Everytime we would get good RNG, we’d pay our respects to the RNG Gods.  Prior to starting Maps, we would offer prayers at the “altar” which was the Map Device.  I can only recall a period of 4 maps in a row where NO maps dropped.  Every other time we had amazing RNG and Maps were dropping like flies, as well as higher end currency.  We ended up riding 64 maps for the rest of the day and this time Fooly went to bed at the same time as Ragnarok and I and we ended up staying up a few hours longer than normal because the competition was extremely fierece.  At this point Fooly was pushing Top 20 and Ragnarok and I were close to Top 50.  Fooly was going to get up a bit earlier than Ragnarok and I because he was so close to Top 20 and didn’t want to fall too far.

I was really worried about our rankings at this point.  While we were gaining on people, we weren’t gaining many ranks and we had already discussed we may have to stay up for longer hours on Saturday, the 2nd last day of the race.  Ultimately it was going to be what the rankings looked like and it’d be a decision we’d make as a group when the time came.  There were a few times I almost thought about quitting because of the competition, but I realized if I was feeling that way, others were too so that may thin the competition, which in the end, it did.

Because of the fierce competition, we got up a bit earlier than normal to begin the final day and a half push.  We still had some 64s, about ten 65s and a few 66s.  Fairly quickly, our RNG luck seemed to have dried up.  There was some group discontent as we began running out of 64s.  Fooly wanted to move up to 65s even though we had a bunch of 63s we could run safely.  I was firm that we should move back down to 63s and hope our luck returned in fear we’d bottom out there anyways.  We ultimately wasted time arguing.  Ragnarok didn’t care either way, so someone had to compromise, so I did.  We had 2 chiselled and rolled 65s so I was comfortable only running those and anything below 65 that dropped we’d move down and run those and we’d discuss the situation again if we ran out. We ended up getting some 64 maps out of them and I believe a 66, so we paid our respects and continued to grind.

There were numerous times throughout the race where one of us needed a break for something.  I had to check on the kids, Ragnarok smoked often, and Fooly mostly no-lifed so he was never not gaining.  During these times we’d be running our lower level maps and we were plowing through that surplus of 62s and 63s.  This would become an issue later as we came closer and closer to bottoming out.

There was a 65 I rolled that Fooly wanted scoured and chiselled when I was saving our chisels for the 66s we were going to be doing soon.  He went on a rant about how you have to chisel maps to get more maps and that I was effectively wasting the map.  I immediately shoved the map into the device, told him it was up and we were doing it.  We got into another argument and he tossed out the gem “You haven’t even done higher level maps, I have.”  While this may have been true, the highest level map I’d completed was a 63 prior to this race, this wasn’t an e-peen competition.  In a perfect world, I would have lit into him them, but we were racing as a group and it would have been detrimental to start something then.  There were many options I could have used, map knowledge != survivability knowledge (He had 2 deaths afterall.  2 NOOB deaths.), map experience != authority, etc.  I settled with RNG is RNG, Ragnarok agreed, and I’m sure if we didn’t pull anything from the Map, which we did get another 65, he would have ranted further about how he was right.

Quickly though we were on 65 maps full-time and fairly soon our map surplus was dwindling.  We managed to get roughly half a dozen 66s and we were forced late morning to start doing 66s.  Maze Waste Pools, Maze Torture Chamber and either pack size or more rare/magic monsters.  We’d magic roll those then regal it.  We pulled our first 67 but our resources were drying up.  At some point in the day either Fooly or someone from another team contacted us about merging groups.  At this point in time I felt it was risky to merge, especially if they wanted to use our 67s first.  We still had some 66s and even though our luck was running out, we could go for a few more hours before things got dicey.  Worst case scenario we could always reconsider hooking up with them if the RNG Gods kept shitting on us, and ultimately it’s what would end up happening.

A few hours after the merger offer, we only had our 67s left, all un-rolled because we lacked the currency for it.  We had nothing between 64-66 and only a handful of 63s.  Things were looking very bleak, and I suggested we reach out to that group now (I know, extremely shitty, but who wouldn’t think that way without knowing strangers?) and see if they were still open to merging.  Surprisingly they were.  They even had some 68 maps, but were lacking 66-67, but had a good surplus of 63-65 maps, something we didn’t.  If they had said no, I doubt we all would have made Top 20, but the grouping incentive is huge so our parties merged.

Their party consisted of Magnicon2, a caster Marauder using Freezing Pulse, a bunch of auras with epic survivability, Pastromy, an Ice Arrow Templar with some other shit I can’t remember, and IMDisappoint, a Lightning Strike Duelist.  We started with one of their 68s, which eased a lot of my apprehensions, so once we rounded out those, we tossed them our 67s and we ran with those.  It didn’t take long for our group dynamics to merge.  They quickly picked up on the paying respects to the RNG Gods and the gag continued for the rest of the race with these guys.  Their group towards the end of the race added a new element to paying respects, which was making an offering.  We’d throw down random unique items, sometimes valuable gems, etc.  A lot of the time I’d take them and pretend I just found some epic new loot, but would quickly throw it back down.  My role also changed in the group.  I speced into dual-curse and would rarely use my summons again.  This made my job fairly easy and boring, and at times I felt useless, but I served my purpose on some of the tougher bosses/maps.

After falling down from our 67 and 68 maps, we eventually worked our way back up with their lower maps, and eventually got a level 69 Plateau to drop.  It dropped in my name, so I quickly grabbed it, joked I was peacing and going solo, then I had a client crash.  I doubt they thought I was being serious, but client issues are a problem for me with multiple party members due to using Linux and running a shitty video card.

Ultimately we ended up trading this Plateau to Team GGG, headed up by Nugiyen.  The plan was Team GGG would roll the map as perfect as possible for us, then use a Mirror on it.  They would get a rolled 69, and we would get a rolled 69.  I traded the map to DesuDesu_GGG and he proceeded to roll it…..  before realizing he forgot to chisel it.  It was a bone-head move, likely due to sleep deprivation, and he was forced to invest 20 chisels into it.  A member of his group suggested completely re-rolling it to save 16 chisels, but they had dropped lots of currency into it, including 3 Exalted Orbs.

We ran the Map and managed to pull a 68 Cells, I believe and our RNG luck seemed to return.  My original group and this new group had already decided to stay up for the duration of the race, so it was going to be a long night.  We tirelessly farmed anything we could find, moving up and down the Map ladder.  There were numerous times in the early AM where I would doze off a bit during a map and forget what I was doing.  Whether it was casting the same curses over and over with no one near me, pressing Z trying to cast curses, etc.  I really didn’t think I would be able to make it, but the group was very talkative and that seemed to help.

Fooly had managed to get into the Top 10 by this point, and Magnicon and Pastromy were hovering around the 12-15 ranks.  I was slightly ahead of Ragnarok and nearing Top 20, and Ragnarok and Disappoint were just behind me.  After getting over the extreme exhausting hurdle, things would eventually pick up in the final hours of the race.  Our luck carried us for most of the morning.  We pulled a Necropolis and the experience was amazing…. Until I crashed halfway through it.  At the start of the morning, I had about a 6m experience lead on Ragnarok.  It was a decent cushion, but it evaporated after that map.  I was getting extremely frustrated with my crashes, knowing that everytime I crashed, I was getting pushed further and further back in the group, while everyone outside us were catching up while I waited for them to clear the map.

For much of the day we would move up and down from 64-68 maps.  I believe at times we ran some 63s.  A former member of the other teams group, Zertan was gracious enough to offload currency and higher level maps to Pastromy.  Pastromy would ultimately give him the second demigod he won for being our hidden 7th team member.  With a few hours left in the race, we ran into a huge wall.  While we had a bunch of 63 maps, that was all we had left.  Everyone in the group was Top 20, though the other groups had higher level maps and were closing the gap fast.  Team GGG had insane RNG during this period, pulling 68/69 map after map without the resources to roll it.  As it turns out, they began to pay some form of respects to the RNG Gods, proving through scientific research that it works.  A trade was made.  We traded them 10 or 12 chisels for a 68 Cells, which we chiselled once or twice with the  remaining ones we had.  Team GGG promised that if he didn’t pull anything they’d give us a 66.

Team GGG pretty much at this point had Top 4 locked down with their group.  They were mostly trying to get Simon_GGG into the Top 20.  I’m fairly certain in retrospect, Simon would never have allowed this trade to happen, but in hindsight, they had a shitload of higher level maps and likely thought it impossible for us to get the luck we would get.  We ran the Cells and we pulled another Cells out of it.  I crashed the first time after trying to curse Brutus, so I had to reload.  We started the next Cells and the RNG Gods returned in full force.  I’m fairly certain we pulled a Necropolis, two 68s, two 67s and a 66.  That type of pull, in the final 3 hours of the race, is staggeringly legendary.  I’ll be the first to admit it.  Without that trade and luck, I don’t think Ragnarok, Disappoint and myself would have reached Top 20 and Pastromy wouldn’t have gotten Top 10.  Those maps are what cemented our final push in the race.

We finished all those maps up within an hour and with two hours to go we lived off the 65-68 maps that dropped from it.  In the last 2 hours, I had a couple crashes.  Prior to all those maps, I had a 3.5 million experience lead on Disappoint.  I ended the race 500k up on him.  Thankfully I only crashed towards the end of a map clear, and typically in lower levelled ones, so it didn’t hurt that much, though I was fairly anxious in the last two hours.  There were two people that passed Disappoint and I, but due to our map clearing speed and experience rate, we passed people that were ahead of us.  With 2 hours to go, we had a roughly 13 million experience lead over Simon and Angry_African.  On Nugiyen’s stream, Simon thought that was easily manageable, and if we hadn’t been gaining, it would have been.  What he failed to realize was our map clearing speed on slightly lower levelled maps allowed us to offset much of the experience he’d gain.  If he ran a Necropolis and gained 3-5 million, we could clear 2 65s and get about 3.  They were also running some Temporal Chains maps which is silly in the final few hour push.

In the last hour I didn’t crash once, I was wide awake and we were face-rolling every map we were doing, which was mostly 64-66 maps.  While Angry_African and Simon_GGG were gaining on Disappoint and myself, we passed someone to give us a little bit of a cushion.  My biggest fear was a crash with Disappoint so close in experience.  I was sitting at 18th rank, and while this will sound selfish, if Simon and Angry both made Top 20, I’d still be Top 20 bumping Disappoint out.  Thankfully, we wouldn’t have to worry about it.  With 10 minutes to go, Fooly left, unsuccessful aiming for Top 5, but safe in the #6 spot.  Disappoint and I both had a 3-4 million experience lead on Simon so we just finished doing some 64 maps before the race ended.

We cheered, we virtual high-fived.  Everyone was excited.  Everyone was tired.  Our original group set a goal of Top 20.  We reached it, with Fooly getting Top 10.  The merged group had a goal of getting everyone into Top 20.  We did it, with two in the Top 10.  Magnicon was so close to getting Top 10, but he didn’t care, he got what he wanted.  Fooly finished 6th, Pastromy finished 9th, Magnicon finished 11th, Ragnarok finished 14th, I finished 18th and Disappoint was 19th.  The final race of closed beta, the final chance to win a Demigods Presence.  I did it.  We did it.  In my opinion this was the greatest 1 week race closed beta offered.  It had the highest level of competition, there were crazy moments, crazy deaths.  I set my mark, I reached my goals.

I have to say thanks to everyone in the group, even though I think Fooly’s a turd, I couldn’t have done it without you.  Thanks to GGG for making such a fun and addictive game.  Thanks to the wife for tolerating the insane amount of time I put to win a “trinket”.    But the most important that needs to be thanked, is the RNG Gods.  Through your divinity, you answered the prayers of both groups, and any group that paid their respects.  You have a loyal follower for life, and I will spread the word.

I pay my respects to the RNG Gods.

The post Path of Exile – Paying Respects to The RNG Gods P3 first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

Because we weren’t focussing solely on survivability and a bit more on progression, our resists were rough.  We trucked through Rocky Climb, the Prison, wrecked Brutus and made our way to Prisoner’s Gate.  We cheesed the The Burning Menace on top of a hill with range/skeletons and got into Ship Graveyard.  This is when things started to get a little rough.

I can’t remember if it was a Rhoa or a Sea Witch, but FoolyCoolant got destroyed by a rare of one of those types.  It was a little deflating group-wise, but he was going to recreate and we’d boost him through the parts we could and all he’d have to focus on was grinding levels to catch back up.  Ragnarok and I kept moving forward and he restarted.  We knew once we did Maligaro and we could start cheesing with Spork Totem things would be ridiculously easy.  We finished up Act 1 Cruel and moved into Act 2.

We went straight for Weaver’s and acquired Spell Totem and everything from then on was a cakewalk.  Fooly continued to level solo and we’d alternate aiding him on boss fights/giving him waypoints while the other continued forward progression wise to keep up the pace.  We had just finished Brutus Ruthless when Fooly needed help with Cruel Vaal, so we gave him a hand and we were just about at the same stage again and things were looking up.

That is until Fooly died again.  Because he was still a few levels behind, we thought it’d be best if he grinded Ledge to catch up in experience as we were mostly just progressing so he could close the level difference that way.  Within a few minutes of him going to Ledge, he died.  At first we thought he was joking, but he was absolutely serious.  He had no idea what killed him and he was extremely close to wanting to quit the race after 2 deaths that day.  He ultimately decided he’d restart one last time and that would be it, live or die.  I went to Ledge to see what could have killed him and there was a rare skeleton that had a critical aura.  I suspect he got critical strike 1/2 shotted and he simply wasn’t paying attention, it happens.

We continued through Ruthless and ended up getting to Act 2 Merciless at the end of the day.  The entire time we’d go back and help Fooly, like we did before, and Ragnarok and I were roughly level 51 when we went to bed.  Fooly though decided to stay awake the entire time to catch up.  When we got up in the morning to start our Fellshrine farming, Fooly was level 61.  I’m not sure if he did it solo, I believe he did, but he managed to not only catch up but get ahead of us.  He also had found 4 maps during that time.

Ragnarok’s first kill in Fellshrine gave him a map, so we were already stoked.  Fellshrine farming can be extremely boring.  It’s very hard to die and it’s highly repetitive.  The issue I was having was as a Summoner, their kill speed was slow.  Ragnarok could clear Fellshrine almost twice as fast as I could.  In retrospect, I’d use a different Summoner build with some hybrid capability damage wise.  For most of the day we farmed Fellshrine and by the time we finished we had accumulate about 9 maps.  At this point I was extremely bored with Fellshrine due to my slow kill speed and wanted to progress and finish Merciless so we could hopefully get through some maps that night, and I would rather farm Pyramid since the minion kill speed wasn’t going to change that much, but I’d get better loot.

While Fooly was asleep, Ragnarok and I finished progressing and continued to farm.  Fooly would eventually get back on after a 4 hour sleep, and we began maps.  The group had a few issues with how to do maps.  Some of them wanted to chisel 63 and up, others wanted 64/65 and up chiselled, depending on the map surplus.  Others also didn’t want to keep doing lower level maps even if we had a good base of higher leveled maps.  A few disputes would come up over the next few days regarding this, and I’ll get into more detail later.

We started plowing through our 60 maps, rolling them blue and aiming for mods that would give us a higher chance for more map drops, or for better experience.  We didn’t waste a lot of materials doing this, but I’m sure we could have saved some.  By the end of the night we had used up most of our 60s and had a surplus of 61s and we were starting to build our 62 base.  Fooly decided he was going to continue to stay up and doing the lower maps.  Ragnarok and I were concerned with him over-levelling which would negatively affect our experience, but there was also the benefit of getting more maps.  Ragnarok and I went to sleep and would hook up with Fooly again in the morning.

I woke up before Ragnarok and got on and began talking to Fooly who was doing maps still.  He had acquired a few 63s and a good stockpile of 62s.  He was also level 71, 4 levels higher than Ragnarok and I.  The difference wasn’t too bad.  I told Fooly we still had some 61 maps left and we’d do those when Ragnarok got online.  Fooly said he thinks it’s time to move up to the 62s.  This was a stupid idea as Ragnarok and I were still in unaffected experience range of 61 maps and the only reason he wanted to move up was he was getting diminished experience gains.  I asked him how many 61s he had left and he said none.  I immediately called bullshit, citing the reasons above, considering the fact he requested moving up the map ladder prior to stating he was out of 61s.  It seemed extremely duplicitous and selfish and it was at this point I really couldn’t have cared less if he died again.  Yes, I’m saying that about my party member.

Ragnarok finally got on and as it turns out we only had about 6 61 maps left, so we plowed through those and moved up to the 62s.  Halfway through the day our stockpile of 62s began to run dry and we had the choice of either moving up to 63s or doing the lower level maps.  As a group we decided to save the lower level maps for solo/break times when another member stepped away so we started doing 63 maps.  For whatever reason Ragnarok and Fooly were chiselling some of the 63s.  I believed this to be a waste, but we’ll never truly know the results had this not occurred.  I never chiselled a single 63 map in my possession.  We finished the day with some 63 maps left to do, a decent amount of 64s and I believe a couple 65s.  Fooly was going to continue staying up doing lower level maps again, but Ragnarok and I were heading to sleep.  This concludes part 2 of Paying Respects to the RNG Gods, the final part will be prepared shortly.  Thanks for reading!

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This article will document, to the best of my recollection, the events of the final race.  My goal for the race was to win a Demigods Presence, an event only unique amulet.  This being the final race meant this would be my only chance.  I’d participated in other events before but mostly casual.  I had a chance to win one back in late August during a 1 week race but opted not to play for 16 hours straight to slip into Top 10.  In order to win a Demigod, you had to place Top 20.  The Top 10 would get _TWO_ Demigods, but I was comfortable with a Top 20 finish.

On January 9th, I made a post seeking to form a party for the race.  It is nearly impossible in a party-enabled 1 week race to place Top 20 solo.  There are far too many incentives to partying.  I initially got a few responses but after checking poestatistics I was hesitant to group with people who didn’t have high level characters or weren’t very active in other events.  Within a day I got a response from the first member of the group, Ragnarok789.  He explained he has placed 29th in the previous 1 week race solo, and was looking for a group and he’d dedicate more time than he did in that previous race.  After checking him out, we decided we’d do it.  We even took place in a 2 hour race and placed 22nd and 23rd.  I wasn’t too concerned with where we placed in that race, it was more about finding out if I would be able to play for a prolonged period of time over the course of a week with Ragnarok and he seemed like a cool guy.

We wanted to add another member to the party.  The wife had agreed to play, but I had an accurate suspicion that she wouldn’t want/or be able to invest the time required to win.  I was right, but we’ll get to that later.  Ragnarok began reaching out to people to try and round out the party.  He eventually found FoolyCoolant.  While he had no race experience, he had multiple high level characters on Legacy.  The only issue was he was already with someone else that we didn’t really want to group with.  With some crafty maneuvering we eventually got him to come with us alone.

We spent Saturday evening planning out our builds, the gem rewards, and what our roles in the group would be.  Ragnarok was going to cheese it with a Dual Spark Totem Templar using Arc manually to keep procing shock, FoolyCoolant was going to go with a Wand Templar using Conduit to share charges, I was going to run a Witch Summoner with Dual Curse support and the wife would have continued on with a Dual Ice Spear Cold Witch.  The idea was simple.  Ragnarok shock stacks, Minions were meat-shields and some DPS, the wife would freeze the entire screen, and FoolyCoolant would DPS and share charges for additional survivability/DPS.  We also agreed it was silly to play straight through from the start of the race at 8PM.  We’d play for a few hours, try to get into Cruel difficulty and sleep for 8 and start off first thing in the morning.

We got back together around 30 minutes before the race started.  We were all using Skype and we were getting pumped up.  We had our GoogleDoc together, we knew our roles, our objectives were clear and we were ready.  We decided to have numbers in our names as a semi-theme.  Ragnarok was SevenPunk, FoolyCoolant was EIGHTcatheart, the wife was NineLittlePumpkins, and I was SixteenIsLegal.  Our characters were created and the timer was ticking down and then the race started.

We started off rather slow, but that was our intention.  Survivability and cautiousness would get us further than rushing difficulties being under-geared and squishy.  I had no intentions of dying and I didn’t mind if we “wasted” time farming an extra level or two.  About an hour and a half into the race, the wife began to realize that the pace we were going at, which wasn’t even that fast, was too much for her and she began to get the impression we’d be playing a lot, which initially she was fine with, but I knew she likely wouldn’t want to do it.  So she backed out prior to Merveil.  We continued on without her, though I did log her in to get the support gem reward from Nessa, since Ragnarok needed Fork.

We ended up finishing the night getting to Cruel Ledge, an ideal farming spot.  We decided to go to bed then and to reconvene first thing in the morning to continue our push forward.  At that time we were sitting roughly at rank 135-170 and our playtime was approximately 3 hours give or take 20 minutes.  Even though we were 100+ ranks outside of Top 20, we felt we were in a good position early in the race and we had no close calls.  This concludes Part 1, Part 2 will be ready tomorrow!  Stay tuned!

The post Path of Exile – Paying Respects to The RNG Gods P1 first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

1.0.5 introduced the Infernal Machine event and Monster Power.  While I haven’t attempted the event, mainly because I want to gear up more to do it on MP3-4, I have gained a small collection of the keys.  Monster Power acts like /players X in Diablo 2.  It increases monster life and damage to increase the difficulty while giving you bonuses for doing so.  More experience, more gold, more magic find, and more loot.  The best change in 1.0.5 was the loot tables for Inferno.  All acts of Inferno share the same chance for ilvl 61+ items.  ilvl 58 and below no longer drop in Inferno.  This effectively gives you a chance to find good items on your own without needing the Auction House, as well as the ability to accumulate some wealth.

The Infernal Machine is like Ubers in Diablo 2.  Farm some Keys, make a portal, kill Uber version of Bosses, eventually get materials to craft a crazy ring called the Hellfire Ring.  The great thing about the ring is that it has no level requirement and it’s account bound so any of your characters can use it.  If you get bored of your Barbarian and you want to quickly get to level 60 with a different class, the experience bonus will help.  Since the ring is crafted and it has random properties there’s always the chance of getting an upgraded version by farming for it repeatedly.

So after a few month reprieve from Diablo 3, I finally decided I’d give it another chance.  With the same gear I had when I stopped playing back at the end of June, I loaded up Act 1 Inferno and started to face-roll.  Prior to quitting, I could solo Act 1 Inferno with relative ease, my issue was the difficulty difference in Act 2 where my gear just wasn’t good enough to handle it.  So with Act 1 being not even remotely difficult, I advanced into Act 2, then Act 3, then Act 4 finally beating the game.  Now I understand the game has been made easier but that’s what Monster Power is for.  I can now play and complete content I could no longer do before, I can now farm for upgrades instead of relying on the Auction House, and eventually I’ll move into higher MP levels to keep the game challenging.  I still do use the Auction House, but I’m focussing on finding upgrades myself.  Here’s a great amulet I found not too long ago that I’ll likely be using for a long time.

 Now I can’t sing praises of the game without complaining about things that I still don’t like or that are missing.  PvP still isn’t here.  It’s been six months and one of the biggest features people are waiting for still isn’t even remotely close to being added.  I have a terrible feeling in my gut that PVP will be added in with the expansion that was recently announced to be in development.  I hope I’m wrong, but Blizzard needs to get PVP right the first time, so if we have to wait for as close to perfect as we can get, I think we can all do that.

End-Game could use a lot more.  The Infernal Machine is a great step in the right direction and Monster Power allows you to ramp up difficulty to play at a pace you enjoy, but once you hit Paragon 100, have semi godly gear, etc all you have left is to rinse and repeat with different classes or on hardcore.  Ladder seasons would be great with gear resets like in Diablo 2.  It would keep the economy fresh and could reinvigorate players to return to compete for top spots.

I’ve read ideas Endless Dungeons before and I really like the idea if you add leader-boards with it.  If you’re unfamiliar with what an Endless Dungeon is… Well, it’s a Dungeon, that has an Endless amount of monsters that invade it.  Each wave of Monsters gets harder increasing the difficulty.  After so many waves, you encounter a wave boss and upon defeating him perhaps you could get a loot drop similar to opening a resplendent chest.  Leader-boards come in for competition.  What wave you got to before dying, how fast you completed each wave.  People would create builds simply for this to get tops on the leader-board for bragging rights.

Crafting items in Diablo needs to be improved.  You have to find plans yourself or buy them off the auction house.  The rolls on the items are completely random which makes it not worthwhile for the high cost.  If an option was added in crafting to give a chance, not a guarantee, to roll a specific property, be it a socket, life on hit, damage, etc you’d at least have the possibility of crafting a usable item.  This should increase the cost significantly, but it would allow for people to be 100% self-found.  You should be able to add or increase sockets on items you have, once again for a cost, or perhaps a quest.  Tie it in with the Endless Dungeon.  Instead of items that drop, have gold drop with the completion of a wave and  a small chance to net you a socket reward.  Add a high gold cost for Haedrig to add the additional socket and those great items you’ve found that were useless because it didn’t have a socket are now viable.

My experience with Diablo 3 over the past month has been great.  It feels a lot like a Diablo game again and it seems Blizzard has been humbled by the negative response to the game.  I find myself playing an hour or two a day now, doing a few farming runs and I’m finally enjoying it because you can see and feel the progression of your characters.  If you’re ever looking for someone to do a few farming runs with, let me know!  Has your Diablo experience improved with the latest patches?

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The good folks over at BioWare are in the giving spirit early this holiday.  They’re giving away a crap-load of promotional items in Dragon Age and Dragon Age II through the BioWare Social Network.

Just in time for the holidays! Starting today, we’re giving away an assortment of Dragon Age: Origin and Dragon Age II promotional items. These are available to all our fans for free! To grant these items to your account, you must first select your platform and then click the button below.

Enjoy!

Unlockable Items:

This is for the PC/360/PS3 and it doesn’t take that long to gain access to it.  All you need is an Origin and BioWare account that are linked (Same login/ID basically) and you can select your platform and redeem them.  Logging into either game and accessing the In-Game Marketplace lists all this content as free and when you download it and start a new game it all appears in a chest.  Fun!

Here’s the link and have fun!  http://social.bioware.com/da2/dlc_bundle

The post Dragon Age Promotional Items Giveaway first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

As many of you probably know, I recently made a comment on Facebook about Dave Brevik. I want to make it clear that I am very sorry for what I said. I have higher expectations for myself than to express my feelings in such a rash way and disrespect a fellow developer like Dave, someone who deserves to be treated with greater respect.

What I said was expressed out of anger, and in defense of my team and the game. People can say what they want about me, but I don’t take lightly when they disparage the commitment and passion of the Diablo III team. Dave is awesome. In Diablo and Diablo II, he made two of the games that have most affected me as a developer. I respect his vision for Diablo, but just like he said in his interview, the Diablo III team must drive a vision for the game that is true to us. We believe in Diablo and have stuck by it through years of hard development to make it a reality.

The foundation of the Diablo team was built from the remnants of Blizzard North: Our lead programmer, who built the basis of the Diablo III engine while at Blizzard North; our lead tech artist, who drove much of the combat visuals, FX, and skill direction of our classes and is one of the most avid Diablo II players you can find; our lead concept artist, who helped establish the core look of the game; Wyatt Cheng, our senior technical game designer, who writes many of our blogs and works tirelessly on the live game. All these people and many others made the commitment to Diablo even after Blizzard North shut down. It was hard for me to see their contributions be diminished by someone they worked alongside, and even harder for me not to try to jump to their defense. I only wish I’d done so in a more professional manner.

Joining the Diablo team was a dream come true for me. In my house, the name Diablo was always spoken in hushed tones. It meant late nights that turned into early mornings, moments of pure adrenaline and pure joy. It meant countless conversations, debates, scouring websites for good builds, and more than one or two sick days. When Diablo II was released, I took a week off work and sent my wife out of state… and she was pregnant at the time! I played Diablo II with my dad during one of the most difficult times of his life, and the experience brought me closer to him, and I hope helped him through it. I joined the Diablo team because the idea of a world without more Diablo seemed like a pretty crappy world to me. I wasn’t sure if I’d be good enough. I’m still not sure. But I felt I had to try.

Regardless of how I’ve done, my team has been more than good enough, and I’m proud of the game we made together. We believe it’s a great game. But Diablo III has flaws. It is not perfect. Sales mean nothing if the game doesn’t live on in all of our hearts, and standing by our games is what Blizzard does. Patch 1.0.4 is a step in the right direction, but we have no illusions that our work is done.

Playing Diablo III needs to be a rewarding experience. The new legendaries are a big step in the right direction, as are tweaks to item drop rates. But I’m not convinced that we’ve gone far enough. If you don’t have that great feeling of a good drop being right around the corner — and the burst of excitement when it finally arrives — then we haven’t done our jobs right. Out of our concern to make sure that Diablo III would have longevity, we were overly cautious about how we handled item drops and affixes. If 1.0.4 hasn’t fixed that, you can be sure we’ll continue to address it.

Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don’t think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we’re planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we’re still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.

Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the ‘players 8’ command — which let people set monster difficulty — was added to address this issue, and we’re considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.

The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we’re not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it’s a problem we can overcome.

While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren’t the only things we’re looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?

We made Diablo III because we believe in the Diablo games. We think the gameplay is awesome, the world is compelling, and it’s the game we all wanted to play. Because we believe in it, we’ll continue to stand by it and make it better. We are committed to making Diablo III the best Diablo game to date, and we hope you’ll continue to help us do just that.

Saying that, I’d like to apologize to all of you, the players in our community. You deserve better than my reaction to Dave’s comments. You deserve more honest communication about the game and what we’re doing to make it a more awesome experience for us all. We care about Diablo very much, and appreciate your passion for it. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to do this, and for that I can’t thank you enough.

The post Diablo III – Jay Wilson Apologizes To Brevik And Fans first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

The change we made back in 1.0.3 to remove the bonus monster damage per additional player was a great start, but we can clearly go a bit further. The first change we’re making in 1.0.4 for co-op is to remove averaging in multiplayer games of Magic Find and Gold Find. You’ll benefit from your full Magic Find stat, independent of other players in the game. We originally added Magic Find averaging so optimal play did not involve people stacking what we call “adventure stats” to the detriment of their party. While this may re-emerge as a problem, we think the current solution feels like too much of a penalty, and is doing more harm than good.

Great change in my opinion.  While this can and likely will promote leeching, a player with good enough gear shouldn’t be penalized because of players lacking good equipment.  A good way to encourage group play and I have no idea why they even added this in as a “feature” to begin with in a game like Diablo.

Along the same lines as the change in 1.0.3, we’re going to be lowering the health multiplier for monsters per additional player in co-op games. It’s going to be a flat 75% in 1.0.4 for all difficulty levels, as opposed to the scaling 75/85/95/110% it is now. This makes enemies far more manageable in co-op games, and rewards a co-ordinated group with a higher farming efficiency than playing alone.

Another great change in terms of improving the co-op experience.  However I feel a lot of the “hardcore” players who through tedious farming/grinding may be a little upset at the “nerf”.  Mainly because the difficulty in group play drops significantly and other people will now be able to farm easier to close the gap between the 1% “hardcore” players and the casual/semi-hardcore players.

We know there are a lot of you out there that are really frustrated by the difficulty of some of the champion and rare packs, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to shrink the gap between normal monsters and Elite packs (Champions and Rares). The design intent of Champion and Rare packs is to provide a spike of challenge, but in general we feel like the gap is too big. Normal monsters die quickly and are usually just fodder, and Champions and Rares can feel like a brick wall.  In general we’re looking to bring normal enemies up a smidge, and Champions and Rares down.

So, in 1.0.4 we’re increasing the health of normal monsters by approximately 5%-10% in Inferno, but also increasing the likelihood they drop magic or rare items by a factor of four. We’re correspondingly lowering the health of Champions and Rares by 10-25% and editing specific affixes to shrink the difficulty gap. We’re still working on those numbers, but that’s approximately what we’re shooting for.

Farming will become a lot easier with this.  White mobs generally posed very little threat, so a small boost in HP with a greater chance at loot is great.  Some Affixes combination on Elite and Champion packs were ridiculous so by addressing that and by lowering their HP, farming speeds will increase and players will begin to find more loot increasing their chances of getting an upgrade.  It also means there will be more items on the RMAH, oh Blizzard, you crafty devils.

Weapon damage is the most important stat on a weapon. It can be disheartening to get a lot of weapon drops and you know before even looking at them that they have no chance of being good. To help give weapons a fighting chance, the raw damage value on all level 61 and 62 weapons will be able to roll damage that extends all the way to the top end of level 63.

While DPS is the most important stat on items, I hope there’s more changes to values then just DPS.  There should be better scaling for other attributes from 61-63 to keep the 61 and 62 ilvl items competitive.

We also want to close the gap between dual-wielding and two-handers, and so we’re improving two-handed melee weapons by creating a new set of stronger affixes to compensate for the loss of stats that can come from your offhand.

Excellent!  I play as a Barbarian and once I found out about stacking critical damage with dual wield, it didn’t matter about the DPS difference on a 2-hander.  This should help change the cookie-cutter dual wield critical damage builds that everyone has been forced to use.

On the topic of two-handers, we’re also changing how damage is calculated on a few damage-over-time skills.  Many skills have text like “Deals 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds”, which isn’t exactly clear as it can be interpreted a few different ways.  It also made skill evaluation difficult, particularly for skills with long durations or cooldowns.  We’re switching a lot of these skills to read “X% weapon damage over 5 seconds”.  Many skills already follow this format, and understanding what the skill does is very clear.  As the skills are converted there is an additional opportunity: when converting to this format, choosing a value for X depends on your weapon speed.  So what we’ve done in most cases is assumed a high attack speed (at least 2.0 attacks per second), chosen a value of X, and then in many cases bumped the value even higher.  A skill that currently does 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds, with a 2.0 speed weapon, will convert to at least 750% weapon damage over 5 seconds.  The skill becomes easier to understand, is a small buff for most one-hand builds, and a big buff for two-hand builds.

Simple change that will keep consistency with skills.  Likely will make some skills have value now, and can’t complain about clarity.

We’re removing Enrage Timers and the “heal back to full” behavior from Champion and Rare monster packs.

Never should have been there to begin with.  This discouraged fighting “tough” packs, so this is a no-brainer.

That said, we think repair costs are just a bit too high, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to be reducing repair costs of high-end items by 25%.

Repair costs should _NEVER_ have needed 2 changes to find the right balance.  With the previous changes listed, I believe this will be as close to perfect as possible.  If you’re still dying to things that have weaker affixes and less life, you need to get some better gear.

That addresses that current preview of changes listed.  There will be additional information on class balancing, legendaries and some additional system changes.  Blizzard states the patch is slated for the 4th week of August, so we’re still 2-3 weeks out.

My only fear is that the “hardcore” players may feel the game has been made too easy now, but I really don’t care about them.  I care about my experience and so far I think Blizzard has addressed a few of the bigger issues.  What remains to be seen is when Jay Wilson addresses Magic Find.  I’m sure he’ll have lots of gems for us all to pick at.

The post Diablo 3 – 1.0.4 Preview Thoughts first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

Another positive addition is that Boss monsters will now drop guaranteed rares if you have so many stacks of Nephalem Valor.  1 if you have 4 stacks, 2 if you have 5 stacks.  Couple that with the large amount of drops a Boss typically has, it’s possible to see anywhere from 2 to maybe even 5 rares from Bosses with a 5 stack.  Bosses relevant again?  Thumbs up here.

While this is just a precursor to the 1.0.3b patch which has been delayed, I’m glad Blizzard is finally listening to reason.  It means there’s still hope for Diablo 3 and maybe the game will be in a place sooner than I thought so I can go back to enjoying the game I’ve been waiting for.  What are your thoughts on the hotfix?

The post Diablo III Hotfixes – June 28 first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.

It doesn’t exist.

There is no end-game in Diablo 3.  Inferno is supposed to be the end-game, but only the super rich (Who got rich via exploits) or pansies who ignore champion and elite packs, abuse game exploits, etc can complete the game.  I wasn’t one of the people who got in on some of the exploits and amassed millions upon millions of gold in wealth to buy whatever I wanted without denting the wallet.  I commend Blizzard for holing up the actual “exploits” in farming gold, but to repeatedly nerf things is a knee-jerk reaction to botters.

Smashing pots no longer yields gold, effectively making them worthless in game, why keep them?  Magic Find no longer effects opening treasure chests, reducing the value of keeping strict MF gear.  All to stop the “botters”.  What about the legitimate people who were using these methods or WANTED to use them?  The effect on the economy is staggering.  Top end items cost tens of millions of gold and with the increased repair costs now, if you actually want to FARM gear for gold or HOPE you get a good roll, you’re eating into what you earn.  So you can play it safe in Hell A3 and A4, hope you don’t die and pray you get decent item rolls and item levels.

Speaking of item levels.  Why is Inferno Level 60 to start, but items as low as ilvl51 drop in Act 1?  How does that help or encourage people to farm when 95% of the time you’re not getting ilvl60+, gear that has the potential to help you or be sold for some gold so you can further gear your character?  “Get Good, Farm A2/A3/A4”  I can already see a response like that.  You CAN’T get good though.  You need gear to do that and it’s an endless sink.  I can farm A1 Inferno solo.  I can run Sarkoth with 240% Gold Find.  I shouldn’t have to struggle to progress to the so-called “end-game” or spend hours and hours just to have a chance to find a good item that can sell, or earn enough gold sans repair costs to spend 2-3 million gold on a marginal upgrade.

Blizzard has lost sight of what made Diablo 2 great.  They took away the great things of Diablo 2 in favour of simplistic design.  There’s nothing left to do at Level 60 but grind and grind and grind to MAYBE progress and beat Inferno and even if you do accomplish that, all that’s left is farming gear for marginal improvements.  They don’t want you farming bosses over and over again, they want you to explore and fight everything you see, yet there’s no real reward for doing it.  Make events worth something if you want us to explore.  Nephalem Valor’s are essential for farming and you didn’t want to pigeon-hole yourselves with Diablo 2’s skill system, yet here we are sticking with the same build to farm gear because we’re penalized for swapping skills.  (You lose your ENTIRE valor stack if you do).

There’s a new patch being rolled out as I write this.  A reduction in “wear and tear” on items is helpful, but the repair costs are out of control, especially if you get caught in an elite pack that has a nasty affix combination.  “Fixed several gold and levelling exploits”.  JOY!  Others were still earning insane amounts of gold further destroying the in game economy.

I’m done.  I can no longer play a game that is this poorly developed, that’s this focused on real money monetization, that doesn’t listen to the players who played Diablo 2 for a decade, even up until the release of Diablo 3.  You got my $60, but you’ll need to get your head out of your asses if you ever want to win me back.  I’m going to install Diablo 2 and play a Diablo game that was done right.  My beta test is over.

The post Diablo III – I’m done first appeared on GamingRendo - News, Reviews, and Videos of all your favourite games.