Act 1 Inferno down

Last night I completed Act 1 of Inferno on my Monk. I killed the Butcher easily in what felt like an anticlimax.

After bitching so hard about patch 1.0.3 I feel almost ashamed at my outburst. What can I do, I'm hotblooded... The fact remains that the patch lost me over a million gold, even if I managed to make a full recovery afterwards. Recoveries don't come cheap though.

Let me tell you a bit about my Monk's stats, which allowed me to so easily complete Act 1 in Inferno. All of these are unbuffed but with the Enchantress companion (who gives extra armor and DPS).

18K DPS (1549 Dexterity)
30.4K Life
5871 Armor
35.5% Dodge
20% Block
303 Resist All

Here's my build. I changed it a few days ago, in a departure from what I had been using for the past couple of weeks.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#biXgYh!ZUX!ZZbaca

If you get stuck with your Monk, I highly recommend this build. If there's one word to describe it, it's "awesome". I don't take credit for it because this is the exact same build used by the guy in this video:

So while this isn't my own innovation, I can attest to the fact that it works very well and playing the Monk is, once more, a pleasure. The video is quite long but worth watching, at least until you can see how he explains the build.

My gear is quite decent for Act 1, as you can imagine. I have a 910 DPS blue sword with 1.47 attack speed. I paid 850K for it on the Auction House and even though it seemed expensive at the time, now I believe it was quite a steal. For some reason 900+ DPS weapons are incredibly expensive.

Yeah, so that's about it for now. I'm satisfied that I have Act 1 on farm mode. I can make a very nice circuit of the most interesting areas (by taking various waypoints) and finally, with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, I can kill the Butcher easily. The fun is back in the game. I really enjoy this endgame farming aspect where I have a chance to find the most powerful items in the game, including a legendary or two.

I don't want to move to Act 2 right away. I think I'm going to farm Act 1 for at least another couple of weeks until I can slowly gear myself up for Act 2. I need about 500 Resist All for that, and also more DPS.

So where are you at? Have you reached Inferno yet? Have you finished it? What is the highest area you have on farm?

Oh the nerfs!

Fuck you Blizzard! I said it in the past and, there you go, I'm saying it again. Patch 1.0.3 is oh so bittersweet. It brings some nice changes, like reduced crafting costs but also fucks many of us hard in the ass. Sorry if your delicate ears are insulted by my cursing but that's how I feel right now. I've suddenly lost all the wind in my sails.

You see, I was preparing to write this post in which I enthused about finally being sufficiently geared to farm Fields of Misery on Inferno with my Monk. Over a couple of weeks I managed to buy a few pieces of gear from the AH, not too cheap mind you, and at the end of this my Monk found himself with 17K+ DPS, 27K health (a bit on the low side) and 250 resistances.

I beat the Skeleton King without issues, as well as a lot of champions and rares, and only died about 3 times in 2-3 hours of play. I reached the Fields of Misery and did a complete clear. Boss packs were challenging but eminently doable. I got a lot of nice drops, mostly upgrades for my Barbarian. Rare items galore. Happiness.

And then along comes Blizzard and completely fucks me and a lot of other people over. Of course, they had to nerf Increased Attach Speed (IAS). And they did it in the most ham-handed way possible by retroactively slashing IAS on all weapons and items (except for quivers). I was fervently hoping that they would only do this on future items. Alas, it wasn't so. I had some significant IAS on a few of my items.

Worst of all, my 800+ DPS fist weapon for which I paid in excess of 600K, had +24% IAS. Now it has 10%. Guess how much my total DPS dropped. It went from 17K+ to 14K+. The weapon now barely has a bit over 700 DPS and in the process has been rendered valueless, as I doubt I can sell it for even 50K on the AH. Nice work Blizzard! Fuck you again!

Now my choices are to spend my remaining gold on upgrades that will bring me back to where I was before the nerfs, or to wait a few more weeks and try to catch some good deals until I can step again in Inferno. You can tell I'm overjoyed.

Don't even get me started on the increased repair costs. If you ask me, that's another quick-but-dumb fix they implemented to "equalize" the difference between ranged and melee classes. Apparently ranged classes were having a ball in Inferno, throwing themselves repeatedly at boss packs in a kamikaze sort of way until the pack went down. I don't know what they are smoking over there at Blizzard but that sounds like complete bullshit to me. Dying is the thing I hate most. I will do everything in my power to avoid it. And now I will hate it even more.

And then there's the little nerfs to drop rates. I won't even go there because this isn't what bothers me the most.

I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. All that time spent farming gold to afford better gear is now wasted. I feel robbed and I can't even imagine what people who have paid real money for those items feel. I can't even focus on the good things the patch brings because I am too distressed by the bad stuff to care.

So tell me, has 1.0.3 screwed you over?

Farming the Fields of Misery

One of my favorite areas to farm in Diablo 3 is the Fields of Misery in Act 1. Since my Monk is now level 56 in Hell difficulty, I will center this discussion around what you can expect to gain from farming this zone on Hell. You can obviously farm it on Nightmare or Normal and I suspect it will be very popular in Inferno.

Fields of Misery is the zone right after defeating the Skeleton King, which makes it fairly easy if you have made it so far. It gets easier as you find or buy upgrades.

To get there, the best thing is to select the quest "Khazra Den" from the quest interface. Take the highlighted waypoint and exit through the north cemetery gate whereupon you'll find yourself in the Fields of Misery. Proceed to clear the entire area methodically, including (and especially) all the random dungeons you may encounter.

Make sure to complete the Khazra Den quest because it is very easy (the mobs inside are pushovers, plus no nasty random bosses) and it gives you some nice XP. Also make sure to turn in the quest once you are done farming the area, for another XP reward. Now, if you are 60, this doesn't apply, of course, so feel free to skip this quest.

The cool thing about the Fields of Misery is that there are a bunch of dungeons and random events that spawn and, on every run I have undertaken, there were no less than 3 of these. Each of them gives nice loot in the form of drops from rare spawns or even more loot from Resplendent Chests. Here are the ones I have encountered.

Scavenger's Den
This is your cookie-cutter 2-level mini-dungeon with a few champions/rares inside and a Resplendent Chest at the bottom.

Decaying Crypt

Another 2-level mini-dungeon with a shitload of zombies inside. The zombies are very good for XP because the Spewing Horrows keep puking them so if you want you can even avoid killing these lady-zombies and let them puke zombies over and over again.

On level 2 there's a Resplendent chest and a small quest given by a ghost. She asks you to kill 3 elites that spawn but they're very easy, just watch out for the frozen orbs they sometimes summon. The reward for the quest is very puny, just one blue item. Oh and make sure to clear the room before starting this quest, as you don't want hordes of zombies to assault you while you're killing those elites.

The Secluded Grove
There's a Resplendent Chest in the middle of this grove with a rare elite tree called The Old Man who attacks you when you approach. As you fight him, 3-4 other trees spawn. It's a very easy fight, just make sure they don't surround you because you won't be able to escape their vicious poison. I died stupidly on my Monk due to this and my overconfidence.

Sheltered Cottage
This is a tiny area on the north side of the Fields of Misery which spawns a single room inside a cottage called Pillaged Home. As you get close to the entrance, a Moon Clan Warrior bursts out the door and you can enter the house after killing him. The small room inside has a Bloody Chest and a bunch of lootable dead bodies.

Forsaken Grounds
This is a farm with a farmer who hands you a quest to destroy 4 Plague Nests. Another easy quest. It only gives a little XP and gold as reward.

Forlorn Farm
Another farm quest. As you approach this area you'll find the body of a large beast on the ground. Clicking on it will start the event. A bunch of Burrowing Leapers spawn followed by a rare Leaper named Burrow Bile. They are an easy kill. After dispatching them talk to the farmer and he opens up his cellar to you. Enter it and you'll find a Resplendent Chest. Also watch the dialogue between the farmer and his "wife". It's hilarious.

Lonely Dwelling
There's also a very rare house which spawns in a tiny area called Lonely Dwelling. The house is called House of Curious and has a merchant inside who might sell rare weapons and rare dyes.

Statistics
Thoroughly clearing the Fields of Misery with all the dungeons takes between 30-40 minutes. At level 56 it rewarded me with a total of 427K XP, or a little over 1/5 of the experience required for the next level.

I made on average 37K gold from drops and from vendoring all the junk I found. I also got 2-4 rares regularly each run, despite having only 8% magic find. Check out these pants, for instance, which were a very nice upgrade and something that I couldn't even find on the AH for a decent price.

Apart from this I also found 4 Tomes of Blacksmithing and 6 Tomes of Jewelcrafting, as well as 5 Radiant and 3 Square gems. You can figure out the market price of these on your own. Easily a few thousand.

This is one particular run that I recorded exactly but all my runs were very consistent in terms of rewards.

I highly recommend farming Fields of Misery if you've reached a point where Act 2 feels a bit too hard and this is valid anywhere from Normal to Inferno. OK, Normal is a bit too easy so you probably don't want to waste a lot of time there. One word of caution: all the underground dungeons have 2-3 packs of champions or rares inside. You were expecting that weren't you?

Have you farmed Fields of Misery? Know of any other nice farming spots?

Farming Azmodan for experience

I will say this from the start: this method of farming Azmodan is not my own discovery. I saw it a couple of days ago in a video that showed how to level low level friends with your high level character. Unfortunately I can't find the link to that video.

Apart from explaining how to do this (if you haven't seen the video and don't know what this is about), I will also put some numbers to the strategy, namely how much XP and gold you can expect for each farming run.

Just keep in mind that these Azmodan runs are primarily for experience, not gold or loot. The boss himself doesn't drop anything of significance, unless you get lucky with a blue item with perfect stats. If you do a full clear of the zone leading up to him, you can expect to find a group or two of champions/rares, as well as loot in the form of gold and items of all sorts.

This strategy revolves around the quest called "Kill Azmodan". You should have access to this quest once you've finished Act 3. Because I have moved on to Hell, I can go back and farm him as often as I please. The beauty of this is that after killing Azmodan you will get the quest credit in the form of XP and gold and then you will get another identical credit shortly after when you return to the Keep.

Strategy

1. Select the quest "Kill Azmodan" from the quest interface. I do this on Nightmare. It is certainly possible to do it on Normal or Hell if you wish. I'm guessing that on Hell it won't be very lucrative because you are probably already 60 by the time you will tackle this quest. But whatever.

2. Log into the game and teleport to the last waypoint on the list, called "The Core of Arreat". From there on, head in a northern direction until you reach Azmodan's lair. The layout of this zone never changes so you will never get lost.

You can choose to skip the monsters in this area, if you can get past them quickly without being killed. Stunning/fearing/disabling them will obviously be of great use here. If gaining the most XP in the shortest time possible is your only goal, then this might be advisable.

3. Do your thing and kill Azmodan. You will get the first quest reward.

4. Teleport back to the keep. Right next to the portal is a soldier called Lieutenant Lavail with a yellow quest mark over his head. Talk to him and he sends you to the Armory and from there immediately to the Keep Tower. Go there.

5. Once you get to the Keep Tower you will receive the second quest reward. Both rewards are identical and that's what makes this very lucrative: you get at least 89K XP for this quick run.

6. Log out of the game. Rinse and repeat.

Caveats

To make this quick and safe you will obviously need a lot of DPS and health. To give you a reference, my level 51 Monk has 2200 DPS and 14K health and this run is a walk in the park for him in Nightmare. It shouldn't be too hard to acquire equipment that gives you these stats considering that there are others who are much better equipped than I am, at the same level.

Occasionally you will run into groups of champions/rares with some ugly affixes on them. It's not worth dying for these idiots. Just run back to the waypoint and teleport back to town where you can log out safely and restart the quest, or alternatively, try to run straight to Azmodan, bypassing all the nasties.

Some statistics

As you can see from the images above, each of the two quests gives 44,800 XP and 1940 gold.

A typical run netted a total of 127,628 XP + 7000-8000 gold from gold drops / quest rewards / vendoring drops. Then there's a variable amount from gems and crafting pages (AH value) that you will also find.

To get from level 52 to 53 you will need 10 such runs. Each run takes 5-7 minutes (with full clear), meaning that you can level your character in only 1 hour with Azmodan runs, on Nightmare difficulty.

Gold find even more viable?

Well folks, we may well be at the last beta patch before Diablo 3's release date is announced. In this latest patch there have been certain adjustments made to the game economy. The ones that look very interesting to me are: larger gold drops from monsters, an increase in training costs for artisans and a nerf to gold find equipment.

Though the net result seems to be a nerf, I will venture to say that in fact it is a buff, simply for the fact that gold drops have increased significantly. People have reported 80 gold single stacks, while previously this amount was much lower.

The nerf to gold find is to be expected if gold is to remain valuable. Blizzard wouldn't want level 20 characters running around with 300% gold find, would they? Combined with the increased drops, gold would soon become so abundant that it wouldn't have much value.

The cost of training artisans has also increased by a lot but it doesn't matter really. Why is that? Because training an artisan to max level is a one-time occurrence per account. No matter how much it costs, you will eventually get there and once you do, it's smooth sailing and you won't need to sink any more gold in artisans, except, of course, for recipes you might want to craft.

I'm sure that, with time, a character will be able to accumulate some decent gold find gear so that by the time it reaches 60, or Inferno, it will be able to farm gold like there's no tomorrow. If drops can reach 80 gold at levels < 13, I wonder how high they'll be at level 60. 500? 1000? We shall see.

For my part, my farming strategy will consist of as much gold find gear as I can gather, supplemented by magic find, with +speed boots and a good weapon. That would be the ideal case. Considering that the latest patch also made the monsters a lot tougher, it might not be possible to always fight at the highest levels with such under-performing equipment but one can always go back an act or two (or a difficulty or two), just to farm low level mobs quickly.

Of course, I will also do the magic find vs gold find experiment. It might be that magic find is actually more efficient for farming. My issue with this is that magic find seems more random than gold find. Magic items drop a lot less often than gold. Either way, it's going to be a pleasure to test all these strategies. I can't wait to put on my favorite podcasts while coasting through the acts, mindlessly killing monsters.