Tag Archives: Diablo 3!

Lord British is back!

  March 12, 2013 - 11:37 am | Game Development, Game Previews, Retro, RPG
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I cannot tell you how excited I am about the news I received this morning! The person who probably shaped most of my childhood, the creator of worlds, the epitome of all that is great in RPG, has decided to grace us with a new game. Richard Garriot, creator of the greatest and longest-running RPG series in the history of computer gaming, has launched a Kickstarter project for his upcoming game (Hopefully October 2014) – Shroud of the Avatar, Forsaken Virtues.

As you can see from the early preview above, and from reading the Kickstarter project details, great stuff are coming our way. A true RPG’er wants to immerse himself in the game, not just hack away to fill an experience bar, and I think that from the meagre details available at the moment, they are doing a good job of it. I especially like the trade, crafting and housing system that they are planning, as well as the fact that it’s NOT BLOODY ONLINE DEPENDENT! If you want to play single-player, you can without a connection. If you want to be able to play this game again in twenty years, you don’t have to worry if the servers are still running. Hey Blizzard, EA and all you other money-grabbing bastards – take note.

The game seems to expand upon the ideals of the Avatar, the protagonist of the Ultima series, and Ultima and I share a long history. My first meeting with the Ultima series was actually a book, more specifically a novelized walkthrough called The Avatar Adventures. A friend of mine had the book at school when I was about 10. I read it voraciously in my lunch breaks and was then overjoyed when it turned out that my neighbor had Ultima IV on his PC. I then spent the next few months firmly robbing said neighbor of the use of said PC. Then, much later, when I finally had a PC of my own with an actual graphics card (a monstrous EGA card), I was lucky enough to find the complete Ultima collection at a second-hand store – a collection I still own today, which sits proudly on my shelf of all things gaming.

Anyway, go check out the Kickstarter, give Lord British and his cohorts your money, and help shape what is sure to become a classic!

Diablo 3: Barbarian on a Budget.

  July 9, 2012 - 11:55 am | Diablo 3
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OK, recovered from that little “site is down” snafu, let’s do some theorycrafting for a change.

So you’ve rolled a mighty Barbarian in Diablo 3. You power through Normal, Nightmare and most of Hell. You hit level 60 somewhere between Act 3 and 4 of Hell. With a massive 20-30k standard damage and tons of hitpoints, all is good in the world. Suddenly from nowhere a dreaded pack of Molten Chains Arcane Jailer elites stomps you to the ground. ‘Wait, this is not supposed to happen!” you say. “I’m way too awesome for this!” you wail.

Guess what! Welcome to the world of Inferno, where nothing is as it was anymore, and the mighty barbarian is relegated to the ranks of peon again. But fear not, there’s the ever-looming Auction House! Some more dps or hp will solve it all… or will it.

Well, in short, no it won’t. What you need is armor and resistances. No more one-shotting everything in your way, you’re going to nerf that damage to kingdom come and start outsurviving those pesky Monks. And to do that we’ll discuss two things: gear and skills. And because not every player has 200 million gold just lying around, we’re going to do this on a budget.

First off: Gear.

Forget strength (well, mostly, we’ll get to that later.). What you need is Resistance to all. Stack at least 300 to all unbuffed for Act 1, and 450+ for Act 2. Intelligence can also help, but please do not start stacking int! Getting 300 for Act 1 is pretty easy and not too expensive. Blue Chromatic rings (about 50-70 +all) with about 70 strength can be picked up for under 10k gold. Add 3 or 4 other items and you’re sorted. Try getting some on a shield too – yes, you’re going to switch to a 1hander with a shield for this exercise, because we’re also going to stack armor. Thankfully Strength also gives armor, but because you’ve just replaced half your awesome +strength items, you’ll need to get the extra armor a shield offers.

Remember to use the Auction House to the fullest. Search for ranges, include the stats you want and set your maximum buyout price as low as you can. With this you should have at least the resistances as above, while still keeping about 30k hitpoints minimum, 7000 armor (buffed is fine, we’ll get to that a bit further down too) and 7000+ white damage (let this slowly climb through Act 1, till you have about 10+ for Act 2). If you can get some life on hit, do so. 1000+ LoH is awesome for barbarians using fast 1handers.

Now the build, which I will break down into the different buttons:

Mouse1 – Frenzy. Here there is a toss-up between 2 runes. I prefer Maniac, because at this point with a low budget your damage is probably pretty low and you still have to burn down those elites somehow. Sidearm is the other option, giving you more aoe damage, but I still find focusing on one at a time is better.

Mouse2 – Seismic Slam. This is for the knockback, which you’ll need – a lot. When you need a breather from the 30 skeletons pounding you, or just need to get out of the corner you’re stuck in, use this and position yourself better. Couple with Shattered Ground for that extra “Oomph”.

 

1- Ignore Pain. This will save your ass more than you can ever imagine. 65% damage reduction for 5 seconds? Hell yeah! Now you can stand in the bad for that much longer as you whittle away at the enemy. Add Ignorance is Bliss for a bit of healing (actually quite good if you have decent damage), although all the runes can work. Play around and find the one that works for you.

2 – Revenge. Absolutely a must for every Barbarian build, not just this one. As it scales with the amount of creep hitting you, the more there are, the merrier. It fails a bit on single-target, but can still save you with that extra bit of health while your potion is on cooldown. Provocation is my preferred skill here – 30% more chance of proccing adds up to a whole lot more than the 8% extra healing of Vengeance is Mine. Once again, whatever works for you though.

3 – War Cry. Another given for this build. To achieve the amount of resistances and armor you need for Inferno, you can’t pass up on this, coupled with Impunity of course. Not only will you survive longer, whoever is in your party will too, with 20% more armor and 50% more resistances for all.

 

4 – Wrath of the Berserker – Hey, we gotta have some fun after nerfing ourselves to death, don’t we? Well, actually, there’s method to the madness. This baby boosts your dodge, crit, attack speed and movement speed. Awesome! But wait, there’s more. Tired of those elites freezing or fearing you? This also makes you immune to crowd control – and breaks any CC you’re affected by if you pop it. Add 100% increase to damage with the Insanity rune and you’ve got the solution to killing all but the toughest elites.

OK, that’s handled, now for the passive skills, which will be all survival, no fun again:

Nerves of Steel – Adds 100% of your vitality as armor. The more life you have, the more awesome you become. Pretty much a no-brainer hey? So yes, it does make sense to have at least that 30+k hp for the first two acts of Inferno, because every bit helps.

 

Tough as Nails – More of the same as Nerves of Steel really. On top of the armor you just gained from Nerves, add another 25% for more damage reduction greatness. The less damage you take, the longer you can give out the pain.

 

Relentless - Face it, you’re going to be on low HP – a LOT. This rune will make sure that when your screen starts flashing, you’re tougher than ever. When you’re below 20% HP, suddenly you take 50% less damage. Remember that if you’ve been following this guide, you’re already taking much less damage than before, and with Ignore Pain active at the same time, nothing is going to kill you. As an added bonus, there’s always that 50% decrease in the cost of abilities, so you can spam more while you’re on low health.

There we go, my first bit of theory in a long time. Here’s a link to the build on the Blizzard calculator. This was put together from various other guides out there when I struggled, as well as from personal experience. This is by no means the end-all to Barbarian builds, but it definitely made Inferno more doable for me. Once you start getting those ilvl 63 items dropping with your 5 Neph buffs, you can start customising and increasing your damage output – which is needed later on because the elites have insane hitpoints, and an enrage timer!. Remember that your resistances will have to scale for Act 3 and 4, up to a massive 1000+ to each, but with a bit of farming on Act 1 and 2, this is doable.

Diablo 3: Real money auction house.

  June 17, 2012 - 12:57 pm | Diablo 3, Musings, Rants
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So the European real money auction house got launched yesterday. I was initially quite excited at the prospect of being able to trade items for some extra cash, and then being able to buy others for the same.
Unfortunately the auction house seems quite crippled by a few problems at the moment, one that seriously needs to be addressed before the new auction house van become effective.
The main point is the cost involved. At the moment there is a €1 “transaction fee” on all auctions. Combine this with a 15% fee for paypal transactions and you end up with the most basic items having ridiculous prices. Midlevel or medium-specced items HAVE to be priced at at least €2-5, and good items seem to be flooding the market at €40-50.
Now don’t get me wrong, but €50 for ONE item in a game that cost a fifth of that price is a bit ridiculous.
The mere fact that Blizzard imposed that €1 minimum removes the opportunity for 99c specials, a pricepoint that most people will still happily click buy without blinking. Suddenly you really have to think about whether you really need that item or should just grind the few million gold it would cost in the normal AH.
And for sellers it’s the same problem – how do you sell your stuff at a price that will sell and still make a few cents on it?
Does Blizzard really need that extra source of income? Does it cost that much to host the AH? If there were a smaller transaction fee, perhaps a percentage or a few cents, then the sales would go up. More successful transactions would mean more revenue for them, more revenue for the sellers, and more incentive for the buyers to actually spend time on the AH looking for bargains.
Which begs the question – have any of you actually either bought or successfully sold anything on the real money auction house yet? Do you plan on buying anything? With the already dwindling player-base, can you justify spending small fortunes on virtual items? The current model may work for the very best of items, but surely not for your average yellows or midlevel legendaries…

Diablo 3, a month later.

  June 5, 2012 - 12:14 pm | Diablo 3, Game Reviews, MMO, Wall of Text
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-=Author’s note=- If you have not played the game yet, or are unsure about purchasing it, please read to the end – I have 3 keys to give away.

-=Author’s note 2=- All the guest passes are already given away, but feel free to continue commenting. I’m also working on a prize within the next month or so, drawn from a random person who “Likes” the MisGuilded Facebook page.

It’s almost a month since Diablo 3′s original release, so I thought I’d share my experience so far, as well as a bit more insight to those that haven’t purchased it yet. I had taken 3 weeks off work to concentrate solely on D3, but unfortunately a wedding and a few birthdays got in the way of me getting to the level cap in the top percentage. Oh, and an early warning – this review contains no screenshots and is the longest game review on this site.

Anyway – my experiences: On first installation I was greeted with, as could be expected from a Blizzard title, a patch download. Thankfully this was nowhere close to the size of your average pre-expansion WoW patch, so I was quickly up and playing. After a few “The server is busy” errors I was in and heading in to New Tristram. For fans of Diablo 2, the first thing you notice is how well the game feels. Instead of reinventing everything, they stuck to the original formula where they could. The playstyle is immediately identifiable as Diablo, something that they could have gotten wrong so easily.

The main differences come with how health is regenerated. Instead of the original usage of belts with tons of health potions of your choice that can be used as rapidly as you can press buttons, there is a single “quick heal” button with the currently selected health potion. This is further hampered by the fact that, like the way they changed WoW in early Burning Crusade, there is a cooldown on the potions. No more spamming potions while facing a difficult boss. This, along with other changes I’ll be going over a bit later, are all part of the push toward more e-sport orientation – the PVP balancing element. Thankfully the health potions are supplemented with health globes that are periodically dropped by creatures as you kill or damage them. These are not inventory items; instead you run across them and they heal you for a certain amount. This has its own pros and cons, mostly in the fact that you usually accidentally pick three or four up at the wrong time as you’re fighting a big creature.

The skills have also been simplified – gone is the old skill tree, to be replaced by a set of skills for each class, with runes unlocked as you level up. These runes change the way each skill behaves – some will grant you additional health on usage, others will change the area of damage or the amount of damage, or add a stun effect or the duration of the ability. This change also makes sense from a balancing point of view. With less skills to worry about, Blizzard can tweak them to perfection for use in PVP, or nerf (as they so love to do) skills that are too popular and  cause the PVE gameplay to be too easy.

Another new addition is that, along with your left and right-click abilities, you now also have four skills that are assigned to the buttons 1-4 on your keyboard, a selection previously reserved for all those extra health potions.

A fourth difficulty, Inferno, was also added. This is a super Hell difficulty, and definitely adds replayability to the game. Compared to Inferno, Normal, Nightmare and even Hell seems like a cakewalk. My Diablo-killing gear in Hell was not even close to the level that was needed to defeat the first pack of rare mobs I encountered in Inferno. And this is where the Auction House and new crafting abilities come into play.

The blacksmith allows you to craft new items, but the only problem is that the gear is crafted with random properties. The chances of crafting a piece of gear that will actually suit your character perfectly is small. You might craft a new two-handed mace for your barbarian, only for it to appear with +80 to Intelligence and +3 to Dexterity. Not exactly what you need. Instead, why not go to the Auction House, set the stats that you’d like and the price you’re willing to pay and see if you get any results. Gearing just became easier.

And a good thing too. With a level cap of 60 which is reached about halfway through hell if you’ve just been playing through without extra grinding, skills and personal growth stops way before the challenges of Inferno. Once you’ve chosen the ultimate killing combination of skills, the only growth is through gear, gear and more gear.

The world, characters and story are all stunningly done. There was a big uproar in the development stages that Blizzard was making Diablo 3 too colourful, but the end product really came out nicely. The colours suit the different environments – bright where it should be and dark (and I mean REALLY dark in some places) where it fits. Fog and weather effects further immerse you in this world, and the new companions add their banter to the tedium of grinding away at mobs.

A lot of the current players of Diablo 3 are people who recieved the game free with their annual pass for World of Warcraft, I’m not one of those. These same players are also for the most part the ones that will easily drop the game to return to WoW, especially considering the numerous errors the servers have been having over the last week, making the game totally unplayable even in single-player mode. Personally, I can see myself (and my significant other, who up to now has shown no interest in gaming) playing this for a long time, so the little bit of problems that there were will in no way put me off. Speaking of which, if you haven’t got a copy of Diablo 3 yet and wish to try it out, I have 3 guest passes available, which will let you experience the first half of Act 1. Leave a comment below and I’ll mail a key to you – first come, first serve.

Pros:

  • Blizzard kept as true as they could to Diablo 3′s predecessors.
  • Advanced crafting and auction house.
  • Easy multiplayer interaction with RealId and friends integration
  • Superb world and story.

Cons:

  • No offline single player or LAN multiplayer – if the server’s down, you can’t play.
  • A little too much focus on the upcoming PVP events.
  • Limited skills to go with the level 60 cap, I miss the old skill tree.
  • Teething problems with login and world servers.

Final score: 4.5 our of 5 stars – this game will definitely be played for years to come, as Diablo 2 was and still is. Oh, and there is no cow level ;)