Random Newbie Question

[Druover]

Hey guys, just tried the Diablo III trial and loved it, so I bought it. I've played wow for years, and played Diablo I alot, but I'm not very familiar with Diablo III. I've tried reading numerous posts on this board, and most of the things referenced are new to me (paragons, inferno mode, etc..). As of right now, i'm jsut a lowly level 12 barbarian on default difficulty who just clicked start game.

So my question, in WoW, there was a progression to end game. 1. level up to max level, 2. run heroic dungeons, 3. run lfr to gear up, 4. RAID!

Well, at least that was the progression i went through..probably doesn't apply to hard core raiders.

Anyways, what is the equivalent in Diablo?

I'm guessing step 1 is to beat the game on regular. Then do I play again with same character on hard, and then again on superhard or whatever??? Getting better gear as I progress each time? If I start a new character, can i go straigt to harder modes, or do i need to run through regular once to gear up first?

Just questions like that...looking for a path to end game that makes sense. Dont care about rushing to max end game...i really do want to enjoy the ride (so i'm not looking for the most efficient necessarily), but just want to understand the next logical steps once I beat this on normal.

Thanks so much in advance!

[Coldkil]

Well, the endgame in Diablo is much more simple: farm items.

First, you need to get to 60 - normally you will reach it during act 3 Hell mode without farming things; also, you don't need particular gear to advance up to level 60 and Inferno, the things you drop are enough to proceed.

Things change at Inferno - cutting right to the point, at 60 you'll probably have not so good gear. Hence you start farming on MP0 (an additional slider of difficulty you can adjust manually) and very likely you'll be able to kill Diablo (it's not that hard).

Once you've done this, you can start farming for better gear to get higher MP doable and farm Paragon levels (an additional 100 levels which grant you bonuses to gold find and magic find). Atm, farming for gear is not that worth because of expansion coming soon, but the paragon XP you get now will be pèorted into new expansion point per point, so it's not time lost/wasted.

Another thing you can do is to craft the hellfire ring; i won't enter in detail (you can find a guide on youtube on how to get it) but it will keep you occupied at least some time.

A final personal opinion: D3 has fundamental flaws that basically made the development team to focus on fixing them instead of creating new endgame content. The expansion has tackled them pretty well, plus introducing new ways of playing, so i expect to see future content patches (at least i hope so).

[Druover]

Thanks Coldkill! Appreciate the feedback and guidance!

followup question: you mention act III hell mode and inferno mode. Are these difficulty settings? So do i beat the game on regular, then beat it on hell mode, and then lastly on inferno (once high enough level like you indicated)?

Also, you referenced "farming". Does that mean once i hit 60 and can do inferno mode, i'll just want to go kill random enemies throughout various early zones to get better gear and level up?

Thanks again!

[Dhrizzle]

There are two difficulty settings in Diablo 3.
The one that goes Normal - Nightmare - Hell - Inferno can be considered progression for your character. Once you've completed the game on Normal you start again in Act I of Nightmare with the monsters becoming progressively higher in level. An important difference to note is monster "affixes", those are the descriptions of elite monsters' special abilities that you have likely seen, things like "Teleporter" (monster jumps to you), "Vortex" (monster sucks you to them), "Mortar" (monster has a ranged, artillery-type attack) and so on. In Normal mode elite monsters only have one affix, in Nightmare they have two, Hell three and Inferno four. This can lead to some pretty hectic and often unfair fights, especially when they have lots of AoE abilities and can root you to the spot. You have to complete Act IV on a previous difficulty before you can move on to the next, so no skipping Hell to move onto Inferno for example.

Monster Power is a second difficulty setting and one you can change any time from the Select Quest menu, it runs from 0 to 10. Higher Monster Power means the monsters hit harder, have more life but drop more gold and magic items. It's basically there so you can make sure you're getting a level of challenge that feels appropriate to you, I usually find myself boosting it quite high during Nightmare and gradually dropping it until I'm playing 0 or 1 on Inferno but it's totally up to you.

Farming is going back to content you know you can complete in order to gear up for something you're struggling with. There's probably a guide somewhere on the 'net that tells you the most efficient areas to farm or you can just go to your favourite quests and farm how you want.

[Druover]

Dhrizzle, thank you. That explanation helped a ton. Buying the game online is nice, but I do miss the instruction booklet that probably explained many of these things. But again, that really helped clear things up...many thanks!!

One last question if someone doesn't mind giving their time to respond again:

If I complete normal on one character (barbarian currently), and then I start a 2nd (lets say wizard), can i go directly to nightmare difficulty with the wizard, or must he beat normal first as well?

Thanks again!

[Patryn]

No you have to play through the story on each character to unlock the next difficulty for that character. In ROS this will be different and you can adjust the difficulty on the fly and not even play the story if you don't want to.

[Delaios]

Just adding to Patryn's post. In the expansion monsters will scale to your level, meaning you can level up in any difficulty or act you want. Currently you'll have to go up in diffficulty and acts to level at a decent pace because monster levels are fixed. In the expansion you'll be able to level in the difficulty you feel most comfortable at.
My adivse would be to just get to 60 at a pace you enjoy and not worry about Paragon levels too much. Grinding Paragon levels involves killing masses of mobs with Nephalem Valor stacks, on a difficulty setting that allows you to one or two shot most normal monsters. Killing speed relies heavily on your gear. Getting gear good enough to farm at Inferno, without additional Monster Power, pretty much requires you to spend gold/money on the AH. You're probably better of farming gold in Hell mode, than farming monsters in Inferno for drops.

I'm not sure if the Hellfire ring is a realistic goal for you at this time. It involves farming the plan and 3 different keys from Keywardens to craft an Infernal Machine. Those keys only drop at Inferno difficulty and require you to get 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor (you get this for killing champion/rare packs, opening golden chests and completing certain events when at max level). The drop chance for the individual keys is terrible unless you run at high Monster Power settings, but you can't run those settings without good gear.
Once you have all 3 keys and the plans, you'll be able to use your crafted Infernal Machine to open a portal and battle a pair of Uber bosses (beefed up versions of regular bosses). Which pair you get is random and each pair has a chance to drop a particular component for the ring. The Infernal Machine is consumed when used. Basically it's RNG (getting keys) upon RNG (getting the right pair of bosses for missing components) upon RNG (getting the part to drop).