Blizzard US has been quiet of late, (except for Bashiok’s five-word reply to this guy who humorously misspelled “Diablo” in his post title) but their EU counterparts, who aren’t busy planning for Blizzcon, have made a few forum posts of note.
Will Diablo III support dual monitors? Of course not, but let’s hear a CM explain that decision.
For those people who do not have a widescreen monitor, the game will offer a letterbox option to compensate for the fact that widescreeen monitors currently display more of the game world.
In another post, 
Hardcore shared stash, which is separate from the shared stash of Softcore characters, is re-confirmed.
This is correct. HC characters will have their own, separate shared stash. However, items in the possession of any HC character at the time of death will be lost.
During our two-part (mega) podcast on all things Hardcore, I brought up the concept of stashing your HC character’s best gear before a really dangerous encounter, so it wouldn’t be lost if you died. Neither of the guests were entirely on board with that concept, (nor was I) but I thought it was worth discussion.
Imagine that some boss or area in D3 is superduper dangerous, ala Duriel’s lair in the slow-loading D2C. If you think there’s a good chance that your HC char is about to die, wouldn’t it make sense to stick your one or two fantastic items in your stash, so they won’t be lost? You’ve probably got a backup item that’s only slightly less useful but that’s 100x more common, and if switching to that item won’t cripple your survivability, it’s a logical decision. After all, really top items can be far more rare and difficult to replace than the character using them, especially with D3’s freespecs and quick level up design.
Or does muling your best item before the most dangerous fight just seem wrong? WRONG!
I care more about the success of my character than I do about his gear. If I’m walking into a tough situation, that means I want to stack everything in my favor as much as possible, which means wearing my best gear.
The only exception would be is a particular encounter was easier with a secondary set of gear designed specifically for it, but then the intention there is not to save gear, but to maximize effectiveness.
I think that the shared HC stashes will be exploited a lot by HC players. It makes sense to equip an inferior item in exchange for your rares/legendaries before a really hard boss fight. After all, it skill>gear right? *cough* The hardcore uses skill to surive and not depend entirely on gear.
I’d very much prefer to be considerably weaker and get the assurance that my items will be safe than effectiveness. Leveling up another 60 character is far too easier than to farm for a lucky rare/legendary drop.
If you don’t use the best gear for the hardest parts, what is the point of even keeping the gear then?
I dont think this will make much impact. If diablo3 will be anything like diablo2 then the Act bosses wont pose the most problems. Random monster encounters with nasty mods will.. And those you cant predict. Of course there will be situations where you could predict an unlucky death, for example in diablo 2 the areas where gloams roam freely, and you where low on lightning res. For the rest, i think plenty of gear will still be lost… if inferno turns out to be as hard as Blizzard claims
The only time I really ever died in hardcore was due to lag spikes. For example you will teleport with the sorceress and lag spike, dead. You are whirlwinding with the barbarian and then extremely long lag spike, dead.
This will be extremely useful for any type of PvP though. This is is realistic because if you were about to duel someone to the death or do a dangerous mission then you would want to leave your most precious items to your other chars/family/tribe before trying to do the difficult deed.
I do not think I will be playing hardcore this time around because the only time I would die is from lag spikes and that doesn’t say skill at all to me.
I did get a level 99 hardcore Barbarian in 1.09 though that just did the cow level with a lot of defense and max shield block so even if I was surrounded by cows for 5 minutes then I still wouldn’t die. I also did barb vs barb duels not to the death with this barb because the barbs couldn’t kill each other because whenever they would get low on health one could just go to town.
I almost forgot that I also had 90 fire resist in case someone tried to hydra pk through town portals. I remember a level 98 amazon got hydra PKed through a town portal before.
For the dual screen, it may be useful if the 2nd screen displays the map. No more tabbing during the game ^^
That’s what I thought; although I sometimes feel I watch the map more than my character in some games (including D2). I also think it would be nice to have my inventory/character info up all the time
Double post sorry ><
I think if one is a true Hardcore player, he will put his best gear, spit on the floor and go to fight. Whatever the result will be.
If one is a sissy Hardcore player, he will have a “secondary set” for extreme fights. But this is just cheating yourself and not being true Hardcore player.
Agreed, if you are afraid to lose your stuff, dont play hardcore right?
Exactly!
If you’re going to tremble over your “best items” each time you go to a more dangerous area… then just always keep them stored away and always use an inferior, 100x more common item? O_O If the rarer item barely improves your character and isn’t worth using then don’t use it.
By the way, anyone has any idea how the hardcore artisans work? In softcore, I heard, you just level them up to max on one character and then you don’t need to do it again on other characters as they all share essentially. So in hardcore now, if you lose the character with the maxed artisans, does that mean you also lose artisan access between all your hardcore characters? That would sting as I imagine leveling them up will be very expensive.
edit: ^… I see myself making some lvl60 I don’t particularly care to play a lot and sticking all the artisans on him in that case just to be safe with them.
I’m pretty sure the artisans are shared too. It would be silly otherwise, or everyone would just do exactly what you said.
Only whimps stash their best items before a tough fight.
(But in all seriousness I have reasons for my opinion but that would mean too much text for a comment.)
1. Why do we care about dual screen ? People are just lucky enough to play it on 1 screen…
2. HC stashes will be exploited no doubt.
If a fight is so hard that there is a good chance you wont survive, most veteran hardcore players would simply skip the fight. For example, I don’t run Hell Nilethak on my flimsy little Fire Sorc because there are vipers down there that can 1-shot me.
However, if for some reason I have to do this fight, you better believe I’ll have my best gear on with every buff possible. There is no point making bad odds worse by equipping yourself with lesser gear. Otherwise you’ll always be wondering if you would have died had you worn that piece of armor in your stash.
Diablo 3 will be so casually easy that I doubt any one will have to stash their best gear to avoid loosing them. In PvP there’s really no advantage in exploiting this feature since you will need your best gear to kill the other team.