Blizzard has shared a bunch of info about changes to the Hellfire Ring v2.0. The basic ring and the 4 new Infernal Machines will still work much the same, but the ring’s proc is changing, the lvl 70 req is going away, and most importantly, the materials will only drop on Torment difficulty and above. Here’s the quote:
It’s also not meant to be something you complete in the first week of launch. It should be challenging, and take time to conquer. It should also get more rewarding at higher difficulties, and I’ll cover that a bit below. All said, there was definitely room for improvement and we’ve learned a lot from the first iteration of the Infernal Machine event.
Let’s use bullet points, because they’re pretty and organized:
We’ve also been paying close attention to the Focused Feedback thread, and have several additional changes coming as a result of your extensive testing. This includes:
We have a couple of bugs being worked on as well, including adjusting the damage on Maghda’s Arcane Sentries and requiring Level 70 Infernal Machines to open the new event.
We posted a walkthrough about the new Infernal Machine last week, so check that if you want more details on the new version of the event.
Infernal Machine Details
There’s now a bug with this that the Blue mentioned above. Old Infernal Machines (either ones you brought over, or made from brought over old keys) will currently open the three old portals, in which you will get the new Organs. You can not use an old Machine to open the new, 4th portal, the Realm of Fright, but the other three are accessible via old machines. This is a bug and will be fixed.
The four keywardens are the same, but each one drops a new key. It takes 4 keys (one of each) to create any of the 4 new Infernal Machines, and you make them specifically. No more “make 3 IMs and hope the Portal you need opens randomly first.” This is a little confusing at first, but it’s easier once you know which one is which, since you don’t have to waste keys making portals to Reals from which you already have the Organ. (Long term the RNG generally equaled out in D3 if you just keep doing all 3 at the same drop odds, but it could be annoying when you had weird luck and were stuck with 0/4/6 organs, and kept not getting the one you were short on.)
Here are the four new options:
Currently all Keys and Organs are dropping at 100% for testing, and they will sometimes drop a second key or organ as well. As far as I can tell from testing, if you get a second key/organ that’s the RNG that would actually function. I did a bunch of runs with friends on Hard difficulty, and we got a second key/organ about 1/10th of the time. I’ve done fewer KeyWarden kills on Torment, but on that difficulty I’ve gotten keys about half the time (something like 6/14 so far).
Blizzard has never revealed the % odds per difficulty level in the new system, but getting a key about 1/10th of the time on Hard and 1/2 of the time on Torment would make perfect sense if the new difficulty levels correspond to the old Monster Power Key/Organ drop rate system, where you got a 10% increased chance on each higher MP level. (Or my drops might just be RNG masquerading as reason.)
In any event, we don’t know how the percentages will change once the Infernal Machine becomes Torment only. There are 6 levels of torment, so while it’s logical to expect drop rates to go T1-T6 > 50/60/70/80/90/100, or they could be 10/20/40/60/80/100, or anything else you can imagine. I hope they leave it at 50% or so for Torment 1, otherwise it’s really going to be tough to get one playing Hardcore.
Even softcore would find it slow; Torment 1 is pretty tough (or at least slow on big bosses; Rift Guardians have 805m hit points on T1) even with very good gear, and as many players have pointed out, the mega hit points of bosses on the higher levels of Torment were apparently designed with Crushing Blow in mind. Now that that affix is gone the hit points of bosses will require outrageous amounts of grinding time, which is more of a bore than a challenge. (I think the bosses even on Torment could use upgrades to attacks and downgrades to hit points; they’re currently wars of gradual attrition rather than strategy/tactics and I’m putting most of my gear towards offense, not survival.)
Related to this article
End game content…
Sarcasti-Capture says: hot sauce
Seems to me if they like this sort of “end game content” there should be a dozen or so legendary items that have this sort of collecting/crafting/summoning component.. at least it’d keep it more interesting.
Exactly what I was gonna say.
If this is really the “end game content” they are planning, then they should at least make the loot more magnificent and much more diverse that it is actually worth the whole effort.
Four keys, four Uber fights.
One measly ring.
Bor-ring? 🙂
Boa-ring.
Good ones both of you 😀
Hats off to you, sir. I thought all sophistiacted people had vanished from the Diablo scene already.
Couldn’t agree more. And w/ Rifts/Guardians, you even have the randomness you need to keep it fresh. Ubers are neat, but you know what they’re going to give you ahead of time. Rift Guardians don’t.
So in D3 v2.0, if I still have old keys can I make old Infernal Machines and collect old organs or will the old keys not work at all.
Just wondering if I should do all of the infernal machines I can before RoS.
So they decided to make this even more tedious for very little reward?
Why not have each Uber battle drop one item in a low level set you could use to help level characters instead. Then allow that set to be crafting pieces for the hellfire ring. At least then there would be more to this than one small reward at the end.
Leveling is trivial now.. 1-70 will be quite fast. Pretty much playing once from act1-act5
So I’ve still got a few keys and machines lying around. Will they be useless (deleted?) when RoS hits?
I´d like to know the same…
So, more BS group content? End-game?
Sigh, so, still nothing to do then.
New band-aid to hold the old band-aid together.
“…not everyone enjoys that style of play”
Glad they know it. I want items, not interested in some ring lottery.
I got 1 lvl 60 Hellfire Ring for crusader a couple months ago and it was boring enough. :p
If someday I faceroll T6 (which will take some time), maybe I’ll visit uber diablo for gear checking purposes.
Can’t even say how sad it is that they’re just retooling ubers for RoS instead of making another new end game event/item AND retooling ubers. They’re always doubling it, except when it comes to new content…
http://mod.diablo1.eu.org/download.htm
demo here
Polish programmer and testers working hard on new Diablo 1 HD Mod. Seems good to me, crafting system, plenty of quests, four diff levels and old creepy atmosfere. Check out this stuff!
Videos from beta tests:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUM4GXtBPrA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4PfLbMJCoA#t=35
new DIablo 1 HD demo : )
http://mod.diablo1.eu.org/download.htm
enjoy!
I also hope the % for key and organ drop rates isn’t abysmal like on Inferno live. Farming keys with a 30% or lower chance of drop is Abysmal. I had to kill the act 4 keywarden literally 30 times just to get the recipe at a 10-30% drop rate. 50% should be the minimum as stated in the article. I personally think the keywardens should drop 100%. Leave the RNG to the boss battles. Those are more fun, so having a 1:1 ratio of farming stupid keywardens to fighting ubers would be nice.
QUOTE
No beta keys atm. Follow the forum demo site. Maybe u will get acces to closed beta.
QUOTE
What do you mean, follow?
I mean: track ppl writing, look after admin and be a part of big thing going on there. Follow the Belzebub.
:balloons: