The official Diablo III website has released their Crafting page with FAQ’s, video and screenshots:
As it was in previous games in the series, a big part of Diablo III is amassing piles and piles of loot. Collecting bigger, sturdier suits of armor. Finding an axe that’s sharper, more brutal, and more perfectly aligned with your play-style and build than the last one. Sifting through the piles of wands, staves, and runes that explode out of slain creatures.
But there’s more to loot than random drops. In Diablo III, we want you to be able to build your arsenal as you progress through the game, turning old, outdated gear into… well, more than just extra money. We want you to be able to make deliberate choices about your equipment alongside the joy of acquiring random items from enemies and treasure chests. To do that without slowing down the game’s action, we’ve implemented a unique crafting system.
Quite the in depth look at gems here, you’ll definitely want to hit the Read More button for all the info:
Q u o t e
So…
When Jay said there are 14 levels of Gems i said “YAY!”, and then he said only the first 5 levels drop in the game… so if my calculations are correct (Which they might not be, because i suck at math), and it takes 3 gems of each level to create one gem of the next level… that comes to 19,683 level 5 gems of the same type to make just one level 14 Gem, assuming you get all gems of the same type… so 1st, if anyone that’s a bit more Math-headed would check my calculation i would appreciate it much.
and 2nd, Bashiok, Considering this is true, this is a MONSEREUS figure, and i know you’re hell-bent on creating a good economy but nearly 20,000 gems borders in the insane, now, I’m not saying that you should lower the number (Even though just adding the 6th gem level as a drop would reduce it to 6561 gems needed, i think), but jay said that you started with a redicules number, so i got a couple ideas to make it easier to achieve(except obviosly, simple making level 6 drop), things like:
1 – Item with a Quality of lets say Rare and above (whatever would be equals to Unique, Set, Rare, and Off course if they add it, Artifacts) could yield 1+ Gems of level 5 or Higher while they are being salvaged, it only makes sense that ” Way Jilsons Holy Shield Of Might” had a couple of Gems smelted into it when it was created!
2 – aside from having the Jeweler being able to CREATE gems for you, with the parts you bring, why not create a system that will allow him/her to convert types of gems to the other? obviously, the higher the gem quality, the more expensive it is, if through items, or cash, examp: 1 L5 Red gem + 1 L1 Blue diamond + Money = L5 BLUE GEM But converting a L10 Red gem to a L10 Blue gem would take X10 cash, a higher level blue gem, and maybe another blue item, such as “The Blue ink of Blizzard posts” or Something… – Additionally, level 14 items cannot be converted.
What do you think?
Yeah, that’s about right. I mean keep in mind none of this has been proven through actual testing but the current design is that yeah, it’s going to take a lot of lower level gems to reach the very highest high end.
The gem-to-gem upgrade intent is not to have these huge gaps where you feel like you’re lame unless you have level 14 gems in every slot, but as a long term goal for the hardcore min/maxers and PvPers who are going to be playing for a long time and be able to work toward those goals. It’s something you can put a little time into just by upgrading the gems you pick up during normal play, so you’re constantly able to keep working toward the goal of crafting a level 14 gem.
Also the trading game and millions of people playing for months is going to make them a lot more attainable than they may seem when throwing out numbers like 19,000.
It’s possible it may feel crappy or we need to add something to help jump gaps, or, who knows. It’s all very unproven at the moment, but we think provides a nice long term goal anyone can work toward just by killing monsters and picking up gems.
Bashiok gives an answer to the question on the poly count and texture resolution of the Diablo 3 models:
Q u o t e:
Dear Diablo III Devs,
After the recent flood of Diablo III news, I have dedicated most of my time playing through Diablo II again and scouring the official DIII website in hopes to finding something new.
I have played WoW from launch as well and so I see some similarities in character models and design which is both a blessing and a curse. For example, Human females in WoW look like a pile of playdough with some horrible textures slapped on for good measure. I’ve read articles that Blizzard “doesn’t have the time or resources to redo those character models and textures”
I’ve noticed that some of the characters/models on the Diablo III site are the same low poly and low resolution textures that are more similar to WoW. Please tell me these are just placeholders and that we will see more detail in the final characters.
I mean no disrespect by this but I will never understand why most games nowadays have low resolution textures. On consoles, sure, you have space limitations but PC games? Look at Torchlight as well. Great game but some 3rd party modded in new textures that make the game look FANTASTIC.
Any thoughts on this?
Blunt answer incoming, only because this has been addressed a whole lot.
There’s no reason to pump up poly counts and texture res for a model you’re going to see from a fixed camera 30 feet up in the sky. At that distance the detail is lost, and so essentially we’d be building a model so it looks pretty on the website.
Which might actually be cool to do, we would love for the close-up characters on the website to look better than they do, but that’s allocating resources to what is essentially throw away material. So we haven’t deemed it worth the effort.
In general we also want to keep graphic requirements low so that a wide audience can enjoy the game, and also so we can have a lot of enemies on screen.
Bashiok answers a question about the possibility of gambling in Diablo 3:
Q u o t e:
Listening to the one on one with J.Wilson, he said they took the ideas for artisans from the previous systems like gambling and runewords. I just hope this doesn’t mean they will take Gambling out. Gheed should be back and Gambling should be yet another way to get decent items but at a very high cost. Low chance to get that good item but we will always be wondering if that next item could be special. Add whatever other systems you want, just dont take my gambling roarrrr
I can see there being a possibility for some high end crafting recipes to have fewer or no fixed attributes, which in the latter case would be gambling, essentially. But better.
As far as a system dedicated to gambling, there are no current plans, but as I just said gambling could be pulled off a whole lot better through the crafting system directly. If we thought those types of recipes were a good idea.
Which I have no idea if we do. ‘We’ being other people that decide these things.
We’ve all been anxious to find out what new feature was going to be revealed today at gamescom for Diablo III, and they’ve delivered. Artisans! A persistent band of followers and crafters that will join you on your journey through Sanctuary.
See the Diablo 3 Artisan Reveal Video below:
The transcript for the Press Conference can be found here and features a great Q&A that you’ll want to take the time to read as it explains the Artisans in further detail. They are NPCs that are craftsmen to assist you throughout the game. Blacksmith, jeweller and mystic are three classes that are available. You don’t start with them but they’ll join you on the quest.
Blacksmith – Catering for heavy duty melee weapon, they can repair and make use of sockets. “You can add gems to any item, regardless of quality.” Gem use will be more “prolific” throughout. Artisans can train throughout the game, and offer gossip as well.
Jeweller – Can recover gems from items without destroying them. Wilson said that they like how gems in II can be combined together, but it made people keep their gems and not use them in the fear that they would lose them. Here, it makes it possible for people to experiment. There are five levels of gems that drop, but there are fourteen qualities total which are obtained through combining in the right way. “To get the higher numbers you have to get pretty ridiculous.”
Mystic – Focuses on crafting magic items – wands, staff and some pieces of armour – and can be used to add enhancements. They are found in the same way that recipes are found, in the world, and as the Artisans level up they’ll encounter new ones along the way. The Mysic can also add elements to items, much like Kane did in the original.
Bashiok answers what may drop a health globe on a critical hit and their drop rate:
Rares and Champions have a chance to drop globes when hit.
Uniques/Bosses… ? Maybe! But their health replenishing mechanics (among other things) have a better chance of being a bit more creative since their lairs are specifically designed for them
Q u o t e:
I assume the chance is going to be quite low?
It’s actually higher. Regular monsters have a chance to drop a small health globe on death, champions have a chance to drop a bigger health globe once during their life and again at death, and rares have a very high chance to drop an even bigger health globe every quarter of their life and then at death.
And he gives some clarification on the different terms:
Champions – small packs of tougher mobs that have a unique champion trait, one affix, increased health, damage, harder, etc. Rares – single enemy of great difficulty, can have a few affixes, they’re named (randomly), much tougher, comes with a group of minions that inherit their affixes and bonuses Uniques – Unique boss monsters. Unique name/art/skills/lairs(or specific location) and are usually a part of the story/goal of a quest, if not the actual end-boss of an act. The Skeleton King and the Siegebreaker would both be uniques
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Was the Siegebreaker Assault Beast a permanent thing in the 2008 gameplay video or was he just a random Super unique that was scripted for that particular video? Because I seem to recall reading somewhere that he wasn’t even the end boss for Act I and I think it would be great to reach the exit of a random dungeon and to find a massive boss/Super unique like that, rather than in D2, where you knew there would be no surprises like that once you’d finished a dungeon
Q u o t e:
Hopefully D3 won’t be as easy to solo with practically any build like D2 was
Did you make it to Hell difficulty? Diablo II wasn’t easy to solo with practically any build at later difficulties. In fact you could pretty easily build a character that was useless. That’s not fun.
We’re not going to intentionally design it so that you must build your character a certain way to progress. Obviously with respecs there’s a lot more ability on the part of the player to try new things, or swap out skills, but that’s not something we’re relying on so we can be careless about mechanics like immunities.
To stay on thread topic, yes the siegebreaker is still an enemy in the game.
As it was in previous games in the series, a big part of Diablo III is amassing piles and piles of loot. Collecting bigger, sturdier suits of armor. Finding an axe that’s sharper, more brutal, and more perfectly aligned with your play-style and build than the last one. Sifting through the piles of wands, staves, and runes that explode out of slain creatures.
We have hand-crafted texture variants where needed.
