I recently "finished" my personal Season 4 by completing all non-leaderboards goals there are (season journey, achievements, conquests). Since some of that was really fun, but also not as challenging as I thought it was, I thought I'll summarize some points below regarding certain achievements, conquests, and other things to consider along the way. This might develop into a guide or FAQ, but for now it'll be more a loose list of tips and tricks based on my S4 experience. Of course there are many ways to achieve any of those goals - so I'd be happy if more people would share their thoughts below, or answer any questions you may have!
Conquests
Something that is often discussed is "what is the easiest conquest". The answer is "that depends". It depends on your class, gear, playstyle - so many things to consider. However, it's probably safe to say that Divinity/Lionheart are the easiest if you consider group play. Note that all achievements, in fact everything in this game (even achieving solo rankings) is much faster if you play in groups, as Blizzard wants to promote and nurture this aspect of the game.
Divinity/Lionheart (Reach GR 60)
This conquest is a bit ill-worded in my opinion; you don't get this from actually reaching GR60 (which you do by completing a GR59), but by completing a GR60. Also, for some reason this conquest is much easier than Blizzard wanted it to be in the first place; if you check their Season 4 preview blog post this is described in the text as "achieved when you reach solo Greater Rift 60". However, GR60 in a group is not that hard at all these days, because it's what people run for speed. Here are a few do's and don'ts:
- Make sure you have one heal monk in the group. A heal monk is always helpful, even for Torment farming - but especially in GR50+ no group wants to go without one. There are several builds; most of them revolve around high CDR, which is a bit more difficult to gear in the beginning. I've created a guide which does not have any CDR requirements and offers a lot of flexibility in gearing: http://www.diablofans.com/builds/58841-low-cdr-rcr-heal-palm-xp-monk
- If you're DPS, make sure you have enough toughness to not be one-shot. The heal monk will keep you alive, but only if you lose just "a bit of life". If you lose it all, no life per second can bring you back from the dead
- In the beginning you should wear at least one toughness gem, if not two. The two choices are Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard or Esoteric Alteration, both should be among the first gems you want to bring to rank 25. The Molten gem is especially useful if you can avoid getting hit from time to time (ranged class and an immunity skill, like Spirit Walk or Smoke Screen, which allows for the shield to go back up). Esoteric is probably better for barbarians or DPS monks. If in doubt, take both.
You can make this as hard as you want, but the easiest way to get this conquest is to join any of the many rifting communities and ask for GR60 speed runs. You should of course have the basic gear and paragon to go there (below paragon 400-500 people might find it strange if you ask for a GR60 group, so probably ask for GR50 speed groups first until you get more paragon in that case). Gear for survivability first and then damage - it's annoying if a DPS class doesn't really deal a lot of damage in "speed runs", but it's more annoying if you're one-shot. You deal even less damage when you're dead. There's no exact figure to hit here, you need to experiment - which is why I recommend starting with more toughness. Never go full glass canon in the first run of the day (especially on hardcore, of course).
Boss Mode/World's Apart (kill all 16 bosses within 30 minutes on Torment X)
This conquest is much easier than people think it is. Once you manage to stay alive in a GR55+ (with a healing monk), you will do so even on the hardest bosses in the game (again with a healing monk). Malthael is by far the one that deals the most damage - so if you have a group that wants to do this conquest, the first thing you do is go to Malthael and kill him. So you can gauge (1) the kill time and (2) survivability. There are many ways to do this conquest, but there are also many shortcuts to make it easier.
- You need to be present for all 16 boss kills to get the conquest. However, you can do this "in turns" by splitting the group and doing it twice: two people are "runners" that check for the bosses, waiting in front of the portal; two people (one of them a healing monk) kill the bosses. After those two completed the conquest you switch (either only the DPS or both, if one of the runners has a healing monk as well).
- Before starting the run, agree on an order and assign who searches for which boss, if there is more than one runner. Also, if there is more than one runner, make sure people are aware of the "save portals" tactic. That means once you're in front of a boss you don't immediately click on it, but go back to town using the town portal. You can then accept another player's request for a boss kill. After killing the boss, go back to town by using the map, not the town portal. That way your portal in town still leads to the boss entrance you "saved before", and you can go right to the next boss.
- Do the more difficult and harder to find bosses first, so if you have a really really bad run you can just restart.
- If you're a runner and do not join the boss fight, gear for maximum toughness, knockback and immobilize immunity if possible (high CDR + Epiphany on monk for example; Ice Climbers and Krelm's Bracers), and put on Homing Pads. Most importantly and obviously, go for maximum speed: a WD with Manajuma's set, a Crusader with Swiftmount, a wizard with Aether Walker, a barbarian with Furious Charge skill, and so on.
- You can separate the bosses into different categories.
- In terms of "killing speed", some of them take a bit more time since the disappear or have animations going on: Diablo, Belial, Malthael, Aranae, Cydea (in this order). The remaining 11 bosses are more or less quick to kill.
- In terms of "difficult to find", there are 8 that have a randomized map and might cause a bit more time to find: Maltael, Urzael, Adria, Izual, Aranae, Diablo, Butcher, and Ghom. And even here there are some that will always take a lot of time to find because the way is just long (Malthael and Adria), while on others it's about luck and finding the right way fast (Izual and Diablo).
- Two of the bosses that have "fixed maps" are still a long way to go: Siegebreaker and Cydea.
- The remaining six bosses are very easy to find, there's no need to split anymore: Skeletong King, Belial, Maghda, Rakanoth, Azmodan, and Kulle.
- => Make a list base on those preferences. Share the first 8 bosses among the runners and don't stress out. The last 6 bosses will never take you more than 4-5 minutes including finding and killing them, so you have 25 minutes for the first 10 bosses.
On a Good Day/I Can't Stop (six gems to rank 50)
This is more a matter of time than anything else. If you find a useful gem right in your first GR and always do 100% upgrades, you'll get this after exactly 100 GRs. In the beginning, always make sure you have 100% upgrades - that means do a rift with at least 12 levels above your lowest gem rank. For example, you have some 25+ gems and your sixth gem you're aiming to level for this conquest is currently rank 14, then you should do nothing below GR26 and you'll get three 100% upgrades and a rank 17 gem after this rift. So your next rift should a a GR29 or higher, and so on. If you *can* run speed GRs on level 59 or higher this conquest is just a matter of time and you should just focus on upgrading your six most important gems to 50. If you are playing solo, or prefer running GR50 at most, you will venture into the 60% upgrade area (if you gem is anywhere between 7 and 0 ranks below the current rift). With a bad luck streak you'll waste a lot of gem upgrades here, so I'd really strongly recommend to do this conquest by running speed GRs in a group. Again - the question is not if you finish this conquest, but when.
To find out more about gem upgrade ranks and probabilities, check out those websites: http://www.diablo3gemcalculator.com/ and http://diablo3calculator.com/
The Thrill/Super Human (complete a GR40 solo without class sets)
So, some people say this achievement is the easiest. I personally disagree, for two reasons: 1) it's a solo conquest, and this game is just much easier in groups, no matter what anyone wants you to make believe. If you lack a certain understanding of game mechanics, skills, class gameplay, monster types, and rift guardian strategies, you might fail this. Without such knowledge you can still finish all the other conquests by "being carried" in a group. If you have all this knowledge though, you probably also don't need this guide. 2) You need some gear, paragon, and gems to finish this - if you are paragon 600, have rank 60 gems, and some random ancient non-set pieces, this conquest will be easy as cake. If you have no legendary gems, are paragon 300, and your items are all really really badly rolled, you can play godlike and will have a hard time finishing this.
Note that "class sets" here really only refers to the armor sets for each class (there's also a list of all the class sets you're not supposed to use). What you can use however are the following sets and items:
- Weapon sets (Shenlong, Bul Kathos, Manajuma's, Chantodo's)
- Focus and Restraint rings
- Blackthorne's set
- Crafted sets
- Single items from class sets (i.e., you can use the Tal Rasha chest for the attack speed bonus, or just any well-rolled class item - just make sure you don't get the 2 piece bonus).
There are many different guides and threads about this, for almost any class. For example a thread about wizards here, barbarians, WD, and a lot of builds if you search for "thrill" in our builds section. My advice though would be to look at your gear, your well-rolled pieces and items you always wanted to use but you can't because "there's no class set for it"! It's their moment to shine, and it's your possibility to do something crazy or out of the ordinary. For example, since I played with a WD on HC I got some nice items including a Carnevil, the Jeram Bracers, and an SMK. So I used the cube to get a Dagger of Darts and went for a mixture of Carnevil, Firewall, and pet build. Here's a snapshot of the completely stupid and unoptimized build, focusing on toughness since it was HC. If you invest some time into this conquest it can be one of the funniest things to do in 2.3 - I personally hope Blizzard introduces more things like this that break us out of the class set paradigm.
Need for Speed/Speed Demon (Torment X rift in under 2 minutes)
This one is arguably the hardest one, as is also indicated by the leaderboards (according to the website there are still spots on both SC and HC conquest rankings on EU and US, though the EU-SC one might be full by now). The main reasons are probably that it requires decent gear (being able to farm T10 fast) and a lot of RNG, and many people don't want to waste the time and rather farm the "more efficient" T8 or T9. Usually you'll be at the point where you can farm T10 fast enough for this achievement at around paragon 500-600. Note that besides those two points (gear requirements and RNG) there are two other reasons why you won't get it unless you really focus on getting it: (1) Picking up stuff and (2) the delay of porting to town and closing the rift. So, here's the guide how you do this conquest:
- Assemble a group that can farm T10 comfortably. It does not need to be super fast on average - low progress cave maps will last 5+ minutes, making some of the runs slow. There's also no fixed group requirements; you will see plenty of different setups who have done this already (here, for example). Our setup was heal monk, WD, HotA barb and WW barb on SC, and heal monk, WD, DH, and U6 monk on HC (yes, no barb!). I ran a classical heal monk with In-Geom to be close to the squishier players (especially the DH and WD on HC) in case they proc, and to be able to quickly scout for pylons/shrines. Even on SC, a death causes more time than you lose by having only 3 instead of 4 DPS classes.
- In-Geom builds can be extremely powerful for this, for example for barbs to have 100% uptime on WotB or WD for insane DPS. Make sure to kill the first elite pack very fast if anyone is wearing In-Geom.
- Open rifts, and go crazy if it's an open map (or a short map like Hellrift). There are a lot of maps that work for this conquest: act 1 maps like Southern Highlands, Fields of Misery, Weeping Hollow, or Festering Woods. Act 2 maps like the new Stinging Winds one, Dahlgur Oasis, or Desolate Sands. And of course there's the act 5 Cemetery or Blood Marsh. Some of those maps are usually quite small though (i.e., Festering Woods or Stinging Winds); and some of them are considered to be good, but they're not as good as people think, because of all the obstacles that prevent you from dealing really crazy AoE damage (for example Cemetery). The best map by far is: Desolate Sands. It's usually quite large and allows you to get to 100% progress on a single level, has quite high density since the fix in 2.2, and most importantly - it's completely open! Only downside is that it doesn't have as many pylon/shrine spawn points as other maps.
- Complete rifts even if you won't make the achievement. It gets extremely tiring to open lots and lots of rifts without finishing them. Do not just open new game - open rift - leave game if it's not the one. That also means that you can wear Gloves of Worship - highly recommended!
- One person should have a timer running (for example this stopwatch on a second display or your phone). Make sure to equip Homing Pads (or have a 100% uptime on Epiphany if you're monk). This person is the designated "closer" and will teleport to town at 1:45 minutes (or earlier if the RG is almost down). You want to talk to Orek the second the RG is dead - if and only if your stopwatch is below 2 minutes. If not, just go back to the rift and let everyone loot, and close once everyone is done.
- Most important point which is the "make or break" for this achievement: DO NOT LOOT. As long as you're on and have a chance to complete this rift, do not pick up anything - just focus on killing (and staying alive, of course). You can pick up the loot afterwards, during the 30 seconds timer in case you succeeded, or you have all the time in the world in case you miss it and you run over 2 minutes (in which case the closer simply doesn't talk to Orek).
As boz0 pointed out in the comments, completing this conquest will also fulfill all the Season Journey requirements with regard to fast Torment rift clears (for example, doing this also grants you the "T9 in under 4 minutes" checkbox). For some action, here's an impressive video of Desolacer getting this conquest on HC (incredible gameplay from DH PoV, especially since he didn't have a heal monk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_3Kalzi2hE
Achievements
Many of the achievements you actually get "along the way", especially when doing the "Boss Mode" conquest, the other conquests, or speed runs. There's no real general guideline for the season journey, as it's again just about time; by the time you finish all the conquests above you have almost everything complete, except for cubing 100 items (you might need to extract a few more as this is currently bugged) and the GR60 solo (which is just a matter of gear, paragon, gem levels, and understanding your class).
There are some achievements that you will probably *not* get just along the way by playing:
Freaks Have More Fun (Kill 20 Unholy Thralls during the Maghda encounter at level 70 on Torment II difficulty or higher)
=> At around 75% and 25% (not sure about the numbers at this point, but simply at two distinct points in fighting her, might also be 66% and 33% or so) Maghda spawns 10 Dark Vessels, very much spread out across the entire arena. You need to stop damage immediately as they're extremely squishy; walk around and make sure all 10 of them transform into Unholy Thralls. Then kill them, lower Maghda's HP, rinse and repeat when the second wave spawns.
Kulle Duel (Kill Zoltun Kulle at level 70 without killing either of his Eternal Guardians on Torment II difficulty or higher)
=> Pretty simple. When entering the fight, walk to the opposite side of the platform. Kulle will teleport onto you, then kill him. If the adds come to close, go to the other side of the platform again, wait for Kulle to teleport.
Like Clockwork (Kill 8 Demon Troopers in 3 seconds during the Siegebreaker encounter at level 70 on Torment III difficulty or higher)
=> At certain percentages of Siegebreaker's HP, those big monster-spawning worms appear at the edge of the arena (two to the left, two to the right). Each of them spawn 2 Demon Troopers. You need to bring Siegebreaker down to about 20% HP without killing any of them (avoid AoE damage); then get all 8 of the Demon Troopers together, kill them *before* you kill Siegebreaker. Done. This might be easier if you get a zero DPS pull monk who pulls the guys away from SB.
Move For Me (Kill Adria at level 70 after surviving 3 Cauldron Eruptions and not getting hit by her Blood Ball attack on Torment V difficulty or higher)
=> This is only a bit more difficult because we have no combat log, so you kind of have to guess which attack is which. The Cauldron Eruption is some sort of red animation around her right *after* she teleports onto you. The Blood Ball looks like an arcane missile shot at you, and when it lands and explodes it does some AoE damage, so you need to be far away from it. She starts channeling it 1-2 seconds before though, so can easily spot it if you pay attention, it's some light pink glow in her hands. I found this much easier on a monk with Dashing Strike than on a barb; a WD (thanks Eramir!) told me that you can just Spirit Walk to avoid her Blood Ball, so it might be even easier.
Because I Spit Hot Fire (Kill Urzael at level 70 after surviving his Burning Cannonball attack 5 times on Torment V difficulty or higher)
=> The only issue people might have here is, again, that we don't have combat log to figure out which attack is which. The Burning Cannonball is an attack he does in phase two, so you can bring him below 50% or so before attempting this. Bring a Molten Wildebeest Gem to have enough life per second.
The Seconds (Kill 12 Thralls of the Witch within 5 seconds of each other during the Realm of Discord encounter on Torment VI difficulty or higher)
=> Arguably, this is the most annoying achievement. You won't get this by speed farming ubers, so you need to farm a machine from Odeg (act 1 Keywarden) and do this yourself. The Witch shields at 75%, 50%, and 25% for a few seconds, and spawns 3, 4, and 5 Thralls, respectively. You have to bring her down until she shields, let the Thralls spawn, wait for the shield to disappear, and then bring her down again. However, if you kill a single Thrall when bringing her from 75% to 50% or from 50% to 25%, you will not make this. Therefore, again, it's much easier to do this with a monk that keeps the thralls together at some point away from the DPS player, and the DPS player should preferably have little AoE so he doesn't accidentally kill a Thrall. It's not a difficult achievement, but if you accidentally kill a Thrall before The Witch is at 25%, you have to farm a new machine... which makes this just annoying
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Phew, that was a wall of text, sorry about that. Just wanted to compile some tips and it ended up in this long thread... but judging by the comments it's helpful for some of you. If anyone has any questions or other hints, leave a comment. Thanks!
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The days of getting 15x group xp is gone with the loss of XP leeches. The current number is ~3x or so, which, imo, is a good spot. Diablo 3 is NOT a single-player game with multiplayer capabilities, its a multiplayer game with single-player capablities. Having SOME disparity between the solo player and the group player is fine.
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I'm planning to start Barb, as it has the starting pieces for the speed build. For finishing, Crusader. I might save the GR 20 bonus for a HC WD though.
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Note that reducing damage by half is a 5 GR nerf. That is all.
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What you are describing, OP, is known as map RNG, which can generally lead to a 5 GR difference (GR fishing exists for a reason). You can see this all the times - Your farm run took an extra 5 minutes due to low mob/elite density, stuff like that.
Losing 12.5% CDR can actually make a difference, as it means less usage on Mystic Ally. If you are using Inna's Diabo, its a loss in damage.
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Its best to be on the safe side then the sorry side imo.
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GR 45 setless- Tricky for some classes. Crusaders have it the easiest by far - Stack a shitton of thorns, use Hack/Sanguinary Bracers. Easy.
6 GR 55/8 set masteries - Time consuming. GR 55 is easy enough that if you have lvl 50 gems+600 paragon, you just need a 6 set and supporting weapons, no ancients required. Set dungeons require more time due to needing 6 piece of more sets, which can take a while longer, but are again easy, especially since you can have additional players help you (Just having them go behind you and pick off mobs you missed helps a !@#$ing ton)
Sprinter - Only hard conquest this time around.
Avarice - This can be done on T6. Stack Gold Find, as much of it as you can spare. Get a lvl 50 Boon of the Hoarder. Go through the Ruins of Corvus WITHOUT killing a single mob, open all the doors, spawn all the scarab packs. When you reach the end, teleport out. Go back to the start of the Ruins of Corvus, Plot out the most efficient path, kill mobs, loot. Did it with an extra 30mil gold, had Leorics Crown (82% gold find), Goldskin (Always 100% gold find), gold find on amulet (100%), and ~3 pieces with gold find (another 100).
So, really, the hard conquest is Sprinter. Even the 45 setless requires either stacking of certain legendaries/paragon/gems for a class (Demon Hunters use Magefist, Cindercoat, Yangs, and DML for infinite Multishot Spam+huge fire damage boost, Wizards can use Arcane Orb/Twister builds, ect), or just go Thorns Crusader (Super easy, I swear, its ridiculous)
Now, for gems/GR 70...
Gems have a 60% chance to be upgraded up to the same GR lvl. OP stated he can do GR 68, so he has a 60% chance to upgrade gems up to lvl 68. Time consuming, yes, but easily doable.
Given that OP hasn't linked his gear, im going to assume that he does NOT have 3 lvl 65 legendary gems, and are probably in the 50s range. Getting 3 gems up to lvl 65 from lvl 50 is almost equivalent to an entire GR lvl, so thats GR 69. Im also going to assume that he does not have ANY Caldessans, whatsoever. Getting 5 lvl 60 Caldessans is equivalent to another GR lvl, so thats GR 70 atm.
Finally, theres a question of, are you clearing the right way? Note that there is such a thing as GR RNG that can lead to a 5 GR swing either way. Sometimes I clear GR 55 (My normal speed farm atm) with only 3 minutes to spare due to having 3 minute stretches of 0 elites. Sometimes I can clear GR 60 in 5 minutes due to having tons of elites everywhere. Note that with the current GR meta, if you do not have the ability to drag mobs into huge groups (Helltooth does with that one Zombie Wall rune that moves mobs around, but its time consuming), then you essentially have to stay moving, ONLY stopping for groups of more then 20 small mobs, elite mobs that you don't take more then 30 seconds to kill, and groups of more then 5 big mobs (Abominations, Unburied, Savage Beasts, Gorgons, ect) If you stop to kill packs smaller then that, you are doing it wrong. If you spend 2 minutes trying to kill an elite group thats a bad combo for you (mob/power composition), you are doing it wrong. If you stop to kill every single minion of an elite pack rather then focusing down the champ, you are doing it wrong.
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Also, for best lvling, craft both a set of Cain's/Borns lvling gear, get a helmet with a socket, and put a ruby in it. All 3 of those combined will more or less double your lvling speed.
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Going from Hard-Expert only grants a ~30% increase in xp gained, but a 60% increase in mob health gain (45% increase in mob damage gain). It is NEVER worth it to go to Expert. You go from Hard->Master (~120% increase in xp, ~130% increase in health/damage)
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For gold, when you start hitting the high GRs, and you keep empowering, you WILL quickly run out of gold.
As for power, at the start, there were 2 max lvl difficulty modes - Hell, and Inferno. In addition, difficulty was divided by act, so technically there were a grand total of 8 difficulty modes, starting from Act1 Hell, going to A4 Inferno.
Also, End Game was "Grind area A over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, until you burnout and never, EVER want to touch D3 again (Or, well, I guess there was achievement hunting). There is a reason that people say Vanilla D3 sucked balls, and RoS saved D3, because RoS actually added REAL end-game to D3.
Now, it isn't so much that the difficulty levels are easy, as much as there has been HUGE power creep since the start of D3. Remember that in D3, BiS gear WASN'T legendaries, but actually rares with the "perfect" roll. Meaning, of course, that you didn't have all these new legendaries that increase skill damage by 200%, with sets that grant +900% all damage, with weapons that further increase skill damage by +100%, with all of these stacking multiplicatively.
Lets take Vanilla Natalya's Vengeance (Known as Natalya's Solace back then). It had 5 pieces - Boots, Cloak, Ring, hand xbow, and helm. 2 piece provided 7% extra crit chance, 3 piece granted +130 dex (Which was barely equal to an extra slot worth of dex), and 4 piece granted +20 disc. Compare that to today - 7 pieces total, 2 piece gives a greatly reduced CD on Rain of Vengeance, the highest damage-per-use ability DHs got, 4 piece DOUBLES the damage on Vengeance, and 6 piece grants +60% damage reduction and +400% increased damage for 10 seconds whenever you use Rain of Vengeance.
Also note that damage on skills got a HUGE boost going into RoS - Rain of Vengeance, for instance, started out doing 700% or so weapon damage. Cluster Arrow only did 200% weapon damage with 100% weapon damage explosions. Grenades did 95% weapon damage per explosion, and not a single primary skill for ANY class did more then 150% weapon damage per hit (At that was for the single target, high-damage runes!)
So, not only has the power of gear GREATLY increased since the days of Vanilla D3, the damage of skills themselves has been doubled across the board, with significantly bigger increases in some cases. Overall, though, anyone who wants Vanilla D3 back is insane, as the game is currently in a much, much, MUCH better place all-around. Can it be improved? Yes, but going back to Vanilla D3 is NOT improvement.