BlogFan 2011. Powered by Blogger.
RSS

Wizzin 'it up with the Wizard Diablo III Assistant Beta Gameplay

The bad news is that all "news" about the beta was incurred during the friends and family test phase before we were allowed even in. The good news is that I finally got the time to sit down and write about my experiences playing with the wizard casting the archetype Diablo III. Along the way, we will discuss some interesting aspects of this decade iteration of the series, to the epic battle with the Skeleton King and abilities of the powerful of the earth.

Disclaimer: If you decide to read further than this line, you accept that I reveal some information that some may see as a spoiler. Beyond this line, I will not bother to delete to hide this, because it is counterproductive for the purpose of an informative article.

The beginning is always a certain sentimental value to me as Diablo players have performed. Your character moves on the screen, wearing nothing but a minimum grade armor, a crappy weapon, and a single skill. It is only from here!

Not much has changed in this respect, except, perhaps, that now our characters have motives changed. Yes, my friends, our heroes have reasons to be where they are! In the hope of the Fallen Star, to find that landed in the ruins of Old Tristram, my male assistants went bravely on their way toward New Tristram, with nothing but Magic Missile and Frost Nova are available, ready for the hordes of the undead to take and the legions of the Burning hells. How very bold of him.
One of the cooler moves of Diablo III's predecessor, that it was not long before you're in the heat of battle. My assistant has appeared less than ten steps in front of a Risen, feasting on a festering pile of human carrion (take Diablo III NON-category-crazy enough!). Body parts were flying in majestic arcs through the night air as I slammed the unsuspecting zombie with Magic Missile, the trailing violet light indicative of elemental arcane magic. Before I entered was the actual village, was a veritable mountain of the undead before the gate mounded. Diablo magic, I'd say.

Here I would like something of interest grisly note: It is often enough to get the Risen One, as its name implies, too, again, after they are slaughtered. Front crawl with bloodthirsty intentions, they draw their bellies through the earth as their spines severed from leak vital fluids, approaches the unaware adventurer handle through the handle. Moral of the story: If you kill a zombie, make sure it is dead.

News of the Dead Rising from their graves, not every resident of Sanctuary hop out of bed in the middle of the night and in the sprint out the door with an ax attack. Entering the village of Old Tristram comes another nice innovation Diablo III to light: Brother Malachi, the healer, a pious, fire-and-sulfur-preaching faith ex-zealot of Zakarum is already damned scream to the world before I had ever the presence of mind to click on it.
Gossip in the game is manifested in two primary media: the players choose different discussion topics at the interface of an NPC, like in the older games, when passing through NPCs. Some even have conversations with each other. Although not necessarily a breakthrough in the art of storytelling (games have this sort of thing for years), it is new to the series and adds a degree of authenticity, the social atmosphere.
Reach from the city center, is a welcome design change to present: do not wander all over creation trying more to find the damn waypoint! (? Kurast docks, everyone) in scenic downtown New Tristram located, the waypoint of all the most useful features of the young village is surrounded: the blacksmith, a merchant in the upper right (not pictured), the location to rent your mercenaries entrance of the tavern (whose owner peddles potions and other little things), and finally the man himself: Deckard Cain.
The waypoint interface is also useful, if somewhat confusing. Flip-down menus are now categorized destinations, as well as recent destinations. And if for some reason you can not read your site from your mini-map in the upper right corner of the screen, but even tells you where you are! Nifty.
But not all the action is outside. In fact, one of the great new aspect of Diablo III, which is, in my opinion, a bit down-played that you actually go in several structures in the cities, with even more NPCs to interact. While this was more in Diablo II occupies minimal, in Diablo III, we see full-fledged quest points, and NPC interaction. At the moment, my assistant went to the board, the wounded gathered there immediately began to rise as the undead. Leah and I had to jump into the fray in order to smooth the situation. These are not just buildings with their roofs decay, as we saw in Diablo II, but also whole new mini-dungeon, filled with comfort and NPC goodies. New Tristram, including walk-building of the slaughtered calf Inn and Deckard Cain at home.

Almost all the NPCs in New Tristram share a characteristic that makes them an improvement over the previous games: they not only stand there all day waiting for a search for what ever the lucky adventurer wanders along the road. One can only wonder how much actually forging Griswold.

But enough of New Tristram. What about the rest of the game? 
Despite all the cool things there, in order to take on a visit to the little village of New Tristram hanging-on, I was sent on the road almost as soon as I walked into the Inn slaughtered calf. Zombie syndrome seemed like a disease spreading, even among those in the village, and an impromptu fight later I was on my way from the inn and down the creepy old Tristram Road. Murders of crows flapping dramatically in the night? Check. Creaking wagon wheels move all on their own? Check. Destroyed houses with a murderous history? Check.

And some of them have such beautiful little dungeons. Oh, and Blizzard was not kidding when they said its random dungeons would be cool.
I must by ten random dungeons (sorry folks, I have other time commitments, too) have been in my play-throughs of various beta, and every time they feel new and exciting. Musty entering a cellar under the ghostly ruins of an old farm home, I see a Quill Fiend poking near the stairs. Approach it and my assistant prepares to blast it to Hell with my l33t Adventuring Oak wall of the Oracle, sinking the little critters in the dark. I ran after him, spamming all kinds of flashy stuff, ask where the rest of the monsters, until the little guy scurried under a pile of rubble in the middle of a room from a hall.

The junk exploded and poured out the whole mob of the dungeon in an instant. Quill Fiends ran everywhere, that what they are doing (shooting spikes, if not you, that some have found yet.) A frost nova and a speedy recovery later I noticed that the @ # $% he had me in tricked him to follow on a nest of famished, twitchy little rascals.

Of course there are other variations of the dungeon. Several times my assistant came in such a cellar, open asking where all the loot was. Around a corner, I saw that the Quill Fiends - the devil - had broken open my chest and looted site. However, killing their leader had the loot that would have generated in the chest. And it gave me a sense of accomplishment. Two birds with one stone.
Continue along the old Tristram Road, zombie hordes were more than annoying (but awesome as zombies are awesome) with the addition of Wretched mothers. This puketastic villains seem to put a permanent hangover, vomiting their guts out - perhaps in the literal sense. It is not only disgusting, but the vomit propagated another zombie. To be killed in the unfortunate mother, the process continues. TLDR: Kill the Wretched mother first and save yourself some time and effort.
A few dead (well, dead again) Wretched mothers later I was heading with Leah in the pursuit of their old mother's hut. Yes, Diablo I, the witch, Adria returns. Or at least not her house. And she has landed a nice little piece of real estate in this deserted no man's land, one hectare of sixteenths. But is one of the coolest things about this encounter that follows Leah, kills chats with you, you monster, and interact with game world objects. Some of the scientific way of thinking characteristic Wizard sparks here and elsewhere. It's amazing how the man is fixated on the falling star.

The journey from here is like a journey into the past.
Ah, the Cathedral, as I missed you! Kael Rills is long gone, of course, and I miss the blood red light stabbing through the darkness. But perhaps deceptive serenity around the cathedral is what they are most uncertain. Its depths are anything but serene.

The Fallen Star, finally makes its reappearance. In its wake, it is a telltale trail of the otherworldly blue flames and a crater large enough to accommodate over nine thousand McDonald's regulars stuff left over. The journey along the ancient Horadric bastion crawling with undead. Ravenous dead, stalking the halls, often in groups. Carrion Bats swarm in clouds stick, my assistant with her ??annoying little zaps (reminiscent of Diablo II Bat Demons.) And, of course, the Grotesque.

Although not particularly the most dangerous enemies, carrying the Grotesque, a few elements that prove tricky could, especially in later difficulties: a fairly large amount of health that guarantees a corpse explosion to the death, and a mobile army in his stomach. Okay, that was a handful of killer lamprey (eels) are not really that dangerous, either, but it was just freakin 'weird. Later in the game, the Grotesque was likely to sell a number of imps, when they for the most part, ran in random directions, until I snipe with Electrocute.
Eventually - inevitably - Cain appeared. Uncle Deckard had decided to go dumpster diving in the cathedral for some esoteric tradition in his never-ending battle against the forces of the Burning Hells. What harmless for any idea.

In addition to the mix of Cain brings another cool feature with Diablo III's take on storytelling: NPCs to talk to each other. Catch up on back in the city, Cain and Leah ancient times: Doomsday prophecy, demonic lore, the usual. Their interaction in the mixed occasionally arrogant attitude of the wizard. Have any other characters around the hero in the discussion, he would also add the flavor of his character in the discussion.

But Diablo III is not all talk and zombie-hitting. The highlight of the beta culminates in the battle with the Skeleton King, a point that Bornakk was given as one third of the way through the first act.

While the fight was not really serious (which is basically, "easy" mode for testing purposes), had King Leoric ghostly remains a few tricks up its sleeve.



The battle is initiated by clicking on the king. I started popping in every fight with a few potions to my resistances, attack and defense increase. The Buffs are minimal and only takes a few minutes, but every little bit helped.

Leoric has three primary modes: a whirlwind attack similar to the Barbarian crossed with a non-I-know-how-to-swing-my-gun-frenzy mode, a teleportation spell, and a simple swing attack with his massive club. From time to time he disappears from the crowd, so that a bunch of undead minions in his wake. Of particular use of the skeleton during waves was the assistant to the Wave of Force.
Wave of violence works in large mobs because of its large area of ??effect and massive recoil. The damage is not bad, either, often decimated low-level mobs in a single hit. For my purposes, blew the wave that is returned by schools and Forgotten Soldiers Depart from me, the fragile caster, and from my fellow patients. Oh, and did I mention the +50% speed barrier?
On defense, the fight with two skills are controlled: either by Ice Armor or Diamond Skin While diamond is the skin better for straight damage reduction, the relatively short (we're talking it to not only about Storm Armor, since there are no missing defensive buffs.) duration (5 seconds) makes it more of a cast-in-the-moment-of-need spell. Frozen Armor, although not a lot of damage absorber will increase the wizard's armor significantly (50%), lasts for two glorious minutes, and chills every enemy that attacks you - including the Skeleton King! This works very well in mobs so that the unwary wizard to escape with his skin intact in certain difficult situations.

From a safe distance, I could then spam them Electrocute, which works just like Diablo II, Chain Lightning, or Power Twister. (Oh, clever. Note:! Energy Twister is ideal for kiting Cast and run, baby)

And that about wraps things. If any of you were lucky enough to have played the beta, we welcome your experiences playing with the Wizard to hear - all the clever slogan tips, survival scenarios or funny lines in the wizard is so vulnerable to the mediation.

And if you do not get enough to Wizard (* cough cough * sign of addicts), we prescribe power gaming strategy Wizard excellent play through videos on YouTube. Here's one to get started:

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Update on our sweepstakes: Diablo 3 Beta Keys and Rage

 Like most of you know, we are currently giving away five Diablo 3 beta keys . Which you can win if you write us a simple email, why you ask because its very beta at the D3 will be us.

So far we have reached nearly 3000 messages (as of Wednesday 01:50 clock). This is not only an incredible reading marathon for us, but we are very excited, what did you come up with some to come to one of these coveted keys. Man, those are some really good ideas so there! This is the true fan culture (not about Facebook, eh ?^^), and if you think about it even a little closer, you will be downright melancholy. (Especially if in the background still Udo Lindenberg's "I'll do my thing, no matter what the others guess what the weak Maten one, I'll go my way and do my thing" sounds from the MTV Unplugged CD!).

Now we have almost seen all your mails and there are always some who still pure. The closing date is 16 October and then we will publish here the five winners, including their spiritual outpourings or their pictures. Finally, we will report the winners' names and their BN accounts to Blizzard, so that they can be unlocked. We also have as part of our live streams a few times the game Rage raffled (high score in gamona.de test). Since the winners are not fixed yet, but we have not forgotten you, guys!

The reason for the delay is that the publisher has sent us yet the games and the fact we are still waiting. Then we will announce these winners. And if that's still not enough, you might still hope to surf on Facebook, and there one of Blizzard's keys to get. The chance for us but it is definitely higher .

We wanted to tell you about any requests only intermittently come before. How we write our readers Asmo so aptly: no power, just draw your mind so if I was not a key win! hoe? Lottery makes no sense but really, if not every week I'm 6-NEN, right? ^ ^

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Fan Art Diablo Watch # 113: Monk, Barbarian, Witch Doctors and Wizards Oh My!


Welcome Friends of the latest installment in the Diablo Fan Art Watch. This week Blizzard shows us a few new pieces of fan art from their own Diablo Fan Art Gallery.

We begin this weekend with two new pieces of Wei-Zi with the Female Monk shipping demons in the old Tristram Cathedral, and a witch doctor summoning forth a wall of zombies, brains Mmm.

Next, we have saints monk breathing2004 destroy many demons in his wake with a picture of one of his many gods, possibly Ytar in the background on him.

Follow from there we go to a jungle / swamp setting, as we follow a female assistant Followed by demons. Art by Laura Ferreira Sardinha.

Wrapping things for this weekend is a male barbarian in Savage yuan. Here we see the barbarians are in a rainy setting with zombies all around him. A demon with the barb stuck in him ax shade in the foreground.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Lottery: Win one of 2,000 Diablo 3 Beta Keys!

Many had already given up hope that even more significant invitations for the Diablo 3 beta coming, but tonight, Blizzard announced that the floodgates are now open at last.


Want to lead the assault against the servants of the Burning Hells, appears before the game? Then join the battle for the fate of Sanctuary, by clicking on the Diablo III beta-key Lottery take part! From 17 Of October we will randomly each week 200 winner take that one key to receive our exclusive Diablo III Beta Test. In addition, every fourth winner drawn a second key that he can share with a friend! Drawings take place every Monday for eight weeks, up to a total of 2,000 keys . Interested? Good! Participating is easy. Follows Diablo just on Facebook and fills our official entry form by 12 From December to keep you secure your chance to win. You can find more information about participating on their site with rules and regulations of the lottery. Good luck!

Which is really nothing more to add. Good luck, and maybe we'll play together soon so times a round. You simply report the news thread if you have won.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Mantra changes

In addition to recent changes on the Demon Hunter hate regeneration and how damage is calculated in all classes, Bornakk recently to a question about the Monk's mantra, specifically why they are updated, instead of simply need to switch.

To give players an incentive to refresh their mantras (which, if you do not currently function almost identical auras), it has the talk of the implementation of short-term bonuses mantras when the player first, they have been activated.


Official Blizzard Quote:
I thought one of us had already posted on this but I'm having trouble locating it... NO MATTER!
We're toying around with making mantras more of an active ability currently. Right now it's just a really short duration buff, which isn't very cool, as stated. What we think will be cool, is that when hitting the button to cast a mantra you get a super-mega buff (or effect) for a short time, and then the buff would lower to its normal levels after.
You can see that design currently on a couple skill descriptions on the site, they're just not reflected in-game.
Keep in mind it's still all of course in testing.
This gives mantras a more 'use oriented' flavor. So while it's a short duration that's OK because you want to hit the mantra button more than once every two minutes, it becomes an active skill. So far we think it's working pretty well.
What we don't want is to have long duration buffs or toggles, because then it may as well be a passive. We want our active skills to be active, and so hopefully this change achieves that.
 As with the review of the regeneration of the Demon Hunter hate mantra will not change on the official site of the Monk skill, but the change implemented in the current beta build. If they were implemented, the ability descriptions would be changed to the current to be adjusted on the Diablo III website:

Mantra of Evasion - Recite a mantra that you grant to dodge and all allies within 40 meters of a 30% chance of attacks. Lasts 120 seconds. Dodge chance has doubled in the first 3 seconds.

Mantra Healing - Recite a mantra that you and all allies within 40 meters lead to an increased life regeneration of 106.4 to win a second life. Lasts 120 seconds. The health regeneration is doubled in the first 3 seconds.

Mantra of Conviction - Recite a mantra, which causes all enemies within 20 yards of you to take 20% additional damage. Lasts 120 seconds. Additional damage is doubled in the first 3 seconds.

Previously, the sections on the first three seconds were not included in the description of the skill, and the change in the other mantra, the mantra of retribution, is currently unknown. Each skill has a cooldown of 30 seconds currently, so this change would most likely make it advantageous to simply use the mantra of every 30 seconds.

These changes have raised questions about the wizard and the barbarian armor Shouts. Although the barbarian gains from some of his anger calls the wizard currently gains no bonus from refreshing their armor, and it seems as though a similar incentive could be used for both classes. If that happens, and when the mantra is to implement change, you can be sure we'll let you know.

So, what think you know about the Monk's mantras? If they are only passive skills? You should only change it on and off? Or are these changes have to offer enough incentive to upgrade the mantra every 30 seconds? Make sure you discuss your opinion in the topic below.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS