Hey Friends! This is probably going to be a pretty short post given that I honestly don’t have an awful lot to talk about. I am deep into the Diablo 3 seasonal grind and finding it very hard to focus on anything else right now. I am still trying to make sure I log in at least once a day to do ESO daily stuff because that anniversary event is still going on… but timing has conspired to place this seasonal grind in direct conflict with that. I am nearing the end and am very much in the slow grind portion where there is very little effort required but just a lot ore repetition and grinding bounties.

Shocking to no one who has been on this emotional rollercoaster with me before, but I am once again stalled out on the Set Dungeon Mastery portion of this ride. Something you have to understand about me, I have a massive hang up about when being put on a timer. Like I could go into the emotional scars and explain it all to you… and probably have in the past… but suffice to say this is something rooted deep within my psyche and just something I can’t shake no matter how hard I try. If you put me on a timer I am going to fail at whatever the task is. If you time me without me knowing it I am probably going to execute flawlessly and with plenty of time to spare.

So mostly of my life I have developed coping strategies for this by trying really fucking hard to ignore the fact that there is a clock ticking down and I use this to get over my natural aversion to Greater Rifts. However Set Dungeons are a whole new level of hell for me because not only do they require me to be on a timer, but they also require me to do a little dance that feels unnatural while watching the clock. So as a result I put them off until the absolute last moment. For example when I finally do master a set dungeon… I am going to zoom forward and complete everything but the very last set of the seasonal journey because I have literally completed two full steps that I won’t get credit for until I have finished off Slayer.

Set Dungeon mental fuckery aside… I am super close to wrapping the season up its entirety. All of my gems are above level 65 so a few more Greater Rifts and I will be able to get them all to 70. I can easily do 80s but my survival is still not where I would want them to be so it means that I die quite a bit in doing them… but am killing so fast that there is plenty of time on the clock to spare. Basically today I need to get over my mental block and build a set for the appropriate dungeon and just do the thing.

Last night Grace and I managed to get a Speed Demon clear of a Torment X Rift and I was easily able to get a solo Greater Rift 75 clear for that conquest. That leaves the most likely candidate on the books to be Avarice which is easy enough to complete but just time consuming. Essentially there are two ways to do this… hoping and praying that the stars align with your leveled up Boon of the Hoarder and you can complete this naturally. Then there is the method that I usually do which is farm up a bunch of bounty chests and open them all at the same time so that I can get enough gold to drop to finish this up in one go. I’ve gathered the calculations before in the past but going to copy and paste them here largely for my own benefit later.

A T13 bounty cache contains 1,190,000 gold.
43 T13 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.

A T14 bounty cache contains 1,440,000 gold.
35 T14 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.

A T15 bounty cache contains 1,540,000 gold.
33 T15 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.

A T16 bounty cache contains 1,640,000 gold.
31 T16 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.

Right now I have several T13 caches that Grace and I farmed up last night. I will probably switch over to T16 Caches when I start farming on my own later today. As a result I am probably going to end up in a similar situation that I have been before of farming up a page and a half of these in my inventory before attempting to do a mass opening and getting the achievement. I seem to usually land somewhere around 35 caches before doing the open. I have no clue how long it is going to take me to do the necessary farming but that and the mindfuck that is the set dungeon mastery are really the only things standing in my way. I also need to extract 19 legendaries but the bounty farm will give me more than enough materials to finish that off.

Good Morning Friends! Those of you who have been around awhile will know that it was only a matter of time before I would be back on my Diablo nonsense once again. This past Friday signaled the opening of Season 23 and with it a whole new grind to the top for loot and fame. Actually for me personally it is always entirely about the pet that is generally the final reward for making it all the way in a season. I don’t make it every season, but this one contains a pet that is so purrfect that I have to do it no matter what.

You can check out all of the rewards on the official blog post but really… it is all about this weird half cat half goblin thing that I love and need to be my friend. I mean the portrait frame is pretty badass as well but really… its about the pet. Apart from the rewards I just generally have a good time hanging out with my friend Grace and stomping demons. This time around they gave us a greatest hits collection of amazing builds to play with on Haedrig’s Gift which is gained through completing some meta achievements. The sets that are up for grabs this time are as follows:

• Monk – Rainment of a Thousand Storms
• Demon Hunter – Unhallowed Essence
• Crusader – Roland’s Legacy
• Wizard – Tal Rasha’s Elements
• Barbarian – Wrath of the Wastes
• Witch Doctor – Helltooth Harness
• Necromancer – Bones of Rathma

I think we got all of these tried and true sets in part because this season ushers in quite possibly the largest change to take place with Diablo 3 in a since maybe loot 2.0. Our loyal followers now get full gear builds which greatly increases their general effectiveness in combat but also brings with it some interesting party tricks. A new affix is showing up on gear called “Emanates” which means if the item is equipped on your follower, the effect will spill over to your character as well. So for example if I throw Nemesis Bracers on my Templar it will allow Elites to spawn any time I pop a Shrine freeing up a slot for my build that would have consumed either space in the cube or my bracers slot. Similarly I have mine equipped in 3 pieces of Sage armor so that every time I get Deaths Breath I get twice as much…. leading to an interesting situation of not being quite so limited in that department. You can check this wiki page for a full list of gear that has this new Emanates property.

I went with the tried and true “Spin to Win” Barbarian build because honestly of all of the sets available it is by far my favorite. It was a close tossup with Demon Hunter, which is also a build that I greatly love but seeing as Grace went that I think we are covered for stupid amounts of wave clear. There was actually this weird place in the leveling curve where I was the primary carry which is a relatively new feeling for me given that she is usually dragging my worthless butt around. Right now I pretty much have to stay out ahead of her to remain useful when grouped up because she just destroys everything in sight. My biggest challenge the entire season has been survival and trying not to die to things that are likely going to kill me.

The other major issue that I suffered from for a very long time was resource generation. My personal preference for a whirlwind build is to run the Bull-Kathos set of weapons which greatly increases your fury generation and makes it so that you can basically whirlwind forever… and speeds you up in the process. I pulled a grand total of eight Bull-Kathos Solemn Vow before ever seeing a single Warriors Blood but thankfully when I did finally get one… it was a Primal Ancient Legendary. For now I am running full diamonds for survival and it seems to mostly work. I finally got my Templar the immunity item which also helped me in the “cheat death” department as well. Now comes the slow grind of leveling gems and actually doing set dungeons and such to knock out seasonal objectives.

The other big thing that I did this season is spend a good chunk of my Friday off cleaning out my vault and deleting characters. Previously I was locked with no ability to create new characters and now at least before the season I was down to just having a single character of each class. Ultimately my goal is to create new characters each season and then delete back down at the end of the season so that I maintain the “one of each” flow. I did ultimately create two Barbarians this season… one to actually play and a level 1 Barbarian that I named “DeleteMe” that I used to gamble on getting a Band of Might since at level one there are only two possible legendary rings I could have gotten. All in all a great start to the season and hopefully in the coming week I can knock out the rest of the bits. Avarice and the bounty grind is going to be the longest part which I should be getting started on shortly.