I mean very often is a real exaggeration. Even the real horrible ones which are very rare aren’t impossible to do if you just watch a guide.
I am not anything specially good in this game and I have never taken more than a handful of tries if I watched a guide. And that was ages ago when I watched them before completing it instead of afterwards like now.
I know everyone isn’t equally good at this game but I mean if you can’t finish even a harder than average challenge rift are you really going to even be worried about node 15 by that time? Someone who can’t do that is going to likely also not have either a Ramaladni’s or Petrified Scream.
So it is pretty much holding out for in case you get that very rare level of tough rift which doesn’t make sense to me.
season 27’s EU first challenge rift was a nightmare, good thing they listened to feedback and changed it. Hoping for a better one this time around tho im sure the tradition will go on and EU’s gonna be dogpoo compared to US one.
I thought it was something like 26 or 25 when that happened, but then again 27 started so long ago.
The only one I found hard was I think 22’s season start one. The absolutely horrific LoD Barb that was not only badly geared but used Frenzy and WW. O and Stone Gauntlets without CC immunity. Was such great fun to spin around at crawling speed, and no charge to get around with as far as I remember. But even that was mostly just frustrating.
The EU new challenge rift on tuesday 23rd of august (wizard who dies plenty of times) was so hard that Raxx made a video and wrote to Blizzard fearing a lot of casuals would not be able to complete this challenge for the start of season 27 (26th of august).
So blizzard changed it and made it actually easier but trolled us… with a sorceress wearing stone gauntlets ^^. That wizard couldnt die, but it took longer time to complete it. ; )
Let’s just say it wasnt for the no level requirement altar node almost everyone would open the challenge rift cache. Hopefully we all get lucky with gold or bloodshard goblins.
I already ruined my luck this season, the first rift i did on the PTR was the cow gauntlet wich gives tons of gold and xp. Theres no way i’m gonna be as lucky on live. That’s basically GG right there , it alone gives enough Gold for the blacksmith.
Also if you get the Whimsydale therem rift, theres a high chance of getting high level gems, those sell for a lot of gold.
When I do levelling practice I generally assume poor luck. I assume I strike out on my upgrade, and I generally skip all the legendaries that drop and ignore any goblins I see. That kind of simulates a worst case scenario, so I know a rough bound on how long it will take to level. If I get lucky on the actual season start, great! I levelled faster than expected.
Also skipping rubies. They can remove decent chunks of leveling time.
Outside of that, I do prefer fixed level weapons, rather than rolling the weapon during the run. You just need some control. A run where you get a 42 weapon with one class, and another run with a different class getting a 51 weapon can give a false impression of which class levels faster.
And I know it’s the best expected, but with a Level 40 weapon for each class, I have that control. And its easier to figure out what I need to dump my difficulty down to, rather than what I can upgrade it too. So, just for personal use, I have two runs, one with a 40 weapon, and one with no Level Reduce. That way I have a chart of the appropriate difficulty to switch over to when I do get my Level Reduction weapon.
This really comes down to what you’re after. There’s still the Ramaladni’s Gift and Petrified Scream that you need to sacrifice. You’ll see people who will say they have them on opening weekend, but you also see people who post if these things exist, when they’ve reached 800+ paragon without seeing them once.
Now, if you’re playing for 20+ hours, it becomes less of a question. But that’s still 6+ hours each day of the weekend. People have family, jobs, etc. that 20 hours over the opening weekend isn’t realistic for them.
And the Challenge Cache not only helps for leveling, it helps for post 70 as well.
I’ll open mine and enjoy the season start (uber leveling), then if I get to power 15 before next CR reset so be it, I can spend that time farming the stuff needed for the rest… Staff of Herding as an example
Love that there is a choice to be made… people also forget you get almost all the good stuff even if you use cache.
If you save the cache, you’re betting that:
-you’ll get to node 15 (and maybe past it)
-having gotten all the drops needed previously
-in time to not only unlock but also meaningfully use those Altar powers, before the next CR is available
-despite leveling more slowly and gearing up more slowly at 70 without the boost the cache gives you
Even for people who have no other weekend plans + Monday off, getting in enough play-time after unlocking node 15 but before the challenge rift resets to make up for the slower start is going to be challenging.
I have plans and will have to work Monday (too bad they didn’t plan ahead to start the 17th for Family Day weekend) so it will likely take me a few additional days to be ready to unlock that node. But I’ll definitely save the second cache for it.
This is a great thread. I’m still reading through (at post 51). I will say this. @BehindTimes is a beast. I thought I had good ideas on solo leveling and then I encounter that guy. Side Note: This game has NO balance. NoNe! The Necro class is broken or should I say Necro is a tool for jail breaking. It is like a skeleton key. /meme_face
This…
Crafted Yellows + Blues are tradable on the PC (not the console version though).
… sucks. I don’t play console but even I was like damn that is a cat turd for sure.
The ideas in this thread can be tested right now. You all have access to all 3 realms.
I’m most likely going to hold my Friday CR until I get my Monday CR. I don’t trust blizz or RnGesus. I could see them throwing a real stinker CR at us on Monday and those who burned the Friday CR are stuck waiting an entire week to finish unlocking the tree.
That’s not true, unless blizz changed it. I did all 4 chapters in SC and had the ‘mail icon’ sitting there on my UI. When I got my Barb to 70 in HC, I clicked on it and got all 6 pieces.
Is it cheesey? Yea, but there were conquests on both sides to get to the end of the journey for the stash tab and either wings or pet.
I’m with you. Assuming I decide to play s28 (still waiting on those darn updated patch notes) I will be using the cache immediately. The quality of life is just too high. Also, I know that I personally will have maybe 8 hours of play on Friday and another 5 or 6 on Saturday. And then the next time I get on, the next challenge rift will be available. There’s almost no chance I’ll need the one for the altar before then. Even if miraculously I could use one, 14 nodes worth of the tree is already going to be a strong power boost.
Somewhere in S-24 or S-25 there was a Wizard CR that used Tal Rasha and Storm Armor, but had no Karini so your CR wizard basically had no defense. The rift was full of Act 4 mobs. There were certain junction points where it was just a killing zone for the mobs. There were other points where teleporting would land you into an ambush. I didn’t finish the CR because the pubs kept leaving. Someone in in-game chat mentioned 1 player had to draw fire and take the death which allowed others to TP pass the cluster to reach a pylon and clear a path. It was a hot mess and several hours of failure due to pubs quitting was real annoying.
Back on topic:
For those holding the CR cache it might make more sense to go A > B instead of A > C. A > B is for PC kill streak strats.
Do not speak to the enchantress until you are level 11. Sounds like a red pill strategy. You have no value until you build yourself up. After you build yourself up then you are high value and get big staff.
