If you patiently waited all that time for the new-gen version of Diablo III you may be wondering what all the fuss is about Adventure Mode. Well, after you finish the campaign mode, you’ll be wanting to bag some serious XP and loot to keep the game feeling fresh and getting to Level 70 so you can explore the Paragon system and maybe start on a few new characters to share the additional benefits of your first demon slaying hero. So why not take a look at this week’s Sunday Seven which has a few starter tips to get you going on the next part of your quest for epic loot in Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition. Naturally, we’d love to hear any hints you’d like to share too.

Bounties

Before diving into Rifts, you’ll need to complete a few bounties. Access the map, choose an act and then visit any of the locations with an exclamation mark. These quests task you with killing a mini-boss at the end or finding an item. If you finish five bounties in one continuous session, you may be in line to receive a bonus in the form of a bag full of loot and gems and a large haul of XP, usually a few million, which you’ll need on your way to Lv. 70 so you can start playing around with Paragon stats.

Rifts

During bounties you’ll be rewarded with Rift Keystone Fragments which are used to unlock Rifts from each camp. Seeing as the number required doesn’t change with difficulty you can feel free to lower the difficulties during bounties to farm them before raising it for the delicious XP rewards in the Rifts.

The Rifts themselves are a mishmash of levels and enemies, so you never know what you’re going to get. Be prepared for a bit of a slog too as in order to get the rift Guardian boss to appear you have to fill a gauge by killing regular enemies and boy does that thing take forever to fill up. The XP rewards and some of the loot picked up along the way and after finishing off the guardian make it more than worth the effort though. It wasn’t long before I was picking up items with double the stats of the gear I’d finished the campaign with.

Blood Shards

This new form of currency is handed out during bounties and Rifts and can be exchanged with Kadala for exclusive weapons, armour and items. We say exchanged, but you effectively gamble shards for a random item. Some will be guff, but it’s worth persisting with seeing as the shards can’t be used for anything else.

Risk the Mystic

This new Artisan is able to enchant items and change their properties. Each roll of the dice costs gold and items, and you can choose from a range of enhancements swap in to your weapons armour and items. Like the blood shards, it can be a bit of an expensive gamble, but you can’t hoard those supplies for ever. Well, you probably could.

The Mystic can also change the appearance of items too if you’ve settled on a few favourites and would like to alter their visual style. This doesn’t affect the stats though. To be honest, with new and improved loot around almost every corner, I have little time for the Mystic, but maybe her enchant skills will be more useful when I attempt the tougher settings.

PS4/PS3 Exclusive Content

Random Rifts on PS4 will be infested with clickers, bloaters and stalkers from Naughty dog’s The Last of Us game. You’ll probably find yourself better equipped than Joel and Ellie to hack them into kibble too. There’s also some Shadow of the Colossus themed armour to unlock too, although I think I accidentally flogged it. I’m guessing it doesn’t come with a massive glowing ‘stab-me-here’ print.

Keep track of bounty objective on map

Sometimes you’re dropped into a large section of the map and told to head to a specific cave. The arrow will only appear after five minutes of wandering about, so you’ll have to be careful where you wonder off to. Head into the wrong area and you may notice that your on-screen objective disappears. This means you’ve gone the wrong way and should back-track immediately and once you’re back on the right path you should notice the objective text re-appear. Keep checking your map for faded areas indicating where you’ve not been yet and try to investigate the larger patches in the middle of outdoor areas as a priority, as cave entrances are rarely along the borders.

Don’t waste time on every enemy during bounties

As tempting as it is to take on every enemy you see, it makes little sense during some parts of a bounty. Check the description of your objectives in the top left corner. Many missions only want you to kill every enemy in a specific floor or area. Or maybe you just need to kill the boss. The XP rewards for completing a task vastly outweigh what you’ll get for mowing down an optional 200 enemies on the way, so in order to level up faster, try to stick to the task at hand.