Mini-games - those odd symbols on the game screen

[ShadowHM]

Just to the left of the blue ball representing available willpower which is at the bottom right of the game screen, there are usually some small odd symbols. Up until now I have occasionally wondered what the heck they were there for but have basically ignored them.

Now, just in case I was not the only one in that boat , I give you a link to an explanation of the mini-game. Some posts giving ideas on how to go about completing those mini-games are here.

[BeefontheBone]

Heh. Just figured them out myself the other day. With a bit of remembering what each symbol represents you can really increase your item drops.

In fact, I'm considering a simple variant idea - only allowed to equip items dropped by the mini game (and maybe unenchanted items otherwise, mainly to avoid having to unequip pickups right at the start). Oh, and things you need to do quests, obviously .

[Zed-F]

FYI they are changing in the near future, so that they reset every 15 minutes, according to patch 0.5. Mixed blessing since it can be hard to find monsters of the right type or enough swords in 15 minutes, but at least it might switch to something easier to finish in 15 mins...

[theGrimm]

Well, the switching might be a good thing. My multiplayer summoner has been stuck on the same minigame for a week now...damned if I can find a way to do criticals with him...

I wonder what determines the quality of the minigame drops. It could certainly add a new dimension to "farming."

[Zed-F]

There are some bugs with the minigame getting stuck as of patch 0.1, which might be why you've been on the same game for a week. You should be able to get criticals, albeit slowly, just shooting stuff. Even a 1% critical rate will come up occasionally just auto-attacking stuff.

Quality of minigame stuff is supposedly affected by +luck items, but I'm not sure how reliable that supposition is.

[theGrimm]

There are some bugs with the minigame getting stuck as of patch 0.1, which might be why you've been on the same game for a week. You should be able to get criticals, albeit slowly, just shooting stuff. Even a 1% critical rate will come up occasionally just auto-attacking stuff.

I get the impression some of the weapons are bugged, so perhaps that's my problem. Perhaps it's not triggering crits. It's some sort of electric cannon that shoots out multiple (6 or 7) electric orbs. But after 4 levels, yeah, you'd expect a few criticals...

Quality of minigame stuff is supposedly affected by +luck items, but I'm not sure how reliable that supposition is.

Well, my summoner has about +200 (if memory serves) luck from his equipment, so I'll give you my subjective opinion when my minigame starts working again.

[Zed-F]

Looks like they found and fixed the minigame 'stuck' bug rather than going ahead with the 15 minute refresh on the minigame. So hopefully you'll be able to get criticals going to progress your minigame once the patch goes live.

Does mean I need to keep a sword or two in my stash for getting unstuck when I need to find melee weapons to progress the minigame, though. You can cause the game to 'find' items for the minigame by using a crafter interface to temporarily put an item outside your inventory in the crafter window, then rearrange your inventory so the item will no longer fit, then close the crafter window. The item will drop on the ground, then you can rearrange your inventory to have room for it and pick it up again, which fulfills the minigame requirement for that item. This even works for small items like mods, but in that case you generally have to actually craft something, which makes it less worthwhile; it's mainly swords that have a low enough drop rate for this to be worth doing.

[BeefontheBone]

Worth doing but a bit exploitative :P

[Zed-F]

Wouldn't need to do it if they fixed the drop rate/quest rate so you didn't need to play for hours at a time to complete a minigame with swords in it. Every other requirement can be completed in a reasonable time, at least if your character is out of act 1 (finding spectrals to kill in act 1 can be tough.) But if you get a mini-game requirement to find 4 swords... you can be screwed, especially if you want to be a Gambler and depend on the minigame to get more items.