If You Knew Back Then… What You Know Right Now
Posted 4 March 2013 by FluxA fan asked a question I think about now and then, and got a Blue reply:
knowing what you know now after playing for a year, what would you do differently? Use a different character? New gear? Spent LESS time doing…? Spent MORE time doing…? What would you do now to improve your experience?
Grimiku: I would personally start in Hardcore instead of Normal, focus on crafting right off the bat, and pick up everything instead of holding Left CTRL + Mouse Over to see if it’s worth picking up or not. Also, I would initially roll with a Barbarian who uses nothing but 2-handers.
This topic came up during podcast recording early this evening, when we were talking about amassing riches and leveling up a variety of characters (or not). I’ve never gotten that rich in D3, largely since I always planned to play all five classes and have thus saved 90% of my most valuable item finds to use myself, rather than selling them off. Furthermore, during my initial play through to 60 I alternated time between a Wizard, Demon Hunter, and Barbarian, and did it (almost) all self-found.
In retrospect, that was sub-optimal Diablo 3 strategy on both counts, and if I could send myself a message to May 14th, 2012, I’d tell me to focus 100% of my play time on one class (it doesn’t really matter which one), and to immediately GAH everything that wasn’t ideal for that class. This would have gotten me to 60 much more quickly and amassed me a ton of gold along the way, which would have bought me better gear, which would have earned me more gold, etc.
Insert morale here about learning as I played, enjoying it more since I had to work for it, walking five miles to school through the snow uphill both ways, etc.
But that’s me. What would you guys change about your early playing experience in Diablo 3? What would you recommend for someone else if they were just starting the game now (such as the hordes of PlayStation gamers, sometime soon)?
Incidentally, there’s no funnier answer to this question than something like, “cancel my preorder/kill myself/go back in time to keep Jay Wilson’s parents from ever meeting/etc.” So be sure you put that as your reply, since we’ll all think it’s really funny and clever and will frankly admire your original wit and brilliance.
Yep. Rolled a barb.
Actually, that wouldn’t have been the best idea until later patches when melee got much better. I was reserving my DH to play with friends only, so started a Barb first and had to park it outside of Act 2 Inferno forever. I wish I would have gotten my DH to 60 first when IAS was crazy good, Smoke Screen was out of control, and Nether Tentacles was broken. Got to that ship too late. But honestly, I wouldn’t change much. I’m sure I could have AHed better or learned the value of items better, etc. but it’s been fun all around, so I think I’d say just pick up everything and have fun and not necessarily worry about efficiency until hundreds of hours later.
To stay away from the auction house. It was too powerful and I wasted too much gold due to my naivety. Would it be optimal? Nope, but I would have had the perception that I was making progress through inferno.
I would go back in time and tell myself “wait a year so that the game gets fully released”
With hindsight, I should never have bought the game.
amen
Can we just keep all the ‘not bought the game’ comments in this specific instance of replies? Or keep them as just recommendations of the initial post? It’ll be kind to the people who have regrets in how they play the game at least.
And yeah…buying the game is on my list as well…even getting it on sale i still wish I had not gotten DIII….as it stands I don’t want to buy or play another ARPG..because I have one I bought recently..and I feel I should get my money out of it.
As for a regret in the game….trying to level up other characters thinking they’d be more fun endgame/playing/whatever. In reality the game only started to become more than a grind when I got my first high level powerful enough to trivilize MP0 (except for extreemly hard bosses) I now do alk runs..and break it up at the end by running through the keep level 2 (which yes is part of a normal alk run I know) but specifically try to get the highest kill combo possible. So yeah, not alt as much thinking a second high level alt would be easier/more fun.
instead of obsessing of efficiency try pushing yourself to run higher mps at a reasonable pace…Also, if you get the right group of people you can actually run faster at highers than lower mps.
wow I can’t type…I mean the challenge helps takes the grind out. Other things that help are farming different areas, trying to complete achievements, trying a completely different skill set and/or class.
Lol, since when should this be a choice? Have fun, or grind efficently and actually progress, you shouldn’t have to make a choice like that. The thing is “have fun” is really just “challenge yourself” and I don’t really like the game when its challenging, I have fun when I progress and get loot etc, thats the point of this game, its too bad that just means I play by myself all the time, they should really just give loot/xp for partys, until that happens ill continue to have a complete blast on PoE.
Been there done that with ‘higher MP challenge’. Exact same thing, just takes longer to do, and/or everything is one shot kills. I’ve tried going to other areas, most of the game is boring to play. And I’ve obviously tried raising other characters, just playing them through the game is boring, and when I raised the MP the game didn’t get harder..it just took even longer to kill the enemies. So playing through the game is boring for me as well.
Again I’ve forced myself to play the game, just to get as high as I have. I’ve only found the game ‘fun’ when I finally got to where I could squish an MP.
It also dosn’t help most characters only having certain setups working, period. Or certain ones don’t work until you’re cracked out in gear and the MP is trivial anyway.
Maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but I’d definitely warn myself not to indulge in Blizzard’s massive 2008-2013 pre-release hype. The final product failing to meet even LoD-level expectations probably were what killed the whole thing for me. It might have been more acceptable as a stand-alone game from a less premium developer and less premium price tag.
If I knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have played Diablo 2 since it sucked so much for a long time aswell and online it sucked for even longer.
Still glad I played it in the end.
I would have quit the game after inferno and spent my summer outside. My friends did tons of fun things and stopped calling me altogether while I wasted my time inside, hoping this game was gonna get better. Not this summer.
Based on the title, if I knew back then what I know now I would not have purchased D3 in the first place. However, having read more than the title, and if I already purchased D3 and knew what I know now, and was actually going to play regardless, when starting out I would have picked a class and stuck with it instead of playing all 5 classes simultaneously to 60.
Each one hit the brick wall at 60 and I wasted tons of gold outfitting all 5. I would have been better off only playing one and gearing him/her to farm Act 3 Inferno. From there I could have outfitted the other 4 classes with ease.
One last thing, I would not have started with a Barb. Blowing tornados out your ass to kill everything as you run away like a pansy is not my idea of playing a Barb. Sure it would have been the best way to get rich, and yes at some point I would have tried it for the lulz of experiencing the build first hand, but no ffffing way I would play this as my main. Blizzard should be embarrassed.
would’ve have played more hours and smarter with my hc barb
would have been the first to solo Diablo in Inferno
then it would be me with my own youtube channel, 1000′s each month in ad revenue and hordes of fanboys instead of Kripp
Except he wasn’t the first to solo Inferno Diablo? Remember? He did it with Krippy or whoever his Wizard buddy was at the time. Can’t recall offhand.
But yeah, not gonna lie he has a pretty sweet set up going for now. I think I would get too bored playing and streaming all the time, but to each his or her own.
Probably the only thing that I’ve 180ed on that I could’ve done from the start was not outfitting my followers with as much MF gear as possible right away.
By the time the MP system was patched in, I realized that there was no way follower DPS could scale at the same rate as my own, so they were becoming mosquitoes wielding toothpicks good for some CC, buffs to my own damage, and MF. I’m slowly getting them outfitted with jewelry with MF on it, but it’s going to be a while before I find a Sun Keeper/Grand Vizier or anything else useful for them, so I wish I had kept the high-roll MF jewelry I most likely previously found and then vendored/salvaged.
I regret starting a monk instead of a barb and deleting said monk because I couldn’t get a daibo based build to work…
Currently leveling a barb though and loving it.
I would tell myself to stop grinding Act 1 Butchers runs when my first hero (a barb) hit level 60. I spent dozens of hours killing elites and the butcher just for some All Res gear and none of that amassed any additional experience. I would have been better off not playing at all and waiting for inferno to get nerfed or starting an alt.