Season Journey Solo

General Discussion
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  • Warning: Please do not read if you avoid ridiculous complaints or do not like listening to a grown man cry.

I preface this post with an apology as this is a bit of a rant and not something I’m proud of either.
I really felt this season could be the one that I complete Guardian (out of work). I can usually get to Guardian 4 out of 6 before I just give up from exhaustion. I say this is no problem but this season it took me over 200 hours. I play completely solo which obviously adds time. I enjoy the game so I dont really push to hard unless I like a build, GR110 would be huge for me. I waste time with silly builds and leveling gems because I have wild theories about how they will work together. Clearly, I couldd get more serious and improve my game play if I wanted to. I say that as if ADHD weren’t a real thing.
I could spend just as much time reading some great guides and watching excellent you tube videos about the game (kudos D3 community). This is just as much of a time suck but this will ik only get you so far solo. If I get lucky with Gear, a good season buff and an exciting build I will some day complete Guardian, although my marriage wont be as lucky. Can’t wait for the extra inventory slot, Oh wait is there a cap on these?
Having said all this and my second apology for those still in it, I’m having a hard time believing all the posts about how easy it is to complete the entire season journey. No doubt, leaderboards prove that many have completed this and very quickly, however, how many of these were completely solo? No bounties with others randpm groups or grouping in anyway?
I performed a quick Google search with the terms “season 20 journey” and “solo” and “diablo 3” , Nothing! So am I to believe no one has done this solo? Can’t be, can it? I wonder how many hours it would take? What would be a good average level for gems and paragon? Any thoughts would be appreciated, even those that will inevitably tell me to suck it up, “it’s not that hard”.
Some of the conquests are admittedly fairly easy to compete if you really want to invest the time for a reward that is nowhere near the equivalent in time spent obtaining it. Having said that, other conquests are so completely ridiculous and overly hard, I personally don’t see me ever having the will power to suffer through that kind of grind and I love(d) this game since release.
So let’s recap this season with it’s fast approaching end date. I completed the Divinty conquest on 5/6/2020 early in my season as I started late. If you play the general Greater Rift meta version of the game and solo this is fairly simple. I plan on completing Years of War before the end of season another fairly straight foward conquest but a huge time suck and if you dont like playing other classes forget this one, hence the name, I guess.
That leaves me with a sophie’s choice this season Boss mode, first attempt 22 minutes using a Frenzy Barb w/ my own build maybe obtainable if I go meta or level my gems. Or?
An even worse choice, The cursed cursed peat event. This is my whole point, why this? Say Good bye to my season journey with this sorry to say “Turd” of a conquest. No doubt a build that can kill 350 monsters in a cursed timed event is totally DOABLE, why does it have to be so hard for me to find it. Seriously? Why! Sobbing into my pillow, now, be back tomorrow, damn you Diable 3.
Oh, and Thanks to Kanai and Kadala for the two excellent primals today even though they only ultimately shaved off 15 seconds off my GR time. Once, I get my Cal’s buffs back up to 100, this build is really going to sing right up to GR110, if only they extend the season and Quarantine another month. RNG gods willing.

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Curses quest can be frustrating to find and I wasn’t able to get the required kill count using a ww barb. To find the “cursed peat quest” go to act 5-paths of the drowned and search the area to find it. Once you find the quest and before clicking on the chest, ask for someone preferably a DH UE multishot to assist you and it will be relatively easy to get.
You will need to make multiple games to find the quest think it took me like 15 games to find it.

Good Luck :slight_smile:

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While I used to play in groups before, I’ve played solo only now for the past several years. I complete the season journey completely solo since about season 9 or so. It takes me around 20 to 30 game hours to complete Guardian, so it can be done.

It took me just over 18 hours for Season 20 to complete Guardian. It is easy as long as you concentrate on completing the objectives rather than fishing for higher GRs. You do NOT have to have a build capable of high GRs to complete the season journey, just something that can do about GR75.

I even ended up doing all five softcore conquests. So they are all definitely do-able solo.

https://i.imgur.com/buGu5mr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/SsgVoEE.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/gQ5hVZN.jpg

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Make a MultiShot DH, by using a Frenzy Barb you are bringing a pencil to a gun fight.

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That’s on you. Quit wasting time on useless builds and maybe next time it will take you less than 200 hours…

Cursed Peat is VERY doable with a Multishot DH (either Marauder or Unhallowed Essence), got ~400 kills without even straining myself. Barb is too slow and the Hurricane WW doesn’t pull them in fast enough to kill & trigger the next wave.

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Not true. You can kill enough mobs to complete the conquest with WW barb.

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I’m casual like you and i prefer solo (beside bounties).
I got D3 on release, so im experienced, but not pro.
And that knowledge is a helping hand in completing the season journey.
Ofc planning your journey is very important too.
By planning, i mean, if your know The Cursed Chest conquest is the season, then you can’t just pick a random character, if all you want is to play solo.
If you do then, you’ll have to ask someone to help you.
Lets say, you wanted to play a WD, because he got a new exciting set and you know The Cursed Chest is in the conquest, you may want to level a DH too. Then later on, you can complete the Years of War conquest as well.
The experience of other seasons, will help you through much faster.

So straight from the causual heart:
Yes its really easy to complete Guardian…

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Prove it.

Better yet, you do it. Record it and post it right here.

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You can complete the entire season journey in under 60 hours solo. As far as doing everything solo, such as bounties and what not, yeah you can do that too.

This season, I ran almost every bounty I did solo. Well over 50 of them, I ran on my own and invited clanmates for free mats when I was done with each game. A few games, my clanmates decided to run with me but at most it would be two games at most.

But you don’t need a lot of paragon to complete the Season Journey. Most folks get it done well before they 600 paragon and some well before 500.

Paragon only comes into play when pushing leaderboards. But really the quickness of completing the journey depends on which class you start with and what conquests you choose to do.

As others have said, a DH is well suited for many conquests having the easiest time completing them. Other classes can do them too but many of the builds other classes use to complete are gear intensive. DH, UE Multi-shot, all you need is any old Yangs and any old Dead Man’s Legacy (no required stats or anything) and you’ll complete Conquests like Curses with ease. Craft a Crimson’s set and put a Flawless Royal Topaz in the helm, and Pride’s Fall in the cube and Boss Mode is a cake walk too.

Point is, if you want to complete the journey quickly, start with a DH. After the Journey is done, if you prefer playing other classes, you can make one and play that for the rest of the season.

60 hours to complete the Journey, leaves you about 140 hours to play any class or classes you want to do anything else in a season you want to do.

Just a quick tip.

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Well, given that you hid your profile, it is clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. Why don’t you actually learn to play? Maybe try examining gear and see if things are possible before dismissing them out of hand?

Cursed Peat:

Oh, you can also do Boss Mode solo with WW barb as well:

Edit:
But nothing beats S6 for Boss Mode IMO:

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Nicely done. I too was puzzled by the “WW/Rend Barb can’t do these” response, when I’d completed Guardian on day 3 of the season using exactly that.

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Thank for the laugh.

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You can do a lot more than that in 200 hours even as a solo player if you focus on your goals.

I have ~128 hours played in this season,done Guardian in a few days and also Augmented x2 chars with lvl 90 gems and pushed their GR limits.
This was done in HC.

Played a LoD Blessed shield sader first and done Guardian with that,then made a Mundunugu WD cause I wanted to try/play it.

Did not do a single party bounty in years,the only thing I do in party is boosting/helping ppl sometimes.

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I know you might not want to hear people say this, but the conquests aren’t that bad. I remember when I first tries Boss Mode, I also failed. There are a few things one needs to learn - it’s not just about having the right build, it’s also about knowing the maps, knowing which bosses to do first, and a little bit of luck. Either way, if you look at some guides (and there’s plenty out there), you will be able to do Boss Mode solo. If I did it (with a sader, barb, WD and DH), why wouldn’t you?

As for curses, this season was my first attempt at that one and, again, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Just have the right build with a lot of AoE damage, and you can just stand there while everything around you keeps dying.

If you need help, feel free to give me a shout - Pja #11980.

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I was prepared to fail Boss mode 1-2 times with Sader but to my surprise I got it after the first try.
I simply threw a lot of CDR on my already existing LoD build so that I could have near perma Steed Charge ‘swiftmount in cube’.
Reseted the bounties until I had either Urzael or Adria in Act 5 and Aranea in Act 1 as they can be far and time consuming to run to.
This way when they are bounty you get the arrow pointing to them and that helps.

Cursed chest I failed once then made a spammy AoV Foh+Heavens fury build with a non shotgun rune so the beams covered more area and that did it.

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There are only two easy conquests this season: GR75 solo and the 350 monsters chest. So for my third conquest I did again the GR75 solo in hardcore this time. You need to be more careful obviously when levelling up but it’s not very hard.

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I do my season journey true solo. The hardest part is normally getting the timed normal rift done. Or the conquests - depends on which ones are on the table.

I can assure you, what Idolis wrote is not wrong.

I’m a true/strict solo player, the last time I joined a multiplayer game was when we still had Inferno difficulty :smiley:

Just look at my data for Season 20. You can see my total playtime in that season is about ~76 hours… and I played a little after completing Guardian so my total time and paragons are a bit higher than what I had when I finished the season. Thing is, I played both, SC and HC. Obviously I could have finished Guardian way faster, had I just focussed on one mode and not split my limited time between them. And I also lost my first HC char (thank you, disconnect), what also led to additional time for refarming.

It’s doable true solo below 50 hours and below paragon 500. That I can assure you. But of course you still need a bit luck with drops.

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The problem is that this season was a particularly bad one for solo conquests. I play 99% solo and have earned Guardian solo in a couple past seasons. For S20, I wound up joining a group that was doing the cursed chest event.

Part of the problem is that I did a Valor (FOH) Crusader last season. She could have soloed this entire season but I didn’t want to play the same class and build again so soon.

Next season will apparently have much easier conquests.

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Plenty of people do it solo. They just don’t bother to record it. I do the journey solo most seasons.

You only need 1 set of bounties to complete the season journey, as long as you spread your journey completion across a couple of weeks. You need 45 of each bounty material (40 for cubing items for Guardian, 5 for a reforge for Conqueror). You need to do a bounty set for Chapter 3, but after that it will only take a few weeks of challenge rifts to get the required materials. If you start on a weekend, you can do one challenge rift on Friday-Sunday, then do the next one on Monday when it rolls over, so that grabs you 30 bounty materials in a few day span. Leveraging the challenge rifts really cuts down on the number of bounties you need to run. Assuming you don’t need RoRG or something for your build, anyway.

15-20 hours as a solo player probably.

I did 100% seasonal achievements + Guardian in 28 hours of gameplay this season. That’s all 5 conquests in SC + all 5 conquests in HC. I finished Guardian well before I finished 100% achievments, maybe something like 15 hours? I did it almost entirely solo.

I don’t bother to record my stuff anymore, but in S9 I made an alt account and did the entire journey + 100% seasonal achievements solo specificically so I could show proof for a situation like this. I made an alt account so I could show that I don’t have the 'Join a Cooperative game achievement to prove it’s a 100% solo account.

Power creep has come a long way since S9, so it’s considerably easier and faster to finish the journey now than it was then. I routinely finish up in about half the time now compared to S9.

Here’s some highlights I recorded from that S9. I mostly only recorded the SC stuff, but I did all 5 conquests in HC too. Only recorded Speed Racer though, the other ones are redundant.

Most of the videos I show my hours played and my unobtained “Join a Cooperative Game” achievement at the end of the video. Although I think there’s one or two where I forgot.

And like I said, you can do it a lot faster now than I did then. You can still see I finished Guardian in under 30 hours. And 100% seasonal achievements (requires all 5 SC + all 5 HC conquests) in about 75 hours. Big slowdown was getting solo Sprinter done on a wizard. I’m a much better runner now, but that definitely took me some work then. It’s a lot easier on monk (hence why I made a monk to do it in HC).

Speed Demon conquest

Avarice conquest

The Thrill conquest

Timed boss kill for Conqueror

4 min T13 rift for Guardian
Forgot to start recording at the start, so missed the first chunk of the rift.

Timed boss kill for Guardian

GR70 for Guardian
I pop off Guardian in this one.

Curses conquest

Speed Racer conquest, solo monk

Sprinter conquest, solo wizard
This is the one where I finish 100% seasonal achievements.

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You know what, I’m kind of bored. I might fire up my alt account again and do the season journey this season, just to show how fast a solo player might expect to get it done. It’ll probably take me a week or so, I don’t have a ton of playtime right now. I’ll update with videos as I go.