Diablo III RoS Ultimate Guide to Level 70 and Beyond!

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Alot of people are picking up or moving over to the console version of Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition and are either unfamiliar with the genre or are confused by the slight differences between the console version and the PC version of Reaper of Souls.

The first thing we recommend to everyone is to play the game for 30 minutes or more. Get a feel for things, try a couple of classes out, gain a few levels, and get some loot. This will make this post a lot easier to follow as you will have at least some basic understanding of what we’re referencing.

The Basics

Basic Stats
There are 4 basic character stats: Dexterity (Dex), Strength (Str), Vitality (Vit), and Intelligence (Int).
Each point of a stat does the following:

Dex adds to your dodge chance (on a sliding scale) and adds 1% damage for Demon Hunters and Monks.
Str adds one point of armour and adds 1% damage for Barbarians and Crusaders
Vit adds to your life. Under level 35, it adds 10 life/point. At 35 it adds (your level) -25. So at level 60, it’s adding 35/points of life.
Int adds 0.1 to all of your resistances (fire, poison, etc.) and adds 1% damage to Witch Doctor and Wizard’s attacks
The stat that adds damage for each class is called that class’ Primary Stat. This is the stat that you’ll generally want to focus on picking up for your character.

Video version: http://youtu.be/HtHBwuLW0L4

Notice those three icons with numbers below your character? Those are from left to right: Damage (sword), Toughness (shield), and Healing (++).

Damage is how much damage you do with your attacks and is calculated from your weapon’s damage number, attack speed, critical hit chance, critical hit damage bonus, and primary stat.
Toughness is a rating derived from your armour, health, resistances, and dodge rating.
Healing is drawn from effects that cause you to gain life: life on hit, life per second, life after kill, and bonus health from health globes.

Watching those numbers as you progress and get better gear will give you a rough idea of how your character is doing. I say rough because there are things that are not factored in, such as items that boost certain skills, playstyle, etc.

Loot System
Loot, that’s why we’re all here isn’t it? Killing monsters and getting loot. But do you know how the loot system works? When you or someone near you kills a monster or breaks an object, a “roll” (random number check vs a probability table) is made to determine if loot is going to drop for you or not. If the check is in your favour you get loot. Next up rolls are made to determine what the loot is (axe, sword, etc), what quality said item will be (normal, magic, legendary), and then the stats on the item are rolled. Speaking of the stats, most things are random but the Primary Stat (as mentioned above) is heavily favoured to be picked for your particular class. So Wizards and Witch Doctors will mainly see +Int items, Barbs and Crusaders +Str, etc.

Having a higher Magic Find stat skews the rolls for loot quality farther towards legendary end of the scale, but in the end we are all at the mercy of the RNG. For more info on the Magic Find stat see the advanced info below.

Loot quality is colour coded from worst to best:
Grey (broken)
White (common)
Blue (magic)
Yellow (Rare)
Orange (Legendary)
Green (Set items)
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Video Version: http://youtu.be/LkNSpE8tuJ4

Inventory & Inventory Management
Now you’ve got your character going and you’re looting things. Good good, now what do you do with all that stuff?

When you pick things up you’ll notice the left side of the screen near the bottom the item name and some upwards and/or downwards arrows. Those arrows are generalized indications of if it’s going to increase or decrease your damage, toughness, and healing. Early on you can pretty much blindly go by those arrows. We suggest paying attention to the info on the items though, so you can see why it changes those stats. Once you know why it’s changing them, you can make better choices to suit your playstyle.

There is a “quick equip” feature you can make use of by using the “up” on the D-pad of your controller. It can be handy when something looks to be an obvious upgrade or you’re just levelling and don’t really care about the specifics.

Later in the game I like to see all the items’ stats before I equip them. Bring up your inventory to get a better look at the loot you've collected. Your total inventory is split up by the slots the items can be equipped in (all helmets are shown in the helmet armour slot, etc.). If there is an item you haven’t looked at yet, that slot will have a gold star on it. Move your left stick to highlight that item slot and then select it. You can compare stats on the items in your bag vs what you’re currently wearing by hitting the button listed at the bottom. Looking these over will give you a feel for what the items are doing and help you decide if you want to change to the new item or stick with the old.

New to UEE is the “Stat range” feature. When you’re looking at your inventory you can hit the left arrow on your D-pad and see what range was available for each property on an item. So when you see that something has say +10% critical chance, you can hit the stat range button and see that the range it could have been was say 7-10%. That way you know you had a high end roll on that particular stat. Handy for telling just how good an item you got was and how hard it will be to replace it.

If you decide you don’t want the item, make use of the Junk system by highlighting the item and clicking down the right stick. This will mark the item as Junk, which is handy when you go to the blacksmith or a merchant as you can then bulk sell at the merchant for gold or bulk salvage at the blacksmith for crafting materials. In the UEE version all items you can equip can be salvaged for crafting not just magic quality and better.

Let’s say you like the item but don’t want to or can’t use it right now. You can hang on to it, but it takes up space in your inventory right? You’re limited to carrying 60 items so you may not want to carry around everything. You also might want to give things to a different character of yours.

This is where the stash comes into play.

In each town you operate out of you’ll find your “stash”. It looks like a large trunk or chest and can be first seen right next to the Inn in New Tristram. Your stash has a finite size and you can upgrade it via gold to a total of 210 slots. The stash is shared across all characters on your account (though Hardcore and regular characters’ stashes are separate), so it's a handy way to give things to an alt, hold on to things for later, or just to make room on your character.

Of interest, you can (and should) drop all your crafting materials and gems into the stash. When you go to craft an item/gem the game checks your character inventory first, then checks your stash and uses materials from there. So by unloading your crafting items into the stash, you not only make more room for loot on your current character, but you make those crafting materials available to all of your characters.

Video version - http://youtu.be/x4pMoVrMPrk


Intermediate

Options Menu
You've gained some more skills now and you’re starting to figure out what ones you like and don’t like, but if you’re like Hog and I were, you want more info and more options. Just so happens there are menu options disabled by default that will help you out.

Pause the game, go to the Options, and from there select the Gameplay section. Most of these will be self explanatory, but there are a few that should be noted.

Elective mode - This allows you to assign ANY skill to ANY button. That means you can have any amount of spells from any category; you’re not stuck with the default of one from each. This also allows you to fit the buttons to a way that fit your playstyle.
Display Player names - This can help you keep track of your character and any friendlies wandering around. I like it on, but some feel it it clutters things up. Try it out and see what you think.
Display damage/healing numbers - Red numbers pop up on hostile's as you hit them, and green numbers pop up on you when you're healed by something. Hog runs with just the Damage ones, but I like to see how effective my self healing is.
Show Advanced Tooltips - This is a must. This tells you exactly what each skill does including the actual damage numbers and durations. Without this you’re almost guessing which skills are better.

Advanced Stats
When you bring up your inventory you’ll see a button listed at the bottom for “character details”. In that subscreen you’ll see all the in-depth details about your character. Your core stats, how those affect things, other stats like Attacks per second, Critical hit chance, Critical hit damage, etc. Scroll through them and take a look. The details about each item are in the black box on the bottom left.

Once you get the hang of things, and as you progress through the different game levels, you’ll want to make sure to pay attention to more than just your core stats. Here’s a few you’ll want to follow:

Critical Hit Damage - Often abbreviated ChD, it’s the amount of damage you do on a critical hit. Your base amount is 150% of normal damage and it can be increased with items and skills.
Critical Hit chance - Often abbreviated ChC, it’s the chance an attack has to deal critical damage. Your base is 5% and you can increase this through items and skills.
In many cases increasing ChC and ChD will actually increase your damage output more than just bringing up your primary stat. As such, many builds focus on abilities that boost critical hit chance and damage.

Damage Reduction - This is a function of your armour. The higher this is, the less damage you take from all attacks.
Elemental resists (fire, poison, etc) - This is brought up by skills, items, and your Int. stat. Increasing your resists allows you to take less damage from specific damage types in addition to your damage reduction.
Those are just a few of the stats in that screen and we suggest you take a moment to review them if you’re having trouble with an area of the game. Often times players will focus purely on doing more and more damage and hit a wall where they can’t kill everything before it kills them. Resists, armour, and life regen play a big role later in the game.


Crafting, Enchanting, and Transmogrifying

Armour and Weapon Crafting
You've stayed awhile and looted things, but you just can’t find an upgraded set of bracer's. Or you’re running a new character and you hate that its not geared out early on. Fear not, the blacksmith is there to help!

As mentioned earlier, you can salvage items at the blacksmith and by doing so you will gain crafting materials. Early on, the blacksmith only has a few plans but you can buy him upgrades and he will learn new plans. Check out the “train” section of the blacksmith interface for the costs of training him and what you’ll gain each time you train him. Also, when you’re upgrading the blacksmith, you’re not picking ONE of the plans listed there during the upgrade. The first time through. I thought I had to pick a single item for him to train and was kind of freaking out that I was possibly ruining my future plans or that I had to coordinate with Hog to make sure we covered the items we’d need between us. You’ll actually get all the plans; they’re just listed there so you can see what’s coming in that upgrade and check their stats.

To craft an item talk with the blacksmith and hit the button with the anvil icon. Then select between armour and weapons. You can cycle around and pick out any weapon/armour you like. When you highlight an item, it will show you below the blacksmith’s picture exactly what’s needed and how much of it you have. You can also compare that item’s base stats to the item you currently have equipped in the matching slot.

Each time you craft something, it will be allocated a number of random properties like the loot system described back in the basics section. You can find the amount of random properties listed in the compare screen along with any attributes that are standard. Because of the random nature of crafting, you may want to craft a couple of times to see if one is better than the other. It’s essentially a loot drop, you just have a say in what type of item you get.

Of note, blacksmith plans and upgrades are shared across all of your characters. So once you teach him a plan your new guys can craft up stuff from the get go.

Jewelcrafting
Gemcrafting differs slightly in that you can keep upgrading gems by combining them with one of the same type and an increasing amount of gold for each tier of gems.

Once you find the gemcrafter during Act 2 in the story mode, he will be available in all of your main towns across all characters. And just like the blacksmith, his designs are shared across all characters as well.

Gems can be fitted into sockets on items to further customise them to your liking. Adding a gem to the helmet and weapons have different effects than adding them to any other item.

Diamond - White
Helmet: %Cooldown Reduction
Weapon: Extra damage to Elites
Elsewhere: Resist All damage types

Emerald - Green
Helmet: Bonus Gold find
Weapon: Critical Hit Damage
Elsewhere: Dex

Ruby - Red
Helmet Bonus XP
Weapon: Damage
Elsewhere: Str

Topaz - Yellow
Helmet: Bonus Magic Find
Weapon: Damage to melee attackers
Elsewhere: Int

Amethyst - Purple
Helmet: %Life
Weapon: Life per hit
Elsewhere: Vit

In both gem and weapon crafting, you will also loot plans which allow you to craft legendary items, sets, and top tier gems.

Enchanting

New to the Reaper of Souls so UEE as well is Enchanting. Once you find the Mystic in Act 5, she’ll be available in town with the enchanting and transmogrify services.

Enchanting allows you to take one of the stats of a weapon and “re-roll” it for a different/better result from the available options.

Head over to the Mystic and talk with her. Under the enchanting section of her interface, select the item you’d like to change. Once you select it, it shows you on the right side of the window the properties that you can choose to try and change. Highlight a property and you’ll see at the bottom of the screen a button that will show you all the available properties and their stat ranges, for your currently selected property.

Once you’re happy about trying to roll a replacement, check the bottom left of the screen for the cost of doing the enchantment. This price will go up each time you try on an item, FYI. Also of note, once you choose a property to try an enchant on, you cannot enchant any other property for that item.

Ok, you've got the materials and a property you want changed selected. Go ahead and hit the enchant button and wait for the progress bar to go forward, but don’t get all button happy! Once the progress bar goes across, you’re given 3 possible results. You get to choose which of the three you want applied and there is no confirmation popup, so be sure about what you select.

Transmogrify

The other new service offered allows you to change the appearance of your armour and weapons in exchange for gold. The kicker is if you want the fancy ones from Legendaries, you have to find the item first!

To do a transmogrify, head to the Mystic and change to her Transmogrify interface option. Select the armor/weapon you want to change and you’ll see options on the bottom right. As you browse the different options your character’s appearance will change on the top left to what it would look like on your character.

Once you’re happy with your look, check the price listed just above all the options and if you’re happy confirm the change.

For extra style points, don’t forget to dye everything to match!

Video version: http://youtu.be/Hm9_gwySulk


Adventure Mode, Rifts, Bounties, and Blood Shards

Once you've played through the campaign and defeated Malthael, you unlock Adventure Mode for all of your characters (Hardcore and regular mode separate, of course). No need to play through the story four times with each character! Just select “Adventure Mode” from the game settings where you would normally select what act of the story you want to be in.

In adventure mode bounties and rifts are introduced. Five areas of each act will have a goal like “kill 150 enemies and a specific Unique monster” or “Clear level two of a random dungeon”. When you complete that bounty, you’re given a chunk of XP, gold, Blood Shards, and Rift Key fragments. (more on the last two below). If you clear all five bounties on an Act and talk to Tyrial, he’ll give you a “horadric cache” which contains semi-random drops (Some items are more likely to drop in specific act caches), and usually more rift key fragments.

You can tell the areas on the map that have bounties by the gold exclamation point on the location. If there is a chest under the exclamation point, you’ll earn double Blood Shards in that Act.

Of note, you now can bring up the map and hop to new locations regardless of where you are in the game. No need to go to town, then hit the waypoint there to get to where you want.

So what’s with the key fragments? If you have five key fragments (on you or in your stash), you can open a Nephalim rift from the obelisk in town. Just walk up to it and activate it. Rifts are randomly generated terrain and enemies with a higher than normal amount of Champions and Elites. (PS3 and X360 versions are limited to the terrain and enemies from the Act you are in). Your goal is to clear enough monsters to get the Rift Guardian to spawn. There’s a progress meter on the left side that moves along as you kill things. Once it gets to 100% the Guardian will spawn near you and attack. When you defeat the Guardian and take your loot, you can keep exploring the rift or head back to town and turn in the quest to Orek. He is a blue, ethereal being who is standing near the obelisk. He will reward you with more XP and gold, and the rift will close in 30 seconds.

Blood Shards are a currency used to “gamble” with Kadala, another new NPC in town. When you talk with her, you can select the type of item you’d like, and she will list her price at the bottom. Your blood shard total is listed by your gold on the bottom left. When you ask for the item, she randomly generates one and gives it to you. Many an angry and even a few joyful posts have been made about the items she gives. Just think about it like even more rough crafting that has the potential to be a Legendary or Set item.


UEE Console Exclusives

Mail - You can mail items to offline friends so they don’t have to join your games in order to trade. There is a mailbox in town and it will have an envelope icon over it if you have new mail.

Gifts - Sometimes when loot is dropped, there will be a gift dropped. This is an item for someone on your friends list. When you pick it up it goes into your bag slot on your inventory. Bring up your inventory and activate the gift to send it to your friend. They will find it in the mail and it will be a random item. The item isn’t rolled until the recipient opens it and they stay in the mailbox for 30 days. This means people will often not open a gift until they are level 70 to try for the best items in game.

Nemesis - When a monster kills you it can later invade the game of someone on your friends list, along with a shadow copy of you. Should it defeat you or anyone in your party, it will escape and then grow stronger so that the next person it invades will also have a copy of you with it. This can progress for multiple rounds before it is retired. You can tell a Nemesis is coming to your game by the sounding of horns that herald them and the rumbling of your controller.

Apprentice Mode - When a lower level character joins a higher level character, the lower levels’ stats will be boosted to make them able to play near the ability of the higher one. This way you can have a buddy join you while he’s levelling up and you’re just grinding for gear. The lower level player will still get loot appropriate to his level as well, so no worry about looting things you can’t use.

Video Edition: http://youtu.be/N5MdbYc_gTQ

Odds n Ends

Difficulty Levels

With UEE you no longer have to go through the story four times and deal with Normal/Nightmare/Hell/Inferno game modes. You now level faster and the game scales the enemies based on your current level. The old difficulty levels were scrubbed and a new system has been instituted:

Normal: 100% Health, 100% Damage, 0% gold bonus, 0% XP bonus
Hard: 200% Health, 130% Damage, 75% gold bonus, 75% XP bonus
Expert: 320% Health, 189% Damage, 150% gold bonus, 150% XP bonus
Master: 512% Health, 273% Damage, 225% gold bonus, 225% XP bonus
Torment I: 819% Health, 396% Damage, 300% gold bonus, 300% XP bonus
Torment II: 1311% Health, 575% Damage, 400% gold bonus, 400% XP bonus
Torment III: 2097% Health, 833% Damage, 550% gold bonus, 550% XP bonus
Torment IV: 3355% Health, 1208% Damage, 800% gold bonus, 800% XP bonus
Torment V: 5369% Health, 1752% Damage, 1150% gold bonus, 1150% XP bonus
Torment VI: 8590% Health, 2540% Damage, 1600% gold bonus, 1600% XP bonus
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Normal, Hard, and Expert modes are available from the start. Master Mode is available after completing Act 4, and Torment Modes are opened up after reaching level 60.

New to UEE is that you can change the difficulty up or down one level from the pause menu without having to make a new session. You can change it as many times as you like, but only one level up or down from the original session’s setting.

Torment difficulties also increase the chance of a legendary drop over previous levels.

"Power Leveling" an alt

Only one character needs to get through the story to unlock adventure mode for the whole account. It's a better way to level a second character because you don't have to wait for story characters, you can jump around the map at will, and you gain things for end game. I just do the bounties and save the keys for doing rifts at level 70. You also earn a ton of Blood Shards during this process which you can spend at 70.

So, the best way to power level an alt is to get to level 21 or higher with your new guy and then throw a big ole Red gem in their weapon(s) and helmet. (Level 21 items start having gem slots)

By the time your main character is level 70, you should have a bunch of marquis and a few imperial rubies laying around. Toss them in your stash for this new low level guy.

Once you're 21-24 range, either craft or loot yourself a fast attack speed weapon and a helmet that require level 21. If they have a slot, toss the biggest ruby you have in the helmet, and the second biggest in your weapon(s). If they don't have slots, head over to the Mystic and look for which property you can replace through enchanting for a slot and then gem them up.

Once you're doing an insane amount of damage for your level and gaining at least 30% more XP than you normally would, crank up the difficulty and go Hog Wild!

Also, if you want you can craft up a Cain's set for the bonus XP. You'll only really need to make one set, and then just stash it when you're done. The next time you level someone they can just grab it from the stash and not care about the stats because you'll be wrecking things anyway's.

Why a fast hitting weapon you ask? You're going to kill things with one or two shots, might as well make those one or two shots go fast.

What about paying to remove the gems, isn't that a waste of money? Nope, when you get 10-15 levels along, craft up or loot a better base weapon/helmet and salvage the old one. The gem comes out free! (Unlike Vanilla D3 where it would be lost and you would yell at your dog.)