Tag: Diablo

Completed Diablo 4.
Legendary items aren’t the rarest type of item, that’s why their names are so generic. That’s the bit I didn’t understand, or maybe forgot. Finally got my first Unique item. From a Treasure Goblin again, I think.
I know I complained that story bosses are useless. Well, Duriel dropped two unique items. Yes, there’s Duriel again.

The battle cinematic reminded me of those times when we were playing a game just to see the next cutscene. It’s that good.
It’s strange writing that both Donan’s (the fat guy) death and Neryelle loosing her hand are so… Offhand. Neryelle gets bitten by a random zombie, and Lorath has to chop her arm off, and Donan gets poked by a zombie column. Remembering how they offed Decard Cain in Diablo 3 like he wasn’t the cult character in the first two games, that’s nothing.

What I do have trouble with is… consistency. I know this is a story about angels and demons (and divorced parenthood). But why Mephisto is in some kind of a bubble?

Is Diablo and Baal also in bubbles somewhere? Lilith says that this is an eternal battle, because things like hatred won’t just disappear. But then her dying is suddenly a big thing? I mean, can’t she just reappear in a bubble like Mephisto?

After all, we killed Andariel and Duriel at least twice already.

Just as I complained that I’m not getting any orange drops, I got my first proper orange drop. And a bow at that.
I feel that there’s a lot of backtracking for a modern game in Diablo 4. Maybe that’s intentional, or maybe I’m missing something, but I often couldn’t jump to the dungeon entrance, like with the “cerberus” dungeon, or back to the quest-giver, like with the “druid on a tree”. Sometimes you have to mow through the same mobs again. Sometimes you’re just walking the empty halls. Both doesn’t add anything to the game experience.

Around level 30, end of Act 2, the game becomes a slump. The monsters are getting more and more meaty, but your gear doesn’t scale with them. And that “orange” bow you picked a few levels ago is now doing same DPS as the “blue” drops.
Also, because it’s an open-world game, and the monsters simply level up with you, there’s this discrepancy that you just defeated The Guardian of Cathedral of Hatred, but then you fell victim to a porcupine.

Ironic that the one of the best written quests is also annoying to complete. The sad story about the Goose Sign, I mean.

I wasn’t much interested in Diablo 3 when it was announced, as I didn’t even play the Lord of Destruction at the time. So to me all the promises and changes are fascinating, especially as I know the final product well enough.
Even more interesting that some things that they promised in Diablo 3 were actually later implemented in Diablo 4.

I’m not much into speedrunning, but I found this video to be fascinating for a couple of reasons:

First, the author managed to bring together most of the speedrunners to get their opinion. Second, he explains pretty well what techniques they use to optimise their runs. And finally, unlike many other game speedruns, those don’t rely on glitches much, it seems.

Getting to level 60 allows you to change difficulty level. And finally die from regular monsters, or at lest from elites.
Surprisingly, I got two set items, and both are from the same set. One from leveling to level 60, and another from one of the dungeon bosses.
There seems to be no more storyline after that point, but you get some sidequests related to characters that you’ve met some 20 hours ago.

For example Valla, a demon hunter we meet in the second chapter, is now tormented by a demon that recreates the horrible moments of her past: her family being killed by demons and all that.

At the end of that questline she gets her iconic red scarf:

I don’t play many F2P games at all. So for me the fact that Diablo Immortal has around 16 different types of resources seems kind of crazy.

By 49th level finally managed to join a raid for Lassal, and we even beat him. At least now I can stop thinking about it.

Had two legendary items drop from updating a monster entry in the in-game encyclopedia. I’ve beaten bosses for far less.
By 53th level I think there’s another such a slump. Takes a day or two of grind to get to level 56. Encyclopedia gives huge boosts, though.

Got a second legendary helmet, and it’s the same as my first one. That’s just my luck 🤷‍♂️

Bounties are pretty boring, but they do allow to level up pretty quickly, I give them that.
There are no two-handed weapons in this game. But if you play as crusader, one of the rage-modes is a two-handed sword.

Around 35th level you get access to raids of 8 people. Gathering enough players is quite hard. The chat is full of calls for Lassal (which is the name of the raid boss). Reminds me why I hate MMOs.

Of course 3rd episode is Jungle. It’s not bad, though. Fetishes are one of my favorite enemies in terms of the design.

Guess who’ve got two legendary shields of the same type? 🤦‍♂️

Hit my first roadblock at the end of the dessert episode, when the game told me literally that I need to be at level 35 to progress, while my character was only 32.
Also about that time got my first Legendary item. Those are the only items that actually need to be identified in town.
Besides the usual gem system that has been around since Diablo 2, there’s also a new “rank” system, that basically allows you to upgrade different equipment slots. That is, if you level up rank of your shield slot, any shield that you wield will become stronger. Level up everything!
The nice part is that when you equip a new item with sockets, the game will also propose you to transfer your gems to this new item. Very convenient.

Diablo Immortal also made me aware that Diablo lore was quite heavily retconed.
Now the Dark Wanderer in Diablo 2 is not just your anonymous warrior character from Diablo 1, but Aiden, son of Leoric and elder brother of whatever the name of son of Leoric was.

Diablo 3 for the poor from the authors of Diablo 3? Not necessarily a bad thing, really. I mean, Diablo 3 wasn’t especially technologically advanced even when it first came out ten years ago. And nowadays some phones have 12 RAM. So it shouldn’t be surprising that they are able to run the game just fine. After all, Diablo 3 was running great on Nintendo Switch back in 2018, and it’s actually my favorite version of the game. Also, it seems the game runs in a low resolution. So the camera on PC feels very close to the character.

Item stats are super-basic. Every item has just one attribute: attack for a weapon, HP for armor.
Once you get past the training quest line, the game begins to resemble MMO. You’ll see other people around you running and killing monsters. But I managed to ignore them mostly. A couple of times I had to go into dungeons with other people, but those end pretty quickly.

The way most of the quests work is usually that you need to kill X enemies to progress.
There are no rolls. Not sure if there ever were rolls mechanic in the PC version of Diablo 3, though. Tried PC version now, and there’s still no support for gamepad in it.

It’s really impressive that they voiced all the dialogues. And there are even some cinematics.