Guide:Frequently asked questions
This page is intended to provide useful information not covered in the official FAQ or the first post of the new player forum thread. Global chat tends to see the same questions repeated, so feel free to direct people here and add questions/answers of your own. (Make sure your information is correct!)
General
What are the differences between classes?
Starting stats, your starting position on the skill tree, and your quest rewards. Gameplay is otherwise the same (there are no class restrictions, etc). All classes start with 50 base life, 40 base mana, and 53 base evasion.
How can I check frame rate/latency/etc?
Press F1
Do stats increase when I level up?
Base life increases by 6, base mana increases by 4, and base evasion increases by 3. Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence must be increased with passive skills or items.
What do attributes do?
| Strength | +0.5 life and +0.2% melee physical damage per point |
| Dexterity | +2 accuracy and +0.2% evasion per point |
| Intelligence | +0.5 mana and +0.2% energy shield per point |
Items and skills can also have attribute requirements.
Are there caps on any stats?
- Resistances are normally capped at 75%, but this can be increased by things like Purity or Flasks.
- The physical damage reduction from armor is capped at 90%.
- Chance to hit cannot go higher than 95% or lower than 5%. The exception is Resolute Technique.
- Chance to block is capped at 75%.
- Critical hit chance cannot go higher than 95% or lower than 5%.
What are local and global modifiers?
Local modifiers will only affect the item they're on, and global modifiers affect your entire character. For example, the global critical chance increase from daggers increases the chance of all your skills critting, but the local accuracy bonus from one-handed swords only affects attacks that use the sword.
What's the difference between "increased" and "more"?
"X increased/decreased by y%" refers to an additive modifier, and "y% more/less" refers to a multiplicative modifier. If you don't know what this means, see Modifiers.
How do I quickly move items between inventory, stash, and vendor screens?
Ctrl-Click
Gameplay
How do I change difficulty?
After you finish the game on Normal your character unlocks Cruel, which covers the three acts again at higher levels with tougher monsters. Finishing Cruel unlocks Merciless, and finishing Merciless unlocks the Eternal Library where Maps can be played. Note that you unlock difficulties for each character - new characters always start in Normal.
Characters get -20% to all resistances in Cruel, which changes to -60% in Merciless. There is also an experience penalty for dying of 7.5% of level progress lost in Cruel and 15% in Merciless.
Are there penalties for being over/underleveled?
Every area has a monster level, which you can see on the world screen or by pressing Tab. If your character is more than two levels above the monster level, there is a -2.5% penalty to Item Quantity for each extra level. (A level 40 character in a 34 area will have -10%.) Characters above level 66 are treated like their level is 66.
The experience penalty is more complicated. Characters have a "safe range" of three plus one per sixteen complete character levels, and the "effective level difference" of an area is the number of levels outside of this range. So a level 24 character has a safe band of 3+1=4 levels. From monster level 20 to 28, there is an effective level difference of 0. At Monster Levels 19 and 29, the effective level difference is 1. The Effective Difference matters in either direction.
The penalty formula is on the Experience page, but graph shows how experience is affected. The penalty increases fairly quickly: a level 50 character earns about 90% of normal experience in a level 42 area, but only about 25% in a 38 area.
How do flasks work?
Flasks consume their charges to recover some amount of life/mana over time. By default regular monsters grant 1 charge each, magic (blue) monsters grant 3.5 charges each, and rare (yellow) monsters grant 6 charges each.
If you reach your maximum life and/or mana before the end of the recovery time, the flask effect will end prematurely. When multiple flasks are used at the same time, the effects are queued. The effect with the highest regeneration rate is always applied first. For example:
You have two flasks, one that gives 500 life recovery over 10 seconds and has a 20% increased movement speed modifier, and a second that gives 500 life recovery of 5 seconds with no additional modifiers. You use the first flask and gain the movement speed while recovering life. After one second, you use the second flask. At this point the remaining 9 seconds from the first flask is queued, and the second flask begins its effect. Once the second flask has expired, the first flask resumes its effect for the remaining duration.
What bonus does dual wielding give?
+10% attack speed bonus, and a 15% chance to block.
Do I have to crit to inflict status effects? What else affects them?
Under normal conditions, yes. "Chilled" is the exception, and can come from non-crits with enough damage. The damage of a critical hit is compared to the mob's max life to end up with a duration, as below: (Note that only the specific elemental damage of the hit is considered, not the overall damage.)
- Shocked: 276ms per 1% max life dealt as lightning
- Chilled: 138ms per 1% max life dealt as cold
- Frozen: 100ms per 1% max life dealt as cold
- Burning: automatic 4 seconds
If the result is above 300ms, the status is inflicted for that period of time. The damage considered is capped at 1/3 max life.
Burning damage will always burn for 4 seconds on crit. The damage is 1/3 of the fire damage per second, for 4/3 extra damage overall. Mobs can have burning effects overlap, but only the strongest one will do damage. (If a mob gets one for 20 dmg/sec and another for 10 dmg/sec but 1 second later, the 20 dps will last for the full duration followed by one second of 10 dps.)
If you have Chaos Inoculation, the calculation uses the max life you would normally have.
What do charges do?
Charges are temporary buffs that can be gained from certain skills. See Charge for more info.
Is there a waypoint in area x?
In the World screen (press U to open), areas with a waypoint will have a blue icon to the right of its name.
How do I reset an instance or join a specific instance?
Ctrl-Click on the entrance to the area and the instance menu will appear. This also works if you're using the waypoint menu by ctrl-clicking the area node.
Chat
Is chat separated by league?
Yes.
Is there only one channel per league?
No, chat is instanced. You are occasionally switched to a new channel when changing areas. If you accidentally join a new channel and want to switch back, return to one of your previous instances.
How do I link items in chat?
Ctrl-Alt-Click (If the chat window isn't open already, this will open it)
What's the shortcut to reply to whispers?
Ctrl-Enter
Chat commands
| /itemlevel | displays the item level of an item held by the cursor |
| /ladder | shows the top ten characters on the current ladder |
| /played | displays how long you have played the current character |
| /age | displays how long ago you created the current character |
| /deaths | displays how many times the current character has died |
| /destroy | deletes an item held by the cursor |
| /bug | reports a bug and gives you the report reference number |
| /passives | displays how many skill points you have earned |
| /whois | displays a character's level, class, location, and whether they are currently online. |
| /ignore | adds someone to your ignore list |
| /unignore | removes someone from your ignore list |
| /clear_ignore_list | removes everyone from your ignore list |
| /invite | invites someone to your party |
| /friend | sends a friend invitation to someone |
Skills
How do skill gems get experience?
Gems get experience equal to 10% of the experience you gain. Equipping more gems doesn't divide the experience, all gems get the 10%.
Do gems in my second weapon set gain experience when I'm not using them?
Yes, which is convenient if you need to level something.
Can you link multiples of one support gem to a skill?
Yes, but they don't stack. Only the highest level gem will take effect.
Can a support gem affect more than one skill?
Yes, it affects every skill in the link group.
What's the difference between attacks and spells?
Attacks are affected by your weapon's damage, while spells are based only on your stats. "Attack" isn't a general word for anything offensive.
Does support x work with skill y?
As a general rule, the keywords of the support gem need to be included in the skill gem. (Keywords are the category words near the top of the mouseover description, such as "Attack" or "Projectile".) Exceptions are the words "Fire", "Cold", "Lightning", and "Chaos"; supports like Added Fire Damage affect any damage-dealing skill. "Bow" is also equivalent to "Projectile". Below are answers to common questions:
- Life Gain on Hit only works with Attack skills. Life Leech works with everything, however.
- Freezing Pulse has 100% pierce chance, so it doesn't work with Chain or Fork.
- Increased Duration won't make charges gained from skills last longer. It only affects the skill itself, which is instantaneous.
Leagues
What's the difference between Hardcore and Default?
There are no gameplay or quest differences (increased drop rates, stronger monsters, etc). The only difference is that Hardcore has permanent death as an extra challenge, by means of moving you to default. (No, the admins will not move you back if you die. Even if it was a glitch.)
Will dying in PvP in Hardcore send me to default?
No.
If I join a race, what happens to my character afterwards?
The character is sent to the hardcore league. If you want to move to default, enter an area and die.
Can you trade items between leagues?
No. However you can send items from hardcore to default by dying.
Items
How do item rarity/item quantity work?
Blue items can only have two modifiers, why does mine have three?
Magic items have up to two affixes, but some of these add more than one modifier. (For example, the "Beetle's" prefix adds local armor and stun recovery.) Rare items can have more than six modifiers, but are limited to six affixes.
What affects item sockets and links?
The number of sockets is affected by item level(see below). Helmets, Gloves, Boots can have up to 4 sockets; Chest armor up to 6; Two-handed weapons up to 6; One-handed and Shields up to 3. Links are not affected by item level.
Socket color is weighted towards the attribute requirements of an item. Strength items will have mostly red sockets, etc.
What does "itemlevel" mean?
Though it isn't shown on the mouseover description all items have an item level, which affects the modifiers that can be added as well as the number of sockets. There are three ways to find the item level of something:
- Pick up the item with the cursor, and type the /itemlevel command into the chat box. The item level will appear in chat.
- With the trade screen open, hold down the ALT key while hovering over an item in the trade panel. The item level will be shown near the mouse cursor.
- Hover with the mouse over an item linked in chat, and press CTRL+C. This will copy the complete item information to your clipboard, including item level.
Items dropped from chests or normal(white) enemies have the item level of the area you are in. Items from magic(blue) enemies are one level higher than the area, and items from rare(yellow) or unique(orange) enemies are two levels higher.