Morning Friends! One of the aspects of this season that is super hard to get used to is just how prevalent Death’s Breath ends up being. Given that there are a limited number of items that make sense to be equipped on your follower, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be rocking the Sage set for the bonus to DB drops. This is what it looks like when you destroy a slime goblin and the sea of teal that I am not tired of yet. The challenge however is that every other crafting resource seems more scarce, especially the white quality “Reusable Parts”. This however has been a season where I am never having to worry about enchanting or rerolling items because I almost always have a full stock of items waiting to be used.
Yesterday I talked about my hang up with Set Dungeons, but given it was one of the things holding me back I set forth to complete one last night. I remembered Immortal Kings being fairly easy in the past so I cobbled together the set of gear that goes with that build. Thankfully I pretty much had everything I needed already sitting in my vault because I am a horrible packrat when it comes to Diablo loot. At least in this specific instance it really paid off because after all of the hemming and hawing about doing this… I walked in and got mastery on my first attempt. At some point on my non-seasonal characters I really should go through the process of completing all of the set dungeons so I can get those spiffy wings.
That leaves the only real thing left on my seasonal journey gathering enough bounty caches to get Avarice. Right now I have 10 Torment 13 caches and 13 Torment 16 caches sitting in my vault. If you follow the math that i posted yesterday that would give a grand total of 33,220,000 of the 55,000,000 needed for the Avarice achievement. However when it comes to this achievement I always overshoot the goal because I am scared to death that I will start the process and not have enough gold and end up having to farm everything all over again. So my plan right now is to fill up the 12 remaining slots in that vault with Torment 16 caches and maybe start into a second vault just to make certain.
Another part of the seasonal grind is getting Primal Ancient Legendary items and I have to admit my luck has been somewhat spotty in that department. So far I have gotten four with my first one being a Restraint… which would be awesome in any other season where that is a common item needed for a build but significantly less awesome this particular season. The second item was my Bull-Kathos main hand and probably the best possible item I could have hoped for. After that I have picked up two complete trash items in Kymbo’s Gold and Pledge of Caldeum. I WISH that the last of those was a one handed spear instead of a polearm so at least my follower could equip it. This is sorta the way of primals however because they very rarely drop as something that would be useful to you.
The main problem I am encountering right now in progressing is that whatever changes were made to implement follower loot seems to have damaged the overall stability of the game client. I am seeing a significantly higher instance of crashes to desktop and they seem to always happen at the worst possible time. As such I am not holding my bounties open because way too often I end up crashing out on the fifth zone of bounties each time. I have other friends talking about crashing out while doing Greater Rifts and I have had one of those occur as well. I am hoping that maybe just maybe I will farm up enough caches tonight in order to finish the season.
The post A Cache of Caches appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Friends! This is probably going to be a pretty short post given that I honestly don’t have an awful lot to talk about. I am deep into the Diablo 3 seasonal grind and finding it very hard to focus on anything else right now. I am still trying to make sure I log in at least once a day to do ESO daily stuff because that anniversary event is still going on… but timing has conspired to place this seasonal grind in direct conflict with that. I am nearing the end and am very much in the slow grind portion where there is very little effort required but just a lot ore repetition and grinding bounties.
Shocking to no one who has been on this emotional rollercoaster with me before, but I am once again stalled out on the Set Dungeon Mastery portion of this ride. Something you have to understand about me, I have a massive hang up about when being put on a timer. Like I could go into the emotional scars and explain it all to you… and probably have in the past… but suffice to say this is something rooted deep within my psyche and just something I can’t shake no matter how hard I try. If you put me on a timer I am going to fail at whatever the task is. If you time me without me knowing it I am probably going to execute flawlessly and with plenty of time to spare.
So mostly of my life I have developed coping strategies for this by trying really fucking hard to ignore the fact that there is a clock ticking down and I use this to get over my natural aversion to Greater Rifts. However Set Dungeons are a whole new level of hell for me because not only do they require me to be on a timer, but they also require me to do a little dance that feels unnatural while watching the clock. So as a result I put them off until the absolute last moment. For example when I finally do master a set dungeon… I am going to zoom forward and complete everything but the very last set of the seasonal journey because I have literally completed two full steps that I won’t get credit for until I have finished off Slayer.
Set Dungeon mental fuckery aside… I am super close to wrapping the season up its entirety. All of my gems are above level 65 so a few more Greater Rifts and I will be able to get them all to 70. I can easily do 80s but my survival is still not where I would want them to be so it means that I die quite a bit in doing them… but am killing so fast that there is plenty of time on the clock to spare. Basically today I need to get over my mental block and build a set for the appropriate dungeon and just do the thing.
Last night Grace and I managed to get a Speed Demon clear of a Torment X Rift and I was easily able to get a solo Greater Rift 75 clear for that conquest. That leaves the most likely candidate on the books to be Avarice which is easy enough to complete but just time consuming. Essentially there are two ways to do this… hoping and praying that the stars align with your leveled up Boon of the Hoarder and you can complete this naturally. Then there is the method that I usually do which is farm up a bunch of bounty chests and open them all at the same time so that I can get enough gold to drop to finish this up in one go. I’ve gathered the calculations before in the past but going to copy and paste them here largely for my own benefit later.
A T13 bounty cache contains 1,190,000 gold. 43 T13 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.
A T14 bounty cache contains 1,440,000 gold. 35 T14 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.
A T15 bounty cache contains 1,540,000 gold. 33 T15 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.
A T16 bounty cache contains 1,640,000 gold. 31 T16 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.
Right now I have several T13 caches that Grace and I farmed up last night. I will probably switch over to T16 Caches when I start farming on my own later today. As a result I am probably going to end up in a similar situation that I have been before of farming up a page and a half of these in my inventory before attempting to do a mass opening and getting the achievement. I seem to usually land somewhere around 35 caches before doing the open. I have no clue how long it is going to take me to do the necessary farming but that and the mindfuck that is the set dungeon mastery are really the only things standing in my way. I also need to extract 19 legendaries but the bounty farm will give me more than enough materials to finish that off.
The post Set Mastery is my Kryptonite appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! Those of you who have been around awhile will know that it was only a matter of time before I would be back on my Diablo nonsense once again. This past Friday signaled the opening of Season 23 and with it a whole new grind to the top for loot and fame. Actually for me personally it is always entirely about the pet that is generally the final reward for making it all the way in a season. I don’t make it every season, but this one contains a pet that is so purrfect that I have to do it no matter what.
You can check out all of the rewards on the official blog post but really… it is all about this weird half cat half goblin thing that I love and need to be my friend. I mean the portrait frame is pretty badass as well but really… its about the pet. Apart from the rewards I just generally have a good time hanging out with my friend Grace and stomping demons. This time around they gave us a greatest hits collection of amazing builds to play with on Haedrig’s Gift which is gained through completing some meta achievements. The sets that are up for grabs this time are as follows:
Monk – Rainment of a Thousand Storms
Demon Hunter – Unhallowed Essence
Crusader – Roland’s Legacy
Wizard – Tal Rasha’s Elements
Barbarian – Wrath of the Wastes
Witch Doctor – Helltooth Harness
Necromancer – Bones of Rathma
I think we got all of these tried and true sets in part because this season ushers in quite possibly the largest change to take place with Diablo 3 in a since maybe loot 2.0. Our loyal followers now get full gear builds which greatly increases their general effectiveness in combat but also brings with it some interesting party tricks. A new affix is showing up on gear called “Emanates” which means if the item is equipped on your follower, the effect will spill over to your character as well. So for example if I throw Nemesis Bracers on my Templar it will allow Elites to spawn any time I pop a Shrine freeing up a slot for my build that would have consumed either space in the cube or my bracers slot. Similarly I have mine equipped in 3 pieces of Sage armor so that every time I get Deaths Breath I get twice as much…. leading to an interesting situation of not being quite so limited in that department. You can check this wiki page for a full list of gear that has this new Emanates property.
I went with the tried and true “Spin to Win” Barbarian build because honestly of all of the sets available it is by far my favorite. It was a close tossup with Demon Hunter, which is also a build that I greatly love but seeing as Grace went that I think we are covered for stupid amounts of wave clear. There was actually this weird place in the leveling curve where I was the primary carry which is a relatively new feeling for me given that she is usually dragging my worthless butt around. Right now I pretty much have to stay out ahead of her to remain useful when grouped up because she just destroys everything in sight. My biggest challenge the entire season has been survival and trying not to die to things that are likely going to kill me.
The other major issue that I suffered from for a very long time was resource generation. My personal preference for a whirlwind build is to run the Bull-Kathos set of weapons which greatly increases your fury generation and makes it so that you can basically whirlwind forever… and speeds you up in the process. I pulled a grand total of eight Bull-Kathos Solemn Vow before ever seeing a single Warriors Blood but thankfully when I did finally get one… it was a Primal Ancient Legendary. For now I am running full diamonds for survival and it seems to mostly work. I finally got my Templar the immunity item which also helped me in the “cheat death” department as well. Now comes the slow grind of leveling gems and actually doing set dungeons and such to knock out seasonal objectives.
The other big thing that I did this season is spend a good chunk of my Friday off cleaning out my vault and deleting characters. Previously I was locked with no ability to create new characters and now at least before the season I was down to just having a single character of each class. Ultimately my goal is to create new characters each season and then delete back down at the end of the season so that I maintain the “one of each” flow. I did ultimately create two Barbarians this season… one to actually play and a level 1 Barbarian that I named “DeleteMe” that I used to gamble on getting a Band of Might since at level one there are only two possible legendary rings I could have gotten. All in all a great start to the season and hopefully in the coming week I can knock out the rest of the bits. Avarice and the bounty grind is going to be the longest part which I should be getting started on shortly.
The post Diablo 3 Season 23 Nonsense appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Tonight once again a discussion happened off air and we sorta reprise this a bit at the beginning of the show as we talk streaming services. From there we talk about Dorf Romantik and how it doesn’t include any Dwarves at all but is still awesome. From there we talk about Deep Rock Galactic which we are pretty sure is a Dwarf game. Kodra and Bel talk about Magic the Gathering Arena on the Phone with the recent launch of the iOS version. Tam talks about his experiences with the Outriders launch. Bel and Grace talk about the launch of Diablo 3 Season 23 and the joy of emanate with follower equipment. Finally we wrap with some discussion about Warhammer Fantasy and the High Elves army.
