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The Vault

Blizzard has made a very interesting blog post about one of the upcoming features of Patch 2.1 - the Vault. It might not be the biggest feature of the new patch, but I'm sure lots of players have been waiting forever to enter on those goblin portals!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Amidst the chaos of battle, ragged opportunists sneer and scuttle to collect the loot of the fallen. Hunched over by the weight of their purloined wealth, these mischievous scavengers represent a more recent addition to Sanctuary's bestiary, with sightings increasing (perhaps unsurprisingly) shortly after the Fallen Star appeared. While not much is known about these so-called "treasure goblins," one thing is certain: they're not native.  As quickly as they enter our world, they depart—disappearing into mysterious portals and escaping with their misbegotten goods. But from where do these enigmatic visitors hail? And to where do their strange doorways lead? No mortal has ventured into nor even seen beyond their gilded veils to provide such answers. . .

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Thinking With Portals:

Ever since the recent demonic invasion, tales of Treasure Goblins scurrying about Kehjistan's battlefields have riddled Sanctuary’s taverns. At first believed to be frenzied grave robbers, the goblins' true nature became known only once they were witnessed in broad daylight. Now, their grayish bodies and lizard-like heads are recognizable to all but the most cloistered of citizens, and prove a welcome sight to powerful nephalem in search of easy loot.  
Treasure Goblins are a guarded species, however. If observed during one of their hunts, they will attempt to retreat through arcane portals—formed from magic not unlike that the Horadrim once employed to summon Town Portals and waypoints. As their presence has become more common, so have rumors of their gold-filled "vault." It is said that beyond a goblin's portal untold riches await, as well as untold horrors.  But what is fact and what is simply fable? It's time to find out. 

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Introducing the Vault:

In patch 2.1.0, whenever a Treasure Goblin is slain, there is chance that he (or she) will open a portal to the Vault.
 
In the Vault, players will encounter unimaginable wealth, presumably stolen from the merchants and townfolk of Sanctuary. Piles of gold, chests brimming with treasure, and enough gems to sate even Shen himself will reward your curiosity.

Be warned! The Vault is also the domain of the Baroness Greed, the de facto leader (or so we assume) of the Treasure Goblin horde.  

 
She is a swarthy matron consumed by her namesake and will not take kindly to your intrusion. End her reign and claim your spoils (if you dare)!

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Designing Greed:

Treasure Goblins are among the most beloved of all of Sanctuary's creatures, and their ability to escape (often with precious trinkets in tow) has drawn the focus of many adventurers. As a result, the idea that a player could actually catch one of said goblins off-guard and suspend the doorway into their world offered a tantalizing possibility for the Diablo III development team. We had a chance to sit down with lead writer Brian Kindregan, senior level designer Matthew Berger, and a cadre of talented artists (senior character artist Chris Amaral, senior environment artist Richie Marella, and technical artist Neal Wojahn) to discuss the creation of, and inspiration behind, the Vault and its sumptuous leader. They kindly put down the weapons of their trade to help us pull back the design portal and see inside the development process.

Q. Brian, there's a lot of activity happening in the Vault—what's going on in there?

Brian:  The Baroness Greed is never satisfied, so there's a lot of work to be done to keep the Vault up to snuff. Her goblin minions are continuously sent out to collect more gold. The incoming gold in turn has to be tallied. And the existing gold must be inventoried to make sure none of it has gone missing. Plus, Greed takes a bath in all her gold every three hours. She's definitely high-maintenance, as is her domain. 

Q. It's been speculated that gold has no value for the goblins and that all they’re really after are the white items. Care to comment?

Brian: Greed is obsessed with all things valuable. It's a compulsion and the only cure is, apparently, <s>more cowbell</s> increasing amounts of physical wealth.

Q. When designing the Vault, where did you begin? And how did you begin?

Richie: We started on the Vault environment first and worked closely with the character team. We actually borrowed coin designs from them and they used a goblin statue for a mace inspiration.  Neal: Victor Lee did some really sick concepts a while ago, too; I’m not sure if they were for anything in particular but we always loved them so much that they inspired a lot of the architecture in the Vault itself.   And as Richie noted, those coin effects inspired us a lot. As we iterated, the Vault developed its own identity, and it drifted a bit away from that initial style. Instead of the Vault being a gold realm, we thought of it like a treasure realm. That's when we added a lot of things in the background for interest like gems, weapons, vases, and other valuables.  

Q. What was the design inspiration for the Vault and its inhabitants?

Richie: The inspiration for the Vault was a mixture of a couple of things: a bee hive, the Lord of the Rings, and Scrooge McDuck's infamous Money Pit. One thing early on we really wanted to go for was "mountains of treasure" that covered a lot of the Vault grounds. We also wanted to create this atmosphere of "worker" goblins, busy working away much like worker bees in a bee hive. I also played around with the hive motif with multiple storage holes built into the walls—these eventually evolved into mini-vaults.  Initially, most people assumed that Greed would be a male. When working with the character team on Greed, though, they proposed for it to be a female. This turned out to be a great idea because it fell in line with what we were going for with the bee hive motif and having the so-called queen (aka the Baroness) at the end fit perfectly. Chris: We knew that we needed a variety of goblin types for the zone, too. A low level/low health worker goblin, a hefty brutish guard goblin, and of course the leader of the pack: The Baroness!

Q. We're definitely introduced to some new goblins in the Vault: Treasure Fiends, Peons, and Sentries. Is there an established caste system in the Goblin Kingdom?

Brian: There is indeed. The entire bureaucracy and society of the realm is set up to bring in, tabulate, and store as much gold and treasure as possible.

Q. Matthew, your team obviously had a lot of fun creating the enigmatic Treasure Goblins. How great was it to finally visit their home?

Matthew:  We'd always wondered exactly what was hiding behind the portals that those pesky goblins disappear through and the idea of being able to visit that place—which we assumed would be awash with riches—was pretty fun. Once we had decided that we were going to finally visit Greed's lair and let players try and take a fraction of her wealth back with them it was all a question of making it as memorable as possible. Everyone wanted to add their own little personal touches to the Vault. Piles of gold everywhere, goblins running around in the background, troopers appearing through portals,  and (SPOILERS!) Greed's death. There really was no shortage of ideas. 

Q. What about the Baroness? Can you tell us a bit about the evolution of her fight?

Matthew: The fight with Greed itself evolved fairly naturally as we played it internally. Her charge attack, for example, was initially much more straightforward: she would charge at you and if she missed she'd get stunned. To add a bit more variety we then added a second charge that had a much longer range so that she could charge all across the room sometimes and surprise the player—that then evolved into her triple charge. Initially, Greed oriented herself while preparing the charge which made it very hard to avoid, when we moved into the triple charge we had her stop doing this, allowing the player an easier time to avoid it. This coupled with the great new warning that the artists had given it was the winning formula. In a similar fashion, we made a variant of her attack where she makes chests of treasure rain down on the player, adding a lot more tempo to give the fight some fresh legs as you got towards the finale.

Q. What was your favorite thing to design in the Vault?

Neal: I loved making the breakables because of the gold effects I got to do, but my absolute favorite was making the giant treasure chest that appears at the end of the Baroness fight! It was cool to make a mega-uber chest. As a prop artist, I don't do as much figurative work, so it was nice to add all the little elements like the face teeth and little feet on it. It was also fun because I got to do a clean version for when it's closed, and a bloody version for when it's open! But that's not all! The character and environment teams were also kind enough to share several pieces of concept art:

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And That's a (Gold) Wrap. . .

And so it is, that in patch 2.1.0, Treasure Goblins will become just a little more reckless, offering players a chance to finally venture through into their world to reclaim the lost spoils of war and contend with Greed, the Goblin Baroness. Fortune and glory awaits those who are bold enough to step through, so good luck! We'll see you on the other side.

More Wyatt Cheng's Posts

We recently featured a Wyatt Cheng's explanation on retroactive changes to items. He also made a few posts answering some user questions on the reddit thread, hinting at possible changes to items for Demon Hunters and Witch Doctors. Check them out below!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Original Source)

Hello, Wyatt. Is it likely that the Shadow's Mantle set will continue to be a Shadow Power modifying set? I mean, it makes sense thematically, but the set (or should I say skill), adds little to nothing for offense (the only thing being a synergy between the area slow rune and Cull the Weak), but takes crucial gear slots. I don't have everything I want to test it, but I've been messing with it a bit. It's been kind of fun running into large groups of monsters and using Fan of Knives over and over because I can tank well with that 35% DR and the LoH, but I still feel weak, even when using a legacy sash of knives that has +49% fan of knives damage (which, by the way, I hope you don't change, I love the belt and the skill tremendously).

Are we going to see a change to the 2 piece bonus? It's essentially a Beckon Sail and the new Awareness passive. I'm not sure we need 3 life savers. Is it possible we'll see a buff to the skill (maybe granting some attack speed bonuses, resource return bonuses, or damage bonuses) that might make the skill more appealing. The skill is just significantly less appealing than Smoke Screen and/or Vault in terms of a defensive skill. Even with every rune available, it's equally tempting to just run a 3 piece nats for the extra discipline + crit and then use Smoke Screen: Healing Vapors.

And I guess, having touched on Nat's a little bit, is there any chance we'll see some improvements here? RoV is kind of lacking. Any chance you could add the Vengeance cooldown to the set? I realize it's a D3V set as well and they don't have access to Vengeance, but maybe they'll see it as an incentive to buy RoS.

So the Nat's say is a great example of looking for alternative ways to make a set better. In my original post I said "We could also introduce a new Legendary item that offers a cool interaction or synergy with the "weak" one, and makes it better."

So in the case of Nat's, one thing Travis (Day) has been advocating internally is that instead of changing the Nat's set directly (which, as I've mentioned, we prefer to keep retroactive changes to a minimum), we could look at finding cool synergies with Rain of Vegenance. I don't want to put out any specifics, but in the same way Quetzalcoatl makes Jades Harvester better, or you can imagine that any legendary item that makes Rain of Vengeance better, makes the set better.
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Question, Why is Helltooth not getting touched when firebirds got redesigned?

Because at the moment we're not completely happy with Wall of Zombies. We'd like to get Wall of Zombies to a place we're happy with first, and then we can properly evaluate Helltooth within that context.
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I'm sure there's a huge list of items tht you want to look at along with abilities, but I'm just wondering if you have any plans at evaluating the chantodos set at some point in the near future?

As I mentioned in the post, after 2.1 we're trying to shift away from revising old sets and more towards introducing new legendary items that introduce new play styles. Rather than just have an existing set be more powerful - let's find ways to promote skills by introducing brand new Legendary effects.

This is not to say buffing existing sets is out of the question, but 2.1 was about hitting things of the highest priority.
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We really want items to feel permanent, and for players to feel free to salvage/vendor items without fear of regret.

What about enchanting?
You guys basically turned the high end weapon enchanting game on its head with Ramaldni's Gift. I've personally found two or three incredibly rare, well rolled (native socket) weapons that I assumed I'd never replace... but that's not the case anymore.
I know these weapons are by no means useless in the new patch, but had I known of Ramaldni's Gift at the time, I would not have enchanted them the way I did.

Yes - this is non-ideal. The things I've described are ideals, not absolutes. We can't improve the game without being able to change it, and sometimes change has a few negative consequences. Overall we try to keep the negative consequences to a minimum while maximizing the positive effects. In the case of the Gift we feel that the benefit was worth it.

Season 2 Ends on PTR

A blue post has come up with the timeline on Season 2's end on the Public Test Realm, the details of the seasonal roll-over, and some info on Season 3. It will not start immediately, but instead be preceded by a "pre-season" period of time. Check it all below.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Greetings adventurers,

Within the next hour, we will be closing PTR Season 2 and beginning preparation to launch PTR Season 3. Below is estimated timeline for how (and when) this process will work.

• 1:00 p.m. PDT: All PTR participants in the Seasonal games will receive an in-game message noting that PTR Season 2 will be coming to a close at approximately 1:30 p.m. PDT
• 1:30 p.m. PDT: PTR Season 2 will end, all active Seasonal games will close, and the Season roll-over will begin. For more information about Season roll-overs, click here.
• 4:30 p.m. PDT: In preparation for PTR Season 3, we will bring the PTR down for maintenance at approximately 4:30 p.m. PDT. We currently anticipate around 1 hour of downtime.
• 5:30 p.m. PDT: PTR maintenance will conclude, and we will begin pre-season for PTR Season 3. For more information about pre-seasons, click here.
• 6:30 p.m. PDT: PTR Season 3 will begin and all PTR participants will receive an in-game notification. At this time, Seasonal heroes and Seasonal games can be created. In addition, the Seasonal shared stash, Paragon experience, currency, artisans, achievements, leaderboards, and Personal Best records will all be reset.

Please note that all times listed above are subject to change. If there are any modifications to this schedule, we’ll be sure to update this post as soon as possible. Thanks so much for continuing to help us test patch 2.1.0 and the Seasons! We appreciate it!
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PTR Season 2 Roll-Over:

After PTR Season 2 has ended, the Season roll-over will begin. During the roll-over, your Seasonal heroes, inventory, shared stash, and Paragon experience will be transferred to your non-Seasonal profile. 

Normal heroes, inventory, shared stash, and Paragon experience will transfer to your Normal non-Seasonal profile. Similarly, Hardcore heroes, inventory, shared stash, and Paragon experience will transfer to your Hardcore non-Seasonal profile. 

• Heroes: At the end of a Season, your Seasonal heroes will become non-Seasonal heroes. They will appear in your normal roster. Any items, equipped or in the hero’s inventory, will roll-over with the hero itself.
• Shared Stash: Items in your Seasonal heroes’ shared stash will be mailed to your Normal/Hardcore non-Seasonal profile. These items can be retrieved by entering a game on any non-Seasonal hero and clicking on the mail icon located in the lower left of your screen.
• Currency: Gold will be automatically transferred from your Seasonal profile to your non-Seasonal profile. Ditto for Blood Shards.
• Paragon Experience: Paragon experience earned during a Season will transfer over directly without any additional involvement required from players. All Paragon experience will transfer, with experience gained by Normal Seasonal heroes going to the account’s Normal non-Seasonal profile, and experience gained by Hardcore Seasonal characters going to the account’s Hardcore non-Seasonal profile. (Note: Non-Paragon experience will not transfer.)
• Artisans and Crafting Plans: If your Seasonal Artisans are a higher level than your non-Seasonal Artisans, their level will transfer at the end of the season to your non-Seasonal profile. Any recipes you have on your Seasonal Artisans that are not available to your non-Seasonal Artisans will be transferred as well.

If you experience any issues with the roll-over, please let us know in this thread, and provide as many details as possible. The more information we have, the better we’ll be able to identify and address the core problem.
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PTR Season 3 Pre-Season:

Once maintenance ends and the PTR is brought back online, PTR Season 3 will be in what’s called "pre-season." During this pre-season phase:

• Heroes: You will not be able to create Seasonal heroes or play Seasonal games.
• Achievements: All PTR Season 2 achievements will be wiped. However, you will still be able to view your Seasonal achievement point total and completed Conquests in your hero Profile.
• Leaderboards: All Leaderboard and Personal Best records from PTR Season 2 will still be viewable in both the Profile and Leaderboard screens.

PC Collector's Edition and Consoles

A blue post came up to clarify if people who have the Collector's Edition on the PC will be able to transfer some of its cosmetics into the console version. It appears they won't.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

So I have the CE of both the original D3 and ROS, can at least get my wings in the console version?

PC game data (which includes any item from a PC Collector’s Edition or Digital Deluxe Edition) is completely independent of console data, so it will not transfer over. 

With that said, players who have console exclusives from Diablo III on the PS3 or Xbox 360 will be able to keep them so long as they transfer their saved data across the same brand. That is to say, exclusive content from the PS3 would not carry over to the Xbox One, although they would carry over to the PS4. The same applies to pre-order bonuses, as well.