The Top 5 Changes in Reaper of Souls

[Yugioh21]

Diablo 3's expansion Reaper of Souls adds many new components to the isometric dungeon-crawling game. Many of these changes are slanted at trying to create more interesting and varied game-play options for players, and give them additional methods of progressing their character. Among all the features the expansion presents, there are five that stand out as the most important to every player's experience in Reaper of Souls.

1. The Mystic

Myriam the Mystic is the latest addition to Diablo 3's cast of secondary characters. Found relatively early in Act V, Myriam offers two services to the player: Enchanting and Transmogrification. Enchanting allows a player to reroll a single stat on any piece of gear for another stat of similar strength. At surface level, this simply appears to be a method to tweak gear, but it dramatically alters how every player in Diablo 3 will have to approach the loot they find. Items with a single deficient stat become a potentially viable upgrade. An item that seems to be a side grade because of a dead stat (Level Reduction) suddenly becomes a notable upgrade. The benefit of rerolling is offset by an increasing cost to reroll the same item, and there's no promise you'll get the stat you want on your first attempt.

The Mystic also enables players to Transmogrify their items, which reskins the item to look like another item that the player has held before. Combined with Diablo 3's existing dye system, players can create the perfect ideal look for their character, rather than a mishmash of whatever legendaries they're able to find. Though this is a purely cosmetic feature, it offers a small reward for finding an item that might not be an actual upgrade.

PROTIP: While grouped with other players, allow one another to touch (pick up and immediately drop) an item with a cool skin, so that each player can unlock its skin for Transmogrification.

2. Loot 2.0

Loot 2.0 is one of the most significant and impacting aspects of the recent changes to Diablo 3. With the removal of the auction house, players now need to rely primarily on farming to find loot. Legendary items are now much easier to acquire, with a drop rate of approximately 1 legendary per hour. Additionally, players will have less bloated loot tables, with less items total, but a higher chance of the loot having desirable stats.

In addition to adding a ton of interesting and awesome new items to the game, Reaper of Souls brought many changes to existing items. Blizzard has redesigned many of the game's legendaries to make them feel more epic and impactful. Diablo 3's legendary items used to simply have better stats with perhaps a unique proc. With Loot 2.0, it's common for players to find an item so awesome that they will significantly alter their build to use it. Legendary items now add procs, alter ability effects, or change gameplay mechanics. Though not every legendary will be an upgrade, they come frequently enough that it still feels rewarding, and even the ones that don't get used can be given to party members or melted down to fuel the Mystic's Enchanting.

3. Social Features

Farming can be a lonely business, but with the implementation of Clans and Communities, players now have a built-in support system to make groups and find friends. With a bonus to xp rates, magic finds, and gold finds for each person in your party, players have every incentive they need to group up to farm.

Players can now make Clans, which are players' central hub for friends and group mates for farming. Reaper of Souls has also introduced Communities, which are glorified chat rooms that large groups of players can go to while looking for groups, or simply to socialize in. Clans and Communities work very well in harmony together. Clans are meant for small groups of friends who prefer to group together frequently, while Communities are meant for large numbers of players to use to find groups. While Diablo 3 used to be a lonely game of either farming alone or in sociopathically silent games, Reaper of Souls is a social game.

4. Difficulty Settings

Reaper of Souls uses a new system to arrange the game's difficulty. Now, all monsters scale to the player's level regardless of difficulty. The new difficulty settings indicate how high above that base-level difficulty they range, with higher difficulties offering exponentially increasing rewards. The difficulty rating system is a more subtle change to how Diablo 3 is played, but significantly impacts the difficulty curve, and offers many different play styles.

Players looking to farm quick, easy runs can set the game to normal and still receive gear that is at their level, while players looking for more elite rewards or greater challenges can turn up the dial and slog their way though the higher difficulties to earn gold and xp modifiers, as well as new legendaries that can only be found at the highest difficulty level.

5. Adventure Mode

Adventure mode is Diablo 3's end game. Once players complete the Reaper of Souls campaign, they can begin to complete bounties and unlock Nephalem Rifts, each of which offer fast, randomized content for the players to crawl through. Bounties are short quests that take place in the open world, where the players must find and hunt down a specific monster, or clear a specific dungeon. Completing bounties awards Blood Shards and Rift Keystone Fragments, which are used to open Nephalem Rifts.

Nephalem Rifts are completely random dungeons that use the format of other content in the game, with the map changing between each floor. Nephalem Rifts are fast paced and have heavy mob density, with an increased number of elite and champion monsters. Bounties and rifts both also offer alternative methods of acquiring loot.. By spending the Blood Shards earned by completing bounties and rifts, players can purchase a random item of a given slot.

Both Nephalem Rifts and Bounties are designed to be highly repeatable, and offers short, objective-based farming runs that award short-term and long-term play. Because Rifts require Rift Keystone Fragments, there is even a built-in system to keep players alternating between the fast-paced rifts and the exploration-based bounties.

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