Reaper of Souls First Impression

I noticed a vast improvement in latency on the Americas server so I decided to continue playing my Barbarian there.

There was a big patch a while back, Patch 2.0 which upgraded the game and has in fact changed the log in screen to "Reaper of Souls". It came with an adjusted loot system (which is awesome), additions to the game like "Pools of Reflection" which allowed you to level up faster. But it wasn't until March 25 did the expansion "Reaper of Souls" was finally activated.

It comes with a new act, Act V, raising the level cap to 70, allowing more powerful items into the game.

Before the launch, I made it to Act 1 of Torment 3, Paragon Level 74. Torment 1 didn't seem all that hard, and the only thing that made Torment 2 slightly more difficult was that it took such a long time to kill monsters.

I thought I'd start over the game on Torment 2 after the launch, and just level up my character from there. What I noticed was the game had suddenly become more difficult, much more difficult than Torment 2 was before the launch. That's probably because the monsters are now leveling up the same time as me. Now that I'm up to Level 65, the monsters have leveled up to 65 as well. In fact, it's become so difficult that I've lowered the difficulty to Torment 1 and the monsters...just mobs and not even elites are STILL KICKING MY ASS. Holy crap. They seem to have a much higher damage this time around.

The joy in all this is that I've started to get much more powerful items, although I've noticed I haven't gotten much legendaries as I used to. Leveling up from 60 to 65 I only got ONE legendary item, but it's a really good one and it's now my primary weapon:

Additionally, the default gem that drops now is the "Marquise" gem, which automatically made all my other gems that I've been keeping and upgrading quite useless. I don't mind though. It's levels higher than the previous default gem which was I think "Flawless". As long as it makes my items much more powerful, I won't complain!

I've yet to see Act V or encounter the new artisan. But I'll get there eventually!

Key of Destruction

Was farming earlier and faced off with Odeg the Keywarden somewhere in the Fields of Misery in Act One. After defeating him, lo and behold, he dropped The Key of Destruction!

I was so happy until I realized that I already had one. Bummer!

The Key of Destruction is one of the three keys required to create the Portal Device, which is required to complete the Infernal Machine event. There's a bunch of other stuff to accomplish but, to make a long story short, you get a Hellfire Ring if you succeed in bringing your jeweler the necessary items from these quests.

Your jeweler can craft one of four varieties of the ring where one of the affixes is guaranteed to spawn with +170-200 to a single attribute, either Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence or Vitality. The full ring stats are as follows:

• +170-200 to one Attribute
• Increase Bonus experience by 35%
• Chance to launch an explosive ball of Hellfire when you attack
• 4 random properties
• 170-200 Intelligence, Strength, Dexterity or 100 Vitality (you choose which one)

The ring is account bound and therefore can not be sold or traded however it can be Salvaged

• You can only wear one Hellfire Ring (your followers can wear one also)
• There is no level requirement on the ring so any of your characters can wear it

Seems I still have some way to go before I get one of those.

The Fowl Lair

I've been to Development Hell which I found in Act 1 (sadly I didn't have the presence of mind to take a screenshot of) where the demons and monsters inhabiting it are named after the team behind Diablo III (quite clever actually). I can only assume that the elites were named after supervisors and team leaders.

Recently, I've been to the Fowl Lair.

It's a relatively small dungeon found in Act 2 filled with chickens (at least I think they were chickens). The objective was to kill a pig (don't worry, it doesn't fight back) and collect the loot it drops.

I have no idea how to find the lair actually. I just assume it's all a mater of luck.

Diablo III Inferno, Monster Power 2

I just started Act 1 in Monster Power 2!

There's more of everything here, monsters and loot (especially the gold). My current stats and gear are coping well but it is just Act 1 after all. I'm probably going to need some major upgrades by Act 2 which will mean another shopping spree at the Auction House. With the gold flowing the way it is now, I'm probably going to be able to afford the more pricier items.

For now, I'm just going to continue merging gems together and ramping up my stats that way.

Diablo 3 Thoughts

In spite of what I wrote in my last post, I did continue playing Diablo 3 on and off (10 minutes there, 20 minutes here). And in a couple of weeks I seemed to have farmed enough to get better gear at the Auction House to be able to play Act 1 of Inferno without much difficulty.

Used to be the wall of difficulty was Act 1 and I couldn't progress because I was getting killed all the time. But finding better gear was able to push this wall further back to Act 2.

And now I can't even step into the first area of Act 2 without the first Elite pack literally pulverizing me to submission. It's crazy. The difference between the level of difficulty between Act 1 and Act 2 of Inferno is just crazy.

So for the past couple of weeks or so all I have been doing is farming Act 1 to get better gear. A nice spear did drop for me while farming, which is quite of a rare thing. In all my months of playing, this was the first time I ever got a really nice weapon that I could actually use. Did the designers really intend on getting good items this hard or this rare? Or does the existence of the Auction house affect the quality of drops for both AH users and non AH users?

Whatever the case, it makes farming for items tedious, laborious and not fun.

And I do find myself playing the game even less than before.

This does not mean to say that the game is bad. In fact, I thought it was pretty great the first couple of months I played it as I leveled up my characters. Now I have two classes at Level 60. A Monk and a Barbarian.

It seems that as soon as I reach level 60, the fun just well....stops. From here on in, it's just all about finding GEAR. The designers thought that item hunt would be fun...but it's only fun if you do find good items every so often. I hardly get any really cool items at all. Sure a lot of rares drop, but much of it is just worthless, really. I've had a few Legendaries drop, but as I previously mentioned, there's nothing legendary about them at all. And I've yet to see a single "set" or green item drop. In all my months of playing....not a single green item.

When I get bored with the game I go to the official Blizzard forums because sometimes reading posts there is even more fun than playing the game.

But lately, even the forum is starting to bore me.

Hardcore

Laying off my Level 60 monk on Inferno Act 1 for now as I gather my wits about further progressing through the game successfully.

For the meantime, I decided to start a new Barbarian character...on Hardcore setting!

This means that once my character dies, that's it. Game over. He can't be revived anymore. I lose all money and gear that this character is associated with.

I have no illusions at all that I can finish the game (at least on Normal Setting) without dying once. I would just like to see how far I can go with that kind of risk looming over my head. I would like to see how careful it would force me to play and what techniques I learn here I can use on my Monk on Inferno.

I'm currently on Level 9 and I've successfully killed The Skeleton King. So far so good!