Diablo IV Advice

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Good Morning Friends! I did not get nearly as much time as I would have liked last night to play some Diablo 4, but I did manage to push through to level 60 and then get another quarter of a level into that for an additional paragon point. I’ve largely been focused on finishing out my renown in the last few zones of the game and finished up Dry Steppes and have now moved on to my final zone of Kehjistan. One of the things that I have been mulling over in my brain is how I would have approached this game differently. For those of you who might not know, I’m one of the admins on the Mastodon/Fediverse server called Gamepad.Club which serves as a gaming-focused social media hub.

While I slept one of my good friends and fellow gamepadders posted a plea for suggestions. I figured I would answer this plea in the form of my morning blog post. Side note… this is the first time I have seen the term Gamepadders in reference to the denizens of Gamepad.club and I think I like it… and am just going to roll with it. Victor got plenty of responses from the larger mastodon community, but I figured I would still outline how I would approach the game knowing what I know now. Of note… I was in MANY phases of Diablo IV testing including several closed phases and a number of public phases. The game changed drastically each time I attempted to sit down and play it. So the truth is I went into the game expecting to play one ability that had been good in the early phases of testing… that was apparently nerfed into the ground.

Follow the Meta

I feel like you first have to ask yourself a simple question. Is the core of my enjoyment of the ARPG experience based on making my own builds? If the answer is yes, then skip this entirely. I am pretty sure you can half-ass your way through the campaign with any build you choose. I made it through the campaign on my heavily nerfed Upheaval build, though I struggled when it came to defeating the first capstone dungeon. Essentially Diablo IV is very poorly balanced right now and not every build is viable when it comes to harder content. If you want the easiest possible experience I would suggest going over to Maxroll.gg and looking at their build guides. They have both leveling builds and end-game builds, and I would choose one of the “in the meta” builds currently that has one of each. That way as you level you get used to the abilities that you will ultimately end up with at the end-game. Icy Veins also has a good build section but I personally like the layout of Maxroll a bit better.

Start on World Tier 1

There are no tangible benefits to playing the game on “Veteran” difficulty. While the placard says that you will get more experience and more loot… you will also take so much more time killing mobs that this benefit becomes entirely negated. Your goal is ultimately to get to World Tier 3 as fast as possible, and as a result, the early game is just an obstacle in your way. There is no point in trying to be a billy badass and insist on World Tier 2. You are only setting yourself up for frustration in the end. If difficult content is your kink, then, by all means, ignore this advice.

Focus on the Main Story Content

Since content scales with you… the later in the game you attempt something the harder it is going to be. As such it is my suggestion that on your first playthrough of the game, you just focus on the main story content. This will be marked in Yellow in your quest log, and you can progress through the game without touching any other content. While you are doing this I suggest you take the time to go ahead and unlock any waypoints you find as you will need these later. Upon completing the main quest you unlock the Tree of Whispers which will give you some additional benefits as you complete the rest of the content in the game. Ultimately you are going to want to do every single side quest available at some point. My personal preference is to unlock the end-game and then roam around doing side content then. If you want a longer journey that will also increase in difficulty as you go, then you can, of course, do side content as you are doing the main content.

Extract Near Perfect Aspects

After finishing the prologue of the game, you will unlock the occultist which allows you to imprint aspects on rare items to turn them into legendaries, and to extract aspects from any legendary drops you might get but no longer need. First things first we are going to need to enable some of the advanced options so go into settings and toggle on the following:

  • Options > Gameplay
    • Advanced Tooltip Compare
    • Advanced Tooltip Information

This is going to tell you how good of a roll a given item is. For example, if you look at the aspect I am highlighting above the ability has a range of 20-30% and the item that I found has a near-perfect roll of 29%. This is very worth holding onto and saving for when you need it on your end-game gear. My suggestion is to go ahead and extract any Legendary item that is at least a roll that is 50% of the maximum and most definitely anything that is perfect or near perfect. Everything else should be salvaged as you are going to need those materials later.

Salvage Everything

There are a lot of guides that I have seen that suggest salvaging gear up until you hit level 50. It is my personal suggestion that you never stop salvaging gear. You are going to reach a point where you have more gold coming in than you need, and are going to still be desperate for materials. I switched to selling everything when I finished the campaign and given how often you need to change gear… found myself completely out of several basic materials. Gold will come over time especially as you find Greed Shrines… but you will never stop needing raw materials at least until you have finished out a set of maxed-out ancestral gear.

Buy Whispering Keys

Obols are the currency for doing events in Diablo IV, and much like Blood Shards from Diablo III, you are limited in how many you can carry at a time. Spending them at the Purveyor of Curiosities is a way to gamble on getting legendary items… but the occurrence of legendary drops seems to be skewed by your level. As such spending Obols on gear early on is a bad use of resources. What I would instead do is buy Whispering Keys which are used to unlock the Silent Chests that you find out in the world. You can hold onto these en masse and then use them later on to get a gear boost when needed as you will likely be finding a lot of these Silent Chests in your journey. So it is my suggestion that any time you have a stack of Obols gathered, you spend it down buying these keys and then holding onto them for later.

Unlock World Tier III

Upon finishing the campaign your next core goal is going to be to unlock World Tier III. This means you need to defeat the Cathedral of Light Capstone Dungeon. Unlike the rest of the world, this dungeon is capped at level 50 but can be completed earlier than that if your build is strong. This is ultimately why you want to be following the meta builds as most of them can complete this dungeon somewhere around level 40-45 without much issue. Even if you do not want to start playing on World Tier III, this is gating your access to the last two tiers of renown which is effectively what you are wanting to unlock as quickly as possible. World Tier III also unlocks Helltide Zones and makes it so that Nightmare Dungeon Sigils drop more often as well as granting you access to the Sacred tier of gear. Sacred gear is a massive damage and survival boost and essentially makes all gear before that point obsolete unless you simply have to have a given legendary aspect. Now this goal might take you a bit to accomplish but I am placing it here to outline its importance.

Tree of Whispers

Defeating the Campaign is going to unlock access to the Tree of Whispers. Now this is not an activity that I think you should ever really focus on, but just something to be aware of as you are doing other activities in the world. If you have the opportunity to collect Grim Favors by doing something that aligns with an activity you are already doing, it is just a bonus. Every so often you will fill the bar and get a free box of loot from the tree. Again this should not be your core focus, but just something to be aware of as you do the next few things.

Collect Altars of Lilith

Scattered throughout the world are the Altars of Lilith which are statues that glow slightly red until you have collected them. The campaign make sure you find a few of these along the way, but after you beat the campaign one of your first goals should be making sure you collect all of them. Once they have been collected on a single character, all of your characters from that point forward get the benefit of them. Since they have to be done on a single character though, you might as well devote the time to collecting all 160 of them early on while you are still working on leveling. Yes, this is tedious busywork, but the stat boost that you gain for them will be extremely important when you are trying to unlock abilities that have stat requirements on the paragon boards. I personally found the maps that Polygon created the easiest to follow as they have them numbered and also have zoomed-in images of each location.

You can of course do these while you are completing the campaign if you really keep your eye out for any areas of the map that snake off into a little alcove. There is definitely a pattern to the placement of these statues that you might pick up on along the way.

Max Out Zone Renown

This is the step that I am actively working on if you were curious. As you are completing the campaign you will be capped at a maximum of rank three renown with each region. It is important that you work up your renown because getting every zone to rank three will net your character an extra 10 skill points and getting them all to rank five will give you an extra 20 paragon points. Both of these are significant and like the Lilith Statues, you need to do this on one character before it applies to all of your characters. This will essentially require you to complete all of those blue quests and unlock most of the dungeons in order to hit rank five. I’ve personally completed four of the five regions and am now working on Kehjistan, the area that I spent the least amount of time in so far.

Play The Game Finally

Congratz! You’ve graduated from the busywork phase of Diablo IV. Now you can just do whatever suits your fancy. You could do a bunch of normal dungeons in order to level most efficiently… or you could hit up the Helltide zone every time it is available for fun mob density and loot boxes. You could also bip around the map doing tasks for the Tree of Whispers or dive into progressing your Nightmare Dungeons and with that leveling your glyphs. Personally, I kind of do a mix of all of the above because that seems to be the most enjoyable. I’ve neglected Nightmare Dungeons a bit so far but I need to focus on them soon. I also need to give an attempt or two at trying to unlock World Tier IV now that I have hit level 60. The last capstone dungeon is hard-scaled at level 70, but I am curious if I can finish it early.

There are some aspects of Diablo IV that I really enjoy, more specifically I like the way the world feels and fits together. There are other aspects of Diablo IV that drive me insane and half convince me to stop playing entirely. I talked about a lot of this in a video yesterday, but most of them can be summed up under the banner of being grossly inefficient and wasteful of my time. So much of the ARPG experience to me is about optimization and the last thing I care about is immersion. Immersion only really holds weight until you have finished the campaign, then you want efficient grinds and in this game nothing is efficient. However since my friend wanted advice, this morning is my attempt at outlining how I would approach the game knowing what I know now. You can of course ignore ALL of this and just fumble your way through the game. Diablo IV is maybe an experience best fumbled through the first time because it will allow you to appreciate the world crafting a bit more. When you attempt to play it efficiently… that is when the wheels fall off.

So maybe… just ignore everything that I just said and approach this game however seems best to you at the time. The shortcomings will make themselves very evident eventually… and when that happens feel free to pop back over here for some advice.

Diablo IV Endgame

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Good Morning Friends! I finished up the campaign in Diablo IV on June 4th and have now had roughly a week of time poking around in the “end-game”. This morning I thought I would talk about that experience and how it mostly feels like “more of the same”. As of this morning, I am about half of the way through level 59, and at level 60 I thought I would take a stab at the next Keystone Dungeon to unlock the final World Tier. During my time at end-game, I have done a pretty wide variety of activities, but I can’t say that I have “ground” any of them terribly hard. Honestly, nothing about the experience so far has made me want to grind them. What I have been doing instead is casually picking away at the three end-game activities while working on my zone renown and collecting all of the Altars of Lilith.

Tree of Whispers

The first end-game activity that you will unlock is the Tree of Whispers, and you gain access to this immediately upon completing the campaign. This is somewhat akin to the Bounty system from Diablo III, and it will highlight various objectives on your map in graduated shades of pink to red. Essentially pink activities reward you a single Grim Favor, mauve activities reward you three Grim Favors and maroon activities reward you five Grim Favors. When you have collected ten of these you can go back to the Tree of Whispers to cash in for a box of loot. These boxes are for a specific gear slot and have the chance to drop glyphs for your paragon board and Nightmare Dungeon sigils. There is a chance at a Legendary item but it seems pretty low as I have opened several boxes and gotten nothing. When you reach the break point for Sacred and Ancestral gear, those don’t appear to be guaranteed as I have opened a box containing nothing but vanilla rares.

I feel like this is not exactly a great activity. It is busy work that you can do… but also seems to take an exceptionally long time for you to gather up rewards. Running normal dungeons feel way more rewarding than poking around the map and completing Grim Favors. The shortest route to one of these loot boxes is to complete two of the flagged dungeons, so I guess if just consider Grim Favors and the eventual loot box that they reward as a bonus, then it isn’t so bad. I feel like this system needs to have the threshold for getting a loot box lowered to 5, either that or have every box guarantee at least one legendary or unique. Basically, the system as it stands doesn’t exactly feel as rewarding as the time it takes to complete.

The next activity that unlocks is Helltide zones, which you gain access to upon unlocking World Tier III. These appear on a cycle of being on for an hour and then off for another hour, and will flag two contiguous regions on the map as containing the Helltide. Essentially this replaces the majority of the spawns in the zone with demons and causes a number of chests to spawn scattered throughout the region. Killing these demons causes Aberrant Cinders to drop, and then you collect these to unlock the various Tortured Gift chests. If you die while in a Helltide zone, you will lose half of the Cinders that you are carrying at that moment, so there is a certain measure of risk to reward for farming these areas. They have much higher mob density than you can normally find in the zones. The chest reward thresholds are as follows:

  • Armor and Ring Chests – 75 Cinders
  • Amulet, One-Handed, and Off-Handed Chests – 125 Cinders
  • Two-Handed Weapon Chests – 150 Cinders
  • Mystery Chests – 175 Cinders

The Mystery Chest rewards 1-5 Legendary/Unique items and several of the zone-specific crafting materials needed for upgrading gear. All in all, this is probably the end-game activity that feels the most rewarding. While you are in the zone it also feels like there is a higher-than-average chance of getting good gear drops in general independent of the chests themselves. My key complaint with this activity and honestly ALL of the “on-timer” activities is that it feels like they don’t happen often enough. I feel like there is never a point where a Helltide zone should not be active. Similarly, I feel like World Bosses should be spawning constantly to the point of being able to have a boss train. The World Boss scene in Guild Wars 2 only works because there is constantly a boss either active or just about to go active which allows people to zip around the map chasing the train. Helltide events should be a constant activity that you can pop in and farm at will.

Nightmare Dungeons

While doing bounties for the Tree of Whispers, there is a chance that you can get a Nightmare Dungeon Sigil to drop. This will unlock access to a nightmare version of a normal dungeon, that has specific affixes applied to it. These remind me of Mythic Plus keys from World of Warcraft, but in reality, they are also not dissimilar to Maps from Path of Exile. Generally speaking, you have positive effects marked in Green and negative effects marked in Grey which change the difficulty of the encounters. At the end of a Nightmare Dungeon, you seem to be guaranteed at least one Legendary or Unique item, which Uniques having a higher-than-average drop rate. The catch is you are given a fixed number of revives for the dungeon, and each time a player revives themselves it takes one of those away from the group. However, if a player revives a character, it won’t strike against that total.

The Path of Exile player in me is annoyed that Diablo IV has no real crafting system to speak of and that I cannot do anything to “re-roll” a bad sigil. The other aspect that annoys the heck out of me is the fact that when you consume one of these… it doesn’t just teleport you to the dungeon. It only flags the dungeon as a “Nightmare Dungeon” and you still have to run there on your own. Those quibbles aside, this is a pretty great activity and it feels fairly rewarding. Experience grinders are largely ignoring Nightmare Dungeons, but in truth, for a more casual player, they feel like a good use of your time. They are also required for leveling up your Paragon Glyphs, which makes that system feel a bit like the Legendary Gems from Diablo III. The only challenge with this system is it takes a bit for you to get enough drops to be able to sustain running the dungeons. I also really wish that they would simplify this system with something akin to the Nephalim Rift device so you could launch directly into them without having to screw with trying to find the damned dungeon on the map.

More of the Same

I recorded another one of my dumb videos, this time attempting to coalesce my feelings about the endgame into a twenty-minute video. I think one of my core problems with the end game that exists currently, is that it does not feel sufficiently different from the leveling game. You are essentially doing most of the same activities that you were doing before be it running dungeons or completing bounties. The only “new” activity is the Helltide zones, which again are just a retread of the zones you have already visited. If Helltide had actually been… going to hell and exploring a whole new map then it wouldn’t feel quite so rehashed. Essentially I guess what I am saying is… finishing the campaign doesn’t really feel like it is a significant milestone other than the fact that you get to skip the campaign on your alts.

The Atlas of Worlds in Path of Exile feels significantly different from the campaign even though it is effectively a retread of the maps you had already seen to that point. The expansion content like Delve and Heist absolutely feels like unique end-game experiences as well, but I would not expect Diablo IV to have anything that rich at launch. The Monoliths in Last Epoch similarly feels like a very unique end-game destination even though again… it is recycling the same content that you have seen over and over again. Even in Diablo III after the Reaper of Souls update, the Nephalim Rift and Greater Rift systems felt like a specific end-game destination that had an enjoyable flow to it. Right now with Diablo IV, I don’t feel like there is a clear “virtuous cycle” that clearly outlines how you should be spending your time. It feels like it is supposed to be empowering that we can “do anything we want” but that is pending that you want to do “more of the same”.

I am sure over time that Diablo IV will be worked and reworked into something that is much more enjoyable than its current state. I think part of my disappointment is that Diablo Immortal was a much more fleshed-out game at launch than Diablo IV is currently. There were a number of enjoyable activities that you could complete that set up a cycle of activities that all felt somewhat unique and allowed you to incrementally move different systems forward. I guess I expected more. There were lessons that could be taken away from Diablo Immortal that would have blended nicely with this game, because quite honestly… other than the egregious monetization… it was a damned solid experience. Admittedly those money-grubbing traits ruined the game for me, but there could have been some good design patterns to take away from that game that would have improved Diablo IV.

I am still playing the game as for the moment I am enjoying myself more than the annoyance… but the annoyance is starting to add up. I really want to see what the next world-tier break feels like, so I will likely be continuing to poke at this until I hit 70… or until some other shiny object takes my attention. Tomorrow I am contemplating doing a “how I would fix Diablo IV” type post.

AggroChat #437 – The Lost Should Stay Lost

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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We start the show with the dangers of bowling in a fursuit and then dive straight into the Not-E3 shows.  The entire crew has finally watched the Dungeon and Dragons movie so we talk a bit about how damned good it was. Tam and Bel talk about Knights of the Old Republic 2 and how maybe not all of the content in the restored patch should have been restored.  Thalen talks about how faithful of a remaster System Shock is and how Nightdive is doing great work.  Bel talks a bit about his experiences with Diablo 4 Endgame and how it is not that great.  Tam talks about playing Wizorb on the Steam Deck and Bel talks a bit about the Honkai Star Rail patch.  Finally, Kodra finishes the show with some talk about Co-Op games that allow players to share the cognitive load of problem-solving.

Topics Discussed:

  • Not-E3 Shows
  • Dungeons and Dragons Movie Finally
  • Knights of the Old Republic 2 and the restored content
  • System Shock
  • Diablo 4 Honeymoon Over
  • Wizorb was Great
  • Honkai Star Rail Patch
  • Sharing Cognitive Load in Co-Op Games

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Reign of Not-E3

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Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was the beginning of the Geoff Keighley replacement for E3 called the Summer Games Fest. Quite honestly I think I like this construct better as it is something that sort of meanders its way through the summer connecting a number of disparate events and looping in Gamescom as part of it. I am going to talk about a few games that piqued my interest, but really… you are going to have to listen to me gush about the new Path of Exile II Teaser that we got as part of it. All in all, I think the show was well worth your time, so if you are interested you can check out the official video here.

Path of Exile II

It would not be Path of Exile if we did not start on a beach somewhere. The challenge with this teaser is that it is very much the definition of a “sizzle reel”. In the gameplay trailer from two years ago, the game did not feel that fundamentally different from POE1. This however feels way more story driven as combat unfolds as you are clearly investigating a location. I also find it deeply interesting that just a very short way into the fight the character seems to do a dodge roll, which makes me wonder if this means that like D4 and D3 on the console… POE2 is adding some sort of an evade button. This does worry me a bit because the way movement abilities work in Path of Exile generally negates the need for an evasion button. However Ruthless mode lacks movement abilities of the same caliber as the base game, so it does make me a bit concerned that they are leaning into that more sluggish gameplay style that bugs me with Diablo IV.

The other thing that is interesting in the trailer is that the character seems to be using a lot of abilities. Like in Path of Exile, you tend to build around one main ability and I guess in part this is due to the lack of access to multiple six links. However with Gems working completely differently in Path of Exile and them socketing support gems into ability gems… does that mean we will have access to a six link for every ability? Again this sort of concerns me in a different way because it makes me wonder if we are going to be forced to use a ton of different abilities due to cooldowns on each individual one. Again the cooldowns and the sluggish pace of combat in Diablo IV drive me up a wall, so it does concern me a bit that what I am scrying from this teaser might be heralding a slower-paced Path of Exile experience. Slower-paced does not equate to a more enjoyable experience for me at least. I guess we will have to wait until ExileCon at the end of July to see more details.

Alan Wake 2

I was happy to see more discussion about Alan Wake 2. The more I see of this the more I am interested. It seems like you will be shifting between Alan and a new character called Saga. It sounds like essentially Saga will be playing through the story that Alan is telling, with the ability to shift back and forth between the characters at various points. My biggest hope is that we also get a crossover with either Director Faden herself or at least some Federal Bureau of Control agents. I am here for Alan Wake, but what I am even more here for is the expansion of this nonsense shared “Remedyverse”.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

Another game that we are getting to see a bit more of is Banishers, which feels like a gaslight-era game where you play a medium of a sort that can banish restless spirits. What is interesting about this specific trailer is it adds a bit of the hook of the game. It seems like you have lost your partner and have to make a Bioshock-like decision do you spare the inflicted humans, or do you steal their life essence in a vague attempt to resurrect your love? The combat looks interesting and the visuals are most excellent. I want to play through this whenever it lands but given my affinity for “forever games”, it will likely have to wait until a holiday break when I seem to grind through a bunch of single-player stories at once.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando

I feel like this game is calling me out directly. I still love Zombie movies and games. I am not tired of them. I was a fan of the Zombie genre long before it blew up with Walking Dead, and I am still a fan all these years later after that same series more or less ruined it for the masses. This seems like a Bulletstorm-style nonsense shooter with lots of zombies and an 80s soundtrack. Putting “John Carpenter” in front of it is also a siren song for those of us who grew up idolizing Snake Pliskin. Will I actually play it? Who the fuck knows. It is going to have to compete with all the other games that seem to look just interesting enough to buy, but never critical enough for me to actually devote the time to finishing them.

Space Marine 2

There are a lot of Warhammer games out there. At some point Games Workshop went from carefully curating their licenses to the maximalist approach of letting anyone use their licenses… which resulted in a ton of shovelware. Space Marine is maybe the single best game that ties into the Warhammer franchise and it is good enough to stand alone as an amazing experience even if you do not care one iota about Adeptus Astartes. I’ve been playing Boltgun lately which apparently sits in between the story of the first and second game, and I am highly looking forward to ripping into things with my chain sword again in non-retro glory. Well worth checking out the first game if you have never played it as well.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

The Prince of Persia reboot… got rebooted again. Do I have any faith that this one will actually make it to market? Absolutely not. However, I do have to say that this looks much better than the previous attempt at rebooting this franchise. I like the focus on a more 2.5D feeling harkening back to the original games a bit at times. The Sands of Time remake may at some point make its way out of development hell, but this definitely looks way more interesting.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

They closed out the show with a powerhouse and gave us footage of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I am here for this game and unlike many single-player outings, this really probably will be a day-one play for me. I loved the Remake and the Yuffie expansion, and quite honestly dig the action reboot of this series way more than a turn-based option. I get that this is a divisive thing, but it works for me personally. I honestly even liked the tweaks and changes to the setting that this alternate version of the world has presented. The open world looks gorgeous and apparently, on consoles this is going to be a two-disc game, which seems like nonsense. I feel like you are either into this with all of your heart, or you have long since checked out of everything Final Fantasy VII related and just do not care in the least. FFVII is not my favorite of the series by any means, but I greatly enjoyed the first bits of this reboot universe so I am here for the continuation.

I think the next show that I am looking forward to as part of Summer Games Fest would be the Xbox/Bethesda showcase at 10 AM PDT on the 11th. It apparently also has a follow-up “Starfield Direct” with a further deep dive into that game since we are getting closer to its launch. I often watch the PC Gaming Show as well since it occasionally has some weird PC-only gems in it. That takes place on the 11th but a bit later in the day at 1 PM PDT. The Capcom and Ubisoft show on the 12th are definitely going to be “look at any relative trailers later” shows because I am not that deeply connected to either publisher. Quite honestly I think I am bored with the Ubisoft formula at this point, and I am not into a return to stealth gameplay with the Assassin’s Creed franchise either. It may not be E3… but it certainly feels like the same sort of experience that I used to have watching the streams leading up to the official trade show that none of us had access to anyways. As much as Geoff Keighley claims that he didn’t kill E3… he certainly helped prove that the companies no longer actually needed a costly in-person show.