Season Journey Chapter III (Season 14)

I am playing a Hardcore Barbarian for Season 14. My goal is to see how far I can get through the Season Journey without dying. I am playing as part of the Solo Self Found League on my Hardcore character.

I’m also playing a Softcore Demon Hunter, and playing in groups with that one. With help, my Softcore Demon Hunter is currently at the point where she is working her way through Slayer. It was time for my Hardcore Barbarian to catch up.

There are 11 objectives in Chapter III. I completed five of them back when I was working on Chapter I.

Tristram’s Most Wanted: Obtain an Act I bounty cache.
Caldeum’s Most Wanted: Obtain an Act II bounty cache.
Arreat’s Most Wanted: Obtain an Act III bounty cache.
Heaven’s Most Wanted: Obtain an Act IV bounty cache.
Westmarch’s Most Wanted: Obtain an Act V bounty cache.

Here is my evidence that I completed one set of Bounties for each act. (Its in the video above, too).

One of the Chapter III objectives requires players to put one Legendary item into Kanai’s Cube. I had already done this on my Softcore Demon Hunter. It turns out that Kanai’s Cube is not shared between Softcore and Hardcore.

I decided to put Stalgard’s Decimator into Kanai’s Cube. It was fun to use, but my Barbarian had already outgrown it. Putting it into Kanai’s Cube meant I could still benefit from the best part of that weapon while using an entirely different one.

Stalgard’s Defender: Your melee attacks throw a piercing axe at a nearby enemy, dealing 700% weapon damage as Physical.

Level I Seasonal Cubist: Extract a Legendary power using Kanai’s Cube.

I now had a weapon in Kanai’s Cube. I decided to go ahead and put a piece of armor (Promise of Glory) and a piece of jewelry (Rakoff’s Glass of Life) into the Cube as well. Why? Because there is an objective in a later part of the Season Journey that requires a player to put three things into Kanai’s Cube.

Hey There Kadala: Spend Blood Shards at Kadala. Kadala has a 10% chance to give you a Legendary.

Kadala did not give me a Legendary. She gave me a bunch of yellow (rare) belts. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

I decided to craft an Imperial Emerald because the weapon I was using had an empty socket.

There’s the Imperial Emerald I crafted. It went directly into my Bag. I picked it up and put it in the empty socket on my weapon.

The Rock: Craft a Gem of Imperial or greater quality at the Jeweler. Socketing an Emerald into your weapon increases your Critical Hit Damage and is a big damage boost.

The three remaining objectives required Master Difficulty. I was playing on Hard difficulty. So, I decided to warm up with a Nephalem Rift in Hard Difficulty, first.

It went well, and I got a Greater Rift Key. I put that into my Stash just in case I died while attempting a Nephelam Rift on higher difficulty level. It is a good idea to play carefully in Hardcore!

Zena the Barbarian is impatiently waiting for me to move up the difficult level. I decided to try Expert difficulty and see how that went. If I survived, the plan was to move up to Master difficulty next.

I decided to go ahead and use up my Greater Rift Key and jumped into a Greater Rift 1. You have to start somewhere, and I wanted to get a Legendary Gem that I could start leveling up. When I was done, I had a Rank 2 Bane of the Powerful Legendary Gem.

Greater Rift Level 1 Completed at 7:03:883

Technically speaking, I could have put this Greater Rift 1 completion into the Solo Self Found Leaderboard… but there was no point. To me, it makes more sense if I wait and enter a higher Greater Rift completion.

Then I got back on track and completed a Nephalem Rift. It went pretty well… on Expert. Was my Barbarian ready for a Nephalem Rift on Master difficulty? It was time to find out!

The remaining Chapter III objectives all required Master difficulty.

If you watch the Twitch video at the top of this blog, you can watch me earn the Master objective.

Master: Complete a Nephalem Rift on Master difficulty or higher.

All that was left now was to kill Maghda and Belial on Master difficulty. I was certain I could kill Maghda, but very hesitant about fighting Belial. In the early days of Diablo III, long before the Reaper of Souls expansion, Belial killed my Softcore characters over and over again. He’s not my favorite “big bad”.