On the quest to get more paragon points from renown, I headed off to Hawezar. This is where things start to get a bit more tricky. Since I’m unlocking so many things now being in a higher world tier it has become a bit easy to get distracted by other things.
It really can be hard to try and focuses on doing just a thing in Diablo IV. You will look at the world map and just want to go run off doing so many different things. I’ll admit during my attempt to grind out the last renown I had in Hawezar I was a bit all over the place.
Out of all the regions I was starting to feel like Hawezar takes bizarre to the next level. There were a lot of rituals, slaying cultists, and just other WTF moments. Hawezar also had some rather long arc side questing.
It felt like this was the last region and the team working on the side questing here went all out. This is also where quests kept going on and on to the point I almost did not see them though.
Perhaps one of the stranger things was me having to place down a head, some candles, and if recall other things for a ritual. That is not something I find myself normally doing in any video game. Like ever.
There would also be quite a few instances of me having to return to the Witch who is quiet in the middle of nowhere in a hut. She had me doing so many things at one point I had logged out for a break from the game. I had forgotten to return to her to continue things along till I had done quite a few other quests elsewhere in the region. It was perhaps for the best I got tired of running off to her hut.
I also found myself in quite a few different dungeons. While some of them were actual dungeons that I’d earn extra renown for finishing. Others were side areas that you could quickly run in, kill some stuff, and be done with the quest most of the time.
There are also some rather frustrating side quests in this game. They on the surface are quick if you know what to do. However, you kind of feel stupid doing them. They normally require you to go to a certain location. You then need to perform the correct emote to finish them.
Sounds easy right? Till you have spammed what feels like every single emote and you still have not triggered the chest spawning and the quest finishing. Then you start to wonder if using the correct emote is the task at hand or if all along you were supposed to be doing something else.
Also not every emote fits on the emote wheel. So you have to sit there reassigning a new one and testing it out. Just to find out nope. While yes sometimes there is a keyword in the quest itself to give you content clues.
I’ll be dammed if I did not somehow every single time getting one of these kinds of quests that I happened to skip over the cutscenes and text for them. Sometimes after doing so many side quests you just want to pick up the pace a bit and it bites you back for doing so.
It was also quite funny seeing a lot of other players run up on the same side quest. Spam quite a few different emotes. Do not do the right one. They would often leaven and I can only assume in a fit of rage to go work on a different side quest.
There were also some stops along the way. I’d need a break and go work on collecting some Grim Favor or to try out something new I’d yet to interact with. It however would not be long before I found myself back in the Hawezar region collecting rewards and deciding I had enough of a break to hit questing back up again.
All of this paled in consideration for one quest arc I ended up running. I was not quite sure if I was the bad guy or if I was dealing with the bad guys. What I do know is was being sent around doing a lot of errands for a guy named Lyndon.
Sure I could have been taking out thieves who were stealing from the town. That is what it seemed like I was doing in the first place. Naturally, they would be angry and want to fight back. I more than torched a few of their hideouts of stolen items with my fire magic.
I could have also been melding in deep politics and corruption of quite a dirty-run town. It was quite clear in the end both sides were not the good guys. If I would not put an end to one side they would have taken over. I’m not quite certain that would be any better. It’s however not like I had much choice. I was hired in the quests by the guy running things. Shame I could not partake in overthrowing him as an option.
There were also just far too many rituals I partook in. At this point, my character must be an expert on them. I’m shocked there was not some kind of in-game point system or counter for performing them. Many of these rituals were far too controversial to have been for the greater good.
At least I got quite a few caches from all the quests I ran. A few of them I stored away in the bank for later opening since they contained Obols and I was not looking to spend any yet. I was still attempting to get back to the max amount I could carry.
Ashava The Pestilent
While I had taken down Ashava during the beta I was not expecting things to be so easy during the actual release. Just so I did not jump into a situation I was not prepared for I ended up going to world tier I for Ashava The Pestilent.
This was also the first time I even noticed the world bosses were spawning. At some point, I need to find the actual timetable for these. I wrote down the time it spawned on one night and the next I never noticed any timers on the world map to indicate another world boss.
What I was not expecting was just how quickly we took it down. We had over six minutes left on the clock. I quickly picked up my cache and the legendary wand that dropped and left the area.
I was hoping I could reset in a way I’d be able to jump into another fight that was mid-battle. That was something I was able to do during Beta once. Every time I popped into the area however it was empty. It seemed a few people were attempting to do what I was.
I could have taken this on a harder difficulty. I had zero deaths and never felt even close to getting killed. I’ve since been on the lookout for the next world boss but I appear to keep missing them. As I wanted to see what else there is along with trying it on a higher world tier.
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Final Thoughts
Yet another region was done and four paragons were collected. This time I managed to find all the areas in the region. I somehow am missing eight quests which would be nice to have found. I can only suspect a few of them come from item drops. Perhaps in the future, I’ll be able to finish it off even though I don’t need further renown.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV.
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