Diablo 3 – Patch day changes

Blizzard updated the D3 beta on Tuesday morning with beta patch 10. There are a couple of significant changes regarding things I’ve already posted about, so I figured it is probably worth it to make a new post and let you all know.

First – Pages and Tomes of training are removed from the game. Now, upgrading your crafting NPCs is simply a gold sink instead of something to gather for. All in all, I think its a pretty good change. Now upgrading your NPC is something that can be done on your own terms, instead of dependant on the amount of something you’ve picked up.

Second – the Nephralem Cube (used to break down items into crafting parts) has been removed from the game. Instead, the blacksmith will be able to salvage items for components. This change will add a little bit of extra time to your game, but isn’t particularly a bad thing. If nothing else, you may need to go back to town a little more often for bag space. Not a terrible change, all things considered.

Third – Grey and White quality items are no longer salvageable. Because of this, the white-quality components have been removed from the game. I actually really like this change. If you’ve played D1 or D2 then you know that there comes a point where its really not worth it to pick up grey or white items anymore, and this just makes the same true for D3. Plus, getting rid of unnecessary crafting components really streamlines the whole process. After a certain point the “common scrap” (previously received from salvaging greys and whites) would simply become redundant and time consuming at best, so this is a pretty good change overall. In the screenshot below you can see what the new tab looks like for salvaging gear via the blacksmith.

 

 

 

 

Fourth – The Nephralem Altar has been removed. Unlike the first three, this is completely unrelated to crafting, but it is still something I briefly covered in my first Diablo post. The altar used to be where we would go to switch out our active and passive skills (unless you levelled up and unlocked a new slot, then you could just slap an ability into the mix). Now abilities can be changed anywhere, almost at will. The downside of this is that when you swap out an ability it triggers a 30 second cooldown. This cooldown prevents you from using the ability you swapped in, and prevents you from switching the ability out for something else.

If you think about it, this change makes sense. You can change your skills any time you feel like, but at the same time you can’t game the system and use a bunch of high-cooldown abilities back to back to back. This will, essentially, keep you out in the world more, while still making you have to pre-plan your skills.

There was a little bit more to this patch, but I mentioned those things specifically because they’re things I have discussed in my previous D3-centric posts. If you’re even slightly interested, you can see the full patch notes for Beta Patch 10 here.

Intro to Diablo 3 – part 2 – Crafting!

Alright! To continue on with my “Intro to Diablo 3” series, i’m going to spend this post talking about the crafting system.

 This first screenshot is of your “stash”. This is basically your account’s bank. Unlike the banks in WoW, it is not character specific. This will span across every character you have on your account. There are also no “Bags” in the game. Instead, you buy pre-sized tabs (much more like a guild bank) with a certain number of slots (14) automatically given. There are 5 pages of slots of 5 14-box slots. Unlocking each one costs a bit of money (the first few are cheap, progressively getting more expensive as you open more pages).

 This screenshot is meant to point out the Nephalem Cube. This operates just like the “disenchant” ability from WoW. You click the cube, and then you click the item in your inventory or bank that you want to break down, and then crafting materials are automatically placed in your inventory. As you would imagine, the better items require higher end crafting items. UNlike disenchanting in wow, you can break down items of any quality (grey, white, blue, yellow, etc). Of course, disenchanting lower quality items gives you a higher chance of the “cheapo” crafting materials, and the higher quality items give you higher quality crafting materials.

 Throughout your travels, you will come across this item: a “Page of Training”. These are for your crafting NPCs, to upgrade the amount of items they can craft. 5 of these pages, when combined, will form:

 A “Tome of Training”, which is then something you give to your crafter, along with some basic crafting materials and a modicum of gold to upgrade them. In the two screenshots below, you will see the “Upgrade Crafter” screen, and the Crafting interface.

 When upgrading your crafter, you will see the recipes that he learns from the upgrade process. (For the record, my blacksmith is upgraded WAY beyond anything I can use in the beta. /sadface) When you upgrade the crafter, he “levels” up, giving him access to higher item level recipes. As you can see in the crafting interface, there are apprentice,  journeyman, adept, and master “level” items, which equates to their item level. This particular NPC is the blacksmith, who creates weapons, armor, as well as repairs your gear. The crafting interface is very similar to what you’re familiar with from any crafting done in WoW. Click on a recipe in the list, and it will tell you what materials you need, as well as the gold cost associated (which also increases with the higher level of item to be created). Also, as you can see, the recipes also show you how many of that particular item you can create based on the materials currently in your bag… it doesn’t take into account any crafting materials in your stash.

It is also worth noting that your crafters, just like your stash, are account-wide. When you upgrade your blacksmith on one toon, all of the new recipes are available for creating among each character. Also, along your travels, you can find crafting recipes, which you can simply give to the respective crafter (weapon/armor recipes to the blacksmith, etc). Crafting in Diablo 3 seems to be very simple, and if you’ve ever done any kind of crafting in WoW, then you’re already 4/5’s of the way to understanding this crafting system.