New Tristam & Girls Diaries
After facing countless menus on last update, we finally click on play and embark on our epic adventure! For those who didn't saw it yet, I recomend watching the Diablo III Intro, that appeared on youtube a few weeks ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9mUe5vHYzs
TL;DW version, a fucking star crashes on Deckard Cain's head.
Of course, that doesn't kill him, just takes him to the lower levels of the Cathedral. It seems that stars work as elevators on this world. I also find amusing that while being attacked by Diablo two times already, he is still reading some profecies about the day hell will attack...and he is actually surprised when that happens! Must be Alzheimer...
Anyway, we and I start our epic adventure at Overlook Road! This will be a HUGE update, so I can show the town and all it's features and them just kill stuff on the next ones.
The air is heavy with death.
The fallen star our sis is near.
Fuck that 'star' shit, Sulik’s MacGuffin has always been his sis, and I’m not gonna let Blizzard writers ruin that. Also, I wanna LARP. I was gonna used Sulik picture from F2 here, but I like this zombie Dalsin pic they use.
We start with a knife, naked and with only one Skill, Poison Dart (ignore the huge ammount of money, it's shared between all characters). As you can see, skills are now based on weapon damage, possibly a way Blizzard found to make class balance better & easier on the long run. This also leads to some weird things, that we will see ahead.
Blizzard default’s is melee attack on right mouse button and skill on left one, but I switch that as IMHO my right button is much more powerful. This is very important to me.
This is the Hero screen, with our 4 stas explained. We won't be using this much since the game automaticaly assign your points when you level up, following a weird logic I didn't figured out yet. Chosing well your equipment is the only way to focus on a stats, and also the only way to increase your mana pool. The screen also shows that our Basic Attack at this point is 3.35 Damage per Second, a great way to fill some codexian hate bars.
For the nick-pickers, Sulik is writen wrong cause I forgot to screenshot this when first playing, so had to create a new dude.
We follow the road and meet our first enemy, a Risen eating some corpses. He is a slow moving zombie that has only a melee attack and is the cannon-fodder of this Act. One powerful click from my right mouse button, a Poison Dart flies from my zarabatana and he is gone.
After 5 more clicks & kills, we arrive at New Tristam gates, which are being attacked. As the guard captain kills the last zombie, We and I proceed to speak with him, while a most distractive Hand Axe that dropped covers his face.
In Diablo 2 some players played holding 'Shift' the whole time, to see where the itens droped. Here by default the always have their names displaying, but you can turn that off.
The spirits tell me, “Go. Seek
the cradle of the fallen star our sis.” And so, I am here.
It fell on the old cathedral. There was only one survivor – Leah. You should speak with her.
Captain Rumford, more dead are coming!
We can’t open the gates until we drive them back!
And thus starts our first quest! We fight and one-hit almost all the undead. There is a new type of zombie here too, a crawling one without legs, that is a little faster and has more hitpoints, because that's what happens when you lose your legs.
Our maniacal slaughter gets us a record in Massacre and +24Xp! This happens whenever you kill lots of enemies very quickly. There are other kind of records too, like killing many enemies with one strike, that we will be breaking through this glorious LP. Also note the tons of health orbs lying around, each fills ~20% of my health pool.
I’ve never seen anyone fight like that before! Guards, open the gates! You’ll find Leah at the Slaughtered Calf Inn.
Man, you build a city called New Tristam, BESIDES the original one, where Diablo lived, and them go drink & chat at the Slaughtered Calf Inn? What's the problem with you guys?
Bad writers.
Oh...I'm sorry.
The Hand Axe we found earlier not only is faster than our Simple Knife (wtf?), but also has a higher Damage Per Second. At this point in the beta I didn’t find any reason to not equip the best weapon always, even if this means giving a 2-handed axe to a Mage, so we and I equip the Axe and venture into town.
Past the gate we find some guards burning the dead and reach our first Checkpoint.
This is the central square. Here we have the Teleporter (still inactive), the Skill Stone (I'll talk about that later), our Stash and the Blacksmith. There are some NPCs saying some NPC stuff to, like this guard.
I should point this now, in Diablo III some things are shared between all the characters, mostly the Blacksmith (and the other upgradable merchants), the Stash and your money. If this were my first time playing, there would be no Blacksmith, he only shows up after some quests. Since I already did them on the other characters, here he is, and already Upgraded to Lv 2 too!
I don’t have materials to forge anything now, and even if I had I won’t be able to use them at Lv 01, so let’s save him for later.
This is the Stash, that works not only as a storage, but also can be used to trade between you characters, since it’s shared. Luckly there is no thing like WoW’s Soulbound itens, so your character can equip and item and latter pass it to other characters or even other players. You can also make the stasht bigger by buying new tabs, too. At the moment there is only some crafting material from other playthroughs of mine and some nice swords I crafted, that require Lv 6.
Note that unlike previous Diablos you can’t store money on the stash, but there is no point since you don’t lose a single coin upon death anymore.
The other part of the town is blocked by this gentleman here, so I will ask him to gently move aside.
Please move your cart. I wish to pass.
How dare you speak to me like that! I am the mayor of this town!
What? I even said 'please', you asshole!
Why are you trying to leave?
Are you mad? This town is doomed! Anyone with a grain of sense should be trying to get out! Will you help me or not?
I will not. This town needs us both. Consider this fact carefully.
Since
BioWare Blizzard writers thought this wasn’t enough to show what an asshole the mayor is, this woman helps us know he is a jerk.
The only other building available is Deckard Cain's house, that is locked, so we finally enter the horribly named Inn and find
Black Cat Leah.
You are Leah. The captain says you survived
the fallen star our sis.
I did. But it blasted my uncle, Deckard Cain, into the depths of the old cathedral. I tried to search for him, but the dead were already rising.
I came back to rally the militia, but – Watch out, the wounded are turning!
Since we already had talked to 3 NPCs without killing anything, the game throw some zombies at us. The barkeeper also says "This is killing business!", just for the lulz.
After 5 mouse clicks, the 5 zombies are dead again (okay, 6 clicks, I missed one). A golden explosion almost burns my retinas away, a sign that we gained a level! We can now equip 2 skills at the same time! And also learned 2 new skills:
We chose the Plague of
Toads Geckos, which turn out kind of disappointing, as it spams 3 geckos that have a very short reach and last only a second…Leah continues:
The dead will overwhelm us all unless something is done.
There is a deep sickness here, but it can be healed.
Thank you. You should speak with Captain Rumford at the gate. He can tell you what to do.
Before that, in search of some
panties phat lewt, we enter Leah's room, that is the only one at the Inn…funny, since her Uncle lives on the next house. Must be some teenager stuff.
Anyway, we find only her diary, that tells how the zombie siege is going. To reward
pedophiles & rapist exploration, her diary is updated every time I finish a quest, so remember to invade the girl’s room every time bros!
Before going to the Captain, we stop at the Skill totem (or whatever is its name), and change our boring Plague of Geckos skill into something better. This is the only place where you can change previously equiped skills, and that is a pain in the ass when you are in the middle of nowhere, level up and learn a new skill, but can't try it untill reaching town. Luckly we will soon get a town portal.
The undead dogmeats are permanent and cost no mana to keep. even though they only do 15% weapon damage, they attack very fast and can hold the enemy while we cast big bad voodoo at them. Now we are ready to exit town and start teh killing.
The body count is really low (only 22 zombies), but this update is getting HUGE. I even had to remove some LARPing to maker it bearable, so let's stop here. Join me next time as we continue our search for Sulik’s fallen sis and FINALLY start killing hundreds of undead.
:D Marvellous.
