PixlBit

I didn't exactly follow my plan I laid out in my previous blog. I went straight to my friend Mark's place and we headed out to watch Seventh Son in the theaters. It was a pretty much a by-the-numbers fantasy flick: very predictible but full of interesting special effects and action. Just turn your brain off and have fun, and it was. Then it was time to pick up some burgers at Five Guys and head back to play video games. 

There was nothing much on sale this week on Xbox Live to interest me so I dove right back into Diablo III. 

                               

                                   Enough with the pink armor. It was time to get serious.

Mark and I played co-op right away. We played a little bit more on Hell Mode, so I could finish leveling up to 60 and move on to Inferno Mode. I set the difficulty at Hard to make it at least a little bit challenging. I got to level 60 pretty quickly, and then I reset the game to start us on Inferno Mode, the final mode in the game, and I put the difficulty at Master I because I felt Hard was a little bit too easy. But shortly it became clear that Master I difficulty was a little too hard. I was struggling to take down even the lowest monsters and anything tougher was just impossible. Mark, of course, was ok but nearly died a few times (he's at level 60, plus 6 paragon levels). So I reset the game again at Medium difficulty and this seemed really good. We played through Act I and II like that, and it was Diablasto!

I picked up a few more achievements for clearing Act I and II on Inferno Mode and two for finishing The Butcher and Belial Triumph challenges. All I had to do with The Butcher was beat him in under 2 minutes; and with Belial, I had to avoid his poison breath. I used my Diamond Skin spell to avoid the damage (dive rolling and moving into a corner didn't work). Mark's Barbarian, who is always up close doing melee damage, couldn't get out of the way, so we moved the difficulty down temporarily to Easy, and then beat him so fast that he didn't have time to breathe on us.

                              

                              Mark's Barbarian looks like a Chinese Samurai God of War.

By the end of the day, I had gotten almost 2 paragon levels and a couple new pieces of equipment that really improved my damage. I was beginning to think Medium was too easy.

Tomorrow, I think, I'll crank it up to Hard again as we attempt to finish the game on Inferno, get the achievement for buying a certain list of items from merchants, and then possibly start Hardcore Mode. I'm already looking at the price of the Ultimate Evil Edition to see if I can get it for $20 or less. Right now, at Gamestop, it's still $38 used, but I'm pretty sure it'll drop in price sometime soon.

Happy algorithms!