How to make random loot luck work for you to get more legendaries in Diablo 3

If you’re just picking up Diablo 3 on the Switch, or hitting a Season for the first time and you’re wondering how to gear up faster, I have some good news and some bad news for you. Bad first — there’s a huge component of RNG to loot in Diablo 3, for the most part you’ll end up getting what you get. But you can take certain steps to improve your gear as you push Torment difficulties and clear harder and harder Greater Rifts.

What exactly can you do?

Diablo 3 is a game that directly rewards successful completion of higher difficulty levels. The higher the difficulty, the more gold, the more experience for Paragon levels, and a higher chance for legendary gear to drop. So, the easiest way to get better gear is to increase the game difficulty and clear higher level Greater Rifts. One milestone is to complete Greater Rifts at level 70 or above — this will reward you with at least one Primal Ancient Legendary item, and will thereafter give you a small chance of getting a Primal Ancient whenever you get a Legendary.

But there are some things you can do immediately that aren’t specifically tied to difficulty in order to improve the rate at which you get legendaries, whether it’s because you need a specific item for your desired build or you’re looking to get a legendary in order to add its power to Kanai’s Cube.

Crafting Gear

Doing bounties in Adventure Mode can net you the usual loot from the monsters you kill to complete the bounty. But doing all five in an act nets you a Horadric Cache from Tyrael. The exact items inside a Horadric Cache are determined at the level you’re playing at when Tyrael gives it to you — if the game is set at Torment 2, for example, and you’re level 70, then the item drops inside will be randomly determined when it is opened as if you were a level 70 on Torment 2 difficulty. But Caches also contain a host of crafting items and blacksmithing plans, and completing all five acts nets you various specific crafting items that you can only get for completing an Act’s bounties. These blacksmithing plans and crafting items can be used to craft set gear and legendary items, some of which rival those available out in the world.

Haedrig Eamon, the blacksmith at your camp, can learn these plans by you clicking on them in your inventory while his interface is open. And while the set items are generally less impressive than the ones that drop randomly, there are a variety of them you can choose to craft yourself.

• Asheara’s Vestments
• Aughild’s Authority
• Born’s Command
• Cain’s Destiny
• Captain Crimson’s Trimmings
• Demon’s Hide
• Guardian’s Jeopardy
• Hallowed Protectors
• Sage’s Journey

These crafted sets are generally three pieces for the complete set bonus, which means it’s possible to wear two or even three of the sets (the Hallowed Protectors are a weapon set, so they can usually be used with two of the armor sets) if you have a Ring of Royal Grandeur allowing you to get the complete set bonus for one less item from the set. The bonuses are primarily defensive or survival oriented, helping you stay alive a bit longer in order to complete harder content for better gear. You are going to replace these sets and that’s okay — their purpose is to let you craft upgrades from the gear you started level 70 with. No one is recommending you try and push GR 70+ in these sets.

The Blacksmith can also craft a host of legendary items, some of which are good for an extended period of time. These items have a small random chance to be Ancient Legendaries — my Season Barbarian was using a crafted Ancient Legendary War of the Dead until very recently, I just never got a drop better than it. Even the weapon I switched to was more of a slight side grade than an actual upgrade, I was just sick of waiting. Similarly, a lot of builds recommend the craftable Hellfire Ring and Amulet, but those are more complicated — in order to craft them, you have to kill various bosses roaming the world at Torment difficulty, so we’ll save them for another time.

Blood Shards and Kadala

Blood Shards are currency that drops from Horadric Caches, Rift Guardians in Nephalem and Greater Rifts, and specific Treasure Goblins called Blood Thieves. There is only one use for Blood Shards — you take them back to camp and spend them at Kadala, the only vendor who takes them. She then offers you mystery items — these items have a 10% chance of being any random Legendary drop, with a smaller chance of being an Ancient item. While Kadala will often disappoint you, her chance of dropping a Legendary is the same at Torment 1 as it is at Torment 13 or higher, making her the only way to get Legendaries that isn’t reliant on you turning up the difficulty. If you haven’t done any Greater Rifts yet, your maximum Blood Shard storage will be 500 shards — every rank of GR you clear adds 10 to your carrying capacity, stacking indefinitely, so if you can comfortably clear GR20 you’ll have an extra 200 shards you can carry.

Kadala sells items for a fixed shard cost — 75 for a weapon, 50 for a ring, 100 for an amulet and 25 for anything else. It’s 10% chance for a Legendary, never going up or down, per purchase. You may get nothing good and spend all of your shards, or you may get some decent items — they’ll always be statted out for the class you’re buying them on unless you buy an item you can’t use at all. So while Kadala isn’t a dependable option, she is a way for your struggling starter 70 to increase their odds of getting some Legendary gear.

Kanai’s Cube and Upgrading Rares

This last one is expensive and just as random as every other option. But, it does serve to recycle all those rare items Kadala sold you and gives you something to do with Death’s Breath and the materials you get from salvaging all that Magic and Rare gear you end up shoveling into Haedrig’s Salvage. It requires you have Kanai’s Cube unlocked, but you should do that anyway.

The Cube, among its many other abilities, allows you to take a rare quality item (yellow gear) and place it in the Cube, along with 25 Death’s Breath, 50 Reusable Parts, 50 Arcane Dust and 50 Veiled Crystal and that rare item will upgrade into a Legendary of the same type as the rare. You can get Set items this way, but it’s completely random — if you put in a rare crossbow, you’ll get a Legendary crossbow, but you could do twenty of them and still not get the crossbow you’re looking for. Still, if you’re at the point where you’re not using Death’s Breath or crafting materials for much and you just absolutely need that one Legendary, it’s a good way to supplement your luck. And you can at least narrow down the kind of item you’ll get — there are only so many Legendary 2h Mighty Weapons, for example. I needed one for my Seismic Slam build, so I kept trying until I finally had it, even though I just cubed the power and never actually equipped the item.

So, there you have it — a few ways to work around random loot luck while playing Diablo 3. Good luck and best wishes on your gear acquisition.