Blaugust took a bit more out of me than I had realized, and I’ve been pretty scarce around here this month. Whoops. I have been busy gaming, mostly focusing on stress reduction and occasionally doing random dumb things with my friends. That includes old raids for transmog and mounts/pets, running LFR and snarking about how terrible it is, and my main focus in the past week – killing demons in D3.
Season 15 is about a week old, and I’m much more engaged than I expected to be. It is hard for me to tell whether I’m going to bounce or not in any given season lately. Sometimes I just do the minimum to get the cosmetic rewards, other times I’m pushing all the way through the season journey ranks. I think this time around the combination of the luster fading from WoW’s new expansion and growing Diablo hype surrounding Blizzcon have made me much more excited to play than usual. I am really hoping for a big announcement this year, either a major new expansion or an entirely new D4 would make my Blizzcon.
As for this season, I think the fact that I arbitrarily chose to level a necromancer instead of a demon hunter is also helping keep me more entertained than usual. I don’t know the class as well so I have to focus a little more, and I don’t have all the builds and gear memorized so getting legendaries feels more exciting because I’m seeing new things. I’m also more motivated to farm good gear because I don’t have a completely ancient, augmented necromancer waiting for me in non-seasonal like I do with DH. The things I get this season might actually not get broken down for parts when the season ends.
I went with the Rathma + Jesseth build since Rathma’s was the free set this season, and it’s quite powerful. Once I finally got all the pieces for the build I rocketed through greater rifts and pushed up to 70 with no problems. Well, I died a lot, but I killed things so fast that I still had no trouble beating the timer. It did take me an unusually long time to get all the key legendaries I needed for my build this season. The two necromancer-only rings were the most elusive, which was frustrating because the circle of buy-one-get-one-free skeletal mages is really crucial. I finally had to resort to some degenerate behavior to force it to drop. Specifically, that ring has a minimum level requirement of only 11, which allows a nice trick to work. Instead of gambling at Kadala at level 70 and having a chance of every ring in the game, I leveled a new baby necromancer to 11 and gambled with her instead. That meant I was drawing from a pool of around 3 possible rings, instead of whole endgame loot table. This technique works best for items that can drop at very low levels, but if you find yourself in the situation where that one thing you need just won’t drop, it might be worth it to try.
Now that I’m all decked out (and have unlocked the possibility of primal ancients) I’m working my way through the season journey. I’ve cleared through Champion and just need one conquest to finish Destroyer. I definitely plan to get through Conqueror, and hopefully drag my buddy Belghast through with me since he still has a few stash tabs to unlock. The conquest choices this season are not some of my favorites. I plan on grabbing avarice first, since with the double bounty box event this season it will be very easy to cheese that one. The next easiest is probably the thrill, since I’ll have lots of paragon levels and high level gems to make GR45 less painful with or without a set. After that the realistic options are either masters of the universe, which requires leveling and farming gear with a second class, or boss mode, which will be very hard with only one or two people.
We’ll see if I keep my momentum this season or fizzle out before finishing. For now I’m still having lots of fun!
Moonshine Mansion 
Erm…wow. Could you explain me this a bit better, if that is alright? 🙂
I got D3 for the pc last month, after years of playing on xbox (I was motivated by the fact that both Princess and two of our friends also bought it, so we’d always have enough people for a cook group).
This new season, do I need to start over a new character? Im still at a loss with the whole seasons thing xD
Seasons are an excuse to start a brand-new character from scratch. It’s a bit like starting with a fresh copy of the game. You don’t get access to your stash, gold, or paragon levels. It seems kinda painful, right? But the rewards are worth it. During the season you have the “season journey”, a series of tasks to complete. Chapters I – IV are fairly easy if you’re already familiar with D3. The hardest thing on the list is a solo GR20. Completing them will reward you with some cosmetic gear, a pet, a portrait frame, and one complete class gear set for your class.
After that are 5 more tiers of the journey (Slayer, Champion, Destroyer, Conqueror, Guardian). Each one rewards a slightly different portrait frame color, and bragging rights. The Conqueror level also gives you a permanent extra stash tab.
There are seasonal leaderboards for conquests and greater rifts, but I mostly don’t mess with those. I just push through as much of the journey as I can, and enjoy the core loop of playing D3. At the end of the season you get to keep everything. Your character will get magically turned into a normal, non-seasonal character, and all the loot in your bank will get sent back to you in the mail. Paragon points are slightly weird since they don’t transfer one-to-one, but basically all the xp you earned toward paragon levels gets reapplied to your non-seasonal characters, so you’ll get a pile of paragon levels out of it too.
Let me know if you have other questions, I know seasons can be pretty confusing to the uninitiated!
What an amazing, detailed and well explained reply, thank you ao much!
And the seasonal characters can group up with characters from other season while levelling? My Necromancer is still at 12, so its worth starting over 🙂
It is so much better playing Diablo on the PC, as it was intended ^^
The worst for me is Act I, but only because this August I did it three times (first two with different friends, one a newbie and other a veteran both looking into getting the game, and the last one with my brother).
On the xbox my maxed out char is a Witch Doctor, loved the playstyle. For the PC I got me the Necromancer DLC, because awesomeness. I could never get behind Demon Hunter, but my favourites on the xbox were WD, Wizard and Crusader.
How about you?
Fun note: I still havent been able to find/enter the cupcake and rainbow rift I once entered. It was a hellish visage xD
Seasonal characters can team up together, so you can definitely play with your friends, as long as you are all playing seasonal. If you have unlocked Adventure Mode on your account you can jump straight into that instead of playing through the story again.
I used to really like Wizard, but at high-level play it does better in a group and I play solo a lot. Lately my go-to is demon hunter because once they get a full class set they go from zero to powerful really fast. I also really enjoy witch doctor and necromancer a lot, because I love having swarms of pets.
I love the rainbow rifts! They are fun and the blood-soaked teddy bears are definitely the stuff of nightmares. There’s some amazing spacey-looking butterfly wings that drop in there, but I still haven’t found them yet.
You do realize that know Im gonna come to you first with D3 questions, right? 😂
Thank you so much for the help!
I’m happy to help!