We’ve been a fan of Blizzard since the 1st Warcraft. It was my dad who taught us how to play the game until he got addicted to Red Alert 2. Several years later, Blizzard launched Diablo, and right-clicking was made even more engaging and addicting. Fast forward 20 years later, the game we always loved got its 3rd installment. It was not received quite well by fans despite selling 3.5M copies in just 24 hours; and 20M copies in 2 years.
2 years since Diablo 3 was launched, Blizzard fought arduous tasks to improve the game even up to the point of removing auction house, which they believed to be culprit of “destroying” the game’ balance. In the end, a major upgrade was launched by Blizzard, which includes a brand new story, new character, Adventure Mode, Rifts and loads of new stuff – Reaper of Souls. Several months later, Blizzard launched a major patch to Reaper of souls. Check out Martin Patinio’s review of ROS here. Eventually, Blizzard launched a major patch to ROS – Patch 2.1.0.
Blizzard has incorporated loads of new features in Patch 2.1.0. The new updates include Seasons, Greater Rifts, Leaderboards and the the Cesspools.
Seasons gives all new and even hardened players of the said game to play the game once again from clean slate. Seasons characters have their own share of stash and artisan progression. Season 1 started last weekend, and it introduced new legendary items. When the season ends, any items, gold, artisan progression, or Paragon experience earned will be rolled over and stashed to regular characters. Plus, new transmogrifications and seasonal legendaries will be available to regular characters. Pretty neat, right?
A new upgrade from the Patch 2.1.0 is the availability of the Artisan to salvage Normal, Magic, and Rare items in just one click.
If ever you’re wondering how you’ll be able to retrieve all items you gathered from the past season, here’s an answer from Blizzard’s community manager last August 22.
Here’s my video the Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Patch 2.1.0 with my Season 1 character.
Greaters Rifts, more over are like… well… greater or better Nephalem Rifts. You can only enter Greater Rifts thru a Keystone of Trials which is dropped from Nephalem Rifts guardians. The Keystone may be inserted to the obelisk so you can access the Realm of Trials. The latter would asses how powerful and capable are you to take on elite and non-elite monsters. When you die, the obelisk would give you a Greater Rift keystone with a level based on your capability. Presumably you gained the Level 26 Greater Rift Key, the elite and non-elite monsters have a difficulty of Torment 6. However, if your character can reach of up to Level 27+ Greater Rift Key, the difficulty would be “Torment 7” and above.
Each time you defeat a Greater Rift Guardian, Urshi (a new sexy and Jean-Grey-ish NPC) will give you an option to either upgrade a legendary gem or your keystone. Gems, which can improve skills and status of heroes, are socketable to rings or amulets. If you choose to upgrade this thru Urshi, it will destroy the Greater Rift Keystone in the process. If you did not defeat the Greater Rift guardian in the allotted time (for bonus), you will not be able to upgrade your Keystone thus leaving you gem-upgrade reward.
I honestly find Greater Rifts as one of the best features of the new patch as it gives the game more “replayability” and value. While hearing monsters scream in anguish or rage during rift completion sounds too repetitive, the excitement to finish each rift and the thrill in completing it before the time timer ends simply make the game utterly more addicting.
Apart from the 2 major updates below, which I really love, are Leaderboards and the Cesspools. If you’re seeking for competition, Leaderboards is your means to track your friends’ and your progress. It tracks every achievement and rift clear times, which may put you to a competitive state against other players. The Cesspools, however, is a new level environment, which did not make in the Reaper of Souls launch. Blizzard decided to include it Patch 2.1.0 as one of the rift environments. A bunch of improvements to each class is also included in the 2.1.0 patch. To know more about these, here is the official link: Diablo 3, Patch 2.1.0
We luckily got to experience the new environment that’s been spawned by a Treasure Goblin called The Vault. In this map, you can collect up to millions of Gold and at the end, you have to defeat the boss, Greed. We managed to kill Greed and guess what – we felt so greedy to take everything.
Overall, the games feels fresh again thanks to the update Blizzard roll out. I love the game since Day 1, and I love it even better after more than a year it was launched. If you have not yet purchased this game, get it now or forever hold your pee. (Wait, what?). The game is now available on PC, Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4.
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
