these rolls.
For example, if a monster has a 4% chance to drop a 6-affix rare item and you have +50% magic find, it now has a 6% chance to drop that item.
Item quality is checked in the following order:
Legendary 6-affix rare 5-affix rare 4-affix rare 2-affix rare 1-affix rare magic item Using the above example, when your roll ‘misses’ a higher-level item quality, the item generator proceeds to the next lowest item quality in the chain (in this case, checking to see if you got a 6-affix rare, then checking for a 5-affix rare, and so on). Your magic find bonus applies to each roll. If the same monster has a 10% chance to drop a 5-affix rare item and you have 50% magic find, you now have a 15% chance to get a 5-affix rare item.
What that breaks down to is the more magic find you have, the better your odds of getting legendaries and/or high affix rares. What it doesn't affect is the roll on the stats themselves. So if an item could have 50-100 Dex, magic find will not give you a better chance at getting a high end roll. You also won't get more loot, just better quality. This can be nice though in that they should sell for more if you're in need of gold.
Dual Wielding
I was leveling a new character and I spotted this oddity and remembered my confusion from when I fist started playing: I was dual wielding with a Monk and I looted a legendary that was a BIG upgrade. When I went to fiddle with the old weapons to see which combo with the new gave me the best damage, I found using only the new weapon, or the new and a shield was actually better damage than the new weapon and one of the old ones.
So here's why that is. Your damage output is averaged between the two weapons and given a 15% attack speed buff. So a 200 damage weapon and 100 damage weapon average to 150 damage. times 1.15 = 172.5 damage. You're actually better just using the 200 damage weapon and a shield.
Now of course that doesn't take into account the weapon's stats, bonuses, and on hit properties from skills where the improves attack speed can do more. But, as a general rule, unless you're looking for specific property from that offhand weapon, you want it to be within roughly 15% damage of your mainhand weapon in order to get a raw damage boost.
Ruby vs Emerald for your Weapon?
Doing some reading, it's really a case by case basis depending on what your build and gear is. The rough rule being to go with what you're build's strengths are, to a point. An Emerald's Critical Damage bonus won't be applied enough to make a difference if your Critical Chance is low, so you're better off with a Ruby. You're also benefiting more from a Ruby if you have a weapon with the +%Damage stat. Emeralds really shine (pun intended) if you already have a build that focuses on Critical Chance and Critical Damage, since you will see more crits, thus the bonus comes into play more often.
In summary, I would advise using Rubies until you start getting +Critical Chance skills/gear and then switching out to Emeralds.
Very useful info, very well organized and edited and your voice is quite pleasant to hear. For someone just starting to play D3, or that wants specific info on the console caveats, I definitely recommend checking these out. Keep up the great work!
Do you also play on PC? And do you intend to make videos on RoS once it's released?
We don't play on PC. Which is a change for me since I played Diablo 1 and 2 on PC. The upside is I can easily relate to anyone trying to learn playing it on the Console and Hog had never played Diablo before, so we get a fresh perspective there as well.
Hopefully RoS will come to the 360 and if so, we definitely will be picking it up.
I personally play on the console version every weekend with 3 more friends. We got a group of a barb, a dh, a monk and a wiz. Pretty awesome to be honest. We are level 60, 23 paragon farming master 1-3.
I uploaded a video for the Co-Op Wizard build I use last night, Hog should be getting it all set up and live this weekend or Monday.
I've a couple things on Magic Find to add to the guide above, since that's another one that's not exactly straight forward. I'll add those tonight or tomorrow as I've got to head out for a few hours.
Thanks again or the kind words and I look forward to getting more involved here, this site has a lot more info than the official forums!
If there's anything anyone would like to see, or any suggestions, let us know!
Also added a second farming route video we did a while back to just spice things up, though for some reason I'm not seeing any of the videos. Ah well, if you want to see them, hit up http://youtube.com/goatnhog
EDIT: Oh, missed the forums upgrade. That explains the vids and formatting errors. Fixed things up.