f13.net

I figure we need one of these, so here goes.

For some reason I remember reading that followers reduce XP gained; is this true?

I checked the Auction House to quickly see the tiers of rarity and their colours. White --> Blue --> Yellow --> Orange? Really? That's it? And where's the original beloved green? Unless everything that is part of a set is bind on pickup, there's no colour for sets. Any more info on this?

How can my blacksmith learn new patterns? Is it just by leveling him up, or can he discover stuff if I make random things?

From the beta it was just leveling him up.  It's not intended to replace drops just supplement them, so you can't just run up and make a full set of level-appropriate armor.  Although I found it IS the best way for later characters to rip-through normal levels.  Saves bank space unless you're finding lots of low-level uniques to pass-along.

I believe it does not. Last I heard is companions are pretty much just a small damage add and boost to utility intended to make single player mode slightly easier. They will now scale throughout the game, when originally only intended for normal mode, which is why they do such a small percentage of your weapon damage (15% base iirc).


I think there is supposed to be green, there are recipes and items for them on the website, but I know that webpage was due for an overhaul. Though, it could just be an oversight on the AH? I know there are grey/white/blue/yellow/orange/green listings on the website, if that changed then I don't know. Here (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/immortal-kings-will) is an example of a green though, so you know they exist (or did at one point).


Level up your smiths, and there are also crafting recipe drops

Is blacksmith training shared between characters, or do I have to level him up with each toon?

Blacksmith training is shared between all characters on your account, which rocks.

The only green items I've seen (so far) have been the books, notes and diaries that trigger lore reveals.

If the companions inherit your DPS, what is the point of their weapon; just damage procs and such?

did .. did they fix the electrocute graphic, does it look good now

VITAL information here people

I didn't see it in beta, but it looked pretty crappy when I saw it earlier, so I am guessing no.

life over, D3 electrocute ruined my george lucas ruined childhood, starting internet petition and making a number of D3 forum threads which put the word "Blizzard" in all caps, like "Fix this, BLIZZARD." or "You've dissapointed (sp) everyone, BLIZZARD."

Then using Magic Missile

Exception to the rule is hardcore and softcore smiths are separate even on the same account. So all of your account's HC characters share smiths, and all your SC chars share smiths. Similar to vaults and auction houses.


Either it is only for the procs/auras/whatever, or the weapon slots are just a relic of the previous system where the companions were to be much higher dps-wise. I don't know the reason behind it, but do hope to find a decent weapon with a nice proc/aura and use it in that way personally.

Not blizzard, you have to appeal to BLUE and demand BLUE do things for you. They're like the gaming UPS or something.

Does anyone know how to gift Diablo 3 (digital version) using the Blizzard Online shop?

Um, my companions dps directly changes when I upgrade their weapon according to the details bar and mouseover?

I'm trying to find the blue post that was talking about the 15%, though I completely forget that it is only their base damage that was said to be 15%. May be a bit troublesome since I think it was in the beta forums, anyone else remember this please chime in, I'll keep trying to look since now I'm trying to remember the exact quote.

Though, while I'm trying to find the original blue post I was thinking of, I found another post (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4857225713#5) by Bashiok showing follower's are effected by stats (such as on their weapons)

Is there any way to manage your friend's list outside of a blizzard game client?

I didn't find one, and when I asked yesterday in another thread Luckton said no.

No, and it sucks.  I kept the F13 thread open on my 2nd monitor to do friend adds this morning but I keep seeing people add their tags throughout the day and know I'll have to go person by person this evening "already sent.. already sent.. send new."  :uhrr:

Is there a glowy option for enemies/environmentals?  Like, press a button and it highlights them?

Also- can someone please post a quick rundown on different difficulties and what they offer?

Show items on the ground=ALT
Show item tooltip on ground=CTRL

Thanks- I tried looking on the official site and it was a mess.  Then peeked into the forums- nerd rage gone wild (as normal).

People are broken.

It's not always efficient to dual wield.

Dual wielding takes the average of your two weapons, plus about 15% in damage. Each attack alternates between the two weapons.

So you could definitely do less damage if you have a significantly weaker weapon in one hand.

Skills do weapon damage but are equally slower with slower weapons, so DPS is still the number to look at.

More info here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vke_bm42cNI&feature=relmfu

The strat guide was waiting for me when I got home, let me know if you or anyone have any more questions.
Yes, I have the strat guide, stop snickering at me!

I didn't even think about a guide until the guy asked me last night if I pre-ordered one. I didn't even know I wanted one until he asked  :awesome_for_real: They were sold out already, natch.

Oh damn- strat guide!

This may be the first time in over a decade I bought a strat guide.  Yessssssssssss....

Hope its not sold out.

edit.  IN STOCK.  Hopefully that lasts until tomorrow- stuck on sick kid duty until then.

I want to say that if you hit "V" you'll see enemy hit point bars like in WoW. Was that just some fever dream or can anyone verify that while I'm at work?

Damn it Ched..read this and hit Amazon (through the F13 link!) and ordered it next day. Thank god for Prime =)

I don't know if V shows it but I did see a way to turn that on in the options.

Verified.

Show monster health bars=V
Show player health bars=D

On the subject of the in-game chat:

- Is it possible to create chat tabs instead of switching between channels in a single tab?

- Is it possible to create custom channels? It would be nice to have a #f13us and a #f13eu :)

What's the point of Diablo 3? (I've never played any Diablo games-so forgive my ignorance)

To level up in Normal so you can play in harder and harder modes?

To gear up a toon for co-op play?

Why would people pay RL currency for items?

I can't figure out what makes it interesting/different. I bought the game and can't yet figure out why it's so highly anticipated. I don't mean this in a sarcastic way, just curious.

You kill things and take their stuff.  That's pretty much it.  And that's all it needs to be.  :grin:

For me for D2 it was the twitch gameplay and the loot. If you weren't wearing out or breaking your mouse in D2 on a regular basis you were doing it wrong. This is the thing all the other Diablo "clones" get wrong -- they don't have enough monsters on the screen at once to wade through* I've only played D3 for an hour so I have no idea if it has the same clickfest at the highest difficulty that D2 has but that's what I'm hoping for. And the loot.

* Torchlight I never played at the highest difficulty so I don't know if has the same D2-style combat

Things seem to get much more hectic after the skeleton king battle.  I definitely started hitting areas where the number of critters coming after you at once can be intimidating and not paying attention and getting surrounded without a way to deal with it can get you killed.

To hear the sound of a ring dropping.

For non-melee's does weapon damage matter?  Currently I toss poison spiders at enemies- would getting a sword that returns life make my spell do that?

Yes. On my wizard I have a magic spear that does extra cold damage, and drains life. This happens on spell hits.
Magic Missile (with advanced tooltip) tells me that it does 110% weapon damage as arcane.
So unless that's totally misleading, your weapon damage does matter.

Yes, I noticed that too and it made me wonder.
Does that mean we can expect to see wizards wielding huge 2-hand axes and bows, as long as the stats on them are better than 'generic wand x'?

Will it be 'this is a hunter weapon' all over again?  :ye_gods: :grin:

My wizard has a 14dps wand and an orb that adds to damage.  So yes, you can wield a hvy crossbow, but it probably won't have the stats the wizard needs AND it's 2-handed which means you lose your orb.

So a wand and xbow both have 14dps but the wizard can also equip an orb for bonus damage.

Edit:  Orbs always give a damage bonus.

Here are way too many words on weapons and wizards:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3424908246

Wow, co-op drops freaking rock.

Got my ass kicked by skeleton king, so jumped into one.  At a glance seemed like double gold drop and blues RAINED.

Yes, it's a huge difference, isn't it? I usually like to play through on my own first and then group up but I think I'll do it backwards instead.

So, how do I find out what my battle.net name is or whatever its called?  Is it on my account page somewhere?

Edit: Never mind, found it.

Wouldn't that be impossible, what with only seeing your own loot drops and all?

Don't feel like startinbg a thread just for this and I don't know where to put my (temporary) disappointment. I am loving the game, but I gotta say that the loot-bonanza isn't nearly as fun as I remembered from 12 years ago. Worse, it's not even nearly as fun as it was in the first few days of Hellgate: London. That loot was fun. This is weirdly underwhelming so far. I got ONE yellow in ten levels. One. Not fun.

EDIT: THE LACK OF THE RING SOUND (which I didn't realize was missing until I read the other thread) IS NOT HELPING.

I'm seeing yellows more often than that.  Are you playing by yourself or with a group?  Groups are more fun, more monsters, and more loot as far as I can tell.

Constantly grouped with my partner. We got to level 10, killed the Skeleton King, only got one yellow out of him and that was it. I am not complaining about the game in general, but I have these fond feelings about a much more colourful looting experience. Maybe it's really just H:L that spoiled me and overwrote the D2 memories.

If you're not grouped you're doing it wrong.

I was against this before. Vehemently.   However, D3 reinforces this with loot frequency and the ease of dropping in & out of groups. Also, while monster difficulty ramps up you are able to survive better in a group than you can solo. (Particularly my squishy wizard ass)

I grouped-up with Ragnoros and his friend last night and it was a blast.  We went from the last 1/4 of the 1st act (level 11) to the last 3 quests in ActII (level 22) and I had at least 9 yellow drops that I can remember.

I know they were getting more than me (or perhaps just more useful drops) because when I'd inspect them they were in 3-5 pieces of yellow gear at all times.  So I wouldn't say yellow drops are infrequent at all.

ed: Oh, Falc.  Yeah level 10 on normal? Don't sweat it. You probably didn't realize it took you until level ~5 to get that first blue item, too.  The SK is meant to be your first yellow. They drop more frequently after that.

Yeah, group of 4 all night ended up with 3 yellow/2blue off first SK kill, then about 2 more yellow from 8 until 15. Though according to my group's bragging I was on the low end of how many yellows I had all night.

RNG is RNG

Is there a good understanding of what parties of disparate level characters do to difficulty, xp, etc?

I've mostly grouped with people within 1-2 levels of my character, but it doesn't seem like there's a limit -- if the level range is much greater 5? 10? etc what if anything is impacted?

Barrels and chests and environmental interactables don't show up when pressing ALT.  Is there some setting I've missed?

Answering my own questions after a quick research: no to both. Hopefully they'll improve the chat system a bit :(

It's a toggle in the options as well.  I don't know if it's keybound.

There's no limit to grouping.  It's just a question of "why would you do that, since they'll die if they get hit."   No leveling cockblocks, since it'll even-out as they approach your level anyway.

Does anyone know how % weapon damage stuff works?  Is it based off the dps or the weapons damage?  Does the attack speed of the weapon matter at all?

I have killed the Skeleton King three or four times so far and have nary a yellow to show for it. I have decided to take this personally.

Duo'd him this morning, got two yellow drops.

You just made my list, sister.

How does grouping work with friends?  Do you automagically skip to the furthest portion of the story quest?

I soloed him and got two.  An orb thing my wizard could use and a WD thing that I plan on giving to the WD I make tonight when I get home. :awesome_for_real:

I believe you do have to go back through the story yourself when you do it solo.

As far as I can tell, everyone joins into someone else's game at whatever point the originator is at. You can also choose which quest to work on from the menu before joining, but that will be more for specialized runs after everyone has seen the story first.

Yep, quest/Act is determined by host.

Does gear on Followers effect player stats?

You inherit gold and magic find from your followers. I think you get something like 20-25% of their total. No other stats as far as I can tell.

Also, followrs don't seem to be able to benefit from the extra health from globes stat. There ma be others too.

Has anyone had any blacksmithing/jewelcrafting recipes drop for them? Or any item above rare?

As well you should, I've killed him about that many times now and have gotten a yellow every time.



Now I will never get a yellow again.

I got a record of killing 40 monsters with one spell last night without realising, so yes - they definitely put a lot more on screen that other games, and having some sort of room clearing ability is handy for those situations.

I think they ended up only having lore items (e.g., Cain's journals) be green.  There are still supposed to be item sets, but they will colored orange along with stand alone legendaries.

I am glad they still have sets, but I loved seeing a bright green item drop in DII, even with all of the problems of most armor sets.  This along with the rumors of no ring ping sound mad me a slightly sad panda despite loving the hell out of the game so far.

When do you get followers?  I had some dude ask me if he could follow in Book 1- I told him to pack sand for fear he would steal my shiny drops and XP.

They come through the story stuff directly - first one is the templar dude just before you get to the skeleton king.

You get them when you stop being such a dick to followers!

(you can go back and hire them in town once you've met them)

Yellow hats are on the first set of the second tier at the blacksmith.  (Maybe one earlier.)

No patterns though.

It was odd. I joined a buddy last night. He was level 9, I was a fresh level 1. I was a DH so I could just hang back and shoot the stuff he was fighting, and I was catching up fairly quickly. Due to joining his game in progress, I skipped the first few quests of Act 1.
I don't mind, I played them in the beta, but I'm wondering about later on when I'm skipping quests that I haven't played in order to MP....

Jar of Souls got me a 69 record (though I only got a 29 in one blow) and there were many more when the timer hit 0 and they all blew apart... so yeah.

Your character is saved at the last quest you completed.  If you start another quest at an earlier point in time you can jump back there to complete it. (I did this already this morning.  I'd missed one of the key events in Act1 when I jumped in to Ragnoros' game)   

So, yes, a fresh level 1 could jump in to the end of Act2 with me and move forward.  They'd have to go back and complete the previous act's quests if they wanted to jump into any other public games prior to that point, though.  (i.e. they'd have to start at Act1, quest 1 and run forward from there.)

Regarding the SK and yellows, the first time you kill him (or most boss monsters) you have a very high (100%?) chance to get a pair of yellows. Killing him again only gives you a standard named mob's loot roll.

There is always the chance that the yellows that may have dropped were misidentified by the new owner and dropped into the gaping maw of the blacksmith salvage beast, but I don't think so. Also a chance they are equipped on my character and I am just a mental deficient. I will check when I get home  :grin:

I have several rare patterns which you get through levelling up. I'm stuck on the levelling because I now need pages of training to progress. I guess I'll start seeing those once I finish Act IV.

It would be pretty hard to mistake a yellow for a blue since you need to identify a yellow (with a right click) to see its attributes.

Try adding another. It was raining yellows for me today in a 3 man. Later acts seem better.

You guys dumping your money into crafting?

I have been; JC is mandatory if you plan to use socketed items, and BS helps to fill slots that you're otherwise unlucky with.

I've been dumping money into stash slots because I'm an altaholic and a hoarder.

10k is too cheap for another row, friends with better blacksmiths can craft stuff for you.

Is blacksmithing completely random? i.e, what you make ends up with 2 or whatever random attributes?

Seems so...

Yep, seems like it. I've mostly been lucky and have made some nice stuff on the first or second try, but I've definitely made some shitty random-ass gear with weird stats.

What is other people's latency at?  I hover betweein 30-40ms in WoW but in diablo I'm at 200ms.  It's fine, I just don't get the discrepancy.

Are Rune affects cumulative?

40 - 100ms. No noticeable lag, except 'teleporting' once or twice tonight. (that's playing from Austria on European servers)

You can only slot one rune per skill, so no.

Quick Question:

Covetous Shen, great NPC or greatest NPC?

It came up a few times today, so thought I'd just inform others

Bank slots: first page is 10k per upgrade. To open the second tab costs 100k, but the next upgrade within that tab is only 10k again. I'm only two upgrades into the second tab, so don't know how much 3rd tab costs yet  but it is good that it isn't 100k for each upgrade in 2nd tab.

Thanks Segoris.  I was worried that after saving up 100k I'd be hit by even more insane per-upgrade costs too.

I need to stop hoarding so much junk!

Turns out a level one hero has the same inventory space as a fully-upgraded stash page so.... hello bank alts.

With my new WD I've gotten 2 yellows per boss up through the end of Act I.  Mmm.  First time I killed the SK with my Monk, I got zip.

Anyone know why I can equip a sword, but not swing it as a DH?

Also, Stash is not shared across toons?  :ye_gods:

Stash is shared across characters.  As is your gold.

Have you tried unselecting any powers? (so that you are just using the default attack). Seems most of the actual attack powers for DH require a bow. Making a viable dual sword wielding DH seems unlikely.

Which cuts both ways. I dumped a crap load of gold into upping my crafting skill on my WD without realizing this is not just his gold.  :grin:

Well, since the artisans are shared across all characters, it's not so bad.

Has anyone figured out what the "recieve a blessing" dude in the town does? He seems to do bugger all for me.

Achievements seem to be bugged too. I have my achievements for hitting levels 20 and 30, but none for level 10, ho hum....

Achievements being buggy is a known issue.  

Pretty sure he is just a stationary healbot. Lightwell, if you will.

Cheers


Fair enough, I just assumed he had done something more awesome in beta, and they hadn't actually got around to taking him out, or he does something awesome, but it's invisible to me.

Because you can't shoot arrows with a sword. There are SOME non-bow things a DH can do and if you desperately want to be the very specialest snowflake around, you can probably build a DH that uses swords, but ... man, why would you want to.

Oh Goddamnit.  I was near end of book 2 (like, right before boss), joined up with a group way near beginning, and fucking rolled back 1 book.

Downside to grouping, going to check what happened with my henchman.

Pro tip, henchmen keep the items that you equipped them with so they are like a mannequin doll stash extension for me  :drill: :awesome_for_real:

Yea. I've learned to not join except at start of chapters.

The manual sucks for the DL version.  Are there "guilds" in D3?  Or, to add F13 folks I have to spam friend invites down the list?

Not that I've seen. Throw it in windowed mode and have the Battletag thread on the side and it makes it easier. Copy and paste works, too.

I'm almost embarrassed to ask, but how do you socket and gem your stuff? :facepalm:

You can't add sockets - you just find things that have sockets. If you have one, just drag a gem onto it.

Once the gem is in the socket, you have to get the jeweler to take the gem OUT before you can replace it with something else, though. I couldn't override and destroy the old one when I tried earlier tonight.

So, I've  been trying to get a better handle on how dual wield v. 2 handed things work, and trying to just judge for practical purposes based on what gives me a higher number in the "damage" field of my character sheet.  If I understand correctly dual wielding gives you an attack speed bonus... but is there any inherent bonus to a 2 hander?  The numbers don't seem to add up to me at the moment, as 2 handers are giving more damage than they "should" as near as I can tell...

Thoughts? info? spreadsheets?

Thought I heard dual-wielding gave you the average damage between your two weapons + ~15% attack speed. In other words, you're probably better off wearing something else in your off-hand.

Correct. Dual wielding alternates between the two weapons, plus a 15% bonus to attack speed for dual wielding. This means that your overall DPS is going to be the average of mainhand and offhand + 15%. But you have to consider, you probably are going to upgrade one weapon at a time, so you're never going to get that 15%. Also, you should only have 1 awesome socketed ruby that you are constantly upgrading to max, so one weapon is always going to be quite a bit better.

Also, for monk+barb having a shield on your OH gives 1/3rd extra armor which is 10% damage reduction, plus a 10-20% block percentage, which is much more valuable than 0-15% extra damage. And you can socket the shield, too.

Something weird going on with public games - 90% of the time when I join one it's one person stood in town doing nothing and not responding to chat at all. I'm guessing they're just AFK leeching, but I can't imagine that actually works very well, if at all.

Only once so far got a 4-person public game.

Third tab costs 200k

Wait until you see the price for the third tab. 200k ouch.

When am I supposed to meet my Jewelcrafter? I've finished Act 1 without running into him.

Somewhere in Act 2.

Is there an easy way to just fire a weapon without using a mouse/keyboard power? I'm not sure I will always want to do this, but I've been curious whether weapon power alone would suffice for things like my wand and crossbow. Is there a special key press I'm missing in keybindings? Or do I basically unassign a power from left/right mouse?

Diablo is as close as you can get to a slot machine while still retaining the word "game". People will pay money to improve when their patience runs out. Time-honored tradition in the Diablo series and MMOs.

Yes.

I've done it accidentally a couple of times by clicking-dragging the ability off the toolbar button in combat. It rarely ended well for me  :oh_i_see:

Level 16 Wizard at the end f Act 1. I keep getting my ass kicked by the Butcher. Do I just suck or do I need to go back and get a couple of levels before I go try him again.

When I say I keep getting my ass kicked, I mean I died to him over and over again until i had no money for potions and no money for repairs. I think the best I managed was to take him down to about 40% health. I tried different mixes of abilities but to no avail - basically he keep grabbing me and holding me over the flames while punching my face through the back of my skull until I die. If I try and run away, I either get backed into a corner where I am stuck or he uses his chain thing to haul me back into contact.

I should point out as well that the game is very jerky for me - not sure if that's server latency or my Macbook Air being a bit weedy for games so there's a fair bit of rubber-banding both f me and mobs.

You CAN dodge the chainhook so your lag could be an issue there.

Use the two healing wells tactically.  Keep moving while strafing.  Watch the floor, the tiles will glow before they burst into flame.  If the Butcher charges you and instead hits a wall he's stunned for a moment.  Wear his ass out at this point.

How I did it with a Wizard.

Heh ok thanks. So basically, I really wouldn't want to do this on purpose then :)

I dont quite recall when you get all the wizard abilities, but I watched my fiancee beat the butcher on her wizard yesterday. What she did was keep up the ice shield spell, when she got hooked the butcher would freeze for some small amount of time. During that freeze, she would then cast ice nova and run away. Basically it was then just playing very safe running around till ice nova came off CD. it took awhile, but it worked.

Normal/Wizard cheese: Diamond skin->Channel Arcane Torrent or Ray of Frost into target. Run the hell away until Diamond skin is back up. Wave of Force with Impactful Wave is also awesome for stunning bosses.

Thanks, I forgot to post that here after upgrading it. Only have a few more slots to open now before blowing gold leveling crafters for no reason

Also, I ended up finding this wiki page (http://www.diablowiki.net/Stash#Upgrading_the_Stash) showing total cost of upgrading all of your stash is 420k

Looks like my problem was entirely down to lag from somewhere. I tried it again at lunchtime today playing on my PC at work and it was a walk in the park, never even touched either of the health shrines and used one potion in total.

This is basically the way to get past bosses you are having trouble with.  All the bosses through the end of nightmare can be stunned, and it makes it a ton easier if you take advantage of this fact.  So, if you are having trouble, look over your available runes, there is a good chance you've got some abilities which can stun which you can switch to for boss fights.

I am on Act 1, Nightmare. If I Change Quest to Kill Azmodan - ACT III - Normal to help a friend powerlevel, will I lose all my progress? I get a warning that says I will lose all my currently saved progress..

You would have to start from the beginning of whatever quest you're on in Act 1 NM.

Thanks

Item identification: why?

If you don't need scrolls or anything, then why do I have to click a rare to "reveal" its properties? Is doing so randomly generating the stats on it?

I imagine partly so you know what type of item it is before you pick it up.

And partly so you go OH BOY WHAT IS IT.

That use to work, but now it's just downtime before I say, yep it's crap.

Maybe they should half the cast/identify time now that people have played with it for over a week now...

But you know already what type it is, at least from the picture. meh...

Yea there seems to be a couple of holdover things like this. Seemed like they designed it to require that scroll and then said screw up and gave everyone the abiility. Same with town teleport. I still remember over a decade later always needing to manage my inventory. Now I just port back to town at whim.

If I recall correctly ID was actually not in for a while, possibly even as late when I started beta, but I can't remember for sure.  But they got a lot of feedback that people liked that "unwrapping" feeling.  So, they settled on the current ID model, where you get that feeling, but you don't need to buy scrolls and waste inv. on them, and you don't need to identify every standard blue that drops on the group.

Frankly, this is the least of my worries about the game.  If the 2 seconds per yellow you get is causing you to not like the game, your dislike probably goes a lot deeper.

Aside from your stash...do you ever get more inventory space that you carry on your person?  The waypoints are pretty well spaced, but I occasionally find it annoying that I have to go back to town to sell off stuff so often.

No. Stop picking up white/grey stuff.

I only pick up blues and still run out of space. Trips to the shops are part and parcel to Diablo though

Yep, that's kinda what I started doing.  No biggie.

It was just a question... I do not dislike the game overall. Just was wondering.

Is there a way to quick-drop items that I'm missing? Like shift-right click or something?

Not that I am aware of. Drag and drop (literally).

Yeah, sorry, I originally thought your post was in the complaints thread.  My bad.

Have they fixed the issue with Templar shield equipping yet?

Yes, last week.

I want my money back!

Really don't care either way. Just an observation. Like with town teleporting to sell. They both make the game easier than I remember, but they also take some of the suck out of what made the last version more challenging (not "harder", just slightly more of a pita).

Town teleporting to sell is definitely nothing new. You just don't have to carry scrolls of town portal anymore, that's the only difference.

Re: Boss loot drops - is it only the first time you kill a Boss when you would get your definite (I use the term loosely) rares, and each subsequent kill, no matter what difficulty, is just considered random?

I was trying to find it today, but I thought I had read somewhere that if the more elites and rare mobs you killed before a Boss the greater chance it dropped better loot, but of course I can't.

edit - Ok, I just read about the Nephalem Valor system - that's what I was thinking of. Didn't realize it was 60 only.

Yeah, my guess is that Nephalem Valor extended to like 30+, would probably solve a lot of issues.

Is there an arreat summit type database site up yet ?

Is there a hot-key or way to switch between two builds? 
I don't see anything in key-bind, but sure would be nice to have a boss kit and an overland kit - what with having not only to select abilities but also runes... for each and every skill.

No there isn't unfortunately.

What's up with the American servers ? They have been down for what now ? 8 hours ?

Maintenance/update.

It's Tuesday, expected to come back up in ~45 minutes.

Had to fix that up a bit.

What is the definitive Diablo3 info site for recipes/uniques etc?

Blizzard?

#1 feature request. Would just make this game fantastically more enjoyable. Of course they would also have to change how Nephalem Valor works.

My question:

Shields: totally useless in Inferno? Early on they seemed like the way to go for survivability, but a 20% chance to block 1000 damage? Maybe if this was applied after reduction, I could see it being moderately useful.

They also offer a not-insignificant increase to your armor, which reduces damage from all sources.

Hmmm that's true. And it seems like there are some higher-end shields that get closer to 2k+ block amounts. Will have to try it out at some point, I guess.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33271127/Shield.jpg)

 :grin:

That's a compelling argument.

Why are jewelry pieces so much more expensive than armor? I was able to buy an entire set of decent armor + weapon for around 100k at level 35, and a ring or amulet with stats that are kinda-sorta-pretty-good costs like 50-80k each. Are good jewelry drops really that rare? Are the prices just inflated? Am I just bad at searching the AH?

Tradition, as best I can tell.

What does Health Link do with mobs?

Vampiric is where they gain life on doing damage right?

I believe they all share an HP pool if near to one another...


Oh here I found this: http://arewenewatthis.wordpress.com/tag/diablo-3-health-link/

It is applied after reduction. (In my experience)



Anecdotally, I would say jewelry is rarer than other items. It also has to do with the paper doll. Running butcher I find usually 12-15 rares a run. Seeing a ring or amulet seems like a once in 2-3 runs event though. It also comes down to the fact that while I am getting 4-6 or so weapons per run a person only needs one. But the one ring I find in three runs is trying to fill TWO ring slots on each character. Supply and demand yo. And yes, as you mentioned on a weapon all you care about is one stat, how high is the DPS. On an amulet you care about the Dex, Vit, Resist, Magic Find, Crit Damage, Life on Hit, etc...