Patch 1.0.5 (12480)

The last two patches have gone a long way towards making Diablo 3 the game we all hoped it would be (yeah, yeah, I know that we're still waiting for PvP as well). I had a chance to play on the PTR and really liked the changes that I saw. Really looking forward to playing again!

The StringList Data Changes are now up. When there is a patch, these changes will show you, among other things, which spells have changed and how. Keep in mind that you can view "Current", "All", and "Changes" for each of the StringList files making it easy to see exactly what has changed!

The Attribute Ids changed in this patch, so I will need to regenerate the Attributes.xml file (and corresponding code files) before I can re-generate all of the individual data pages.

Patch 1.0.4 (11327)

UPDATE: I finally got around to re-generating all the Affix, Mod, and Item pages with the 1.0.4 data. Among other things, you should now be able to see the correct ranges for Two-Handed items. I also added a "Combined Attributes" table for each item type that shows the max possible values for any given Attribute; this takes into account the possible combination of a prime stat an a combo stat (e.g., Dex and Dex/Vit both appearing on the item).

It's been far too long in the making, but it looks like D3 will finally start looking like the game it should have been. Overall, this looks like a great patch (and you know that I have been very critical of Blizzard, so I don't say this lightly).

The class balancing (aka, fixing the skills that no one was using because they sucked) will finally make spec building fun and intersting. Trying out different ideas should be a lot more interesting, and I know I am looking forward to a few things.

I think the new Paragon system was necessary. It's important for players to feel like they are progressing, especially when good loot drops have been few and far between. However, I think the MF cap is a horrible idea. It completely devalues the MF mod (although that will take some time to really take effect). And it gives players less choice. Right now, I have to choose between MF and damage stats; in the future, that won't be necessary and that is bad for the game.

And last but not least... Puzzle Ring... how I love thee...

Patch 1.0.3b (10485)

This is a minor bug fix patch with little worth mentioning. The only StringList changes are to a few AH related strings. There are no item or affix changes. The only Power that was changed was was the "Healthlink" monster affix.

Affix and Mod Cleanup

I have fixed a problem where the "maximum" values shown were greater than what actually is possible in the game. The reason this was happening is because there are certain Affixes (e.g., "MF XI") whose alvl (affix level) is greater than the highest ilvl (item level).

To make matters more complicated, most items have a max ilvl of 63 (as can now be seen since Patch 1.0.3). However, Rings and Amulets are currently capped at ilvl 62. Consequently, alvl 63 Affixes cannot be generated on Rings and Amulets. This explains why 18% MF is the max for a Ring, and 40% is the max for an Amulet. Note that Affixes with an alvl > 63 cannot be generated at all since the max ilvl on any item is currently 63.

Finally, I cleaned up an issue where Mods that could appear on Legendaries (e.g., Movement Speed on items other than Boots) would incorrectly show as available for those item types.

Patch 1.0.3 (10057) and the IAS Debacle

Patch 1.0.3 will be upon us once the Blizzard servers are up again, and with it comes one of the largest nerfs in Blizzard history. The "Increased Attack Speed" (IAS) mod is being reduced on all existing items by approximately 50%. There are a lot of weapons on the Auction House that will plunge in value due to losing significant DPS. This change also affects Amulets, Rings, Gloves, and Legendaries (e.g., Tal Rasha's chest), but not Quivers.

According to Dretar's DH Damage Calculator, 13% IAS is equivalent to about 6.0% Crit Hit Chance, 48% Crit Hit Damage, or 135 Dex (with my current gear which is pretty balanced). Slashing IAS values completely destroys the relative value of DPS mods (Prime stat, CHC%, CHD%, and IAS%). Now I do realize that unlike the other damage mods, IAS impacts resource generation and attack procs (Life on Hit in particular). Personally, I think a 20-25% nerf would have been more than enough to bring IAS in line with other damage mods. Instead, Blizzard will have to deal with an epic shitstorm on the forums as certain spec/gear combinations become unplayable overnight. I imagine that any Monk high IAS + Life On Hit builds will suffer greatly.

Three Weeks Since Launch

It's been three weeks since launch so I thought it was time to take a quick look back and share some thoughts. The biggest mistake I made so far was not playing a Demon Hunter from the start. I leveled a Monk first, but hit a brick wall in Inferno Act 2. So I then leveled a Demon Hunter and I now have Azmodan runs on easy farm. The only Elite packs I skip are the Invulnerable ones, and on occasion, I will also skip some Reflect Damage, Extra Health, Fast ones too since they are a pain to kite and take forever to kill. I do hope to someday go back to playing my Monk, but I am going to need to get much better gear before I can do that.

Overall, I think the game is very good, but it still feels like it needs a lot of tuning. My biggest complaints thus far are: not being able to lock your action bar (losing 5 stacks because of a misclick sucks), not being able to tell when a cooldown is actually ready (this was a huge issue with my Monk, because I would sometimes think a CD was available when in fact it had 0.2 seconds left on it), Elite packs being able to spawn right next to waypoints (sucks starting a new game and going to a waypoint only to get 1-shot while zoning in).

In development news, I am still working on getting my remote Auction House up and running. I don't have an ETA on how soon it will be ready, but I am actively working on it once again.

Edit: Brandon let me know that you can lock the bar by turning off elective mode in the options. Kind of a pain but worth it to keep you 5 stacks. Thanks for the tip!

Another Botched Blizzard Launch

Blizzard has completely botched yet another game launch. I hear things didn't too smooth in Europe; and not sure about Asia. The US launch is a disaster with massive reports of players still not being able to log in over an hour after launch. And all kinds of other problems too. On top of that, the Login screen as no queueing mechanism so you have to keep trying to log in over and over again... ading yet more load to the already impoverished Blizzard servers.

And you want a status update on what the hell is going? Don't bother going to Blizzard's web site; that is down too for "maintenance". Somehow I doubt they scheduled a maintainance window the night of launch. A more accurate represenation would say "down because we didn't get our shit together".

When you are the largest gaming company in the world, this kind of launch is utter fail and due to complete mismanagement. If this happened in any other industry, I am pretty sure that several heads would roll as a result.

Update: Today (Wednesday) more of the same. I think we are on our third emergency maintenance window. One thing after another. Servers back up in a couple of hours... Maybe.

Launch Day (v 1.0.1.9558)

Launch day is finally just around the corner. You can now install the game client in preparation for the midnight PDT launch.

Beta Archive

I have moved most of the Beta related articles from the front page to the front page to the Beta Archive

D3Lexicon

After a long hiatus, D3Lexicon is back and updated! This has been my favorite D3 game info site for a long time so be sure to check it out. In fact, I liked this site so much that it completely removed any desire I had to try and do something similar. And that's a great thing because I am very busy with trying to take over the world with the Auction House.

Auction House Search Preview

I've finally completed the first pass of my Auction House item viewer. Currently, the item data is old (from Patch 8692) and is not being refreshed. There's still a long ways to go, but to get an early sneak peak, click on the Auctions link at the top.

Bypassing Game Client Patching (for Mooege)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about Patching the Diablo 3 Game Client. This new article describes how tp bypass game client patching so that you can use Mooege without an Internet connection (useful for folks like myself that travel a lot). Click here to read more...

On Duping...

Let me start of by saying that if duping exists in Diablo 3, it will kill the game. I don't think that's an exaggeration. You may think to yourself that it won't be so bad because Diablo 2 is still popular and duping there has been going on forever, and in large amounts. While that may be true, duping in D3 will bring Blizzard to its knees. Click here to read more...

Patching the Diablo 3 Game Client

Every Beta Patch, I noticed that some websites were able to obtain the Patch MPQs before my Beta game client was able to download them. Some folks on various forums posted as much, and Bashiok even commented on this on Twitter:

@crypto2000 @Angryrobotics Nah, they just know where to look. The patch is technically public, just not enabled in the game launcher.

@crypto2000 @angryrobotics Our patch clients are always available before the patch is officially released, if you know where to look.

I found those tweets quite annoying because rather than informing the public exactly where the publicly available patches were, Bashiok confirmed that they did exist, and implied that you were just not cool enough to be in the club with those in-the-know.

A friend from the great d3db.com website gave me the links to the Patch MPQ downloads which I really appreciated. But what I really wanted was to understand more about the patching process so that I would not have to rely on others should the process change down the road. Read on to learn more...

Mission Statement

The purpose of this site is to provide the Diablo 3 community with a place to discuss and analyze items. While this sounds pretty mundane, Diablo is at its core an item hunting game.

The central feature of this site, and the one that differentiates it from the myriad of other Diablo sites, is the ability to create "Item Profiles" and to evaluate items against these profiles. An Item Profile is a template that allows you to evaluate an item based on how well the attributes of the item match those defined in your profile. For example, you could create a profile for a "dual leech" ring; this profile would require that the item be a ring, and that it has both "life steal" and "mana steal". Furthermore, you can assign values to other useful mods (e.g., prismatic and +Life). This will allow you to assign a "rating" to a given item. That rating represents how good the item is based on the profile that you have defined.

I also plan to allow users to submit their Item Profiles to the community. This would be done using a forums-based review process. Once an "Item Profile" is accepted, it would become public for everyone to use. The purpose of this feature is to create Item Profiles that actually reflect the wants and needs of the community.

When you want to evaluate an item, you will have the ability to rate the item based on all your profiles (and/or public profiles) at once. This way, you can see whether an item might be suitable for niche purposes.

Eventually, I hope that Auction House data will become publicly available (as it now is for WoW via the Blizzard Community Platform API). When this happens, I plan to add Auction House features to the site. This will not only let you see current auctions, but also get historical information about past auctions. Most importantly, it will allow you to scan the Auction House using your custom Item Profiles. This will help you find the items that you are looking for. Ultimately, the Auction House scanner could be enhanced to support email notifications such that you would be notified immediately once an item you are looking for has been found. There are a lot of possibilities with this feature, but it all depends on the Auction House data being public or data-minable (e.g., screen scraping using OCR technology).

MPQ Reverse-Engineering

Another feature I am working on is a reverse-engineering of some of the crucial game files. Since this is quite a daunting task, I started off with something very simple: StringList files (click on the link for more information). I am hard at work on reverse engineering the AffixList.gam and Items_*.gam "GameBalance" file formats.

In the not-so-distant future, I hope to publish item data, affix data, spell data (with per level details), and treasure class data (monster loot drop information).

The MPQs menu link above provides an introduction to the Diablo 3 MPQ files. It will also contain links to the game file details as I make them available.

The details of the ItemTypes.gam File were previously posted. This was a prelude to the more juicy Affix and Item information which is now available.

StringList Files

The StringList files are used by Diablo 3 to convert Non-NLS keys into language specific strings. A number of these files are now available for viewing. For each file, differences between (beta patch) versions can also shown allowing you to track patch changes as they happen.

What this site is not

This site is not a replacement for general community sites such as Diablo incgamers or Diablo Fans, nor is it intended to act as a wiki for the Diablo 3 universe.

When will it all be ready?

Features will be added as they become available. I have a very long list of features that I plan to add over the coming months, and will also be soliciting feedback from the community via the Forums. Speaking of Forums, I have recently enabled them (email verification required). That's the good news! The bad news is that it will take some time to build up a steady community, and forums are only as useful as the posts contributed.

I expect this site to be fully ready before the launch of Diablo 3, towards the end of this year. I will continue to evolve this site based on feedback from the community.