Diablo Nerds - The Darkening of Tristram

Diablo 3's 20th anniversary patch is now live.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HEqHl9Wf6mE

I was pretty excited about this. I haven't played D3 since ~March of last year.

It took a little while to download and install all the updates, but I managed to remember my password and answer my confirmation question to prove to Battle.net that I was me.

I couldn't remember how hard the Torment Levels really were, I knew my Crusader with the full Invoker Set was a bad ass and soloing pretty high Greater Rifts when I used him last, so I decided to softball it, and started a Torment V game.

Everything was going great, running through the Old Tristram labyrinth easily with my previously mentioned Invoker Crusader, drops were pretty poor, a few veiled crystals, a bunch of gems, and one ancient flail that was hidden under a tile. I killed The Butcher and a few other elites none of which dropped anything of substance. The Butcher dropped "The Butcher's Cleaver," but it's just a blue/magic item, I did get an achievement for picking it up though.

I was almost done with level 5 of The Labyrinth when I recalled one of the reasons I quit playing again last Spring, the game randomly freezes and locks up my computer. My laptop has a discrete Radeon GPU it switches to for gaming and the like. It's a known issue that Blizzard stuff doesn't play well with "vintage" Radeon cards. Apparently even with the latest drivers from AMD and a years worth of updates from Blizzard, there's still not a fix for the bug.

I may get motivated enough to try again later, but from what I've seen so far, there was no nostalgia to it, and I'm a HUGE Diablo fan, I even have the Hellfire expansion for D1, so far it's just a crappier looking version of the same D3 dungeons with a randomly dispersed original game NPC or boss every now and then.

Rat's, I was expecting Lambo content

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Rat's, I was expecting Lambo content

I've always been more of a Countach man.

I thought there were a few other Diablo (the video game) fans around here. I realize I might be a super fan/super nerd though, so no surprise at the vacant thread.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it being 20 years since I played the first one.

I felt like D3 got wrong a lot of the tension stuff that made the original special. Introducing the Butcher like he's a pro wrestler? That's not as scary as just opening a door and SUDDENLY THE BUTCHER WHY IS THIS HAPPENING!

I have D3 on the PS4 but having kids takes away a lot of the co-op time for me and the wife. Oh well, in a few years I'll just play with my son!

In reply to The0retical:

"You've found a horadric cube!"

dculberson wrote: In reply to The0retical: "You've found a horadric cube!"

Oh no, I just read that in his voice.

DW and I played a TON of Diablo I and II on the Mac and III on the PS3. We both put 2 characters through the console version, and it was fun playing coop, but yeah, nothing beat playing the original late at night in a dark room with headphones on.

As bad as blizzard butchered WoW the last few years i didnt even buy diablo3. Seems like i didnt miss much!

D3 took a bit of getting used to but once I finally got used to playing on a console with a controller I started to really enjoy it.

Darkening was more of a Tribute than a recreation. That said I enjoyed it. My Wizard walked through it in just under 2 hours, although the butcher did kill me once. I got lazy and he hammered me one time. That was my only death.

dropstep wrote: As bad as blizzard butchered WoW the last few years i didnt even buy diablo3. Seems like i didnt miss much!

I didn't buy D3 or SC2 because I completely disagree with the always online DRM that they packaged into it. I was traveling a lot at the time and when I stopped my internet was heavily restricted so I wouldn't have been able to play even if I wanted.

I hear it's been removed but I'm told I have a problem letting go of grudges.

I have a deep unabiding love of Warcraft Lore though. I haven't had a taste of the WoW smack in since about a month after Cataclysm was released. I plan to keep it that way.

Anyone play on PS4? I've not played co-op.

"Productive" Friday night.

I re-rolled my old Witch Doctor for this season. I did a few bounties on Normal and Hard to get some XP and gear, then did the Darkening of Tristram on Hard, entered at 21 and finished at 32, so it was worth some XP, but all of the drops were garbage, except maybe the Read Soul Shard that Big D drops, but I doubt I'll ever find a use for it.

I was hoping to get the Butcher Pet, but didn't read the requirements closely enough before I started, you must start fresh at level one and complete the dungeon from start to finish with the fresh character in one game to get a little Butcher of your own.

The0retical wrote:

dropstep wrote: As bad as blizzard butchered WoW the last few years i didnt even buy diablo3. Seems like i didnt miss much!

I didn't buy D3 or SC2 because I completely disagree with the always online DRM that they packaged into it. I was traveling a lot at the time and when I stopped my internet was heavily restricted so I wouldn't have been able to play even if I wanted. I hear it's been removed but I'm told I have a problem letting go of grudges. I have a deep unabiding love of Warcraft Lore though. I haven't had a taste of the WoW smack in since about a month after Cataclysm was released. I plan to keep it that way.

Dont worry if you go back now you will just be dissapointed. Its been a steady decline since cata.

I'd like to get D3 for my computer but I have no idea if my laptop can handle it. I'll probably just hold out and get it for ps4 when I manage to scrounge up the cash for new playstation.

Had it on ps3 but having a friend that dupes items makes it boring after a while since I could have anything I wanted.

Blizzard still eats a ton of my free time though since SC2, Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm are all on my computer.

In reply to Grizz:

I don't think I've ever played an RPG on a console that I didn't find cumbersome, Zelda might be the only exception. I've got friends that played Diablo 3 on the Xbox and don't seem to mind it, but when the RoS expansion was released they both went to the PC version.

There may be dupping on D3, I know there was on D2, but I don't know how. When Blizzard released the patch to Loot 2.0, and did away with the auction houses, Diablo game play and drops got a lot better. Though with most good items being account bound now, I'm not sure how you'd be able to dupe.

Diablo 3 isn't a very demanding game, as long as you've got better than dial-up internet and a computer that's <10 years old it'll probably be playable.

My aging laptop handles Star Craft 2 and Diablo 3 fine. My Diablo 3 graphics settings are all High with Fullscreen Anti-Aliasing at 1366x768.

My laptop is nothing special, just a ~5 year old Vostro 3550, 64-bit Win 7 Pro, 7200 RPM HD, 8 Gb of DDR3 Ram, Core i5 2430m (that's only a dual core 2.4 Ghz with HT), and a switchable Radeon 6600m GPU.

Duping on D3 is stupid easy, you go into a friends game, drop your E36 M3, and hard quit out so it doesn't save on exit.

Had the same issue on Borderlands 2, where someone would come on and just toss everything down. Sucks a lot of the fun out of the game.

As far as it playing odd on console, it's not bad at all.

E: my problem with most games is that I don't have a graphics card, and have to rely on the garbage intel hd thing that came with the laptop.

In reply to Grizz:

Does that still work? Almost all items, they one's you want anyway, i.e. Sets, Legendaries, Gems, etc. are "account bound." You can only trade items among your own characters on your own account by putting them in your stash. You can trade/give items to other players, but only if the other player was in the same game as you when you found that item, and then only for a short period of time, like 4-6 hours after you found it, then it becomes account bound.

Dunno, I haven't played it in a while, that might have been their solution to duping.

As I continue to keep dragging back up a thread no one really cares about, I finally got the Darkening of Tristram achievement reward, my very own little Butcher pet to follow me around.

I never played 1or 2, but hearing how D3 was supposed to be some kind of gaming Holy Grail, I took the offer from Blizzard for D3 for free with a 1 year subscription to WoW. I made it a few hours before I quit, and I cancelled my WoW after that year and haven't touched either since.