Diablo 3 Hints, Tips and Tricks

Here are a lot of useful Diablo 3 Hints, Tips and Tricks. Credit to the usernames listed below for these. If you want to submit a tip or want to report outdated information, please use our contribution form or post a comment near the bottom of the page.

Thank you for all the hints and tips you guys have submitted! We now have over 85+ useful tips here, and growing.

Note: Please contact us if you find any outdated or incorrect information. Thanks.

• 1) Show item stats: CTRL + Mousing over and item on the ground (outside of inventory) shows stats. (kallell)
  
  - Doing this while having your inventory open should compare the item on the ground to what you currently are wearing as well. (broken1000)
  
• 2) Force Move: There is a “force move” (labeled “Move” and is unbound by default) button that is unbound by default. This is helpful for running through packs of monsters and not accidentally clicking and attacking one. (need to manually bind) (kallell)
  
• 3) Link Items: You can link items by bringing up the chat text box and shift+clicking an item, making it easier to show items to people to see if they need them or if you're in different areas. (twincannon)
  
• 4) Inspection: If you think you have an upgrade for someone you're playing with, instead of asking him you can inspect him by right clicking his icon on the top-left. (twincannon)
  
• 5) Junk in the inventory: Whites/grays sell for next to nothing and really aren't worth the inventory space outside of the first act, just toss that junk for less town trips (make sure to check the prices in nightmare mode and beyond though, who knows if this will change later on). (twincannon)
  
• 6) Magic Rings: Buy +2-4 damage magic rings ASAP, they're pretty overpowered when they become equippable at level 6. Restart the game a few times if they don't show up, or if they give a poor secondary bonus. (twincannon). Buy @ Radek the Fence: (Sf4tt)
• 7) Vendoring Magic Items: This tip was outdated, the mats on the AH are actually pretty cheap, so it's ok to vendor useless magic items for gold rather than salvage them.
  
• 8) Hold off on bigger stash: Dont waste money on bigger stash early on, make mules to hold items, (twincannon) (Hold 50 more items tip)
  
• 9) Save some money: If leveling up with a friend, designate one of you for leveling up the jeweler artisan (JC is MUCH cheaper) and one for blacksmith artisan, saving half the money required. (twincannon)
  
  Although I don't remember the exact numbers, the Blacksmith will require about ~700,000 gold to level up to max, while the jeweler will only take about ~45,000. (tolvinar)
  
• 10) Stutter Walk: You can hold left click to run around and simply tap shift to "stutter walk" fire instead of clicking the mouse (holding shift and casting will make you cast the ability in place,), works well for ranged characters to give your clicking finger a bit of a break. (twincannon)
  
• 11) A little privacy: If you've got a big friends list and don't want people to join your game without your permission, or just want to play alone, there's an option to disallow "Quick Join" under social options which is what makes your game show up with a "Join" button for friends (twincannon)
  
• 12) Compare Box: If you open your inventory (C or I), and THEN hold ctrl while mousing over the ground loot, it will pop out the compare box instead of just the item's own stat box. (similar to when mousing over an item in your inventory -- shows dps changes, etc.) (exuled)
  
• 13) Comparing Tip: And if you hold ALT it will compare to your off-hand/equip to your off-hand, while in inventory of course. Handy for dual-wielders. Also works on rings. (Nyctalgia)
  
• 14) Lecterns: You need to activate lecterns yourself. It is different than a chest as only you can activate your lecterns. If they don't drop lore they can still drop gold. (rec916)
  
• 15) Frozen: When you are leaving a game and the timer is counting down because you are not in town, your mouse does not work but your keyboard does. You may be frozen and getting beat up while waiting to leave the game but you can still fire off those skills with 1-4. (rec916)
  
  16) Lore books give EXP, make sure to pick up all you can. (Only works on lore books you have not already picked up!) (ethereal4k)
  
• 17) Elective mode (off by default). Gives MUCH more customization on where to stick your skills on your bar. (KroBa)
  
• 18) Advanced tool tips (off by default). Shows advanced skill information such as % damage increase and what the skill does (KroBa)
  
• 19) Shared Health Globes: While each player gets their own loot and gold drops, the health globes you pick up are shared and will heal other players if they are nearby. (Tolvinar)
  
• 20) Hitting "g" will make your banner fly down wherever your mouse is pointing at. Shows off your achievements as well. (Tolvinar)
  
• 21) Hitting "f" will bring up your follower's (templar's) inventory. Don't forget to choose his skills and give him equipment! (Tolvinar)
  
• 22) Once you begin the fight with Jondar, use town portal and then wait in town for about 2 minutes. Once you go back through the portal Jondar will have summoned about 50 skeletons. They will most likely be in a tight group so you can get big massacre bonuses from this.( Tolvinar) That tip with Jondar will be great if they still have the achievement to kill 20 monsters in a single hit. I never managed that in the beta. (Oneironaut2)
  
• 23) Item Names: Pressing "alt" will make items on the ground show their names for 10 seconds. The time can be adjusted in the options menu. (Tolvinar)
  
• 24) Switch the hold key: Intead of playing with your pinky on the shift key and the rest of your appendages on numbers 1-4 try this. switch the hold key from shift (default) to the spacebar. I felt it more comfortable if I played spacebar instead of shift. (spaceboundmonkeys)
  
• 25) Pressing 'Z' zooms in on your character until you press it again. (nathanstratton2010)
  
• 26) Advanced Tooltips: Checking the advanced tooltips option in the game play menus will show additional item information in your inventory while holding CTRL key. (snhender)
  
• 27) Numpad 0-9 will make your character say in game phrases (both audible and to chat). (kallell)
  
• 28) Item Compare: over a weapon in your inventory or a merchant it will bring up your currently equipped item to compare. However if you're dual wielding it will only bring up your primary hand. To quick view the other hand just hold alt. (dextini)
  
• 29) You must be level 10 to do hardcore. (kallell)
  
• 30) Your battletag is what is going to show up in game to your friends. As of now, character names really do not matter outside of the character select screen and in game dialog with NPCs. Pick a battletag that’s easily remembered and that you wouldn’t mind others seeing! (kallell)
  
• 31) Patch 1.0.1. bug - Running programs that put an overlay over Diablo III (such as Mumble, Xfire, and MSI Afterburner) can cause Diablo III to crash. Use these overlays at your own risk. (kallell)
  
• 32) Treasure goblins will disappear if they are not killed fast enough. Make sure once you see them they become a priority as they can drop vast amounts of gold and loot. (kallell)
  
• 33) Gems in game drop up to rank 8 now, ranks 9-14 need to be crafted. (kallell)
  
• 34) Magic find is averaged across group members. IE: if player a has 300 mf, and player B has 100, the MF rate for the group is 200. You get 20% of companion MF(kallell)
  
• 35) There is no “procs” for new recipes in crafting. All recipes become available on a rank by rank basis. (kallell)
  
• 36) Monster scaling (damage and HP) depends on the difficulty (norm, nightmare, hell, inferno) and players in game. You WILL NOT get more exp per monsters the more players you have in the game. You do however, gain killing speed – theoretically farming monsters faster which in turn gives more exp and loot. (kallell)
  
• 37) Catch Up Fast: If you fall behind or wander off away from your party, use your town portal and click their banner to quickly catch up.
  
• 38) Make sure to delete your D3 beta entirely (including files in programdata/battlenet) ortherwise your D3 install may not work correctly. (kallell)
  
• 39)  MAKE SURE TO UPDATE GRAPHIC CARD DRIVERS (and sound card drivers if you have non-integrated ones)! This can have vast improvements on FPS. (kallell)
  
• 41) There are two types of auction houses. RMAH and Gold AH. Gold sounds exactly like what it is. Sell and buy items off the AH with in game gold. With RMAH, you have two options. Send money straight to paypal or use “battle bucks”. If you choose to use battle bucks, the money will reside in your bnet account and can be used for other AH purchases, or blizzard merchandise. YOU CANNOT cash this out. If you intend on getting cash for items, be sure to go the paypal route.(kallell)
  
• 42)  RMAH will not be available for the first week after launch. (This tip is now outdated as RMAH has been launched.)
  
• 43)  RMAH: - Blizzard charges $1 + 15% transfer fee to paypal for items.
  -For commodities Blizzard charges 15% for the item itself, and another 15% transfer fee to paypal.
  
  YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY AN ADDITIONAL $0.30 + 2.9% paypal fee Formulas:
  Items
  
  (Sale Price - 1)*(1-Blizzard to Paypal Transfer Fee) = Profit
  (Sale Price - 1)*(1-.15) = Profit
  
• Commodities
  
  (Sale Price)(1-Blizzard Commodities Fee)(1-Blizzard to Paypal Transfer Fee) = Profit
  (Sale Price)(1-.15)(1-.15) = Profit
  
• What are commodities? Crafting materials (from salvaging items), gems, and gold.
  
• 44) The official authenticator should be out today (May 14th) for 6.50 + S. However, you can always get the mobile app for free on any smartphone. (kallell) **Furthermore at the very least, make sure you sign up for mobile alerts. That way you get texted if anything is changed on your account (password, personal info, etc) Info and signup is here - http://tinyurl.com/7mu68rz (kallell)
  
• 45) Dual wielding averages your two weapons dps then gives you a 15% ias bonus. If your secondary weapon isnt over that 15% mark you will lose dps. If your shield has dex and secondary doesnt then the dap increases.
  
• 46) The best magic finding will be from killing rares around the world rather than simply boss farming (unlike d2). Every rare pack you kill, you gain a (stacking) Nephalem valor buff which increases your gold and magic find. Switching your skills removes this buff. Only kicks in after level 60 (kallell) Note: In HardCore if you die, you lose the Nephalem buff.
  
• 47) Re-Assign Your Keys:You can re-assign the 1234 keys to QWER (good for MOBA players)(riraito)
  
• 48) Bosses have enrage timers. Inferno only? (kallell)
  
• 49) Press X to show hp bars of every individual monster (altzan)
  
• 50) Each vendor sells specific types of items that are generated when the game is created. If you want different items then remake the game.(riraito)
  
• 51) Unlimited Blue Items: Unless they changed it from beta, magic (blue) items sold by vendors have unlimited stock. A cheap blue item can be a useful source of crafting materials if the auction house is too expensive.(tolana)
  
• 52) EXP chart basics:
  
  
  • If the level difference is less than 5, there is no penalty
  • if the level difference is between 5-10, there is a small penalty (10%, 20%, 30%,...)
  • If the level difference is more than 10, you'll only receive 5% experience (95% penalty)
  • You only get "bonus" exp from monsters 6 levels below you. You gain increased (over 100% by default) exp by killing monsters up to 3 levels above you.
• 53) Activating 'Letterbox' mode in options will allow you to play in 16:10 if you have a 16:9 monitor. This means you will have more horizontal visibility. (Space-Dementia)
  
• 54) Not as much of a tip as just personal preference...Remap my skills to , W,.A, D and potion to Q and/or E.
  This way I can keep my hand in standard wasd position and have easy access to shift, alt, ctrl, skills and pots. No,need to reach for number keys.
  I usually put my "oh ****" skill on space bar since my first instinct near death is to press every button. (hsmith711)
  
• 55) If you fall behind or wander off away from your party, use your town portal and click their banner to quickly catch up.
  There are slash commands for the voice emotes (/followme /thanks etc). Voice emotes can be especially useful if you are playing with strangers who speak a different language.
  Unless they changed it from beta, magic (blue) items sold by vendors have unlimited stock. A cheap blue item can be a useful source of crafting materials if the auction house is too expensive.
  
• 56) Turn on the following features in game:
  
• Elective skill mode.
  
  You can customize your action bar / hotkeys with your own order and select multiple spells from the same category  ( i.e you could chose both teleport and frost nova as a Wizard or Firebats and Haunt as a Witch Doctor).
  
  I wasn't aware of this until later on and I found the numerous, new build choices must more rewarding, so I was hoping to shed the light on something a few others might have other looked. (moobeat)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Avanced skill tips. Shows you the % of damage and more detail.
  
• Highlight items to on and off, so you can have the items always showing rather then having to hold a button down when you see something drop.
  
• How to use your weapon if you want to use it. Have elective mode on, and chose the same skill for both left and right buttons.
  
• 57) Witch Doctors, apply multiple copies of dots by re-applying them after casting Soul Harvest
  Normally, you cannot cast multiple copies of dots like Locust Swarm on mobs.
  
  However, this is not true if you apply the dots at different int values. If you play with Locust Swarm and Soul Harvest, begin by applying an an unbuffed version of Locust Swarm, then immediately Soul Harvest and apply it again. The two versions of the spell will stack on each mob.
  
• 58) Barbarian is the only class that can gain his resource energy back by simply destroying the surroundings, never be fury starved again!
  
• 59) Warning to HardCore players! Skip cinematics, the game is running while you watch.
  
  While watching one of those class specific cinematics the game was apparently still running, at which point I'm guessing my minions caught the attention of some monsters and lured them to me, can't remember where it happened exactly other than in act 2.
  
  When I got out of the cinematic I was greeted with a death screen with a bunch of almost dead monsters around me (I'm a witch doctor)
  
  I never play hardcore for lag reasons and, because of bad bugs like this one, so it wasn't a big deal for me, but I hope this helps for those of you who do!
  
• 60) You can retrain your followers' skills by right-clicking their portraits in the upper-right corner of the screen.
  
• 61) You can get your gems back for free by salvaging the item.
  
• 62) Standing around in town is not safe: If you are playing hardcore especially keep in mind that you are not safe in town.
  
  
  
  
  Mobs can freely enter Tristram in the later difficulties. This is the Shattered Crown Quest just after the cellar with Haedrig's wife.
  
  
• 63) Why as a wizard you should not get vitality items: Energy armor rune makes it so that you can only take 35% of your maximum health per swing if that swing is over 35% of your maximum health. Therefore having the least amount of health as possible is ideal.
  
• Example: If you have 1000 Health 35% is 350 health. If you pop diamond skin which absorbs 11k health at max level for 8 seconds (with rune), you'll essentially need to take 31 hits before you die in those 8 seconds, rendering you essentially invulnerable for 8 out of every 15 seconds. Tip by mdbx
  
  
• 64) Wizards have a skill, Energy Armor. With the Force Armor rune, it does
  "While Energy Armor is active, incoming attacks that would deal more than 35% of your maximum Life are reduced to deal 35% of your maximum Life instead."
  
  So if you have 1000 dmg, anything over 35%, will be reduced to 35%. 35% of 1000 dmg is 350 hp, so if you get hit with a 999999 dmg 1 hit ko, it gets reduced to 350 hp.
  
  This syncs with another Wizard skill, Diamond Armor, gives a temporary shield (6s) which adsorbs 10.8k damage. However, since damage is now being reduced to 350dmg, its going to take a lot of hits to break through the 10.8k Diamond Armor.
  
  Also, with a rune, you increase the duration of the Diamond armor from 6s to 8s. And with a passive, you get to decrease cool down duration by 15%. So you get 8s shield with 12s cooldown.
  Since everything in inferno is 1hit ko-ing, might as well encourage it, and just rely on the % game to survive, while using high hp regen items to stay at 100% hp. Tip by Dreamwaltzer.
  
• 65) Identifying Enrage tip by Xitium:
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  Whenever you see this, the mob/pack is enraged. ANY attack against them with instantly drain you of all of your health. The good news is that the mobs WILL reset after about 90 seconds to 2 minutes of not being attacked.
• 66) Watch all the cinimatics tip: Once you have beaten Normal with a character - At the login screen you can watch ALL the cinematics for every class and gender.  Tip submitted by Nihasa.
  
• 67) Unchecking Elective mode after setting up a build locks your abilites, preventing them from being dragged off in the middle of a boss fight losing your 5 stack of Neph valor. Tip by Clawtrocity.
  
• 68) Equipping your follower with MF gear adds to your own MF, you won't get the full MF value though. Equipping my follower with a 21% MF necklace gave me 4% on my own stat sheet. MF Tip by Jrgsubzero
  
• 69) Merchant Tip by ShadyJane: Sometimes they sell ridiculously good gear, or at the very least, gear you can flip on the AH.
  
  I was in Act2 Hell and the merchant by the healer was selling rings with +90int and +40vit for ~7,000g each. I bought two for myself instantly (I’m a WD) and bought about 5 more for the AH where I sold them all for ~18,000g each.
  
  Also in Act 2 Hell, after we helped the alchemist in the Mysterious Cave he sold us a rare 3 socket chest piece with decent stats for about 8,000g. I sold in on the AH for 20k.
  
  Point is, mouse over the merchant’s wares before writing them off.
  
• 70) A tip for NVIDIA users to improve Diablo 3 FPS:
  
• Comp specs: NVIDIA GTX 570, 8 GB ram, Intel i5-2500k OC @4.3GHz
  
  Ok, so I built this awesome computer a while ago (60fps crysis etc..). I noticed when I installed the game that my frame rate was at like ~30FPS and during certain times it dropped to almost as low as ~15-20FPS... This is pretty low for my computer, especially for a game like D3.
  
  After a bit of trial and error, I realized none of the in-game options really made a difference. So I started messing around with the nvidia control panel, and found out the culprit was "Ambient Occlusion". It was set to "Performance"... On Global settings I turned it to "off", and in program settings I tured it to "Use global settings (off)".
  
  I took screen shots to compare the picture side by side and there is a VERY minimal difference, barely noticeable... BUT the framerate is at 60FPS always, no matter what, and I'm playing WD. I then noticed my roomate (who has the same gfx card as me) had the low frame rate as me, changed his options, and once again, got 60fps.
  
  And this is with everything turned to "High" in game.
  
  Not sure who this will apply to, who this will work for, who has already figured this out, or who this was already obvious for, but just thought I'd let you know, because it made ALL the difference for me. Good luck! Tip submitted by Pandajuice22.
  
• 71) Right-clicking the potion slot opens a menu to quickly change potions.
  
• 72) Nephalem Valor Tip 1: Each stack adds 15% MF and GF up to a total of 5 stacks, so at max +75 gf and mf. The interesting thing about it though is if you kill a boss at 5 stacks they are guaranteed to drop at least 2 rares.
  
  This works on the mini bosses like SK, The Warden and Magda. Right now one of the easiest ways to farm Inferno gear is starting on the "Imprisoned Angel" quest and going through the Halls of Agony getting 5 stacks and downing both The Warden and the Butcher.
  
  You'll get 4-6 rares from the bosses alone and usually some more from the champion packs as well.
  
  Tip submitted by igettripped
  
• 73) Nephalem ValorTip 2: Once you have the Buff, turn off(!) "elective mode" in gameplay settings so you don't accidentialy remove one of your skills from the hotbar with your mouse! Tip submitted by mindfr34k.
  
• 74) Break out of frozen/jails/stuns/etc!  A lot of people don't know this. I hear many people complaining about how unfair Jailer-Desecrator-Arcane Enchant type champions are.
  
  Well, Blizzard wanted you to be able to counter these effects! That's why they gave you skills like the Wizard's Mirror Image. You can use Mirror Image even while you're frozen/stunned/etc, and it will instantly break you out of any kind of root, snare, or other crowd control (CC) effect.
  
  I'm pretty sure every class has abilities like this. Unfortunately, the tooltips don't mention it, but you can probably get the idea: You're supposed to have access to a defensive cooldown that you save for the right moment, and hit it to save your life when you're rooted in front of the laser beam or what have you.
  
  I hope people start to learn this. While we're at it, can we make a list of which abilities are CC breakers?
  
  I'm certain Mirror Image is one, and pretty sure Teleport is. Probably Smoke Screen and Spirit Walk, too.
  
  Tip submitted by FreeGiraffeRides.
  
• 74) Make elites drop health globes tip by: DiNoMC
  
  
• Blue monsters : 60% chance to drop at 50% and 0% life.
  
• Yellow monster : 100% chance at 75%, 50%, 25% and 0% life.
  A bit risky against blue, but sometimes I'm running away and see the yellow boss has like 76% hp and try to stun him and make him drop his globe to heal when I'm low. There's even marks every 25% on the life bars to make this easier.
  
  Also, Health Globes dropped from blue and yellow monsters restore 35% of your life (+ boost on equipment) as opposed to 20% from globes dropped by normal monsters.
  
• Normal monsters only drop them at death, and the odds depends on the monster (tends to be bigger on big/hard monsters eg. 5% on Corpse Worms, 20% on Dark Berserkers, 75% on Demonic Tremors).
  
• 75) Finding pages of blacksmithing: Pages of blacksmithing drop in higher difficulties. (Nightmare, Hell and Inferno.)
  
• 76) Barbarian Stat Priority: When you start looking for gear look for these stats in this order.
  
  
  Resist All > Vit > +Armor > Strength
  
  
  Gem 100% Vitality and look for a weapon with as much +hit on life as you can afford.
  
  Make sure you have passives "Tough as Nails" & "Nerves of Steel"
  
  One ability you need to have on your bar is War Cry runed with Impunity - this should do wonders for resists. Tip submitted by raz0rxx.
  
  77) Demon Hunter good DPS to start hell: Around 10k
  
• 78) What are Tomes? As you upgrade your weaponsmith and jewelcrafter, it begins asking for additional items to upgrade further to ensure you can't craft higher level weapons than your character level.
  
  The first tier are pages of jewelcraft and pages of blacksmithing, which drop in nightmare. Tomes of JC and BS drop in hell, and Tomes of secrets drop in Inferno.
  
• 79) Only one legendary ring: You can't equip more than 1 of the same legendary ring
  
• 80) Do items stay in the game until you leave? Item drops do stay on the floor until you leave the game, but you have to press ALT to see them because their names fade out after a while and they can be hard to see.
  
• 81) Keybinding trick: Bind Mwheel up to open your inventory, and bind it to down to close all windows. Tip submitted by redtown.
  
• 82) Life on Hit vs Life Steal: 
  
  • You can have up to 959 life on hit and up to 3% life steal on a weapon.
  • In inferno, life steal gets a 80% penalty so that 3% becomes 0.6%.
  • You need to deal 160k damage per hit to gain 959 life from 3% life steal.
  • The breakpoint damage is less than 160k since not all skills benefit 100% from life on hit.
  83) Use two sets of gear? Dye them different colours so you can easily tell which set you're wearing. Tip submitted by ChalkUp.
  
• 84) Wizard: Re-summoning Hydra Heals 3x Your Life On Kill Stat. Tip submitted by Joeyz1.
  
• 85) Valuable Stats on Items:
  • Life on Hit (loh): Very good for survivability, especially melee, highly sought after
  • Resistances: Resist all combined with another resist is best, any resist is good though.
  • Magic Find: Highly sought after.
  • Movement Speed: Very valuable for any kiter. 
  • Armor: An important stat for melee characters.
  • Vit, main stat: Life becomes very important late in th egame.
  The more stats from this list an item combines, the more it is worth, there are other stats like goldfind that sell rather well, but vit+main stat alone just don't cut it anymore, at least in inferno. Tip submitted by Grodek.
  
• 86) Act 1 Inferno Butcher Runs Tip: When you see the thee guys in robes chanting over another one in the middle STOP. DON'T KILL THEM. The middle guy will turn into a single elite. It is an easy NV stack. Tip submitted by basmith7.
  
  
  
• 87) Compare your rings: In the auction house, when you compare a ring to your own rings, it only shows you one of your rings. If you want to compare it to your other ring, just hit Alt.
• 88) Slow your Enemies: Have your follower use a weapon with Cold damage. Cold damage adds a slow to the follower's attack, which is pretty overpowered for ranged classes. It even helps with melee. Why not have Cold damage on your own weapon? Because Cold damage rolls lower than other forms of damage, specifically because it adds this snare. Tip submitted by teacoopz.
• 89) Use two sets of gear? (For example, regular gear, and MF gear) Dye them different colors so you can easily tell which set you're wearing. Tip submitted by ChalkUp.