Fundamentals
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Prepare to lay waste to the demons of the Burning Hells.
Contents
Core Controls
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Doors lead you to new areas.
Exploring the world of Sanctuary and interacting with its inhabitants and environments is at the core of the Diablo III experience.
Adventuring will allow you to discover new areas, quests, allies, enemies, and powerful items as well as lore and information about the world.
PC Core Controls
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Interact with others to hear their pleas.
To move, point your mouse cursor at the spot you’d like to go to, left-click, and your character will walk there, avoiding obstacles on the way. You can also hold your mouse button down to move, dragging your mouse to change direction. To see if you can use an object, move your mouse cursor over it. If it becomes highlighted, then you can click on it to interact with it.
That’s it. You’ll interact with objects like doors, gates, and treasure chests this way. You can also pick up items by clicking on them. If you find someone you want to talk to, clicking on them will let you speak to them and hear what they have to say. Click. Click. Click.
Console Core Controls
Use your controller’s left stick to move your hero around the environment. Tilting the stick slightly will cause your hero to walk, while tilting the stick completely will make your hero run. Keep this in mind when venturing into new areas—running at full speed into unexplored territory might make retreating more difficult.
On your adventures you’ll meet the people of Sanctuary as well as find items and objects that you will want to interact with. To initiate conversation with a character, pick up an item, or use an object, walk up to one and press the “A” button (Xbox 360 and Xbox One) or “X” button (PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4).
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Xbox 360 Controls
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PlayStation®3 Controls
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Xbox One Controls
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PlayStation®4 Controls
Combat Controls
Combat is the thumping heart of Diablo III. As you venture through haunted graveyards, blistering deserts, and other dangerous locations on your journey, you'll be pursued by monsters that rear up in the shadows, dash towards you in swarms, and burrow through the ground beneath you. Sometimes you’ll hear them in the darkness before they attack you. Most will chase you if you run.
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Use your skills to slay your enemies.
Attack a monster, and by default, your hero will swing or shoot at it, depending on whether you have a melee or ranged weapon equipped. To attack, move your mouse over the monster and click on it (PC) or press the attack button when the monster is in range (Console).
If you hit the monster, you’ll do damage to it based on the weapons you have equipped. You can check the average damage you’ll do in the Inventory pane accessible with the “I” key (PC) or through the character menu on Consoles (Xbox 360 and Xbox One: BACK; PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4: SELECT).
While you’re attacking a monster, you’ll see a red bar with its name at the top of your screen: this is the monster’s health, a visual depiction of how much damage it can take before exploding violently or collapsing in a crimson puddle at your feet. When you reduce the bar from its filled state (red) to empty (black), the monster dies. (If you see the upper half of its torso crawling towards you, clawed hands still reaching for your throat, it’s not dead.)
Console Combat Controls
Additional combat mechanics designed to enhance gameplay on consoles are available to you in Diablo III. For example, you can spotlight yourself to show where you’d like to lead your comrades to, or that you're in need of aid, by pressing the right stick. Below you will find details on activating Target Lock, assigning skills, and evading.
Target Lock
On Consoles, you can use the Target Lock function to hold still and focus on a specific monster - an arrow will appear over the target you’ve locked onto. This makes it easier to focus your efforts on a specific monster in order to empty its health bar quicker.
- PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4: Hold down L2 to activate Target Lock.
- Xbox 360 and Xbox One: Hold down the Left Trigger (LT) to activate Target Lock.
Assigning Skills
As your hero gains levels, new skills will become available for use in battle. You can deploy a maximum of six skills at once by going to your character menu and assigning them to your controller buttons. Once your skills have been assigned, pressing the corresponding buttons will allow you to unleash several combinations of offensive and defensive strategies using your various skills in unison.
- PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4: Open the character menu with the SELECT button, press R1 to move to the Skills pane, and assign skills to your X, Circle, Square, Triangle, R1 and R2 buttons.
- Xbox 360 and Xbox One: Access the character menu with the BACK button, press RB (Right Bumper) to move to the Skills pane, and assign skills to your A, B, X, Y, Right Bumper (RB), and Right Trigger (RT).
Evade
The more powerful enemies you’ll encounter in Sanctuary can deliver devastating blows. Thankfully, Nephalem heroes in Diablo III for Consoles are able to use a special evade command to weave between attacks.
- PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4: Tilt your controller’s right stick in the direction you wish to dodge.
- Xbox 360 and Xbox One: Tilt the controller’s right stick in the direction you wish to dodge.
Action Bar
The action bar is a visual representation of your hero’s health, active skills, class resource, and other vital information.
On your screen, you’ll see a bar made up of small icons. This is your action bar. The action bar contains your active skills, class-specific powers that help you slay demons faster or stay alive longer. It also displays powerful limited-use items; specifically, healing potions. Using these abilities and items carefully can mean the difference between life and death in tough battles. During multiplayer games, additional action bars will show up on your screen so that you can monitor the status of your allies.
The action bar will also display any positive effects (buffs) and detrimental effects (debuffs) currently on your character, as well as their remaining duration. Buffs gained through your own skills will display their remaining duration with a green bar along the top of the skill’s icon, while buffs gained through passives, fellow party members, or items which display along the top left of the action bar. Debuffs will be shown on the top right.
PC Action Bar
Console Action Bar
Other Functions
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Use portals to return to town.
Town portal: You can activate the town portal by hitting the “T” key (PC) or pressing right on the D-Pad (Consoles). Doing so will slowly summon a portal that will return you to the safety of your camp or town. The portal is two-way, so after you've finished your business in town, you can return to the wilderness or dungeon you’ve left behind. You’ll unlock the town portal ability early in Act I. Note that only one portal can be opened at a time, and there are some areas where you cannot create a portal.
Skills: You can access the skills menu by hitting the “S” key (PC) or through the character menu on Consoles (Xbox 360 and Xbox One: BACK; PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4: SELECT), where you can select and view your abilities. Additional information on your skills can be
found in the Combat and Skills section of this guide.
Inventory: You can view your inventory by hitting the “I” key (PC) or through the character menu on Consoles (Xbox 360 and Xbox One: BACK; PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4: SELECT). Your inventory holds the loot you’ve acquired on your journey, both the items you have equipped and what you’re carrying. You can find more information on your inventory in the Inventory section of this guide.
Quests & Journal: Press the START button on consoles or click the chalice icon on PC (default key “J”) to open your quest log, which contains a list of your active quests and a journal describing the creatures and people you’ve encountered. More information on your journal and quests is available in the World section of this guide.
Game Menu: Press the START button on consoles or click the computer icon on PC (default key “ESCAPE”) to open the Game Menu, where you can review and change settings outside of the game.
Game Menu
You can tweak your Diablo III play experience to your specifications through several menus. To access the Game Menu:
- PC: Use the ESC Key or click the computer icon on the bottom right corner of your Action bar. Most adjustments can be found within the “options” pane.
- Console: Press the START button to pause the game, and then select “OPTIONS”.
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The game menu.
PC-Specific Menus
Video: Adjust your video settings to change resolution, display parameters, improve performance, and more.
Sound: Modify your sound settings, game volume, subtitles, and more.
Gameplay: Modify information displayed in-game, from tooltips to damage numbers, and more.
Achievements: View a list of your accomplishments in Diablo III. More information on achievements can be found in the Playing With Friends section of this guide.
Customer Service: Get in touch with Blizzard Customer Service for help with an issue or to report a bug.
Exit Diablo III: Close the Diablo III game client.
Return to Game: Close the game menu and return to the game you’re playing.
Chat: Adjust the display and presence of chat messages.
Console & PC Menus
Account: Choose your game language and more. If you're playing on PC, the options available to you in this submenu are affected by the region of your battle.net account.
Social: Adjust options for your friends list, enabling notifications or blocking players you don’t want to chat with.
Key Bindings: Change the functions of your keys from the default Diablo III key bindings.
Leave Game: Leave your current game (your current progress will be saved) and return to the Main Menu.
Attributes
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Hint: for all attributes, higher is better.
Each hero in Diablo III possesses immense power—incredible muscle, speed, sturdiness, or brilliance—that allows them to defy darkness. These core qualities are called attributes, numbers that represent just how potent a particular hero is in their areas of expertise. Here’s a brief overview of heroic attributes in Diablo III:
- Strength: The primary attribute for Barbarians and Crusaders. Strength increases Barbarian and Crusader damage, and increases Armor for all classes.
- Dexterity: The primary attribute for Demon Hunters and Monks. Dexterity increases Demon Hunter and Monk damage, and increases Armor for all classes.
- Intelligence: The primary attribute for Witch Doctors and Wizards. Intelligence increases Witch Doctor and Wizard damage, and increases resistances for all classes.
- Vitality: Increases Life, the total amount of damage you can suffer before dying.
- Toughness: The amount of damage you can take from enemy attacks, derived from your Life, Armor, Resistances and Dodge score.
- Damage: Indicates the average amount of damage you deal with your attacks. Damage is derived from your equipped weapons, primary attribute, attack speed, and critical hit chance.
- Recovery: The amount of Life you recover every second. Your recovery rating incorporates life restored through attacks, Health Globe bonuses, or ongoing Life per Second regeneration.
Each class has each one of these attributes, but depending on your preferred play style, you might be more interested in some attributes more than others.
For example, if you find yourself darting in and out of combat to deliver quick strikes instead of going toe-to-toe with enemies, you might be more concerned with your Damage, and less concerned with Vitality. It's less valuable to increase your health if you’re rarely hit.
Attributes are raised automatically as your level increases. You’ll grow more powerful as you destroy your enemies and progress through the game. In addition, many pieces of equipment that you’ll find are enchanted to confer specific bonuses to attributes when they’re equipped; select your gear to bolster the attributes you care about most.
You can review your current attributes at any time from the Inventory page (PC: “I” Key; Xbox 360 and Xbox One: BACK; PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4: SELECT).
Difficulty Levels
Diablo III is not over when you finish its final Act. You might want a tougher (or easier) experience; to that end, you can choose the difficulty of your game in the Game Settings menu. Increased difficulty means hardier, more deadly monsters and increased rewards like more gold and experience. As you complete certain milestones, you’ll unlock even more difficulty levels with which you can continue the game, modes with names like Master or Torment.
Your hero’s levels, skills, powers, and equipment will persist when you switch between difficulty levels.
In the Torment difficulty setting, you will also find unique, legendary armor and weapons that are only available in that difficulty level. As you grow in power, so too will your enemies.
For more detailed information on difficulty levels, check the Game Difficulty section of this guide.
Hardcore Characters
When creating a new hero on the character creation page, you can choose to create a hardcore character. Hardcore characters differ from "normal" characters in only one crucial area:
IF YOUR HARDCORE CHARACTER DIES, THAT CHARACTER IS PERMANENTLY DEAD. They will never be playable again. There is only one way to successfully play a hardcore character: don’t die.
Hardcore characters can only share the items in their stash with your other hardcore characters. They are not recommended for the faint of heart.
Messages
While inside a game, you can select the envelope icon on the bottom left corner to access the messages system. If you redeem any Collector's Edition keys for Blizzard Entertainment games with exclusive Diablo III rewards, they will be mailed to you through this window. If you've participated in Seasons, any items present in your Seasonal stash will also be sent to you through this window after each Season ends. On Diablo III: Reaper of Souls – Ultimate Evil Edition, you’ll use this window to receive mail from other players.