So, while I play my blog dedicated Barb, I figured I’d write up an article covering things most newer players should know. Think of them as helpful tips to guide you on your way.

1. Always push your limits.

This is going to come first, as it lends itself more towards progressing in this game than anything else I can think of. I see far too many people hit Torment 1, then just farm, and farm, and farm…

Torment 1 is by no means a bad place to be, but if its at the point you can reliably clear a Torment 1 rift without dying, crank it up to Torment 2. A good rule of thumb is this – If you’re clearing without dying, and in under 15 minutes, turn up the difficulty. The drop rate increase between difficulties is pretty substantial, so adding 5 minutes to each rift run may seem less efficient, but trust me, you’ll see more drops in the long run. The fact you get more blood shards by cranking up the difficulty helps here too.

2. Don’t sweat enchanting.

This is another thing I see a lot.

“I got this sweet looking sword! I should try re-rolling something!”

Stop. First, ask yourself if you have the materials to properly re-enchant it. If you can only do 3-4 enchants, its probably a bad idea to re-roll that sword. Second, is the item even worth enchanting? Quite often, a weapon can seem good, but is quite lacking in multiple areas, and as such, is best left as is until a replacement invariably comes along. When looking at your items, press left on the d-pad to bring up stat ranges. If it appears to be on the lower end of most of your stats, don’t bother enchanting it, it’ll ultimately be a waste of materials and gold.

If you’re unsure on what stats to look for on gear, I have a handy guide about that here.

3. Keep playing (alternatively – don’t get discouraged).

Diablo is a pretty feast and famine games sometimes. Some sessions, it’ll feel like the legendaries are raining down on you. Other sessions, it feels like you never get anything-why-do-I-still-play-this-stupid-game.

That’s totally okay!

RNG is the name of the game in Diablo, but Blizzard has put in some measures to stop the game feeling fucking awful. IF you continue to play for a period of time, you’re eventually guaranteed a legendary. Yeah, you read that right. While the exact window of time is something Blizzard has kept under tight wraps, they have confirmed that there is a system in place that basically looks to see how many drops you’ve had recently, and if you haven’t had any, it’ll eventually drop a legendary for you. The window of time this mechanism kicks into gear is estimated to be about an hour to three hours. However, this isn’t the only reason you should keep going. I’ve noticed that, true to the nature of RNG, legendary drops tend to balance out the longer your session is. If you’re hitting rifts/bounties back to back to back, you’ll find yourself swimming in legendaries before you’ve noticed what has happened.

This is further assisted by Blood Shards, and gambling at Kadala. While it can be expensive to do so (good lord, Weapons anyone?), her legendary drop rate is substantially high, and you’re *going* to get something good from her if you keep going.

Don’t get yourself down because you don’t feel like you’re not getting drops. 🙂

If it gets really bad, and you’re feeling like that bitch Kadala is never going to give you that one set piece you want…

4. Play with friends!

Better yet, get your scrubby ass carried 😀

Seriously though, Blizzard has added heavy incentive to playing as a group in this game, with drops being significantly more common with a group of 4 players (not to mention heavily boosted xp).

I’d say join a public group and play there if you have no friends, but unfortunately hacking is prevalent on console diablo, so if that isn’t your cup of tea, you’ll want to track down some friends. Thankfully, there is an awesome subreddit, d3ps4.reddit.com, where you can find other folks to play with.

The other benefit to playing in groups is that you can often tackle content that would be out of your scope of viability solo. If you’re clearing Torment 3-4 on your own, running with a group of folks in similar gear could mean clearing Torment 5 without too many issues.

5. Have Fun.

This is the big one. If you’re grinding rift after rift while hunting for gear, but you’re really not enjoying yourself, stop. You’ll likely burn yourself out if you continue pushing without enjoyment.

What to do though?

There are a couple of ways you can combat this. You can try rolling a new character for a change of pace. While you could argue that the time spent leveling and gearing this toon could go towards gearing your ‘main’ character, remember Blood Shards are account bound, and as such, any you earn on this secondary character can be used on the main character. Furthermore, you might actually enjoy this new class more than the original.

Alternatively, you can try a new spec. For example, right now, the most powerful spec for Barbarians is Furious Charge, which makes use of the Raekor’s set bonuses to deal immense amounts of damage. However, it can get super boring and tedious over time. You could switch it up to a whirlwind build, enabled by the new Wrath of the Wastes set. While it may not necessarily be as powerful, unless you’re pushing the most extreme of the extreme limits of content (55+ greater rifts), you’re probably not going to need that extra power, so mixing it up isn’t going to lose you too much. This goes for any build. Tired of running a fire wizard? I’m gonna mess around as a frost wizard for a while. Pet WD not doing it for you? Try out a DoT WD.

Remember, the most important thing when it comes to games is that you’re enjoying yourself. If you’re not enjoying yourself, its not time well spent.

That’s it for now. I’m currently playing my Barbarian I created for this blog, and slowly getting her geared (school/work eats a lot of time). You can check out her starter gear here.