Hey all, I was curious as to what my fellow GD players who GD Stash use as their own personal rules in order to keep the game enjoyable and fresh. This is a loot game after all, so if we take the loot hunt out, what would we have left? This doesn’t really apply to builders, as I simply can’t see how not GD stashing almost everything while testing would be realistic vis a vis time and having a life.
So in my personal example, I’ve got just over 2000hrs in GD now, with the first ~1200 or so strictly SSF. I had by then found essentially all BPs and any legendary that could drop in the game, outside of Celestials. I did farm Lokarr’s full set for leveling alts.
I decided to GD Stash in order to play what I call the “D3 Primal Game”, so a fun little way of trying to roll optimized pieces on my favourite builds in order to test them against SR 65/66, my personal benchmark endgame content. I did initially Stash a few expensive components but immediately felt terrible about it and decided never to do that again and I instituted the following rules for myself:
can only Stash an item that’s been found/dropped in game, ie. if I haven’t farmed it, I don’t stash it. I’m currently still farming the Magis for all their rings, manoman what a grind. I also just recently farmed Garg’s pistol for the Defiler I’m leveling
no components/quest items/consumables - farming still matters! I still do my runs for Blooms/Seals/crystals etc
If there’s a build on the forums that uses an item that I haven’t personally farmed yet (Ravagers/Calla’s helm) then I either use something else or don’t try it.
What about everyone else? Do you have your own GD Stash rules or is it anything goes? How do you keep the game fresh for yourself?
p.s. much respect to anyone who refuses to GD Stash at all, I was absolutely the same with that until I reached that stage where I had farmed everything I needed to and the only thing left was making the “perfect” build for myself, I don’t want this thread to become a debate about whether Stashing is “cheating” or whatever, it’s a solo/non competitive game so I think that argument was rendered moot a long time ago
For me, since I rarely get out of Normal difficulty, I just use it for making the relics I want and my most used components. I don’t have any rules about how I use it; if it happens I want a Legendary set for one of my rare endgame builds then I’ll make it with the stash since I’m unlikely to have it already. I do occasionally use it for making items, but recently realised I’ve got so much stuff stashed away it’s just as easy to search that as make anything. So my “crafting” in GDStash has actually gone down rather than up.
Nemesis warrants for the factions where my first character has nemesis rep. As far as I’m concerned the game design that nemeses have 20% drop rates (or whatever the value is) for warrants is flat-out wrong, it should be 100%. After nearly burning myself out on the game (again) last year grinding away at Val, Ben, and Moose trying to get all the warrants I need, I decided that installing GDStash and getting them that way was the better solution.
Major character rebuilds, in some cases in ways that are not possible in game. My vanilla gunslinger sorceress became a purifier in AoM that way, and I forked my spellbinder so that the clone could try out AAR (turns out AAR is good now - when I started playing it was what the kids these days seem to call a “meme” skill).
So far I’ve never crafted any gear in GDStash. The only scenario where I can see myself doing that is if the few nerfs in the past couple years of patches have significantly messed up one of my characters (looking at you, Empowered Essence of Beronath, no longer having +1 to all skills… ). I think I have enough options to work around the nerfed items, but I won’t know for sure until the character I’ve been running through AoM finally has the mandates for my other characters and I can actually start playing my level 85s again.
In my “semi-legit” char folder I would stash only purple MI (can’t be bothered with key gear with less than 1% drop chance once per 10-15 minutes of a grind run in main game where hardly anything else is worth the grind) and Blooms, Chthonic Seals, etc (farming for gear doesn’t give you nearly enough of those to spec a char, especially when you like to tweak things; I can’t be bothered with 30 minutes of farming every time I wanna change a little component).
Btw, how do you use GD Stash to create/edit items, or obtain a desired legendary? Crafting tab is inactive for me, I can only see stats, but not change them.
Since last year I started crafting mandates and Warrants from all factions and experience potions. I’ve already been playing the game for years so I don’t feel like dealing with that aspect of grinding and I think that I’ve earned it. I also craft common materials like Scraps and Aether Crystal because farming them is boring. The only rare material I craft is Killian’s Soul because RNG is a particularly nasty bitch when I try to farm it.
). I think I have enough options to work around the nerfed items, but I won’t know for sure until the character I’ve been running through AoM finally has the mandates for my other characters and I can actually start playing my level 85s again.