Next newbie question

General Discussion
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(I’ve read some maxroll guides, but they target folks who a) know stuff already and b) got itamzz already (and c) use terms that don’t mean anything to me yet), so not particularly useful (yet).)
So I have played through the storyline / campaign setting. I’m lvl 70 by now. Gotten the cube as well. Located the altar (and followed maxroll’s guide regarding the 2nd node - and :man_facepalming: 'ed really hard afterwards since I’m lvl 70 already) (and for your reading pleasure: I also :man_facepalming: 'ed when I noticed that I had to use a much higher gem since I hadn’t kept a flawless one. A few hundred thousand gold down the drain :smiley: )
If I understand things correctly, there are basically 2 things I could do in adventure mode: Bounties and rifts.
According to guides, I should do rifts now and ignore bounties?!

By the way, is there an easy way to jump between the 5 maps of the 5 acts? Or do you always need to zoom out? Some turn page feature or some such. Next page. Anything.

The official d3 site had something about one of the 5 acts being “featured” and marked and when you do all bounties of that act, the feature will jump to another act. But I don’t see anything special on the 5 maps. Unfortunately, the official d3 site gives me error messages so I can’t link to it.

So those bounties are marked with explanation marks - what are the red Diablo heads for? And then there is a key marker as well - what is that?

Sorry for this wall of text.

EDIT: official site working again:

Whenever you enter Adventure Mode, one random act will offer an extra cache of rewards—this act will be marked with a “BONUS” tag on the world map. Completing a Bonus act will move the bonus effect to another act.

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For future notes, you never have to do the Campaign again. When you start a season, simply start right up in Adventure Mode. Way, way, way, way easier to 1-70 than Campaign.

Bounties, rifts, Greater Rifts (GR), and Visions are the current adventure mode activities.

Definitely not. Rifts are basically useless unless you want to farm a ton of GR keys. Run bounties and hunt for Visions. It’s a little blue portal with a ton of mats. You will also get GR keys here to, so, tbh, you really don’t need to do any rifts unless you want to complete season journey. Big time saver doing Visions, take the quickest route on the Altar to pet-auto salvage and double bounty caches, next I do double legendary rate from Kadala.

hit “m”, then the “-” sign at the top, then the act you want to go to. AFAIK that is the only way.

That is an antiquated system that was removed many years ago. Don’t worry about it.

If you are curious, there used to be 1 act that would give you a bonus cache (always the one the game started in). If you completed that act, an new act would become the bonus act, then after you complete that, it would go to another, etc. They removed it because a lot of noobs would go complete the wrong act and screw up a pub game. When they removed it, they just rolled a lot of the double bonus cache rewards (like the gold and mats) into one cache.

Fun fact: To this day, the game still starts you in a random act because of this system.
Funner Fact: The starting act changes randomly at the top of the hour.

Those are areas where there is a boss.

Acts 1-4 each have a key warden. Kill them and get a unique machine to open an Uber portal. The machines can be used in a secret room in the upper right of the A1 town. Go in there and right click on each machine to open a portal. Kill the Ubers in the portals and you get Hellfire crafting mats. With the mats you can craft a hellfire ring or amulet (get the plans from the little person merchant in A2).

The Hellfire ring is only useful for leveling an alt from 1-70 as it gives an xp bonus.
The Hellfire ammy is only useful a sacrifice to the Altar where you need an ancient one.

Neither of these items appear in any mainstream build. Both were kinda useful back in the day, but not really any big deal anymore.

No problem, we were all noobs at some point.

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Right click instead of moving the mouse to the - sign. This is the way.

My method for moving to Act I is open the map, then right click, left click on act I as moving mouse to centre of the map, then left click. (New Tristram waypoint is in the middle of the Act I map.)

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@Orcinus,

This can only be done in Adventure Mode.


@Orcinus,

Once you’ve killed a Keywarden, that Key icon on the Map will have a green check mark on it. If you need more Infernal Machines after killing all four Keywardens you will need to Leave Game and start again.

When you kill a Boss, their Map icons will get checked off too.


@Orcinus,

Her name is Squirt. DO NOT buy the 2 million Gold Plan. That is for players who do not have Reaper of Souls. Only buy the 5 million Gold Plans.

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A fast way to navigate the Adventure Mode map is to, press"M" to open the map, then right click it anywhere, then left click the new act.

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Fun fact: that right-click zoom out works from the local map, too. In case you accidentally open the wrong level.

(We’re also assuming OP is playing on PC?)

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More than two, actually. You can chase Bounties across the acts and activate a Nephalem Rift from the Obelisk without consuming any keys; given that you are playing in Seasonal, both of those adventures also have a chance to rip a gateway to a randomly generated Vision of Enmity while you are killing stuff.

If you are daring, you can run the time trials of Greater Rifts from the Obelisk once you have some Greater Rift Keystones from farming Nephalem Rifts or Visions; that’s the main end game loop for upgrading legendary gem ranks by the offer of Urshi. Main way to stack loads of experience is speed farming Greater Rifts.

Alternatively, you can hop in to an Echoing Nightmares after looting a Petrified Scream from killing Greater Rift Guardians (5% drop chance), and chipping it in the Kanai’s Cube. But that is an optional experience, yet really handy to gain power with a tight challenge in case you want to do high pushes above GR120-125. If Visions or high Greater Rifts give you a hard time, definitely try Echoing Nightmares.

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We are and I am.

Thanks all for the helpful hints everyone!

That happened when I was going for the cube. I was doing 3 or 4 of them (a new one opened after I killed a yellow monster) but since the cube was my goal I aborted. :smiley:

Are they part of anything special as well? Like bounties, rifts, visions? Or just for fun?

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I rarely skip them especially early in the season. And like I said, unlock pet-auto salvage on the Altar. It makes Visions 10x more fun. Just know when you do skip them, another cannot spawn until the opened one is completed.

Bosses are an OK, reliable source for gems when they are a bounty. Many Season Journey tasks involve killing certain bosses. My favorite conquest, Boss Mode, requires you to kill all the bosses (minus Vidian) in 20 minutes. Outside of these, there is not much special about the bosses in Adventure Mode.

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Ahem.

  • Malthael drops the Reaper’s Wraps recipe. Compulsory for doing the altar.
  • Izual drops the Staff of Herding recipe. Also compulsory! (getting this to drop was the bottleneck for me this season.)
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You are correct about the Guides. They show optimum gear for advanced players.
They also change as the high-level players find new and better ways to reach GR150.
Lower level players can, and should, make substitutions, depending on what drops.
They are a pretty good reference source, though.

Look closely at what affixes the gear has. You may have that item, but with inferior stats.
Myriam can only enchant One affix, so if you have an item with 2 or 3 inferior stats, look for a replacement.

Also, many build guides feature Bane of the Stricken gem. That is fine once the Rift Guardian takes too long to kill.
Bane of the Powerful is more useful at lower levels.

Note: They don’t say it, but some of the builds require using a separate Force Move button instead of Left Mouse.
Force stand still is also used with some builds.
Mapping key bindings can be done in the Options menu if you feel the need.

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HF amulet can be useful at lower levels if it has a good Passive, especially in HC where a Squirts could get you killed.
It has a guaranteed socket, which can save a bunch of mats at the Mystic.

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