• Players should no longer receive an “Error 14009″ when logging in
• The “Select a Hero” menu will now also display the difficulty level for each character
• Several speed improvements have been made to the streaming downloader

Achievements

• All players in a party should now receive “Till Death Do Us Part” even if they don’t have Haedrig Eamon as their active follower

Acts

• Act IV Witch Doctors should no longer receive an error if they kill a Shadow Clone with a Damage-Over-Time (DoT) skill after it’s launched a Firebomb but before it’s reached its target

Auction House

• The auction log in the Completed tab will now display a player’s activity (bids, buyouts, sales, etc) in the proper order
• When placing a new bid over a previous bid on the same auction, players will now be provided with the correct warning message: “Raising your maximum bid on an Auction you are already winning raises your current bid to just above your previous maximum bid. Are you sure you want to continue?”
• Players will now receive an error message if they attempt to purchase an item after the 50 item limit has been reached in the Completed tab
• The “Physical Damage” Preferred Stats option for rings has been renamed to “Bonus Minimum Physical Damage”
• The “All Damage” Preferred Stats option for weapons and armor has been removed and replaced with bonuses of specific damage types Items which have been purchased from a vendor and equipped by the player can now be sold on the Auction House
• Listing items on the Auction House from a different character than the one currently selected should no longer cause item display issues Battle.net The public chat list will now sort alphabetically

Classes

Monk

• Active Skills Serenity Skill Rune – Tranquility Duration of immunity granted to nearby allies from crowd control effects reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second

Witch Doctor

• Spirit Vessel (Passive) no longer clears debuffs when using waypoints or changing equipment

Related Posts:

These drop on the different difficulties and not at a specific location. They can come from monsters, bosses, chests, and other breakable objects.

Pages and Tome of Training Drop Locations

Page of Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting – Nightmare Difficulty
Tome of Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting – Hell Difficulty
Tome of Secrets – Inferno Difficulty

You will need these for leveling your artisans, however not in huge quantities. Just from leveling through the game, you will have plenty to level the Blacksmith and Jeweler. Just be patient and wait for the drops, there is no need to pay for these if prices are high. One of our strategies for the first week was to sell off everything since prices will never be that high again. With the profits, we can buy them back later if we need to. However when going back to the other difficulties and farming or helping friends, I have accumulated more than enough pages and tomes for leveling.

The other use of these pages/ tomes are for crafting items and combining gems into higher tiers. Depending on how your economy looks, crafting it isn’t very profit at the moment. It feels more like a gamble, much like crafting in Diablo 2 or buying gear from Gheed. The only profitable ways I see from artisans right now is if you have a good pattern which yields a valuable enough item that it offsets the loss in gold from a bad roll. A bad roll is when the stats that are randomly generated on the item aren’t great or useful to anyone.

Based on friends and forum members, most are not making money with artisans. It is indeed a gold sink, like Blizzard planned. If you need gear or a gem, just buy one on the auction house for much cheaper than trying to roll a great item. The jeweler has its uses for min/maxer’s that want high tier gems for themselves. The blacksmith doesn’t do too well due to the randomness of crafting. The main benefit is being able to salvage any gear regardless of level.

What are your experiences with artisans? Are you making any gold with them or do you feel like its a waste of gold?

Related Posts:

• Battle.net Updated Items, Pre-Inferno Legendary Crafting Materials Removed, Rank 14 Gem No Longer Costs 42 Million Gold To Make
• Beta Patch 15 Minor Changes to Artisans, Pages/Tomes Required for Crafting Items
• Beta Patch 14 Blacksmith/Jeweler Prices Changed Again, New Crafting Tomes
• Diablo 3 Artisan Crafting Materials and Recipes
• Diablo 3 Beta – Blacksmith Artisan and Crafting Video

Hey fellow demon slayers! How is everyone enjoying the game so far? Personally I have hit 60 and tackling inferno. They weren’t kidding when they said it was going to be hard! It’s interesting that the people complaining about difficulty were the same ones who said the game was too easy.

I for one like how difficult it is. It reminds me of endgame progression raiding where it would take months to gear up and farming just to take down the last boss. OS3D and Ulduar come to mind if you want to relate it to WoW. It has only been two weeks since the game came out and the sense of entitlement of some players is astonishing.

D3 Broken/Overpowered Specs

The only reason why players have beat Diablo/Act 4 on inferno is due to overpowered or broken runes. The main ones were Energy Armor (Wizard), Smoke Screen (Demon Hunter), and Mantra of Healing (Monks).

Last week before the skill and Act 2 chest nerfs, those classes were able to farm certain areas or mini-bosses on inferno for high quality gear. This gear also sells for millions of gold, which you would only have if you were in Act 3/4. The richest most geared players in the game were those classes who played a certain spec.

After the hotfixes, most of these players are still able to clear inferno on their own due the gear obtained beforehand. There were Demon Hunters running around with 130,000 DPS last week.

This is just how the game played out and I can respect those players that were able to figure out these builds or who did their research and adapted to the situation. I guess this is what you would call clever use of mechanics since no one “hacked” their way into an inferno clear. However it is important to note that this is less than 1% of players.

What About The Rest of Us?

So where does that leave the rest of us? To me it seems like we have to play the game how it was intended. If you want to clear Act 1 in inferno, you may have to go back to late Hell and farm for gear and gold. Then work your way through Act 1, slowly building your gear. According to older blue posts, you were supposed to farm inferno acts a lot so you could progress to the next one.

Due to players farming late inferno, there are higher tiers of armor on the market. Those 1000 DPS weapons don’t drop in Act 1. For those that didn’t know, inferno has different “tiers” or levels of armor. The best and highest “tier” drops in Act 3/4 inferno.

So some of us who are behind the curve can make progress by buying late inferno gear. This helps a lot with survivability since almost everything can one shot you in inferno if you walk in with gear from Hell. The first upgrade that players are looking for right now for Act 1 inferno is a high DPS weapon. Meaning anything above 800 and they don’t necessarily have to be a rare with good stats. A blue 1000+ DPS weapon may be a lot cheaper and will hold you over for now.

Before gearing up and spending any gold on the auction house. Please do some research on your class. Such as builds, stat priority, weapon speed, and gear. Consider everything up to inferno easy mode. You now have to figure out how to spec, gear, and play properly. You no longer can stand in one spot and and kill everything around you. You will have to kite and “scoot n’ shoot”. Champion packs take a lot longer to kill now.

Inferno Witch Doctor Builds

I play a Witch Doctor so I figured out I need a high DPS weapon, increased attack speed, intelligence, all resist, and vitality. For Act 1 solo I picked the Zombie Bears build with Vision Quest. Someone with a similar build soloed inferno Butcher in 9 seconds! For Act 2 or group play I go with a Poison Dart, heavy crowd control, and utility build.

Gearing cost me around 2 million gold to have 11k DPS, 30k HP and ~400 resist. Each piece of gear costs about 200k each on the auction house. Stats on them included int/resist/vitality for almost all pieces and attack speed sprinkled in. IAS is a very good stat right now. Even a simple attack speed ring may increase your DPS more than one with damage and your core stat.

Recently I upgraded my weapon again from a two-hander to a fast one-hander and mojo. This cost 1.5 million gold. My DPS is at 19k. Still low compared to other inferno players.

Making Millions of Gold In Diablo 3

So how do you get all this gold? Play the game. As simple as that sounds, Diablo is a farming game. Loot every gold drop, research what stats each class wants, sell good items on the AH, vendor the rest, don’t spend gold unless it is an investment, researched the best farming spots. My artisans are still at level 0 since at this point in the game, they don’t help you make gold. Just keep saving up gold for the gear you need to handle inferno. Just be patient.

How did I know how to do all of this? A little experimenting, playing the beta, and a lot of research. Watch streams, read forums, read blogs, and search Google for answers. I’m starting to understand why people buy game guides now. Most of my friends don’t have the time to research this with their 40 hour a week job and family responsibilities.

Guide Coming Soon

It’s no secret that I’ve been working on an all encompassing Diablo 3 guide with a friend for months now after announcing it a year ago. However the idea had been in our mind for years now and I had first mentioned it to Stokpile (well know MMO economy blogger). After publishing 500+ articles on my WoW gold blog, I realized a lot of that time could be spent making a guide. The thing with blogs is that great articles get buried under news and other new articles, never to be read again. I wanted to create a one-stop source for beginners as well as advanced players. In fact while we are writing the beginners guide, we had our more casual friends and family members in mind. We walk them through the aspects of the game since a lot of them aren’t hardcore gamers like some of you that follow my sites. They don’t even know what a gold blog is. Just the simple account security section could have helped a lot of the from being hacked. However we also have an advanced section for the hardcore players as well. There is no word on a release date yet as we are making this with quality in mind and waiting for the next major patch. As Blizzard will address itemization, builds, and inferno difficulty next week.

Now get back out there and keep on leveling and gear up for inferno!

Related Posts:

• Kripparrian’s Pro Tips: The End of Days, Nolife Mode
• Kripparrian vs Athene – World First Level 60 and World First Inferno
• Jay Wilson Gamescom Interview
• Video: Diablo 3 Presentation at Gamescom 2011 – Inferno Difficulty, Upgrading Artisans, Gem Progression, Endgame

Question

Comment: Hi,

Awesome website with great information.

I have a question as I’m trying to still figure some stuff out.

How would you suggest I start off with, first play with one character and play alone through the singleplayer?  Dive straight in with other players?
Only create on character or create a couple and try use their inventory to store some items…
Is it every really worth it to just sell some very low items to a merchant?

So, I’m just trying to find out what will be the best way to start playing D3 so I can maximize my selling potential later on?

Thanks for the help.

-Cranzy – Demon Hunter

Answer

Thanks for taking the time to message us. I assume your goal is to have a lot of gold or money (economically successful).

I would just play one character and get to 60. The items that are worth the most are high level ones, past normal. As you level higher, you will loot more gold plus higher value items, gems, ect.

If you need bank space, create alts and run them to the stash. That is an additional 60 slots per character.

As for lower level blues, I would loot them all and vendor them, but check the value to subtle essence first. I’m on NA servers, and they are 50g each, while the vendor value of a blue is ~150. So sell and re-buy mats if you want to craft.As for crafting you can go either way. Level them up now and try to make money on crafting or gem combining (check AH value + combine cost) or just sell off everything you loot and re-buy when prices are lower.

Hope that helps!

Follow up Questions

I’m still not understanding entirely … what do you mean by “As for lower level blues, I would loot them all and vendor them, but check the value to subtle essence first. I’m on NA servers, and they are 50g each, while the vendor value of a blue is ~150.” ?

When I go to the blacksmith and select Salvage and then hover over a blue item ….. It doesn’t show any information regarding what I will get or what it is worth when salvaged…. I have 200 Subtle essence … sell value of that is 2800 … so 14 each … that is when sold to a merchant. Haven’t actually seen how much they are worth on AH.

And Yellow Items, that I keep at the moment, I have 3 running on AH. I’m actually not sure if i should put them on AH now or keep them for RMAH later?

Answer

I meant do whatever gives you the most money. On my server a subltle essence sells for 30g on the auction house but a blue item can be vendored for about 150g. So I vendor everything. I didn’t mean vendor the actual essence. Does that make sense?

As for yellows, I just put them on the AH for 5-10k. I honestly don’t know if they will be worth anything on the RMAH. Rares drop all the time plus they are dirt cheap on the gold auction house.

Question

Oh ok. great – I understand perfectly now … damn .. I’ve been doing it wrong .. but going forward I will vendor all…

I and put up the yellow items im not using for Auction straight away.

Thanks for the information.

In your opinion, which is better to upgrade, blacksmith or jeweler ?

Answer

As for yellows, I just put them on the AH for 5-10k. I honestly don’t know if they will be worth anything on the RMAH. Rares drop all the time plus they are dirt cheap on the gold auction house.

The Blacksmith I personally didn’t upgrade either since I have friends that sunk all their money into it so I can use them whenever. The jeweler is not worth it since you can just sell the 3 gems you need and buy the next level. The costs are just too high to make them yourself compared to the the AH prices.

The BS lets you create gear with all the essences you have as well. Although feel free to search the AH for good deals by filtering by your level, stats, and sorthing by buyout. Under level 40, I have not spent more than 5000g on a rare item that was a huge upgrade.

Related Posts:

• Diablo Launch Day Problems, Wirt’s Bell, Dye Locations, Follower Inventory
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• Diablo 3 Beta Patch 13 Economy Related Patch Notes

It is a wake up call once you reach nightmare difficulty. Normal was a walk in the park and now you will die a few times if you haven’t already. That first champion pack you encounter will be fun.

As a level 30 witch doctor, I had to create a new build for nightmare. This build had to focus on survivability as well as control.

Witch Doctor Nightmare Build [Link]

Poison Dart – For my main attack I used Poison Dart with Splinters rune for high single target DPS. Don’t let other spells with 575% weapon damage fool you. Do the math on how much damage per second that is and you’ll see that poison dart is one of the highest damage output single target spells. Firebomb can be a alternative if you want a low cost AOE main attack. The first rune also causes the spell to bounce up to 6 times, great for breaking barrels without really having to aim… Try it!

Fire Bats – For AOE, died picked up Fire Bats with the Dire Bats rune. It does 288% in a straight line although it can be mana intensive so use poison dart when you’re low.

Spirit Walk – This skill was not used in normal but come nightmare, it will save you more times that you can count. During champion packs, this will ensure escape when fighting waller, jailer, and other modifiers. You essentially go in invisible and can walk through mobs to avoid damage. Pick up the rune based on your play style. I went with Honored Guest for mana regen. This ability also helps you survive long enough to resurrect fallen teammates as you can start the cast while invisible. It also seems like it allows you to cast while remaining invisible as well.

Gargantuan – Having a tank like pet is a nice addition, especially if playing solo. The Restless Giant rune, will enrage him, casing more damage, movement speed, and attack speed when fighting champion packs, bosses, or 5 or more mobs. This will hold the attention of dangerous enemies while you DPS or when you have to rez others. Zombie dogs can be an alternative, but the seem to die very quickly especially when overwhelmed.

Locust Swarm –  It’s great for mana when runed with Devouring Swarm. This spell spreads to enemies automatically after the first cast, and does 360% damage over 8 seconds.  I started using this in early nightmare but may have to rethink it. I may go with Soul Harvest instead, ignore mana, and pick up Pierce the Veil.

Grasp of the Dead – Having a CC/slow is nice in almost all situations. Mobs become more aggressive in nightmare and will chase you down. The 80% slow with the Desperate Grasp rune is a solid choice. Alternatives for CC are Horrify, Mass Confusion, or Hex.

Witch Doctor Nightmare Passives

Spiritual Attunement – Basically 1% mana regen and higher mana pool. If you aren’t using much mana, maybe try Pierce the Veil passive.

Fetish Sycophants – Using physical realm spells, you have a 3% chance to summon a fetish pet that lasts 60 seconds. I usually have 3-4 active when my group is clearing fast.

Spirit Vessel – This will save your life! If you take enough damage to die, you will automatically go invisible and regain 10% of your health. This can happen only once every 90 seconds. Choose another passive if you don’t have trouble staying alive, out-gear, out-level the content.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment. I’m always looking for ways to improve, just like most of you here.

Also just hit 500k gold at level 39. The RMAH has almost been pushed back and will NO LONGER go live on May 22nd. More leveling tonight!

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Wow, the Diablo 3 launch day was fun and frustrating at the same time. Once we were able to login and get pass the error 37 message, it was good times! Just finished leveling our Witch Doctor to 23 before going to sleep (US). Upon waking, I wanted to get some content out to you guys and gals! To stay up to date, don’t forget to sign up for our free newsletter over there on the right.

Dye Vendor’s

These one time use items will dye a piece of armor a certain color. They can be found in Act 1 towards the end. The marchant on the left side of the inn will seel them for around 300 gold. Some players have even tried reselling them for a small profit on the auction house.

In Act 2 there are two dye vendors named Squirt the Peddler and Tilnan the Collector at the Caldeum Bazzar.

There is also an achievement for dying your armor all the same color. Just be aware certain items can not be dyed such as weapons, rings, and amulets.

Wirt’s Bell

This item that costs 100k gold will be used for the secret cow (pony?) level. They blacksmith will need the staff of herding recipe first. It is still unknow where the recipe drops from or where the other materials are aquired from, but the bell is only the first item you need to find.

Skip Looting White Items

While leveling in Act 2, there is almost no need to loot white items. The entire time my bag was full of magical (blues) items, gems, and follower items. So I had to go back into town to salvage and and vendor a lot of items.

D3 Gems

Speaking of gems, they are white in quality, so you may miss them if you don’t pay attention. They Jeweler is also unlocked in this act.

Follower Inventory

Shortly after Act 2, you will have unlocked all three followers. Even when in a multiplayer game, you can click on them to access their inventory. This is a nice way to “store” some of your items or if you plan on using followers later on in single player, they will have a full set of gear already.

What I’ve been doing

I have decided to skip leveling the Blacksmith for now as I have friends that are sinking a massive amount of gold and materials towards it. If I need something made, I can just ask. My focus will be on the Jeweler first. However I still haven’t put in any gold towards it until I get a feel for how the market will play out. Most people are still leveling and just using items and gems they find. I did list some magical and rare items for 3-10k hoping they will sell, but they are low level. My main goal is to reach 60 before most of the player base and work on the level capped market. Farming for Hell items is going to be mandatory if you want to survive even Act 1 of Inferno, so I see a lot of demand during that wall.

Bank Alts and Stash

I bought 2 stash upgrades so far since my groups have been clearing content really fast that we had to go back into town all the time for inventory management (although not as bad as it was in Diablo 2). I simply needed the inventory space for items I wanted to sell. In hind sight, a lot of those items probably won’t sell since gear upgrades come so fast. Aweosme rares from Act 1 that I was saving were just salvaged to make room for Act 2 items. Once I was done plaything though, I made some mules (bank alts) and ran them to the shared stash in Tristram. That’s a free 60 slots of inventory space per character that you can sell from directly from the auction house!

As I was salavging items I kept wondering if it was worth it and really wanted to check the auction house. However due to fear of errors, I stayed in the same game till I was level 23. After that I checked the gold auction house and it was clear that subtle essence was worth a lot less, around 30g, than the vendor value of blues. I’m going to keep that in mind as I finish normal difficulty tonight.

As for the blog, launch day traffic was crazy! We think of ourselves as a small Diablo 3 economic site, however we experienced a traffic spike of 17,000+ so far today. A lot of players are looking for information right now. If you have any questions or suggestions for content, feel free to drop us an email or comment below!

Take care, hope to you’re having fun! How was your first 24 hours of Diablo 3?

Don’t forget to join come say hi in the private gold forums too!

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• Battle.net Updated Items, Pre-Inferno Legendary Crafting Materials Removed, Rank 14 Gem No Longer Costs 42 Million Gold To Make

Video courtesy of Kripparian (used with permission)

About: Kripparrian is going for Inferno World First and will be competing with Athene. He has devoted a lot of time to researching everything related to Diablo 3 in order to dominate the game. He will be streaming 16 hours a day when the game goes live as he makes his way to level 60 and prepare for inferno difficulty, which should be brutally hard. Kripp estimates that inferno mode will be similar to WoW heroic raiding, which he also has a lot of experience with.

How have you prepared for Diablo 3? What have you don’t that is out of of the ordinary?

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• Kripp’s Tips: Diablo 3 Auction House Fundamentals
• Diablo 3 Release Date is May 15th 2012
• Video: Athene and Force Discuss the RMAH (Real Money Auction House)

Video courtesy of Kripparian (used with permission)

Kripparrian is going for Inferno World First and will be competing with Athene. He has devoted a lot of time to researching everything related to Diablo 3 in order to dominate the game. He will be streaming 16 hours a day when the game goes live as he makes his way to level 60 and prepare for inferno difficulty, which should be brutally hard. Kripp estimates that inferno mode will be similar to WoW heroic raiding, which he also has a lot of experience with.

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• Diablo 3 Crafting Profession: Blacksmithing

Video courtesy of Kripparian (used with permission)

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• Diablo 3 Beta: 6 Gold Making Strategies
• How the F**k Do I Afford a 250,000 Gold GF Amulet? Gold Find in Beta, A Look Back at Patch 13.

According to SirPasta117 of Reddit, Amazon USA has shipped the Diablo 3 Collector’s Edition guide by Brady Games if you had one day shipping selected. I just checked my order and with Amazon Prime 2 day shipping, it still says May 17th as the delivery date. Even when changing to one-day shipping, it says May 16th. I hope I get a hold of the guide before release. I don’t care what you haters say about outdated info (not all will be outdated), this thing is awesome. And this is coming from someone who actually provided the WoW gold making community with 500+ articles of free info. Anyone else order theirs?

Brady Games Diablo Collectors Edition Picture Album

The album is spoiler free. There are pictures of the cover, back, spine, size comparison to The Book of Cain, Blizzard products advertisement page, and art page of an already seen image.

5/10 update: If you ordered the limited edition of the Brady Games Diablo 3 guide, recently, it won’t ship until the 17th. Plus Amazon US is sold out still. However you can still order the standard guide and have it shipped before the game comes out. I went ahead with and ordered the standard edition with one-day shipping and it should be here tomorrow, Friday, May 11th. Other’s have received their limited edition guide already if they ordered months ago.

Hmm, what to do with the limited edition when it get’s here? Or should I cancel. I would do a giveaway but sending it out to a different country can be a hassle.

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