I am playing a Hardcore Barbarian in Season 17. For the most part, I am having fun. The one thing holding me back from making progress was the Season Journey requirement to complete a Set Dungeon.
This proved to be a very difficult task for me. In this blog post, I share the strategy I used when I realized I was unable to complete the Set Dungeon that corresponded with Season 17’s “freebie set”.
The “freebie set” for Barbarians in Season 17 was the Might of the Earth set. It was a set that I hadn’t used before because I’d never managed to collect up all the pieces.
All I had to do to obtain this set was complete Chapters I – IV of the Season Journey. I’m moving slower than most people in the game because I’m playing Hardcore. One must make good choices if they want to avoid getting their main character killed.
When I was able to equip the full set, I was pretty happy. It felt like I was making progress. After messing around with Skills for a while, and gathering up a few more Paragon Points, I felt like I understood how to use this set.
The next thing to do was to locate the Might of the Earth Set Dungeon. In previous Seasons, my character was strongest when wearing a full set. It made sense to wear it to Leoric’s Mansion to find the clue about where the Set Dungeon was at.
Season 17, however, had a unique buff that changed that. This Season, my character was strongest when she was wearing a lot of Ancient items. My strategy was to put the Might of the Earth Set into my Stash, put on a bunch of Ancient items, and fight my way to the clue while wearing those.
If my Barbarian died on the way, she would lose all the Ancients she had been wearing. The new Barbarian I would have to make would have much fewer Ancients to work with, and that would slow down my progress. But, the new Barbarian would still have the Might of the Earth set in the Stash. I figured it would be easier to find more Ancients than to try and track down a second Might of the Earth set.
The clue for the Might of the Earth Set Dungeon pointed me to Belial. I fought my way, through all the snake people to where I guessed this Set Dungeon would be located. Once there, I teleported back to town, swapped out my Ancients for the Might of the Earth set, and teleported back.
After losing track of how many attempts I made to complete this Set Dungeon, I gave up. Maybe this one isn’t hard for other people. For me, it was very frustrating. All it takes is one mistake to complete fail the entire Set Dungeon.
I learned how to hit and freeze the enemies I encountered, and the dungeon seemed rather forgiving about how many seconds passed by without out me killing and freezing one. (The timer appeared to reset whenever I froze and killed the next monster.)
The problem was the gold monsters. I knew I had to hit three specific skills (Leap, Ground Stomp, and Earthquake) within just a few seconds, while standing very near the gold monsters. I could not get the timing right.
The Slayer part of the Season Journey requires a player to complete a Set Dungeon. It doesn’t actually matter which one the player finishes. Unfortunately, I only had a few pieces of some (but not all) of the other Barbarian sets.
My solution to this problem was to use Season Rebirth to get my Hardcore Demon Hunter into Season 17. The game required me to play through what I think of as “Story Mode”. I really didn’t mind because it gave me a way to start leveling up my Demon Hunter.
I finished “Story Mode” somewhere around level 55 or so. Adventure Mode was now unlocked, and I did small things in it while leveling my Hardcore Demon Hunter to 70. This is when I realized a problem. My Demon Hunter didn’t have a set. He didn’t even have one piece of any Demon Hunter set.
Back to the Barbarian! I had her run a lot of Bounties in the hopes that the Bounty Caches would include a set piece or two. Between that and a few Nephalem and Greater Rifts, I was starting to gather pieces from other Barbarian sets.
Some of those pieces were duplicates, so I put them into Kanai’s Cube in the hopes that I could turn the extras into set pieces that I didn’t have yet. It’s kind of hit or miss. Eventually, I was successful.
Upper Class: Complete two of the following Class Sets at level 70.
I now had the Might of the Earth set and the Wrath of the Wastes set.
Athena the Hardcore Barbarian was ready to find the Wrath of the Wastes Dungeon. My hope was that the corresponding Set Dungeon would be easier than the one I’d been trying (and failing) to complete.
I followed the same strategy as before: put this set into the Stash, equipped my Ancient items, and went back to Leoric’s Mansion for the clue. After clearing away the enemies, I teleported back to town, and swapped the Ancients for the set gear.
The Wrath of the Wastes Set Dungeon is located in the first level of the Pandemonium Fortress.
The requirements for the Wrath of the Wastes Dungeon didn’t sound too difficult. But, I found myself struggling with it anyway. I kept running out of Wrath, and wasn’t very good at guessing how how many monsters were in a mob before I used Rend on them. I also kept running out of Fury.
Rather than give up, I made a series of changes, hoping to find a combination that would give me the improvements I needed to complete this Set Dungeon.
I had been using the Arcstone ring on both my Barbarian and the Templar. The rings cause a lightning pulse to shoot between all those who wear one of this type of ring. It might have been making it more difficult for me to Rend 10 different monsters at one time. So, I swapped those out for other rings (which probably weren’t as powerful).
Using “trial and error”, I replaced skills and runes, hoping for the best. After many tries, I was starting to get a little better at this Set Dungeon. Not good enough to complete it, though.
By this point, I had collected some pieces of each of the other two remaining Barbarian sets. I repeated the process of doing Bounties for the Bounty Cashes, running Greater Rifts in the hopes the right set gear would drop, and putting duplicate pieces into Kanai’s Cube.
The Raekor’s set was the third Barbarian set I was able to collect in Season 17. The helm was an Ancient, which doesn’t give me any extra boost during Season 17 (because I am using it with set pieces and it is one of those pieces). That said, it will be useful after Season 17 ends.
Once again, I removed the Raekor’s set pieces, put on a bunch of Ancients, and set out to find the clue about the location of the Raekor’s Set Dungeon. Next, I cleared out the enemies near the area the dungeon was located in, teleported back to town, put the Raekor’s set back on, and teleported back to it.
The Raekor’s Set Dungeon is located in the Overgrown Ruins. Look for a square area that has two pillars on one side of it. The easiest way to reach it is by leaving the Act V town.
It took some effort, but I was able to complete the Raekor’s Set Dungeon. This one was the easiest of the Set Dungeons that I tried in Season 17. If you are playing a Barbarian, and struggling with Set Dungeons, I recommend giving the Raekor’s one a try.
I was overjoyed to have finally completed a Set Dungeon because it was the last thing I needed to do in order to complete the Slayer part of the Season Journey in Season 17. I’ve got some of the objectives for upcoming parts of the Season Journey done, but felt like the Set Dungeon was holding me back.
There is more to do. The Champion part of the Season Journey requires players to Master a Set Dungeon. With a little more practice, I think I will be able to do that with the Raekor’s Set Dungeon.
#Blaugust2019
Season 17 (Season of Nightmares) Set Dungeon is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites.
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