Diablo III - A Quick Inferno Machine Component Farming Guide-

Here is my guide on effective ways to farm the components needed to the infernal machine, as well as some strategies for the uber battles that I have observed during my time with the game.

Plan Farming

This is probably the most annoying part of process, so lets get it out of the way.  The plans for the infernal machine are dropped by the keywarden in Act 4.  The annoying part of this, is it is very hard to get a full five valor stack before reaching the area where the keywarden is located, which adds ontop of the frustration that the enemies normally give you in this act.  So, on average, you can pick up four elite packs between the two garden areas, if you are lucky, you get the full five, if you are unlucky, you only get three.  From my time farming, I was happy if I got four, and I usually found at least one elite before running into the keywarden.  If I found the keywarden before getting a fifth elite, I would try to lead him away from the checkpoint and just die, and made sure I went a different direction when I respawned to find another set.  I personally farmed this on a lower MP levels, just because at higher MP levels, the mobs get really frustrating if you are not geared to survive it.  It took me about 20 runs at MP1 to get it, but it was not as frustrating as trying to get it on higher MP levels since I would rarely die at MP1, so I was able to get more runs per hour with less headaches.

D3 - Legacy Nats vs New Nats - The Evolution of Demon Hunter Playstyles.

So, in the past, I had convinced myself that the Legacy Natalya's set items were not worth the gold, compared to the updated versions.  Now that 1.05 has been released, and the increase in shadow power duration, I must say that I was wrong about this.  But I'd like to write out the thought process as to why in the past, it was not as appealing.

When I was first looking at these two Natalya's set items, I was relatively low paragon level, and I was not geared as well.  So my mindset at the time was, "I need more stats to be better", which at the time made sense.  I need to deal more damage, and the only way to do it is to have more stats in general, more dexterity, more crit chance, more crit damage and better weapons.

Diablo III 1.05 Patch - 2 weeks in

So its been a couple weeks since the latest Diablo Patch has come out, and having spent a decent amount of time within the various monster power levels, here are my thoughts on the latest changes & additions.

Updates to Existing Events.

So a few patches ago, they disabled the effect that a player's magic find stat had on chests, so 99% of the time, the big glowing chest was just a huge sign of disappointment for the players.  In this latest patch, they took a step back, and now a player's magic find stat does have an affect on what comes out of the chest, plus it becomes affected when a player has five nephalim valor stacks.  Another nice thing that Blizzard has added is that these chests count as a valor stack, so if you have three, opening the chest will give you the fourth stack.  If you are at five stack, it will reset the countdown timer.

In addition to the changes to the resplendent chests, the random side events have also been reworked with a similar mechanic.  Completing these side quests will now grant a valor stack, and they now all end with a unique monster.  I am unsure if the valor stacks affect the quality of drops from these unique monsters, but from what I have experienced, its been a mixed bag of a bunch of blue items, to getting a legendary item from another.