Diablo III - New patch 2.1 Coming Aug 26

[FlamesAddiction]

Someone bought me this game as a gift. Pretty fun so far..

Question: Can someone realistically play the whole game solo, or is there some content that you need to team up with people to complete? I'd prefer to avoid playing with others online if I can help it.

[Raekwon]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Someone bought me this game as a gift. Pretty fun so far..

Question: Can someone realistically play the whole game solo, or is there some content that you need to team up with people to complete? I'd prefer to avoid playing with others online if I can help it.

You can solo the whole game.

I'm happy with this game I've made my millions playing it. Made about $350, sold a bow yesterday for $75 and a necklace Saturday for $60. I have just been 4 man goblin farming as overall the game will tend to get boring and I figure I might as well make some money while I can before I get out.

[Rathji]

Where do you goblin farm?

The old ruins location I used once with a couple CP place never has any golbins when I stop in to check.

[nickerjones]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Where do you goblin farm?

The old ruins location I used once with a couple CP place never has any golbins when I stop in to check.

Found a lot of goblins in Act 1 but never in any set place. And Im mad about the goblin in old ruins =(

[Raekwon]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Where do you goblin farm?

The old ruins location I used once with a couple CP place never has any golbins when I stop in to check.

Act 2 Black Soulstone quest, ancient path waypoint.

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by Raekwon

Act 2 Black Soulstone quest, ancient path waypoint.

Should go to the Road to Alcamus waypoint as well. Quite often they are there too.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Don't they do server maintenance on Tuesday mornings, just like they do for WoW?

It was tuesday evening for me, played for exactly 7 minutes.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Raekwon

Act 2 Black Soulstone quest, ancient path waypoint.

Originally Posted by Shawnski

Should go to the Road to Alcamus waypoint as well. Quite often they are there too.

Just sitting at/near the waypoints? or any particular direction?

I don't know that I will ever do it again, the time I did it was quite boring, butit is nice to have a place where I can pop in and check quick a few times if I have only 5 mins to play. Right now, I do Dank Cellar in those situations, with one good reward Nat's Shadow, but the rest of the stuff is 100% garbage with no real chance of anything useful.

[photon]

Ok, killing Hell Diablo felt like easy mode (due to my gear I assume). But Act I Inferno the elites are really being difficult, and it feels like it's my elemental resist that's the issue... I'll be fine, but then one defile or arcane will take me down 3/4 health before I can hardly move.

I think my resist is about 350 for all of them (Monk, so they all have the same), is that adequate, or too low?

I haven't spent much in gear, and have 850k on hand.. is this the point where people start having to farm for millions / gear just to play Act I Inferno?

[Pacem]

Originally Posted by photon

Ok, killing Hell Diablo felt like easy mode (due to my gear I assume). But Act I Inferno the elites are really being difficult, and it feels like it's my elemental resist that's the issue... I'll be fine, but then one defile or arcane will take me down 3/4 health before I can hardly move.

I think my resist is about 350 for all of them (Monk, so they all have the same), is that adequate, or too low?

I haven't spent much in gear, and have 850k on hand.. is this the point where people start having to farm for millions / gear just to play Act I Inferno?

I was able to get thru most of act 1 on my monk with just over 200 resist. Had 12k dps and just over 30k health. This was before the changes. Ice stopped playing my monk and rerolled as a demon hunter. Way more tools that i see as being useful for inferno. I dont play diablo that much anymore. Oh and i had to die repeatedly to get that far in act one. New repair costs and i said #### it to a monk lol

FWIW... As a monk the whole game was ridiculously easy up untill inferno.

[nickerjones]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Just sitting at/near the waypoints? or any particular direction?

I don't know that I will ever do it again, the time I did it was quite boring, butit is nice to have a place where I can pop in and check quick a few times if I have only 5 mins to play. Right now, I do Dank Cellar in those situations, with one good reward Nat's Shadow, but the rest of the stuff is 100% garbage with no real chance of anything useful.

I think I saw a live stream you have to run in a big circle around the WP .

[photon]

Originally Posted by Pacem

I was able to get thru most of act 1 on my monk with just over 200 resist. Had 12k dps and just over 30k health. This was before the changes. Ice stopped playing my monk and rerolled as a demon hunter. Way more tools that i see as being useful for inferno. I dont play diablo that much anymore. Oh and i had to die repeatedly to get that far in act one. New repair costs and i said #### it to a monk lol

FWIW... As a monk the whole game was ridiculously easy up untill inferno.

Thanks, I think I'm ok then except for DPS, I have 7k, so I guess I should be looking for weapon upgrades.

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Just sitting at/near the waypoints? or any particular direction?

At the Ancient Path waypoint, it could be immediately to the East or just further up that direction until you get to the top of the switchback.

At the Alcamus waypoint, there is a small area around the waypoint with exits to the north and east. It spawns in that small area fairly often.

Personally, I don't goblin hunt... too boring and not enough reward...

Act 1 is far better overall because you can kill much faster (which offsets more than enough for the lower drop rate.)

You can kill ~15-20 elites in about 30 minutes or less, with an option to go longer if you like.

My run:

Start with Imprisoned Angel/Chamber of Suffering quest.

• Take the Northern Highlands waypoint and look for the Watch Tower in the NW or W area from the waypoint. If there isn't one, start a new game. The Watch Tower has up to five (!) elite/champion packs in a very small area. Personally, once I see that there is a Watch Tower, I usually proceed to the next steps first and come back later once I have my NV built up. No harm in just going into it right away though.
• Take the waypoint to the Cathedral Level 3, quite often there will be one elite/pack either right near you, or back in the rooms by the top of the stairs where you rescued the templar
• Go to the Cemetery of the Forsaken and do all three underground areas. There are usually 1-3 elites/packs per area, plus the side quests. Edit.. there may be one above ground in this area too (about 1 in 3 times or so).
• Go to the Festering Woods. The two underground areas are guaranteed to have an elite there every time. Plus that whole area usually has 2-3 above ground and quite often a treasure goblin. And it is pretty small area... clear it out.
• This is where if I have skipped the Watch Tower I go back and do it with full NV
• Go to Leoric's Manor. Quite often there is an elite/pack back in the manor upstairs or sometimes downstairs. Regardless, clear that area and continue west (backwards gameplay wise) to the courtyard where there is almost always at least one elite/pack there.
• Lastly I will drop by the Dank Cellar (west of the Old Ruins) just for kicks as it only takes a minute.

Optional at this point is to go kill the Butcher, run through the Cathedral Garden (if you plan on this, skip the Cathedral Level 3 step above), and/or check the first little bit west of Highlands Crossing waypoint. That last one can be hit or miss to find anything at the end of the bridge, but who knows, at this point, you have full NV and it only takes a couple minutes to check.

I am running ~150 MF without NV at this point and am able to quickly kill the elites/packs so like I say in about 30 minutes for this run it is likely I will get over 30 rare items. Plus there are usually 3 or 4 treasure goblins during that time.

You may be able to do this run even faster than I do as I usually wait for my Archon to reset before hunting the next pack. That Archon/Improved Archon for the Wizard just melts everything in its path.

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by photon

Thanks, I think I'm ok then except for DPS, I have 7k, so I guess I should be looking for weapon upgrades.

What type of char were you again Pho? And what are you using for weapon(s) (incl offhand if appicable)

[nickerjones]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

What type of char were you again Pho? And what are you using for weapon(s) (incl offhand if appicable)

Doesn't the Archon take forever for cool down tho?

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by nickerjones

Doesn't the Archon take forever for cool down tho?

it has a two minute cool down... BUT, that cool down starts when you activate it, and since you have 15 seconds plus 1 second for each kill, it is often that I will kill 100+ guys and as soon as it finishes, it is ready again.

Beginning of Act 4 inferno, I would kill hundreds of the swarm, and move on with 2 or 3 minutes still to go with it in full effect. There can be a downside to that length though... your force armour wears off after two minutes so at some point you can kill quick, but you are a sitting duck if hit!

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by photon

Ok, killing Hell Diablo felt like easy mode (due to my gear I assume). But Act I Inferno the elites are really being difficult, and it feels like it's my elemental resist that's the issue... I'll be fine, but then one defile or arcane will take me down 3/4 health before I can hardly move.

I think my resist is about 350 for all of them (Monk, so they all have the same), is that adequate, or too low?

I haven't spent much in gear, and have 850k on hand.. is this the point where people start having to farm for millions / gear just to play Act I Inferno?

You shouldn't have to farm millions to do Act 1. Your resists might be fine, mine are not even that good - I have about 320, but I don't get hit a ton as a DH, so a monk might need a lot more, and you should be able to push those up with some good gear tweaks. As a monk you can get 80-100 per resist piece with All Resist + Another secondary resist. I assume you have figured out that you should pick a resist and focus on it, if you need I can further explain.

Just as important as resist though, is HP and Armor (and dodge). This is known as effective heatlh (see here for a calculator). By plugging your numbers into there, you can see how all yours stats effectively work together to keep you alive.

Plus it tells you how what the best stat to improve to give you the most effective hp, (see this snippet of an old version of mine)

Spoiler!

You can see that, at my current stat levels, I get 99 EHP per vit but only 20 for Int, 18 for str, 21 per dex, and 198 for each All Resist that I get. +life % is the best at 997 ehp, but also one of the hardest to get.

This is good because it allows me to understand that while All Resists is good, Vit is still half as good, and a piece with both at good levels would be best. It also gives you a total of your EHP, so you can figure out how a gear change has impacted you, or might impact you.

If any of this is confusing, I can explain further.

edit: As a monk, you might be able to use some of my old gear that I am pawning off, invite me (Rathji#1666) and we can see what I have for you.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

At the Ancient Path waypoint, it could be immediately to the East or just further up that direction until you get to the top of the switchback.

At the Alcamus waypoint, there is a small area around the waypoint with exits to the north and east. It spawns in that small area fairly often.

Personally, I don't goblin hunt... too boring and not enough reward...

Act 1 is far better overall because you can kill much faster (which offsets more than enough for the lower drop rate.)

You can kill ~15-20 elites in about 30 minutes or less, with an option to go longer if you like.

My run:

Start with Imprisoned Angel/Chamber of Suffering quest.

• Take the Northern Highlands waypoint and look for the Watch Tower in the NW or W area from the waypoint. If there isn't one, start a new game. The Watch Tower has up to five (!) elite/champion packs in a very small area. Personally, once I see that there is a Watch Tower, I usually proceed to the next steps first and come back later once I have my NV built up. No harm in just going into it right away though.

• Take the waypoint to the Cathedral Level 3, quite often there will be one elite/pack either right near you, or back in the rooms by the top of the stairs where you rescued the templar
• Go to the Cemetery of the Forsaken and do all three underground areas. There are usually 1-3 elites/packs per area, plus the side quests. Edit.. there may be one above ground in this area too (about 1 in 3 times or so).
• Go to the Festering Woods. The two underground areas are guaranteed to have an elite there every time. Plus that whole area usually has 2-3 above ground and quite often a treasure goblin. And it is pretty small area... clear it out.
• This is where if I have skipped the Watch Tower I go back and do it with full NV
• Go to Leoric's Manor. Quite often there is an elite/pack back in the manor upstairs or sometimes downstairs. Regardless, clear that area and continue west (backwards gameplay wise) to the courtyard where there is almost always at least one elite/pack there.
• Lastly I will drop by the Dank Cellar (west of the Old Ruins) just for kicks as it only takes a minute.

Optional at this point is to go kill the Butcher, run through the Cathedral Garden (if you plan on this, skip the Cathedral Level 3 step above), and/or check the first little bit west of Highlands Crossing waypoint. That last one can be hit or miss to find anything at the end of the bridge, but who knows, at this point, you have full NV and it only takes a couple minutes to check.

This is exactly what I do, except I sometimes start at the Highlands crossing and will do the cave that can be just north of the zone, or the event Lycem (sp) that spawns there as well, both are giving 4-5 packs in a reasonably small area, and then go on and either clear through Leorics to or just hop into the Halls of Agony and get Warden and Butcher, depending on how much time I have.

I will try some of the other stops as well

[photon]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

What type of char were you again Pho? And what are you using for weapon(s) (incl offhand if appicable)

I'm a Monk, dual wielding. I've got a sword and a fist weapon, both 1.40, and both around 580dps. I'll take screenshots next time I'm in the game.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Rathji

You shouldn't have to farm millions to do Act 1.

Yeah bumping up my damage a bit helped, and mostly it's the bad combos of abilities I seem to be getting in caves... one was a smaller mob so it had like 10 burrowing minions, but it had arcane so they ALL cast arcane, in some caves of course so not much room to run. Oh and freeze too.

Took like 15k worth of repairs to finally kill it, and 10 feet past them was the end of the dungeon :/

Originally Posted by Rathji

Your resists might be fine, mine are not even that good - I have about 320, but I don't get hit a ton as a DH, so a monk might need a lot more, and you should be able to push those up with some good gear tweaks. As a monk you can get 80-100 per resist piece with All Resist + Another secondary resist. I assume you have figured out that you should pick a resist and focus on it, if you need I can further explain.

Yeah I upgraded a few older items with better armor and got +Cold and +All on a few, my resist is over 500 now, and 50k HP, still only 8k dps.

Originally Posted by Rathji

Just as important as resist though, is HP and Armor (and dodge). This is known as effective heatlh (see here for a calculator). By plugging your numbers into there, you can see how all yours stats effectively work together to keep you alive.

Cool I'll check it out.

Originally Posted by Rathji

edit: As a monk, you might be able to use some of my old gear that I am pawning off, invite me (Rathji#1666) and we can see what I have for you.

Sure I'll do that tomorrow.