Part 11

Learn about legendary items, gear slots, and quests in Diablo III. Get tips for co-op play and finding rare loot.

The rarest type of item is a legendary item, and these will appear sort of bronze in color. The drop rates for legendaries are incredibly low, requiring a lot of playtime, plenty of magic find stacking, and a LOT of luck. The very first time you kill each main story boss in normal mode you are guaranteed one rare, with chances of more dropping. From there you'll need to be lucky and rely on your magic find stat.

Legendaries contain a huge number of stats, are completely unique in design and most often look awesome, and have a almost 100% fixed stats set by Blizzard. In traditional Diablo fashion however, there are still a couple randomized stats as well. You can sell a legendary for a crazy amount of gold or money on the Auction Houses now.

Gear

You'll find endless hordes of loot in Diablo III, from gems and gold to helms and awesome two-handed swords. However the most interesting part of loot is getting gear for your character. Gear is important as without great equipment you will even find Nightmare difficulty incredibly hard to beat.

Your character may equip: two rings, an amulet, bracers, gloves, boots, pants, chest armor, shoulder armor, helms, a two-handed weapon, two one-handed weapons, or one weapon and a special off-hand item (shield, mojo, etc, depending on class). With random stats and rarities on each of these pieces and so many different art styles you can probably guess so how much gear there is in Diablo III.

Gear is equipped by opening your character menu, then dragging a piece of gear to the right gear slot above your inventory. You will see a nicely drawn image of your class with slots for gear at the corresponding places, and each piece of gear will also have their own art drawing. There are 16 tiers of armor set art STYLES, and these are just looks - there will be loads of different equipment with the same look but with different names and stats.

You will find more and more of these tiers as you progress through the game, with the final three being solely in Inferno difficulty. The couple last tiers are therefore really hard to acquire, and will make you distinct over most people if you manage to get some. You can also dye your gear for even further distinct looks. Dyes can be bought from various vendors and found as drops.

Quests

Like with it's predecessors, Diablo III has quests to complete as you progress through the game. There are a good number of story quests that you play through from start to finish, and the story they tell is a big improvement over the previous games.

Quests are basically "missions" your receive from NPCs (non-player characters) or from story events that can be completed whenever you want. To progress through the game, the main quests must be finished. The core of Diablo III will be about its epic main quest however - remember Diablo III is not about questing storylines like it is in the Elder Scrolls series, it's about the loot, awesome fights, and developing your character while you beat harder and harder content.

As you'll wish to go into certain areas to defeat bosses or farm around certain acts or bits of the story, you are allowed to replay any of the quests in solo or with your friends. If you wish to play with others in a public game, you can still choose from the quests of which you fall into the level range. The level range is usually around nine levels (e.g. first quest in the game can be joined by played that are level 1-9). Once you reach Inferno though, everyone is level 60 and so you can join any quest in public games.

Co-op Play

You may bring your own character, complete with your skill choices, dyes, and items - basically your complete hero, into the game with another bunch of players. You may do this with up to 3 other players in Diablo III, whether it's a public game with random players or with friends you know in a private party.

Either way it makes the game even more interesting on quite a few levels. For example you'll need to work together to defeat enemies and bosses, as the difficulty scales as more players join your party, and you'll have an explosive time fighting together with abilities and corpses flying everywhere. Going hunting for loot or demons together with a friend is much more interesting as well, and the classes are extremely balanced in co-op play.