Diablo 3 Preparation Part 3

   Here we are for the third and last part of these mini D3 preparation posts. In the Part 1 and Part 2 of the posts we had peek at what to expect in the fees section, and we saw a bit about how the auction house is going to work. Well today we are going to take a look at the crafting portion of the game, the affixes and a general idea of what to expect for the first month that the game is going to be out.

THE CRAFTING ASPECT

   Crafting is going to be a big part of the Diablo 3 economy, and a very important aspect that will make the game all that more exciting.

   Just like in any game that has a crafting system, it need to have some sort of different levels and skill you must master in order to be able to craft the most powerful items and weapons. Well in D3 this system is kinda similar to that, but with a bit of an added twist.

   

   Namely if you want to level up your crafters, or artisans as they are called, you will need to fork out gold. Every time you pay an artisan some gold he will progress further more into his craft and gain an additional item that he will be able to craft for you. With each payment that you give the artisan, he learns a more powerful item and a higher level item for that matter. After a certain amount of payments have been given the artisan he will "level up" which will be easy to notice as his store will change it's appearance into a more advanced building.

   Lets say that you managed to get all the gold needed to level your artisans and you feel you have mastered that artisan, well this is where that twist i mentioned earlier comes in. The game has extra world drop patterns that you can collect from killing monsters, or purchase from the Auction House (RMAH or GAH). 

   So here you are, you have leveled your artisan a bit, you have made some gold and now you want to craft some items, so what do you do ? Well crafting takes a bit more then a leveled artisan and some patterns, you will need materials in order to be able to craft items. The way you obtain these materials is by salvaging items with magic properties in them, it's the WoW's equivalent of disenchanting. So now that you have the leveled artisan, you have the materials to craft with all you will need is some gold to pay the artisan to craft your item (yeah he's like that, you pay him so he can expand his store and then he turns around and charges you) and you will have your item. 

   One last thing i want to explain about the crafting system before i skip over to the next thing. When crafting items in D3 you will never know what you are going to get. What i mean with this is that the affixes ( the magical bonuses ) are always going to be different, and it will all boil down to your luck at getting a piece of gear with awesome affixes.

THE AFFIXES

   

   The affixes, or the stats that can appear on items in D3 are quite a bit. To make it easier to understand it would be ok to divide them into two categories, affixes for combat and affixes for "farming". As you can see on the image above, there are affixes like +Pysical and Elemental ( cold, fire, etc.) resistance, thorns ( returned damage ), movement speed etc. There is no need to name them all as you can see them from the picture and get the idea.

   What i want to explain about the affixes is why i said you can divide them into two categories. Well the first category is the combat oriented buyers, they will always be on the lookout for pieces of gear that will have +Primary Stat and +Damage on it, at the same time the other category of buyers will focus on +magic find and +gold drop. 

   One thing that is kinda important that i haven't mentioned until now and it is about affixes is that while being in a group the +magic and +gold find are shared with the group. So if you have a group of 4 people and one of them has gear that is all +magic find, at the same time the second person has +gold find gear on then the remaining two even if they don't have any magic/gold finding gear on they will get that bonus from their friends. So as you can see it will be very profitable, and that much more interesting to play with your friends rather then play on your own.

HOW TO PROFIT FROM ALL OF THIS

   So we saw how everything works in the AH, we saw what the affixes do, we saw how the artisans work and now for the end i am going to give you a few free tips on how to take all of these informations and use them to get some profit.

   As i mentioned before the RMAH is going to be delayed for about a week, what this means for us is that we are going to have about a week to earn some gold that we can put on the RMAH and profit off the huge demand there's going to be for gold in the first month while everyone is starting out.

   The best way to use that initial one week wait would be to have fun and actually play the game. After you have played for a while you are bound to pickup a few rare items on your carnage. What you need to do is define if that item is Combat or Farming item and price it correctly. In the beginning you will have a much better luck selling +magic/gold items as people will not understand that a +100% magic drop doesn't mean you get a magic item from every kill, but rather if that mob has a 1% chance to drop a magic item with your +100% Magic drop increase that same mob will have a 2% chance to drop an item. So to sum it up with these stats, it is going to be a very profitable to sell the +M/G drop items, and when pricing them check the Auction House so you get an idea on how much it is going to be worth it and either put it up at that price or undercut for a very small amount, and if there isn't any up there put it up for 80% of the gold you made that day.

   One of the best things that you want to profit off is going to be selling the weapons. To clarify, a weapon with higher DPS would be superior to any gear that offers +stats on anything pretty much damage wise. So it's a fact that weapon DPS is king when it comes to racking in high prices on the GAH or RMAH. At the same time if you get a weapon that has +Magic Find/Gold Drop then you can market that weapon to the "farmers" as well, so that weapon would be even more valuable.

   And last tip i leave you with that made me a ton of gold in the Beta would be the vendors. Just like you can profit off the vendors in WoW by buying and reselling patterns and items on the AH, you can do the same in D3 but instead of patterns you would buy out gear, rings to be more precise. There is a vendor that sells these rings but he is a bit in the background so many of the people usually don't see him when they are out and about killing monsters and raiding dungeons. I sold quite a bit of those items and i am sure that they will sell just as good when the game goes live.

   For now that is all that you should need to know to get you started and prepared for the release of D3 and if there is anything else that you would like to know just put it in the comment. If you would like to know anything else about D3 and how it is going to work, again put it in the comment and i will try to do my best to answer any questions that i have the answer to.

   This was the Third part of the mini Diablo 3 preparation category, you can find the Part 1 and Part 2 in the Diablo 3 category. Anyways i hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it, so have fun and i'll see you in Diablo 3.