Diablo III - PC - Review/Guide
Well... This will end up a big one 
OK... Lets start with what this is going to be. Below is the initial review, I'll be adding, as replies to the OP, various Guides... Character, area, boss, items, blah blah blah. Please feel free to add your own or to reply with corrections to whatever you crap I get wrong. This being a Blizzard game, it will get a number of patches that will change various spells/abilities over time so I'll also update as best I can (at least put in a patch note) when they occur.
On to the review...
For anyone that is unaware of what kind of game Diablo is (skip this section if you already know) - Diablo is an Action Role Playing Game (ARPG). You control your character through a third person overhead view, taking quests, killing hoards and hoards of monsters, leveling up your character and collecting loot. The story, as with pretty much everything Blizzard does, is not new but very well done. Evil coming, must save the world, etc, etc, etc. It is worth listening to everyone as there is some good stuff here... Eventually you have heard it all though and you skip over it and get to the meat of the game genre... Leveling up and loot. Killing monsters and completing quests gains you experience points and they drop loot. With enough experience points you level up... At level up you get to something to do with your spells, either a new one or a modification to one you already have. Loot can be many things... A quest item, an equip-able item (weapon, armor, rings, etc) or a consumable (potion... not sure what others there are yet). Get better loot and you can kill more monsters... to get more loot... to kill more monsters... and on and on and on... It is kind of like crack. Blizzard is the king of the ARPG genre... Read on for details on their latest monster
Wow... A rocky start... I think anyone who has played a Blizzard game before was expecting it. They suck at launches, always have, it is just something I have come to expect. I am very dis-appointed they were simply deleting anything that had the word 'Vista' in it from their Forums... Especially since I was running Vista... At some point I hope to get my now bricked laptop fixed... Fuckers.
Graphics - Blizzard took a lot of shit when they first showed off their new engine, 'It will be too bright and cartoony'... Nope, it's dark... A little too dark for my tastes, turn up the gamma a little. It does look great though with tons of eye candy that only makes it hard to tell what is going on sometime after the third bowl 
Control - Standard controls for this type of game... Point and click to move/attack/cast spell. A nice key mapper to hot key everything how you like it.
Characters - There are five characters in the base game (I expect at least one expansion with at least two more characters), they are:
Barbarian - Melee character.
Demon Hunter - Ranged bow/crossbow.
Witch Doctor - Ranged magic/summoning.
Monk - A slightly... off... detective... heh, no, a martial arts expert.
Wizard - Ranged magic user.
That is, in general, what these characters are. Each has a variety of spells, modifications to spells and passives (I'll get to these later) that can be used to modify the character in many ways giving a huge variety of character types. Look for character guides to be added over time.
Spells - By the time I had gotten my first character to about level 7 or 8, I was thinking... WTF? I'm not seeing where there is going to be very much variety to characters... Then I got to level 10 and opened up my first set of passive skills and Holy Shit... The possibilities are going to be many There are several spell types, they are:
Left mouse spells - These are your main attack. Each character has four to choose from.
Right mouse spells - These are your secondary spells and again there are four to choose from.
Action bar skills - There are four action bar skills, these are skills bound to key strokes (default is 1,2,3,4 but you can change it). Each action bar skill has four skills to choose from.
Passive skills - There are three passive skills. You do not have to do anything for a passive skill to work... It is just 'On' all the time. There are lots and lots of passive skills to choose from for each of the three.
In addition, there are modifications that can be made for all spells except passives. There are five mods for each skill (I think only one mod can be active at a time... Gotta check that).
Start doing some math and you will see there are a lot of possible character types. Some will be 'stronger' then others but... This being very much a multi-player game only (if you want to really survive at the highest levels and/or go hardcore) the real trick is putting together teams that are designed to compliment each other making true godliness.
Cinematics - Really well done, some of their best work yet and there are still plenty I've not seen yet. They badly need a patch though, let me skip the things if I want to, they are going to get very old very quickly if you keep making me watch them. I hate that shit.
Battle-net - I am not one bit happy about having to always be connected to battle-net in order to play... Fuck you Blizzard for doing this, it's a shitty idea. I paid for the fucking game, let me play it when and where I want, not only when I can connect to you. At the very least you could have had the battle-net commands working. Also... Get rid of the fucking 'social networking' crap... I don't want any part of it.
So... I have these friend invites sitting there the last two or three days and I've had no idea what to do with it. I see it there when I log on but I'm thinking... Shit... I want to accept it but I also want to do some single player here and gather up some info to do the review but I also don't want people to think I'm ignoring them but I also don't want them sending me messages while I'm in game because I can hardly see the little fucking window that has all the words from the game as well as messages (and battle-net does not have the /dnd command yet) and I also... Fuck. So I decide to send a PM when I finish but by then I've smoked a number of bowls and have completely forgotten and don't remember till the next time I play and go through the same shit again... grrr... Fucking social media shit... Battle-net was fine before dammit. So I am going to accept the friend requests I have now and send some to those here I've seen... If I message to join a game and hear nothing back, I'll assume you did not see it and are playing... If you message me and hear nothing, assume the same, don't take any offense if I don't reply.... And for the love of god don't start spamming me with messages I've heard Skype is the best thing to use for in game chat without typeing... I'm know nothing about it at the moment but will be downloading it and setting it up this weekend (I hope... Soon anyways) and will add a section for it.
Items - Items come in a huge variety of types... More then belongs in a review paragraph. No issues with Items... Look for sections on items to come later.
Fun Factor - This is the shit. Crack-in-a-box. Don't be one bit shocked if I'm still making updates/additions to this several years from now.
Bottom line - Blizzards paranoia about character security and the whole stupid social networking crap have now reached the point that if either gets worse I may give up on their games... They are a serious pain in the ass. Once you get past them though, this game is a real treat. They are not doing a whole lot that is ground breaking but they have taken their tried and true formula and turned it up to eleven. Go buy this now.
I have several parts to several sections that I've already begun work on for additions to this (including the first character guide for the barbarian). Again, feel free to add your own sections, give it a good title so people looking for info can jump to it quickly.... Look for more in the coming days!
= new reply since forum marked as read
but after you die 5 times to the same boss -
So, I haven't gotten as far into D3 as I otherwise would, but I am on Act 4 of normal with a Monk, and my wife and I are on Act 2 of normal with a DH/WD combo.
We both really love the game so far, and some of the Blizzard forum complaints drive me nuts.
Maybe I'm just not 'getting it', because I generally never played D2 online. To me it was a solo game pretty much exclusively. But, having said that, the complaints about itemization and the Auction House just make me sigh and roll my eyes.
The way I look at it, there's not that much difference between endless boss runs in D2 to get different epic drops each time which may or may not be useful and which the players can buy/sell/trade, and the open Auction House in D3 combined with low drop rates of really good gear from elite mobs and/or bosses. In D3 you don't have to just keep doing boss runs, and you have a good chance of elite packs dropping great stuff too, but the overall chance is just lower. Enter the Auction House, where you can exchange all that gold you just farmed for something which is better for your toon. In the end, what's the difference, really? You're still upgrading, and at least with D3 you can pick the exact item you want rather than being a slave to repetition of the same bosses ad nauseam and hoping for just the right combination of stats and effects.
I didn't buy D2 until after the LoD expansion anyway, but from what I've heard, D2 wasn't quite all that and a bag of chips out of the starting gate either.
So pardon me while I continue to enjoy D3 and look forward to future updates and expansions. 
Last edited Thu Jun 7, 2012, 02:03 PM - Edit history (2)
Tonight, I start off with the last big bowl of some great Pink Grapefruit I picked up last week. It is topped off with a sprinkling of wax hash... The whole thing together is extremely mild through the bong and you end up with an amazingly relaxed that needs a little time to settle into before I bo into the frenzy of D3 game play so... I'm going to explore the Gold Auction House for the first time and thought I'd walk you through what happens... What could possibly go wrong
From the main menu, I select the Auction House button and am brought to a very confusing screen... Lots of crap going on here... Lets see... OK, I find a 'Sell' tab at the top and go there (I have the crappy item I want to sell in my stash... I hope that is where it is supposed to be). I'm brought to a screen that has not only my stash but a list of my characters to show what each is wearing. It seems you just grab the item from where it is and put it in the box in the middle... OK.
I put it in and it gives it a minimum starting price of 279 gold (15% goes to Blizzard... WTF? I assume it actually just disappears). I can change this and also I can put in a buyout price if I want. I'm selling:
Rare Wizard Hat
Armor 67
Strength +23
Critical hits give +4 arcane power
Globes give +74 life
Empty Socket
I think something like this could have benefit if any of the spells are based on strength and/or weapon... I'll have to check on that... Could make a build there.
Regardless, this one is still from normal, it's crap, it goes for the test 
I change the minimum price to 600 gold because I have no idea what this is worth, I've looked at no going prices or even what a vendor would pay me... Just filling shit in. Using the same indifference, I set the buyout price to 1000 gold. I hit Create Auction and as I'm doing so I notice something along the lines of '1 of 10 Auctions'... I seem to recall something about getting x number of auctions per time period but it was undecided at the time what those values would be. I'll have to keep an eye on it and see what happens with it. I'm also told I have five minutes to change my mind before the auction goes live... I'll update this post when I hear something.
Edit 1 - The time ran out on the auction without so much as a bid 
I've put it back out there at a lower price (300 gold, buy now 1k). I did try to look for it using the search but there is so much stuff out there for sale, I never found it. I expect high end stuff is what to sell but we will see. I also noticed that the '1 of 10' thing reset, so I'm thinking you can have up to 10 auctions going at a time... I'll update if that changes as well as when the current auction ends with results.
Edit 2 - The 1 of 10 definitly means you can have up to 10 auctions going at a time. I've put this hat out there a few times now and not gotten are takers so I scrapped it at the blacksmith I did find that auctions can be done to get some good items or make some good bucks though. I did some messing around with some legendary items and here is what I found:
1 - Look for items where the auction is about over (less the 1 hour is my limit) and either has a low bid or no bid, wait till it is down to 1 minute and toss out your bid. I've yet to have my bid beaten doing this.
2 - Look well beyond the first few pages, it does not seem that many people do.
3 - If it looks good and you don't need the scrap, throw it out for auction. I've been very surprised at how much I've gotten for a few items... Not tons of money but a few thousand and it all helps when your starting.
4 - If you have the spare gold and can grab a legendary at base price or a little above, do it. Turn right around and throw it back out for auction with the same price... I've turned a few hundred thousand profit doing this with Goldwrap belts.
I'll update this post if I figure out any more stuff with the Auction House.
Tonight we have a very nice blend of Island Sweet Skunk and Blue Dream. I get them separately but I really like them blended together. Smooth and easy, you have to be a bit careful because it really does not hit you right away... It continues to build for a good twenty minutes after you stop, then evens out for a good while before you fire up another bowl. Also very nice because it does not make you tired.
OK... What is Hardcore? Hardcore is a one life game, you die, you are done and get to start over. You will die... You will die a lot and you will cry yourself to sleep because you had some awesome item on that character that will never be seen again. Accept these as a given, learn to let it go and you end up with the true reason these types of games are so freakin awesome. I understand, I've been through it... The first time you give it a try, you are cruising through with no worries and get about 3/4 to the Skeleton King and bang... Some random pack kills you... WTF... Wait... I was a hair from the potion key... Fuckin lag killed me.... FUCK!
Yeah... Thats the problem... Believe me, it hurts even worse to have a high level character die.
If you manage to get past this very unpleasant stage in learning to love doing this, in the true spirit of the genre being merciless, you find yourself worse off. You have learned the basics... Slow pacing with a scorched earth approach... After normal, you have to really add in a short 'rest period' (a few seconds) after each battle to recast any timed spells (never want to be caught without them active)... Frequent trips to town to put anything worth while in the stash (like regular, stash is for all Hardcore characters, so even after death you keep the stash.. As long as you have another character).. And lots more on how to stay alive and go far in the game. But... You will still come to places that can kill you in a second if you make a single mistake... or have bad luck... And it's all gone... Poof.
The problem is that not everyone can get past the 'stuff' they found being lost... Or they can't get past the 'work' they put into the character they lost... With the Real Money Auction House coming (I believe it will remain 'Gold' for Hardcore and only Soft-core getting RM) it makes it even harder... But if you can get past those... Well... Welcome to that area of gaming where people say... "What the fuck is wrong with you?" heh, but don't worry about that
Onward... I select as my first character, a Monk. This will be my 'Anchor', alive for the sole purpose of keeping my stash going, I don't really play this character. Then, the one I really want to start with, a Witch Doctor. One of the things you do differently is that you take everything that drops and be sure to equip whatever is best and sell the rest. In addition, do not forget the scorched earth policy... Explore every last bit of every map, every dungeon and the whole dungeon, kill everything and search every search-able item (chest, body, whatever), take everything. I know, it seems like a lot of overkill, there is little that come close to challenging you and you are getting peanuts for all the stuff you do but... You are doing for the exp points as well as to potentially find something decent (for your level) to be better prepared for the boss fights. Check vendors for items as well, they are a good way to get decently outfitted as quick as you can. Stash anything you might find for your next character in case you die (I tend to only play one Hardcore character at a time).
The going is pretty easy and at the time I stopped to write this, I am level 7, using Poison Dart as primary and Grasp of the Dead as secondary... The only other thing I have is the Zombie Dogs. I'm just about to start looking for the alter thats in one of the crypts in the cemetery (I'll do all of them completely regardless of when I find it). I'm looking for items that give +to attack speed (that speeds up Poison Dart fire rate) or Dexterity (same) or intelligence (adds damage to Poison Dart). +to exp is great, as well as +to pick-up radius. I am extremely interested in getting items that give +life per hit but I forget how soon they start showing up... But I want em very much, as much as I can get, it will go awesome with a high rate of fire Poison Dart. Later, I will also want a shit load of +to vitality.
I've even found a nice Hand Crossbow for my next character, a Demon Hunter. I'll update more on the WD when it's made some more progress.