I headed over to Dry Steppes next to grind out further renown. I was not expecting to take a break to upgrade some gear, run the number of dungeons I did, or find myself fighting in a Helltide. It was however nice to have my normal grind broken up with some unexpected things that transpired in Dry Steppes.

I was still taking on each region according to how much renown I had remaining to finish things off the last tier of rewards. This also meant each region I would do next would require even more than the last. For this one, I had perhaps only 100 points into the fourth tier for increasing the amount of max obols I can carry. It would be quite a while before I reached the fifth tier and finished it for the paragon points.

New Upgrades

I’m sure at some point I’ll release a proper post on all the ins and outs of that. You can do quite a lot of things to a single piece of gear in this game to try and make it better for yourself. You can also spend a lot and not get very far.

One thing I did want to keep focusing on in at least maintaining is my weapon and offhand upgrades. Having a proper boost in damage if it’s not at the expense of many other factors was quite needed. So when I looted the wand on the right I knew it was time to spend some time in town.

Something I’ve been struggling with more than I was expecting was gold. At this stage, I had almost 1.5 million stockpiled up. While that might sound like a lot. It’s nothing when you want to do something like exchanging. While the first attempt might be 150k the next one could easily be 650k gold. That just sounds like an insane jump in cost.

This was not the only piece of gear I decided to upgrade either. I ended up not that long ago buying another stash tab with gold. As I’ve just been tossing in any legendary that might be useful if I make a build switch or had a decent aspect roll that I might want for later.

So I made some swaps outs. Spent way too much gold. At least now I’d be dealing more damage making it feel like how things were just a couple of levels ago.

While leveling has not been that quick going this route of actives first. You might have noticed I had quite the boost in levels from a couple of regions again. Those effects of not getting further upgrades were no longer felt so hard. I’d be getting killed a lot less for the time being.

Running Dungeons

Some of these quests would be completed rather early on in a dungeon. I could have if I wanted to just have ditched finishing the rest of the dungeon. That however felt like a waste from all the time I spent riding over to the dungeon and how far I’d clear finish the quest.

Not all quests were like that, however. Some were quite close to the end or required you to kill the end-of-dungeon boss. That was also kind of the fun part. I was already close to the end on most of them anyways so I might as well spend the extra amount of time finishing the job.

While others it seemed would send me on wild goose chases throughout a dungeon. Makes me check every little corner of a place and sometimes walk back through what I’ve already cleared just to double-check check I did not miss the objective.

There then came a point where I ran out of quests that I could find. So I looked around on the map checking for dungeons I’d yet to run that would offer aspects for sorcerers. Doing it that way I’d be finishing off two things at once. I do love to stack things when I can.

They say The Butcher has a high kill count. I’m not that shocked. Even I still struggled to take it down the first time. At least moving forward every time I see it I can think about getting a legendary drop. Not worrying so much that I was about to go down like a sack of potatoes again.

Helltide

While running around I noticed a large group of players and a skull on the map. There was some epic fight underway. I thought why not give it a shot? This thing must drop a lot of cinders.

This is also when I learned quite a tough lesson about Helltides. I ended up getting killed and losing half the cinders I had already collected. It was a bit of a shock to me and with so little time left I did not think I’d collect enough to turn in for any loot.

Thankfully it was not long after we downed the creature. I was rather disappointed with how many cinders were dropped. So I started to run off hoping I could kill enough to regain what I lost. That is when I started to notice something quite interesting.

Everywhere I was running I’d find cinders. It appears that I was fighting with all those people despite not being in a group. When they killed things after that event and got loot. I was getting loot as well. So I ran around on my mount collecting piles of treasure scattered all over the ground.

I then quickly with a minute left ran off to a chest to turn in some cinder. I had a couple extra but I was just glad to get something out of the deal. Then the Helltide ended and I worked on completing the remaining missions I had in the area before moving on to the next.

Final Thoughts

Other Content

• Diablo IV | World Boss And Hawezar Renown Finished
• Diablo IV | Fractured Peaks Unfinished Business
• Diablo IV | Ruins Of Eridu A Former Loot Cave

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV. This was during the early access beta. Things are subject to change.