Rare mob. *Spoiler*

Hey All,

With the dicsussion lately about the Den of the Fallen (I got this on my first play through, and didn't think to post anything about it) I figured I would shine some light on a rare mob in the Cathedral.

Lloigor is a crazed Conjuror pouring through the libary in the Cathedral.  When he appears, it is always at the begining of Lvl 4.  He will be standing on the far side of the libary reading from a podium.  He is "friendly" until you touch the podium, at which point he'll get rather upset and start conjuroring bats to throw at you.

This is a purple type boss, so he has a reasonable chance to drop some loot, and wouldn't you know it, he dropped a rare while I took pics for the article.

DIablo 3 Beta Screenshots

I figured over the next few days I would post some screenshots.  Today I'll just start with the two Blacksmith lvls which were not previously shown in the media coverage.

Blacksmith Lvl 3.

Blacksmith lvl 4

Diablo 3 Beta Info

Here is a quick list of initial beta information you may not have seen yet.

1. I estimate D3s economy to be 200x that of wow, ie: 1g in wow = 200g in diablo
2. You can only play in the beta up to the skeleton king, this takes about 2 hours. However you can play it over and over (character level continues to go up, max 13)
3. Your crafters are shared between your characters, so once you level it up or teach it a new recipe, all chars have it. (I'm assuming at least for normal, etc)

Diablo 3 Beta Begins

In case you hadn't heard, the Diablo 3 friends and family beta has begun to a very select few.  They are working to stabilize the beta before inviting more individuals.  As anything we would write here would be under speculation, I beleive it would be best to take a week off before continuing on the postings.  At that point, the NDAs should be lifted and we can give you pre launch details, which could still be not accurate, but they would be "less not accurate".

See you in a week with some insider info.

August Highlights

August highlighted the start of the blog as information streamed out about the Real Money Auction House and the incoming release of Diablo 3 beta.

These were the most popular posts of August:

1. Blizzard Site update.
This detailed the new website Blizzard had launch for Diablo 3 including extensive FAQ sections.

2. It Begins
The first blog post, a discussion around why this change will change the video game industry forever.

3. Blizzard becomes Amsterdam
A comical/serious look at the controversy surrounding the RMAH and its implications on Diablo 3 gameplay.

I hope you enjoyed them.  Stick around for September as we continue to delve in.

Blacksmith Artisan

The Blacksmith is the first of the Artisans you'll meet in your travels.  According to the Beta, the NPC will ask for your assistance in a quest (spoilers omitted).  Once completed he will join your Caravan and provide you the Salvage Cube.

Here is a run down of the Blacksmith Features and how they may affect you.

Artisans, Long overdue

Yesterday I spoke a little about selling crafting materials early game, so I thought it was probably time we talked about Artisans

In Diablo 3, Blizzard is implementing a sort of companion class of crafters, who will follow you to the neutral zones of each act.  These will include a Blacksmith, a Jeweler, and a Mystic.

Early Launch Dramatics

So I'll pose a question to the audience; in the early game when you break down an item, will you keep the mats for yourself, or sell them?

The answer should simply be, sell them.  Those who are familiar with Warcraft's gold blog communities will see that the most money can be gained when people are trying to rush to the endgame.

For example

Region Locks, and Making Bank

As some of you may or may not know, Diablo III will be region locked.  What this means is that each region will have its own auction house.  It also means that different copies of the game will be sold.

What does this mean to you?  Well, if you live in Russia, you will probably have your own region.  Similar to those in Europe, China, Oceanic (Aus, NZ, Indo etc), North America and South America.

But what can we do to profit from this?

Bots

Botting is strictly forbidden in Diablo 3, and we should all be hoping that Blizzard is as strict as possible on these cheaters.  Bots will be the ruin of the economy, and I'm hoping Blizzard insta bans these hacks instead of the wave bans they do with world of warcraft.

That being said, we're bound to find them in the game so here is a list of themed Bots we're most likely to find.

Magic Find, Friend or Foe

In Diablo 2, Magic Find (MF) was a big help to those hunting down gear.  Diablo wiki here has a good overview of the system.  In short, Magic Find was a gear stat just like Strength or Dmg, however, this stat gave you an additional chance to have rares drop.

What diablo then turned into was how much MF can you wear while still surviving.The good news, and the bad news, is that Magic find is back in Diablo 3.

Blizzard Site update

Blizzard has uploaded a starter page for their Auction House, which I'm sure will have more information shortly, there's a lot of FAQ items which I'll discuss in future blogs.  Here's another pic of their "smart search" feature, which is a good thing, or you would otherwise have to search through approximately 3 million items everytime you wanted something.

Character Selling, more info

Speculation on fees and regions can wait until tomorrow.  Thanks to those at IncGamers we have a screenshot of the character selling section of the auction house.

Here we can see more detail as to how these characters will be sorted and searched in the AH

What's for Sale

Hello Everyone,

Today I'm going to speak about what's for sale on the Real Money auction house (RMAH) in Diablo III.  First let's start with a pic.

This is a screenshot of the RMAH which tells us, currently, what we may be able to sell for real money when Diablo 3 is released.

Let's go from top to bottom:

Blizzard becomes Amsterdam

Blizzard has recently decided to launch Diablo 3 with an in game Gold auction house and... wait for it... Real money auction house.  This is a game changer, while this news is about 3 weeks old from the date that I'm writing this, already sites that have been in dormancy for years are back generating 10s of thousands of hits each day with people clamoring for content information.

I have to admit, having attended Blizzcon in 2010, I hadn't really sat in on any of the panels, or the game demo as I figured "heck, it's Diablo, I'll just pick it up, and click things to death".  When this info released, I admit, I was fired up.  Then I started to read some of the information and commentary surrounding the RMAH and was surprised to see a large community base upset with this decision, this is in fact what prompted me to start up this Blog.

My perspective is that Blizzard has decided to become Amsterdam.  Here is an artist's rendition

  

If you're wondering what the real Amsterdam flag looks like, find it here 

(and yes, I find it hilarious that it is a triple X)

It Begins

Recently Blizzard dropped a game changer on us, Real Money auction house, and since then the world of gaming has been in a stir.  Productivity at work has gone down, speculation is high, and already, China is breeding another 40 million children so that they can be dexterous enough to farm loot when Diablo 3 releases in 4 months.