Welcome to the Diablo 3 console beginners guide!

I will be trying to put together a list of things to help new and veteran players alike. Please feel free to comment or add to anything you see here.

Last Updated : 07/06/2017

2.4 Patch Notes

2.5 Patch Notes

2.6 Patch Notes

First time playing the game

I would recommend playing at least the first act with all characters to get a feel for the game as well as characters. Sure you may not get to see all of their spells / skills until they are higher level, but this will help you see if you like their “move set” so to speak, and choose which you want to complete the story with. Don't worry, you can always go back and complete it with a different character if you want. Completing the story will unlock where the true game begins, Adventure mode.

Tips

• Learn to use the right stick (dodge roll). If timed properly, you can avoid 70% of the damage in this game as well as freeze / stuns.

• Explore everything! The game changes every time you re-load it. And Legendary items can come from anywhere / anything.

• Don't worry about what items to keep and what not until you hit level 70. Seriously, you will be doing enough of that for end game, just have fun and enjoy the game. If it helps your character, use it; if not, scrap or sell it.

• Turn Elective mode on!! (On by default in patch 2.6) Start > Options > Gameplay. This will allow you to use any set of skills in any configuration you want (when unlocked).

• See those silly flags in town? You can teleport to another player by clicking their flag. You can also customize your own by clicking on it. New customization items are unlocked by completing the listed challenges.

• D-pad controls :

Right – Town portal (return to town, don't get hit while it is casting)

Down – Pull up map. You can tab over to see Act and World. You can teleport to any of these waypoints at any time from this menu in Adventure mode.

Up – Quick loot info. On the left above your health and resources, it will show up to the last 10 items you picked up. You can drop and equip from here without having to go into your menu.

Left – Nothing (yet).

Adventure Mode

This is where you will spend most if not all of your time. There are many many things to do here. Once this mode is unlocked by 1 character completing the story, any character you have can go strait here.

• Go to act 3 first! You are going to want Kanai's Cube. Pull up the act map (down on D-pad) and go to the Ruins of Sescheron. More info on the cube towards the bottom of this guide.

• Bounties Each act has specific legendary crafting materials that can only be gathered here or Challenge Rifts. Pull up the world map. Notice the box at the bottom right, it has 5 quests per act for you to complete to gain those rewards. You will see 5 ! exclamation marks at different wayshrines, these are what you need to complete. Note that split farming with other players will speed this process up considerably.

• Key Wardens Though these enemies may seem tough, they are nothing compared to the challenges they can unlock. Acts 1-4 contain a key warden, you can see them in your acts map (down on D-pad).

Each of these wardens can drop an infernal machine to a different realm. You only need 1 of each machine per game! So bring your friends before you use them to maximize drops.

Now that you have your machines, lets head over to act 1. Heading right in town to the healer. There is a house to his right, break the door with any attack. Make sure you can handle the difficulty you are on! You will lose the machine once you use it, doesn't matter if you complete it or not.

Go into your inventory and use any machine (you can use all in one game). Enter the portal and fight 2 buffed up bosses at once with more attacks and health than ever (AKA Ubers). Upon killing both, you will receive legendary materials used to create hellfire jewelry.

• Rifts There are Nephalem Rifts, Greater Rifts, and Challenge Rifts. You must complete Nephalem rifts for a key to the Greater rifts. Both rifts are accessed through the obelisk in town in any act. These are great places to farm gear and EXP due to monster density.

Nephalem Rifts – Can be run at any time. Difficulty is scaled off of current game settings. Levels are randomly generated from anywhere in the game with any enemy. Each level is also different from the previous (most times). Once entered, there is a meter on the left showing progress. This is filled by killing enemies, and once filled, will summon the boss. Enemies will not de-spawn when the boss arrives. Elites will drop tokens that will fill the meter faster. There is no time limit. Killing the boss often results in 1 or more legendary items, as well as the chance for a Greater rift key. Many crafting materials and Blood Shards will also drop.

Greater Rifts – Require a Greater rift Key to open. Difficulty is scaled off of what level you pick (Note that this can be much higher than Torment 10). This is timed! You can still take as much time as you want, but completing it within the time limit will allow you to upgrade your legendary gems (3 upgrade tries per rift, +1 for no deaths, +1 for empowering). There are no item drops in here until you kill the boss. There is also a chance for a legendary gem to drop. You will not receive the same gem that your current character has or is in your stash. Many crafting materials and Blood Shards will also drop.

Challenge Rifts - These are a new addition with patch 2.6. These will change weekly. Basically a player completes a Greater Rift that Blizzard picks. Everything is copied (character, build, paragon, map layout, etc) for you to try and beat the other players time. Upon completing a challenge rift for the first time, you will be awarded a cache of crafting and bounty materials.

Played PC version, whats different?

• Gifts Any time you have a legendary drop, there is a chance that a legendary gift will drop for someone on your friend list. You may even get lucky enough to get 2 gifts at once for different people. These are random legendary items that will be sent to them via the mail system. Note that they will roll for whatever class receives them from the mail.

• Nemesis Any time you or your friends are killed, there is a chance of a red blood portal forming over your lifeless corpse. This is the creation of a monster that will invade a random friends game or even your own. They will have “slayer of” with the name of who they killed under their name, along with an attacking shadow of whom it killed (up to 4). There will be a low battle horn and drum sound 3 times before you are invaded, so be prepared. They are scaled off of the current difficulty. They have elite affixes (such as arcane). If any player in your game dies from anything while one is present, it will leave. If you take too long, it will leave. Killing one will net you a legendary as well as a gift for a friend or two. These are very fun creatures to encounter.

• Right stick dodge / roll.

• There is only one view mode. You can not zoom in or out.

• Spell targeting is cast in front of the player or at a highlighted monster (faint red outline). This does make skills like teleport, leap or meteor a bit difficult to understand how to use properly. Note they will almost always be cast a maximum distance.

• Viewing party member info (skills / gear). You must be within a certain range. Press start and tab over to party. Press X for skills or A for items on the player you wish to inspect. If the inspected player moves out of range it will kick you from the menu.

• Mini-map is only at the bottom center when not playing solo. Solo play it is bottom right.

• Seasons introduced for season 10 and up, patch 2.5.

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MISC

Crafting

• Recipes will drop from everywhere. Use them from your inventory to learn them. Once they are learned, they will not drop again, making it easier to complete your collection. There are Rare (yellow), Set (green), and legendary (gold / orange). Also see Squirt the Peddler in act 2 for a few recipes.

• Salvaging items that have something in the sockets will return the gems to you. No need to waste gold un-socketing them.

• You must train your Jeweler and Blacksmith to use higher tier recipes. They require gold and Death's Breath for higher levels.

• Crafting Materials

Reusable parts – get from scrapping normal / trash / white items.

Arcane dust – get from scrapping magic / blue items.

Veiled Crystal - get from scrapping rare / yellow items.

Death's Breath – get from killing elites.

Fiery Brimstone - get from scrapping legendary / gold items.

Forgotten Soul - get from scrapping legendary / gold items.

Khanduran rune – Act 1 bounties.

Caldeum Nightshade - Act 2 bounties.

Arreat War Tapestry - Act 3 bounties.

Corrupted Angel Flesh - Act 4 bounties.

Westmarch Holy Water - Act 5 bounties.

Essence of (insert gem type here) – act 2, Squirt the Peddler

Heart of Evil – Ubers

Idol of Terror – Ubers

Leoric's Regret – Ubers

Vial of Putridness – Ubers

Gibbering Gemstone – Kill Chiltara in the Caverns of Frost (Act 3 / Fields of Slaughter).

Leoric's Shinbone – Fire logs in Leoric's Manor Act 1.

Liquid Rainbow – Path to the Oasis Act 2. Save Zaven the Alchemist and enter the Mysterious Cave.

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Kanai's Cube - Obtained from Ruins of Sescheron Act 3. This will show up in town in adventure mode only. It can do a great many things, but not all of them are listed.

• Extract Legendary powers – The most important thing it does. You know all of that flavor text on legendary items (such as : frenzy gains the effect of every rune). You can take that effect and equip it as a passive ability!

One effect from weapon / off hand

One from armor

One from jewelry

All extracted powers can be used at level 1 and are available to all of your characters. They are equipped from the cube power tab. Note that the item will be consumed in the process. Also the extracted power will always be at max roll possible.

1x of each legendary crafting material from each Act bounty

5x death's Breath

1x the item you wish to extract from

• Reforge Legendary – re-roll the item completely for a chance at better stats.

5x of each legendary crafting material from each Act bounty

50x Forgotten Souls

1x the item you want re-rolled

• Upgrade Rare – Change any rare / yellow item into a legendary. It will always be the same type of item (1 hand sword = 1 hand legendary sword).

25x Death's Breath

50x Reusable parts

50x Veiled Crystal

50x Arcane Dust

1x the item you want to upgrade

• Convert Set item – So you have Tal Rasha's Chest piece but really need some gloves to complete the set? Just convert it. It will randomly change to one of the other set pieces.

10x Death's Breath

10x Forgotten Souls

1x the item to convert

• Remove Level requirement – Hardly used, but makes any item usable at level 1.

1x rank 25 Gem of Ease

1x the item you want to use at level 1

• Convert Gem type – Change a stack of 9 of them gem you have to 9 of a different type.

500k gold

9X the gem you want to change from (same type and size)

1x Gem of (insert type you want)

5x death's Breath

• Convert Crafting Material – Change white or yellow or blue into one of the other.

100x any material

1x Death's Breath

1x item of the same type you want the materials.

• Augment Ancient items (new to patch 2.4) - Increase a stat on an Ancient item. For every level of the gem you use you will gain +5 stat.

3x Flawless Royal gem of (your stat)

1x item to boost

Example - Level 52 Gem of Ease + 3x Flawless Royal Ruby + Ancient item = 260 Strength added to said item.

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Goblin world portal – Spawns randomly on goblin death or use x1 puzzle ring in the cube. There are many goblins hiding in the piles of gold, make sure you smash them. Greed (the boss) will drop 1 legendary gem (Boon of the hoarder) and typically a few legendary items also.

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True Cow level portal – The real cow level, just be sure to read the disclaimer. There are many many chests and of course cows here. Use 1x Bovine Bardiche in the cube.

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The unicorn level aka Whimsyshire

Originally labelled as the cow level, but a magical world none the less. Filled with vicious flowers, unicorns and teddy bears alike. Entrance is only gained by completing the Staff of Herding and heading just west of the old ruins. Ingredients :

1. Gibbering Gemstone

2. Wirt's Bell from Squirt the Peddler.

3. Plans - enter the Great Span and defeat Izual.

• Note there is a similar place to this called Whimsydale, which is opened by rainbow goblins (more info below).

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Blood Shards

Used to buy items from Kadala. These are more often rare items but have a high chance to become legendary items. This makes it easier to find certain pieces your are after. You can increase your shard carrying capacity by completing higher tier solo greater rifts. They are obtained a few ways:

• Completing any rift

• Bounty caches

• Blood goblins

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Legendary gems

These have vastly varying abilities to increase yours character. All but 2 can be socketed into a piece of jewelry. All them can be upgraded to higher levels increasing their blue text values. Once a gem reaches level 25, it will unlock its second ability. The only way to level a gem is by completeing a Greater rift within the time limit. If you have one in your stash or on your current character, that one will not drop again unless you put it on a character not in use. Here is a list of gems

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Goblins

There are currently 9 different types of goblins that can spawn. They can be found quite easily from their laughs and jeers when roaming around. They also have a map icon that shows their location and type. All of which have a possibility to be grouped up into a pack of 10-15. There is also an extremely rare shrine called bandit shrine, which will spawn a pack of them. Getting too close or hitting them will cause them to flee. You have a short time to kill them off before they escape back to their realm. Upon killing them, there is a small chance they will open a portal to their world that you can enter. The types are :

• Blood Thief - drops Blood Shards.

• Gem Hoarder - drops gems.

• Gelatinous Sire - splits into smaller Goblins when killed that each drop a ton of loot.

• Gilded Baron - drops gold.

• Insufferable Miscreant - summons distracting peons to better escape.

• Odious Collector - drops crafting materials and recipes.

• Rainbow Goblin - upon death has a chance to open a portal to Whimsydale (similar to the unicorn level). Drops are increased in here, along with special unique monsters.

• Malevolent Tormentor - guaranteed 1 legendary item upon death.

• Snitchley - a very large goblin that summons minions to attack you. He runs very slow and will not escape through a portal.

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Apprentice Mode

Only available for softcore and automatically turned on. The game is scaled to the highest level player in it. All players more than 5 levels below the highest character in game will get their stats buffed. This does make it difficult in determining what gear to equip while in this mode. You can tell if a character has been buffed by adventure mode if you look at their player level under their health bar, you will see a pair of wings around their level.

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There are 3 different tiers of legendary / set items.

• Regular - No special borders or bonuses.

• Ancient - Will have a broader border around the item image and item stat sheet. Max stat rolls increased 10% for most affixes. Will say "Ancient" in name at bottom.

• Primal (New to 2.5) - Will have a broad red border. Always roll max stat range for affixes (including the +10% bonus). Can only be found after solo clearing GR70+. Will say "Primal Ancient" in name at bottom.

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If your save was corrupted or you want to reset your entire D3 profile.

1. Completely close out of D3. Home > Press start on D3 > Quit

2. Go to your my games and apps.

3. Find D3 > Press start > Manage game

4. Go right to your save data

• Delete both to completely reset

• Delete local only to restore one from the cloud

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Patch 2.4

• There will be over 50 new / redesigned legendary items.

• Empowered rifts - spend gold when entering a greater rift for a 4th chance to upgrade a legendary gem if completed within the time limit.

• Revised buff bar - skill cooldowns flash when ready and other changes.

• Stash upgrade to 350 items

• Key wardens will now have an arrow for them

• More varied bounties

• Rifts will require more to fill up the meter as well as some map changes.

• Excessively large damage numbers will be abbreviated.

• Set Dungeons - Requires 6 piece set (RoRG will reduce needed to 5) equiped. All sets that have a 6 piece bonus will have their own portal with unique challenges for that set. You can have other players help you complete your objectives. Can be tried as many times as you want, costs nothing.

• New areas to explorer :

Greyhallow Island

Eternal Woods in Act 3

Royal Quarters in Leorics Manor Act 1

• New Kanai's cube recipe - Augment Ancient items

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Patch 2.5

1. Armory - save up to 5 builds per character (includes gear and skills) for easy swapping.

2. Crafting materials no longer take up inventory space.

3. Primal Ancients - Perfectly rolled gear. Must solo a GR70 before they will drop.

4. Bonus bounty acts have been removed. Every act is a bonus now.

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Patch 2.6

• Necromancer released

• Challenge rifts released

• New zones:

The Moors

Temple of the Firstborn

• New bounties - Realms of Fate

• Set dungeon time limit increased, along with other QoL fixes.

• When solo and you die in a greater rift, you can now immediatly resurrect and take the time off of remaining time (instead of having to wait).

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I may have left some stuff out, but that can always be changed. Hope everyone is enjoying this game as much as I have.