Also known as Loot 2.0, Patch 2.0.1 brings about a significant overhaul to the loot system. With the Real Money and Gold Auction Houses shutting down on March 18th, players will be entirely dependent on loot drops in order to gear their high-level characters properly. Prior to this patch, your ability to do so sans the Auction House was a crapshoot. While I?ve seen players that have been able to do so, it generally would take a significant amount of time and luck to properly gear your character for high-level play. While the series is no stranger to grinding for loot, the rewards were often incremental while being few and far between.
The new loot system does a few neat things to alleviate this. Patch 2.0.1 implements ?smart loot?, something that?s already been put to use when Diablo III hit consoles last year. Smart loot recognizes the character class you?re currently playing as, and tries to ensure that the gear drops you see are tailored towards that specific class. So instead of rolling a legendary with high intelligence while playing a Monk, you?re now more likely to see that roll turn into dexterity, a far more useful stat for the class. In my experience with the game post-patch, this seems to work the majority of the time.
About every hour to two-hour play session would net me at least one legendary. I did an entire playthrough of Acts 1 through 4, and Act 4 alone netted 3 legendary items, all within a span of two hours. The last run I did against the Skeleton King boss in Act 1, which currently guarantees one legendary if you?ve reset quest status, dropped both a legendary weapon and green-texted set item. While not every drop was an upgrade for my 300+ hour Monk, I certainly found more improvements than I had seen in quite some time.
A final and significant change to loot is the type of affixes you?re more likely to see. While you?ll still come across your standard stats like dexterity, strength and vitality, you?ll also see a lot more plus percentage attributes to individual class skills and elemental damage. For instance, seeing something like +6% Lightning Damage wasn?t too uncommon for weapons prior to the patch, but you?re more likely to see both higher percentages on the affix, and to see it apply to other pieces of gear than just weapons. Likewise, with skill specific affixes, this patch makes more diverse character builds viable for the first time since launch. While flavor-of-the-month builds will surely still be a thing, a quick trip to the Battle.net class forums will show that a lot of players are actively experimenting and trying new things. Build diversity was a major part of the series prior to Diablo III, and it?s nice to see it make a return here.
Cursed Chests are a new event introduced with Patch 2.0.1, which can be a bit scarce but net you both experience and loot rewards when completed. Attempting to open a Cursed Chest will trigger a random event, which typically involves killing a number of spawning monsters within a time limit. Completing the quest will net you experience and gold, and grant access to two Resplendent Chests filled with loot.
This is a great time to jump back into Diablo III. Whether you played the hell out of it at launch and burned out, or if you stayed away due to negative word of mouth, this is a significant change from the original vision of the game. My only real negative thought here comes from the Bind on Account status given to Legendary and Set loot, which makes trading or selling virtually impossible. There is a small allowance given to players within a group at the time of the loot drop, allowing a window of opportunity to trade with players present. But I?d still love to at least offer up trades with other players, and hopefully that?ll be re-evaluated in the future. Outside of that, this is the patch that puts Diablo III back on track, and has reignited my love of the game in a way that I didn?t think would be possible prior to the expansion.
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