Hi All,
First post.
— tl;dr —
p1500 solo, xbox, legit player farming t16 bounty mats reasonably fast with a DH Marauder MS speed build (wreath/hoarder/tactical advantage/hot pursuit). One shotting most elite packs. Well accustomed to grinds in many games, but repeating quests really pushes the tedium/boredom boundaries for me. Looking for ideas to speed it up even more as a way to try to keep it fun. Currently farming bounty mats for quad ancient Squirts to upgrade DPS on a Hydra build pushing GR115 at present. Ancient 20 fire/7as/91chd at present.
— not tl;dr —
I’d hoped to write a “Hi” on General Discussion and this post in Items and Crafting, but doesnt look like my xbox linked account has access to create new posts there ><
I’ve played top tier in group and raid based mmo’s in many years prior and in recent years find D3 to be a good outlet for when I have a few minutes here and there to play the similar genre of game without interfering with RL too much and without needing to bother with aligning play schedules with friends for consistently efficient grouping.
For a new challenge I thought I’d start out playing d3 without referencing any online material… this was pretty fun discovering everything for myself and of course slowed things down a bit, which kept that stage interesting for longer. The TV / lounge approach of the console is pretty chillax for something different to the desktop experience. Leveled all the classes.
By the time I had to start making a lot of choices about gear to keep / salvage (hello storage constraints) I eased into exposing myself to more community based research to get a better handle on longer term objectives and was pleased to discover there’s some pretty clever parts to d3 end game to keep a good balance of fun / effort / reward / variety.
Happy sticking with this play approach for now.
But bounties are pushing it a bit for me on the tedium front. 2 minute GR80 rift farming is pretty fun action and GR pushing is pretty fun for more challenge when I find a build I like… currently trying Hydra builds and pushing GR115 on the LOD variant after starting it recently. Not as advanced as many, but doing allright for limited time and all legit / solo I hope. I think quad ancient Fire Squirts is the go for the next push so that’s already taking some grinding.
I was wondering how others are keeping bounties fun and thought it time to post / say Hi.
Playing non season and trying different builds out presents a bit more attractiveness from reforging generic items than leveling one character in a season with a leaderboard focus. Rather than the primary focus being progression efficiency I can improve equipment that can benefit builds / classes I may try in future. E.g. working through reforging squirts for an ancient fire quad at the moment improves the quality of the best ancient/non of each element% in my stash.
Hi EddieLMT, thought the single para marked with tl;dr might have done it, but here’s some edits that might help a bit more 
“— tl;dr —”
and
“— not tl;dr —”
I don’t know if pools of reflection are a thing on console but sometimes when I’m grinding bounties I do bounties until I have full pools then burn those on GRs. If I get a Puzzle Ring, I’ll run that immediately for something slightly different.
For some bounties, get to know the shortcuts to make them a little bit quicker… for example the Forged in Battle bounty always spawns at the end of Keep Depths 1 so quickest way to get there is the Level 2 waypoint and go back up. There’s a Keep Depths chest bounty that works the same way, but can’t remember what it’s called. Or some of the chest bounties are worth activating then TPing back to town and getting on with the rest of the act before navigating back to town via the world map and taking the portal back to the bounty to finish it. Saves a few seconds here and there but adds up over time.
I also “methodically” do the acts left to right (5, 3, 1, 2, 4) on the world map and the individual bounties left to right on the map. For some reason that seems to block out some of the monotony. Sometimes I’ll also quit an act if there’s one of the notorious bugged bounties or The Great Weapon bounty (Act V).
Of course, the best way to do bounties is in a group but I’m too casual for that.
1 Like
Bounties are no fun, especially when you solo them. If you wanna be efficient for farming act mats, just try to find a solid group. I personally dislike reforging, as the effort isn’t worth the result.
Happy farming. Best class for bounties is still DH (UE or GoD).
1 Like
By not doing them and avoid reforging and rely on self found items.
Paragon wins this game and you can get proper Ancient items just fine by grinding GR’s and Primals are simply not worth it, rather do GR’s and get Paragon and get my gear that way.
1 Like
I don’t do bounties often because I find fun things to “bet” on with fellow players. I definitely enjoy doing a best out of 5 pvp. Loser owes winner a set of bounties.
If you’re looking to keep from being bored, start making other classes/builds. I reccomend making a Monk. If you’re still bored, go hardcore.
2 Likes
You forgot the last step and “delete all other classes from the game”!
1 Like
nothing they stink, I hate doing them. I just do just enough to do what I need and nothing more.
You can try to listen to some music to distract you from the time suck.
1 Like
I wait until they ask me how to make their non monk character better. Thats when I look at their gear, reccomend a few stat rolls (get serious), then say ,“wait, wait, wait, I see a huge issue!” They typically respond with , “what is it?” I follow with, “something that’ll make your character way better, but you need to leave the lobby first.” When they leave, I talk them through going to their character select screen, selecting the character, then press X followed by A very quickly, then make a monk with your newly open character slot."
1 Like
I’m sensing that I’ve yet to catch on to the epic fun that is waiting for me in the 70 monk on my character select screen 
1 Like
Having a solid group of 3 other people to di them with. U can easily clear a full set of bounties in like 10 minutes u guys are using fast builds like WoL, WW, Rathma ect
2 Likes
A modified Justice tempest rush monk works quite nicely for bounties.
2 Likes
I play primarily on switch. I watch tv while running bounties, t16, or when speeding. Really helps the monotany
1 Like
Nice. Still haven’t played since the set was new. Consistently hit 125s with it on my non Season
1 Like
beg to differ on that point, but I guess I’m just unlucky with RNG. Reforging or upgrading rares is how I get pretty much every ancient in the game and has been since forever. I get the odd ancient drop, but they are few and far between.
if you want a good ancient HPS quiver from a natural drop, this is not the game for you. You can’t even get a good non-ancient with the right stats drop for this item…
2 Likes
Do a few each day or split ppl up farming rifts bounties together. Put on some good music or a show.
2 Likes
I haven’t observed a consistent pattern here myself after burning many thousands of FS on reforge and observing the drops that went into those FS.
It feel like different options below are a way to constrain the outcome. I approach it like
- drops - no focus of RNG on either item type, item - ordinary to primal
- shards - focus on item type - rare to primal
- rares - focus RNG on item type - legendary to primal
- reforge - focus RNG on an item - legendary to primal
Each using mats you come by with varying degrees of effort spent on different things. Shards and rare upgrade mats come from just doing GR’s and the required rifts for tokens. The bounty mats for reforge for me takes me back to the subject of the post.
I’ve got ancients and primals I’m looking for from all of the above.
From training in software algorithms, including so called random number generators, there’s not really such a thing as a true random from a binary computer program… their all just approximations designed to give a random like appearance. Even in nature what appears random may just be a perception of random from lack of understanding of complex factors that caused the outcome (ie butterfly effect).
The algorithms may not yield say a 1 in 10 chance in a uniform way over small samples sets, but over time they should average out in a predictable way. I havent seen any studies done on long term averages for D3’s RNG. I’ve certainly observed anecdotally that it can go in spurts of good luck or not good luck for the task at hand. Afternoons where I’ve goblin pack after goblin pack.
That’s not to say the D3 RNG is a good RNG algorithm or not. I haven’t seen the data to comment really.
Something I’m reminded of with strings of bad luck (or good luck) is probability study / combination and permutation maths. E.g. Even after 100 tosses of a coin goes heads, the chances of toss 101 being tails or heads is still 50/50. That can mess with your head a bit… especially if your double down on red at the roulette table It’s the length of a specific streak (be the streak all the same outcome or any other specific list of outcomes) that becomes increasingly remote in chances to predict, but can still happen.
But geez it can burn being on a streak of not what you’re looking for can’t it?
1 Like
Not sure it is unlucky per se but more how we play? Doing ratruns or group play doing GR115’s in 2-3 mins gets you an insane amount of gear and if you are pushing you do ratruns and avoid doing bounties thus with the amount of GR’s at high level and speed the gear just comes.
If solo play then like you I will tend to use some mats to upgrade/reforge to get my gear because I’m not rinsing high GR’s as fast solo.
So it really depends on solo/group play and how frequent you play that really determines the RNG in getting good gear from loot or the requirement to do a little upgrading or reforging.
1 Like
I would agree with this - but, it just shows how imbalanced the game is between solo and group play.
But, even then, and as I said, I have terrible RNG, per capita (# rifts run to find an ancient/primal etc), I’m still way off par. i.e. compare 200 GR runs me solo vs 200 group runs, I’m finding less imho. I’m not looking at the time it takes for either object, it’ll obviously be faster for group and more ‘efficient’. Drop rates should be similar between the 2 on a total GR number. I’m not super sure if I’m unlucky, or if group play gets a massive buff on magic find that solo players do not get and this contributes to better luck finding gear when in a group.
I have also long suspected that primal drop rates have an increased chance in group play, vs solo play. I’m not talking magic find increase, I’m talking an improved drop rate for primals independent of magic find increases.
1 Like