7 Reasons Why Now’s A Great Time To Revisit Diablo III

Diablo III has become less of a game for me and more of an ongoing obsession. Even as my backlog continues to pile up around me, I find myself returning to the demon-plagued world of Sanctuary nearly four years after the game’s release. The biggest expansion for the game, Reaper of Souls, added a new act to the game and brought it to current-gen consoles, but Blizzard hasn’t left the game alone since 2014. The game has received a steady stream of updates since then, and it’s a much different beast now than even two years ago. Last week, the 2.4.1 update arrived, bringing a host of new cosmetic items and pets. If your enthusiasm dropped off or you’ve never played, now’s a great time to get back into Diablo. Stay awhile, and listen.

Potions (Revamped in August 2014; legendary potions added in update 2.2.0, April 2015)
When vanilla Diablo III came out, players had to juggle a variety of different healing potions. It seemed every time my friends and I would play online, someone was porting back to town to resupply their inventory. The Reaper of Souls expansion did away with that aspect of the game, swapping it out for a bottomless potion that runs on a cooldown. You don’t have to worry about running out, but you can’t jam on the heal button whenever you want. Maybe those potions cause an upset stomach?

Later, legendary potions were included as drops, which added temporary buffs along with the healing properties. The bonuses aren’t game-changers, but these potions are another rare item to strive for while you continue to run along the loot treadmill.

Kanai's Cube (Added in update 2.3, August 2015)
Kanai’s Cube is arguably the biggest post-launch tweak the game has seen. This versatile object can be found in Adventure Mode, in Act 3’s The Ruins of Sescheron area. It has a host of recipes associated with it, which can be used in a variety of game-changing ways. You can transmute crafting materials from one type to another, remove minimum-level requirements for high-end gear, and make shortcuts to the game’s Vault and Cow levels. That’s great, but a trio of other powers are where it really shines.

Players can extract the special abilities associated with legendary items, and equip them as powers. Those powers are sorted into three categories – armor, jewelry, and weapons – and you can have one from each type active at any given time. The item is destroyed in the process, but it opens up much more flexibility when it comes to creating gear loadouts. For instance, you can activate the special ability from the Ring of Royal Grandeur, which reduces the number of items you need to wear to get a set bonus, while wearing two other rings. Or you can have your powerful main weapon equipped while enjoying the cow-summoning ability from the gimmick polearm Bovine Bardiche. 

Additionally, the cube makes it easier to acquire set items. One recipe upgrades rare items to legendary, with a chance of upgrading to a green. And if you have a nearly complete collection of set gear but doubles of something, you can reroll one of those duplicate items to something from the same set. Need the Jade Harvester helm, but have two pairs of the boots? Give the cube a shot.

Bounties (Added in Reaper of Souls expansion, August 2014)
Before the Reaper of Souls was released, players didn’t have a lot to do once they were done with the game’s campaign. Sure, you could walk around Sanctuary and kill stuff, but it felt pretty aimless. Fortunately, Blizzard had a solution: bounties. These simple, repeatable quests gave players goals, as well as some decent loot for helping to rid the world of monsters.

Players can look at their world maps in Adventure Mode, and they’ll notice certain zones have exclamation points on them. Those are where the bounties are. Each act has five active bounties at any given time, and players who complete them all get a special parcel of randomized loot. In addition, one world is flagged as a bonus, and completing the bounties there will score a bonus cache, too. In other words, you should beeline to the bonus stages, finish them up, and move on to the next bonus world.

Bounties can include things like defeating bosses from the campaign, killing all the enemies in a particular dungeon floor, or cleansing a cursed shrine. They add a sense of purpose to the end game, and the caches can include special crafting components that are required for Kanai’s Cube recipes. They’re well worth your time.

Rifts (Added in Reaper of Souls expansion, August 2014; updated consistently)
The Reaper of Souls expansion added Adventure Mode to the game, providing players access to randomized levels designed to be replayed. Players could also jump into rifts, which provided additional challenges. They’ve been redesigned and tweaked several times since being introduced, and it’s difficult (and ultimately pointless) to cover every change. All you need to know is they used to require keys to enter them, which were drops from completing bounties. 

Now you can simply pop open a Nephalem Rift at will by visiting an NPC in any of the towns. From there, you fill a meter up by killing enemies and collecting orbs that the elites drop. When the meter is filled, a random Rift Guardian boss comes into the game, and you have to destroy it. Play on the higher difficulty settings, and the Rift Guardian is likely to drop a Greater Rift keystone. These are used to open… Greater Rifts. These are similar to the Nephalem Rifts, with one key difference: They’re timed. You have 15 minutes to complete the rift and get the bonus. In keeping with the speed theme, enemies don’t drop any items, encouraging players to cruise through the rift as quickly as possible. Fail to do it in time, and you still get loot from the Rift Guardian. You just miss out on the legendary gem part, which is a bummer.

Legendary Gems (Added in update 2.1, August 2014)
Legendary gems are an important facet (snicker) of the endgame. These gems are awarded as a bonus for completing Greater Rifts. They have special abilities when socketed into jewelry (and in one case, weapons). For example, Enforcer adds bonus pet damage, while Bane of the Powerful adds a damage boost for a short period after defeating an elite enemy. Successful Greater Rift runs also let you upgrade these gems, with more challenging rifts giving you better odds that the upgrade attempts will succeed. Gems have a special bonus that opens up when gems are leveled to 25, too, such as Enforcer reducing the amount of damage your pets take from enemies.  

Set Dungeons (Added in update 2.4, January 2016)  
Greens are the highest tier of loot in Diablo 3, representing sets of class-specific gear. Each class has several different suits to collect, with each one highlighting the various skill archetypes the classes represent. For instance, The Shadow’s Mantle set bonus activates all of the demon hunter’s shadow-power runes, emphasizing stealth, while Natalya’s Vengeance gives a damage bonus for the AoE Rain of Vengeance arrow barrage.

Earlier this year, players who were able to collect complete sets could access hidden set dungeons. These tricky challenges have special requirements to complete and master them. For instance, to successfully master the Natalya’s Vengeance set dungeon, you need to defeat all the monsters in the dungeon while keeping Rain of Vengeance activated for 90 seconds and not running out of the hatred resource. These aren’t procedurally generated, so players can memorize layouts and come up with strategies ahead of time.

Cosmetics (Added in update 2.4.1, April 2016)
The most recent update offered many of the usual rebalancing tweaks we’ve come to expect. It also included a bunch of new cosmetic upgrades and pets for players who like to make their characters stand out. I’ve only managed to find a lumpy new pet, but he’s a welcome change of pace from the spectral dog that’s been following me around for a few years. Getting a sweet-looking pair of wings is its own reward, but pets are actually kind of useful. They’ll dart around you, picking up piles of gold on your behalf. Not too shabby!

I’ve put a dozen or so hours into the game since the update, playing bounties and rifts, and that pet is the only new cosmetic that’s dropped. I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff online, and I’m excited to see what comes my way. That’s how they get you, after all.