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.
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.
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).
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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).
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.
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.
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.