Bounties

Introduction

While playing in Adventure Mode, you’ll be able to hunt for bounties. Bounties are special missions to kill a specific enemy, clear an area, or complete an event. To see the available bounties in each Act, press the “M” key (PC) to bring up the world map. Waypoints with nearby bounty objectives will be marked with a yellow “!”, and clicking on one of them will teleport you there. Completing a bounty will reward all players in the same Act with small amount of Gold and XP. Completing all 5 bounties in an Act and talking to Tyrael in the town will reward all players in game with a Large Horadric Chest. The chest will be automatically deposited in your inventory; be careful: if you don't have any space, it will drop on the ground under your feet.

Large Horadric Chest

Large Horadric Chests contain an assortment of loot, which depends on the game difficulty and on the Act in which the bounties were completed. Apart from normal items and materials, you can find unique bounty-only Legendaries, that can not be obtained in any other way. You also receive a number of Bounty Materials which are necessary to craft Legendary and Set items, and use some of the Kanai's Cube recipes.

On Torment 16, a Large Horadric Chests contains:

• 1,640,000 Gold
• 135 Blood Shards
• 90 Reusable Parts
• 92 Arcane Dust
• 35 Veiled Crystals
• 6 Death's Breaths
• 22 Bounty Materials
• 1-4 Marquise Gems
• 1-2 random items of Rare and above quality
• 2 bounty-only Legendary items

Bounty Item Rewards

Act 1

Act 1 Bounty Material is Khanduran Rune. Act 1 items are themed around Leoric, the Skeleton King.

Act 2

Act 2 Bounty Material is Caldeum Nightshade. Act 2 items are fancy looking items with green and purple color scheme.

Act 3

Act 3 Bounty Material is Arreat War Tapestry. Act 3 items are "desert-camo" type items with snake ornaments, named after seven deadly sins.

Act 4

Act 4 Bounty Material is Corrupted Angel Flesh. Act 4 doesn't have any specific items and instead it can gives you random items from any other Acts.

Act 5

Act 5 Bounty Material is Westmarch Holy Water. Act 5 items are spooky Malthael-themed items with skulls on them.

Types of Bounties

All existing bounties can be broadly separated into three types: Kill, Clear and Event. Each of these types can be identified before starting the bounty, just by looking at it's name. Kill and Clear bounties always start with exactly that word and Event bounties cover everything else.

Kill Bounties

In this type of bounty you need to kill a fixed number of monsters within a zone plus Unique monster. In some cases you first have to go to a different zone, which can be either a dungeon or a nearby area without its own waypoint.

Boss Bounty is a subtype of kill bounty, here you don't have to kill any mobs and instead of a Unique you need to kill one of the Act bosses. Each Act, except Act 4, is guaranteed to have exactly 1 Boss Bounty. The Unique monster, door the the dungeon, or door to the boss room is marked by a ping on your map and a yellow arrow pointing towards it on your minimap.

Clear Bounties

Here your objective is to go to a dungeon (or a last level in a multi-leveled dungeon) and kill all enemies within it. This includes enemies that spawn after you enter the dungeon, such as summons or quest mobs. When there's 15 or less enemies left you will see the exact number of them in your list of objective and all the remaining enemies will be marked by skull icons on the minimap. The entrance to the dungeon (and to its second floor if needed) is marked by a ping and yellow arrow.

Event Bounties

Event Bounties is a broad term for all other quests, in general you have to run to the objective (marked by a ping and yellow arrow) and then complete a quest there, which can be anything: a random event from campaign, a cursed chest or even a portal to Bounty Grounds.

Click Bounty is a subtype of event bounty, where you have multiple (3 to 6) objectives in the same zone, and you need to visit each one and click on it. Each of the objectives is marked by usual ping and arrow, but only when you get close to them. Clicking on an objective will start a 4 second channel, that is interrupted by damage, unless you are immune to Crowd Control. There are special mobs guarding each objective; on some quests they only spawn when the player approaches.

Bounty Builds

In this overview we compare the best bounty builds in the game and the best bounty builds for each class. Three builds deserve a separate mention.

LoD WoL Bounty Monk is by far the fastest, when it comes to getting from point A to point B, and it also has excellent AoE coverage. Unfortunately damage is not quite there. In order to comfortably oneshot everything in a 4-player T16 game you need quite some Paragon and very good gear (which also needs to be Ancient and with max CDR and RCR rolls everywhere). Another problem that can be fixed with Paragon is that this build requires gear swapping. The insane movement speed is achieved by Dashing Strike spam, which is only possible with Raiment of a Thousand Storms (4) Bonus. Raiment is a very weak set so it's impossible to actually kill stuff, while wearing 3 pieces of it. But if you have the Paragons and if you are willing to do the swap, you get the bounty build that blows all competition out of the water.

UE Multishot DH is second fastest bounty build, and it has one big advantage over LoD Monk: it's incredibly easy to build. Just throwing together the full set of items with any rolls at paragon 600 will be enough to crush T16. By optimizing your gear you can make the build a little bit faster and eventually get rid of swapping. If you are playing any other class and are planning to do a lot of bounties (15+ hours) over the course of the season, then you should seriously consider making an UE DH specifically for that purpose. It will only cost you about 2,000 Death's Breaths, some crafting mats, and 30 minutes of your time.

GoD DH is just a hair slower than UE, but it doesn't require any swapping and is overall more chill to play. It also has quite low gear requirements, so you can build that instead of UE if you don't want to swap and/or farm DH gear.

Hydra Wizard was buffed in Season 23 with reduced Teleport animation speed, which matters a lot in Bounties. This buff makes it about as good as the two Demon Hunter builds, so you can play that if you like Wizard. The only area where this build is lacking is CC-immunity but it's not that big of a deal because Hydras can protect you while you channel.

General Bounty Strategy

Since two out of four strongest bounty builds involve item swapping, the next 2 sections will contain remarks specific to swapping, marked by italics.

First and the most important trick to doing bounties is to do them in a group. 4 players going to different waypoints and doing different quests will earn Large Horadric Chests almost 4 times faster than a single player. Even going to a public bounty game, where one of your teammates is terribly undergeared and another is straight up AFK, will be a lot more efficient than doing bounties solo. Never do solo bounties, unless you are playing Solo Self Found for extra challenge.

Kill Bounties

swap to DPS mode at the start

These bounties are extremely straightforward: you go through the map towards the quest marker, while killing everything in your sight. On some maps, where there's way more enemies than required by bounty, it's faster to do it the opposite way: first run to the Unique, kill it, and then go through map killing everything.

Kill bounties can be done faster with more players, so if there's no more bounties left and someone in your team is doing a kill bounty, don't hesitate to help them.

Boss Bounties

swap to travel mode at the start

This bounty type is even more straightforward: you run to the boss, you kill the boss. The tricky part comes when you consider the group play. Only one bossfight can be active at a time, meaning that when you reach the boss door and one of your teammates is currently fighting another boss, you will be unable to enter. There's two ways to avoid this.

1. Designate a dedicated boss killer. Have 1 player do all 4 (or 5) boss bounties, while other 3 players ignore those quests completely. This is very easy to organize, but if your game has Belial, Diablo and Malthael at the same time, your boss killer won't be able to kill all bosses before all other bounties are done.
2. Follow a boss order. The player running Act 2 is always starting the game with his boss bounty. Another player goes second, and they are doing first some other quest and then the boss. Finally, the 3rd player is doing their boss as their 3rd quest. This way is superior, but it's way harder to explain and people need to pay attention for this to work.

Clear Bounties

swap to travel mode at the start

Nothing special here: run to the dungeon kill all the mobs. Some of these bounties can be very long and they can not be done faster with more players, so try not to leave them for the last.

Event Bounties

swap to travel mode at the start

Here you need to run to the event and then do it. Depending on what this even is, you may need to do different things, but mostly they include talking to NPCs, killing enemies and interacting with objects. Your best friend for these bounties is "Close all Windows" button (Space by default). With its help you can skip most of the NPC dialog, even when it doesn't have a visible window. When waiting for even to progress, spam this button, it never hurts.

Some of the event have a fixed timer and they can not be completed faster, no matter what you do. Most of these bounties are "Kill 100 enemies" Cursed Chests, but there's some others such as Jar of Souls, Blaze of Glory and Forged in Battle. Here instead of waiting the entire timer you can do the following:

1. Run to the event and initiate it
2. Use Town Portal (T) to go to town
3. Go do a different bounty
4. Use the map (M) to go to town
5. Enter your portal made in step 2 and complete the timed bounty

This way you are effectively doing two bounties at the same time. This technique doesn't work when there's no more bounties left, so try no to leave these events for last.

Click Bounties

swap to travel mode at the start

Click bounties are unique in that you are not required to kill any mobs. All you have to do is reach the objectives and perform a 4 second long channel. If you are CC-immune and have enough toughness to tank all enemies for these 4 seconds, you can just run up, channel the thing and run to the next one.

Like with kill bounties, here you can help your teammates to complete the quest faster, if there's no more bounties left.

Tips and Tricks for Individual Bounties

Act 1

• Southern Highlands
  • Kill Cadhul the Deathcaller. This kill bounty doesn't have a quest marker. Cadul can be found on the pedestal in the center of the map. You need to kill the mages around him first.
• Northern Highlands
  • All Kill Bounties. Try to get at least 15 kills before ascending to the Leoric's Hunting Grounds.
  • Kill Krailen the Wicked. Sometimes doesn't have the quest marker. Jezeb can be found either straight at the entrance of Leoric's Manor, or further inside up the left staircase.
• Halls of Agony Level 2
  • Kill the Warden. Does not require to kill any monsters (swap to travel mode at the start). Can be accessed from the other side by going out of Halls of Agony Level 3. However, there won't be a quest marker and the entrance can be very far from the waypoint. Only do this when you've already explored HoA 3 during another bounty.
• Halls of Agony Level 3
  • The Cursed Bellows. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• Caverns of Araneae
  • Kill Queen Araneae. The Queen will attempt to run away after being damaged to 75%, 50% and 25% health. If you can't kill her instantly before she escapes, don't attack her and wait for her poison spit attack. It lasts about 3 seconds and she doesn't run away until the attack is completed.
  • The Cursed Hatchery. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• The Festering Woods
  • Eternal War. You can make the first batch of enemies spawn faster by activating the even and then running about 2 screens away.
• Cemetery of the Forsaken
  Event bounties in this zone also require you to kill 50 mobs. switch to DPS mode at the start
  • Jar of Souls. Event with 60s timer. Use Town Portal trick.
• Fields of Misery
  • The Cursed Grove. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• The Old Ruins
  • The Cursed Cellar. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• Cathedral Level 2
  • The Cursed Court. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.

Act 2

• Archives of Zoltun Kulle
  • The Cursed Pit. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• Dahlgur Oasis
  • Prisoners of Kamyr. The quest marker only shows the first prisoner, there's another one right next to it and two more down to the south. After all 4 are freed, the Unique spawns, which needs to be killed.
  • Clear the Mysterious Cave. Kill the ghosts, talk to the NPC and then run about two screens away to make him stop talking and open the door to the cave.
  • Lost Treasure of Khan Dakab and Sardar's Treasure. To access the treasure room, you need to activate a mechanism which is located in same dungeon. There's no ping on the map for it, but it's always located in one of the dead ends.
• Howling Plateau
  • All Kill Bounties. Try to get at least 30 kills before crossing the bridge to Black Canyon Mines.
  • The Cursed Outpost. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• Desolate Sands
  • Kill Pazuzu. The quest marker leads you to event that summons Pazuzu. The marker disappears after you initiate the event.
• Shrouded Moores
  All random events on this map also show a ping when you come close. Don't get bamboozled!
  • The Cursed Moors. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
  • Break A Few Eggs, Grave Mistakes, Off the Wagon, One In The Hand. You can make the event activate faster if you approach it, skip the dialogue and then run a couple of screens away.
• Temple of the Firstborn Level 1
  • The Cursed Temple. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
  • Kill Vidian. Vidian's cutscene must be skipped manually, even with "Skip All Cutscenes" selected in options.

Act 3

• Stonefort
  This location can be accessed from the other end, by going to town, leaving through the gate and turning right. This, however, is only useful when you want to help your teammate with a kill bounty in Stonefort.
• The Keep Depth Level 1
  • Forged In Battle. Event with 45s timer. Use Town Portal trick. This event is usually located at the end of the map and can be accessed by going to The Keep Depths Level 2 waypoint and going backwards through the door.
• The Battlefields
  • The Cursed Garrison. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• The Bridge of Korsikk
  • All Kill bounties. The kill bounty in this location requires you to kill 150 mobs. The map doesn't have that many on the ground, but there's a lot of demonic birds in the sky. If you go too fast, the birds will never land, so you need to go slowly, especially on the westernmost part of the map.
• Rakkis Crossing
  • Blaze Of Glory. Event with 45s timer. Use Town Portal trick.
• The Ruins of Sescheron
  • The Cursed Bailey and The Cursed Eternal Woods. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.

Act 4

• Gardens of Hope 1st Tier
  • Kill bounties with 100 mobs. In this map you can go left, or right. If you go one way, you will find 80-90 mobs most of the time and then you will have to backtrack to get the last few kills. To avoid this, first swing the opposite way of where you need to go, and only then go in your chosen direction.
• Gardens of Hope 2nd Tier
  This is a very big map with static layout, that can be accessed from the other end. By going to Gardens of Hope 3rd Tier waypoint and going back through the portal. First open the map and locate the bounty ping (hover over it to make sure it's not Nekarat the Keywarden of Fright), and then go form the closest to it end of the map.
• Gardens of Hope 3rd Tier
  • Watch you step. Go along one of the edges of the room directly to the chest. Only activate 4 panels.
  • The Cursed Pulpit. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• The Silver Spire Level 2
  • The Cursed Chapel. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• Realm of ... Fate
  • The Cursed Realm. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
  • Kill Senahde. Don't need to kill any monsters (swap to travel mode at the start)

Act 5

• Westmarch Commons
  Many event bounties in this area only show quest marker when you get close to it. Good luck!
  • The Cursed Forum. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• Westmarch Heights
  • The Cursed Bone Pit. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• Paths of the Drowned
  • Kill Fangbite and Kill Morghum the Beast. Requires you to kill 150 enemies in Blood Marsh. First run to the Blood Marsh. When you reach the door, turn around and kill all enemies following you. In the Blood Marsh hug the outer edge of the map to make Boggits spawn. If you see multiple Tusked Bogans try to let them spawn Boggits before killing them.
  • Kill Lu'ca. Don't need to kill any monsters (swap to travel mode at the start)
  • The Cursed Peat. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
• Ruins of Corvus and Passage to Corvus
  • All Kill bounties. Walk next to the walls and holes in the floor to spawn large numbers of scarabs. If you go through the rooms too fast, you will need to backtrack and kill the scarabs that spawned behind you.
• Battlefields of Eternity
  • The Great Weapon. The worst bounty in the game. Take at least 2:40 to complete and there's no way to make it faster. For that reason the recommended strategy is to check the bounty in Battlefields of Eternity at the start of every game, and, if it's The Great Weapon, leave the game.
  • The Diversion. This event also has a timer, but the timer only ticks down, when there's no enemies next to the angels. The recommended strategy is to use the Town Portal trick immediately after initiating the even then coming back after doing 2 other bounties. If the timer hasn't advanced while you were away you can kill all the monsters and try Town Portal trick again, but that can cause the bounty to bug out.
• Pandemonium Fortress Level 1 and 2
  • All kill bounties. There's not enough mobs in Pandemonium Fortress. You can clear the entire level and not have enough. To reach the goal, you need to spawn extra mobs. For that you can: visit all the walkways between rooms and click petrified angels there, open chests in the rooms, click cursed chests, and activate random events.
  • The Cursed War Room. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.
  • Kill Malthael. At 70% HP Malthael will become invincible and start monologuing. Press "Close All Windows" to shut him up. At 50% HP Malthael will use a special attack, that has a chance to summon 2 Exorcists. The transition to phase 2 will not happen until they are dead. During the phase transition Malthael can spawn mist cloud under you that will deal damage before you can see the arena. To avoid it, spam a movement ability during the black screen; you can move before you can see.
• The Greyhollow Island
  • Kill Fharzula. Don't need to kill any monsters (swap to travel mode at the start)
  • The Cursed Wood. 100 enemies Cursed Chest.

Bounties are the only type of activity in Diablo III where joining even the worst possible group is better than going solo. For that reason it's incredibly important that average person playing Public games knows what they're doing, because it makes Bounty farming faster and more enjoyable for everyone. I hope this guide helped you improve your bounty gameplay!

Credits

Written by Northwar

Reviewed by Raxxanterax