Diablo III dorkitude

See? Fire! I am seriously badass.

Last weekend, when I wasn't busy panicking that we were going to die in the mountains or buying moisture-wicking clothes in an attempt to avoid becoming a portable sweat swamp, I did some gaming! Part of this involved a vicious bidding war with at least one other person on a pair of Fire Walkers, which are legendary boots in Diablo III that were recently given a fabulous new property: they BURN! You can see the flames around my feet, and of course the boots were bright red. I hoped they would be. J will know all about how I love a red boot... (as usual, click on the pictures for higher resolution ones if you want to see them a little better)

Bidding on the Diablo III auction house works exactly the same as with eBay, so you can sneak some great deals out from under people if you have really good luck and you're prepared to stare at a couple screens intently, waiting for exactly the right second. These boots usually go for no less of a buyout than 4 million gold, so I was watching an auction that had a bid of 1.5 million. I put in my own bid, with a maximum of 1.6, and waited to see what would happen. I made sure the screen was switched over to the one where cash would appear if I was outbid, so I could instantly send it back to myself (you have to do that before the game realizes you have it in your account again to use for another bid).

Here they are without the fire.

Sure enough, when we had less than one minute to go, the screen told me that someone had outbid me on them, so as fast as I could I sent my refunded 1.6 million gold back to myself, clicked on the boots and placed another bid with a max of 2 million. Really, I probably should've done 2.2, but it doesn't matter. Apparently whoever I was bidding against tried again, but since their new max was 2 million, I won. If two bids have the same maximum, whoever made it first wins. Yay!

I'm sure my coup immensely irritated whomever I was bidding against, but I was thrilled! I'd been waffling about whether I wanted to wait and save up for a really amazing pair of these with huge stat increases for me or if I wanted to just get some that were approximately where my previous boots were so I could start enjoying them immediately, and I finally decided to go for it.

These boots are so fun, y'all. They leave a molten trail behind you, which ticks (does damage every second) for about 3-5k, more than enough to smash every breakable item in the game when you run by it. Further, you can crash through doors without having to shoot them open, and you have that added damage per second running along behind you when kiting stuff (stringing monsters along behind you so you can make them run through your various spells and do damage to them while still staying out of reach).

Molten trail!

There are some creatures in this game called treasure goblins, and they are little looting monsters that will only run away from you, not trying to do any damage. In higher difficulties, they have a lot of health, and if you don't kill them quickly enough, they will open a portal and disappear into it with a maddening giggle. This will make you want to smash your face into the keyboard.

They scatter gold behind them as they run, so you can follow the trail to them if you lose them momentarily, but generally you want to be close enough that that's not a problem. They drop a lot of loot if you manage to get one of them, so they're worth going after. These boots just make killing them even more fun. Instead of just chasing them around and pelting them with spells as usual, I now try to run over and stand on their faces while killing them. Another couple thousand damage per second is nothing to sneeze at! Plus it's funny. Burn, baby, burn!

Seriously, the running around and smashing things with my boots does not get old. I'm so easily entertained, it's hilarious. It's like a whole new game. I purposely went back and did Act I just so I could go smash a bunch of ash vases in the crypts, and it's great fun. Ahhh, cheap entertainment...

Patrick's demon hunter Gabriel with Morgause

Most of the pictures in this post were taken in Act III, which is where we do a lot of our playing. Act III has to do with the siege of Bastion's Keep by hordes of monsters pouring out of Mt Arreat's crater, led by Azmodan, the lord of sin. When we first did it, it was incredibly difficult, but we've gotten more skill and better gear since then.

You tend to get better item drops in Act III because there are far more elite groups to kill than in Act IV, despite IV having higher good drop percentages. When you get to level 60 in this game, you start gaining something called Nephalem Valor stacks (this is a "buff", which means it's a good thing for your character to have, as opposed to a "debuff") whenever you kill an elite pack. It stacks up to 5 times, and gives you a boost to magic and gold find. At 5 stacks, you're guaranteed a rare item drop from every elite mob you kill. This is nice, since these are the items that have a chance to be really awesome and either sell for a lot of gold on the auction house or drastically improve your own gear.

Every time you gain a stack of Nephalem Valor, the clock starts ticking down again from 30 minutes, so that's how long you have to kill another pack if you want to maintain your stack. If you don't kill another elite pack within that timeframe, any previous stacks of this buff will fall off, and you start all over. We therefore try to maintain a pretty steady pace, starting with the Machines of War quest out in the open fields and moving down through the entire crater until we reach the first boss, Cydaea. At this point, with our current gear, she isn't really worth killing. She's too irritating with her zillion summoned spiderlings, and it still takes a few attempts to kill her. Each time you die in this game, your items lose 10% durability and you have to spend gold to repair them. If you don't, they eventually lose all durability and provide no protection until you do so.

If you're trying to farm (that's what gamers call it when you do an area over and over looking for drops or experience points) for gold and items, you don't really want to do stuff that has a chance of costing you quite a bit of gold for very little possible return. So far, the best farming we've found is to go from that aforementioned Machines of War to Cydaea and then ditch that game for a new one. Every time you start playing again in Diablo III, you make a new game. It isn't like World of Warcraft, with a persistent world that exists all the time for everybody. You can have a maximum of four players in each Diablo III game, and everyone only sees their own loot. This is such a vast improvement over the old system where everyone had to madly click for loot as soon as it dropped in the hopes of snatching something good out from under everyone else.

The new Paragon system Blizz recently implemented in the game is fun, too. Makes playing endgame actually seem worthwhile for more than just lootwhoring. There are 100 Paragon levels, and they take forever to achieve. You can't even start earning them until you hit level 60. Each one gives you more stat increases and 3% to each magic and gold find. Most high level players want as much of both of those as they can get, since when you've beaten the game the only real goal most of us have anymore is finding amazing loot. This new system with the guaranteed progress toward earning stat and magic/gold find increases makes it seem like you're achieving something when you play, even if you don't get any really great drops.

Anyway, it's been a real blast having these new boots. They're so much fun just to run around in. Endgames should always be this entertaining! No more of this Get To The Highest Level And Then Do Nothing But Daily Quests Unless You Want To Raid As A Second Job. I confess to actually being impressed by Blizzard having the brains to come up with this new system. Generally we gamers tend to be really disparaging of stuff that company does, which is amusing when you consider how many of us play and love their games... This game is terrible. I can't believe they even put this out, this game is such crap. Wtf, Blizz. #blizzfail (and so forth). We're a very complainy group. But in this case, I think they did a great job, and I'm very pleased. Thanks, Blizz!