The dagger was comparing against your wand only, whereas the staff is 2-handed and compares against wand + offhand.

If you haven't done all the strongholds, there are a few in those.

Other than that, just run around the map to all the blurry bits and you'll find them. Or look up a map online.

For a moment, I was wondering if there was something easier than the ATO's online tax return stuff. But nah, it's just that.

For anyone with simple tax situation (salary, maybe a few deductions here and there), it's definitely the easiest and quickest way.

I don't see how "make helltides almost completely pointless" could be a feature. But hey, it's Blizzard.

Sounds about right. If they've deliberately made this change, they should change the "recommended level" text on the world tier descriptions as it's now mandatory, not just recommended.

it feels like work to dutifully collect all golds just to sell without even looking at them because i only care about legendary, which are rare and mostly not even useful for my build.

That's not quite right. Legendaries are usually only useful for their aspects. The rares are the ones you want to be looking at. You find a rare with 3/4 good affixes, reroll the last to something good, imprint a legendary aspect on it, and you've got an excellent item.

That one's a side-quest dungeon with a fixed layout. For the "By Three They Come" quest, judging by your quest journal.

The same way that the basements are 10 times bigger than the houses themselves.

WTF is that giant creature supposed to be?

The massive drop rate reduction is a confirmed bug that they'll be hotfixing.

Still doing campaign at level 55? No wonder it's feeling grindy. Monsters cap out at level 50 in WT1/WT2 so you won't be getting much in the way of experience and you won't be getting better items.

Rerolling item affixes is done at the occultist (where you extract and inscribe aspects) and is called "enchanting". You unlock this at level 25.

Yep. As they'd said repeatedly, the premium battlepass is just extra cosmetics. You get armour/weapon skins, emotes, titles, horse stuff. Nothing that affects the gameplay at all. The smoldering ashes that have gameplay effects are all available on the battlepass for free without the premium unlock.

The only way the premium battlepass is "worth it" is if you really like buying useless cosmetics. Not my thing, but I figure some people enjoy it.

Also set "cursor scale" to large so you actually see the damn thing during fights.

The trick is... you don't get the mastery.

I found another I found in a cellar that seemed impossible - there's a guy trying to absorb some creatures or something (hey, I wasn't paying attention!), but they only seem to spawn one after every wave, and the guy has to do some long animation thing after you get the creature to 20% health or so. I only managed to get 2 of 5 done by the time the timer ran out. Maybe it'll be easier if I ever see this event again at a higher level, but I've only seen it once so far since release.

You can start a seasonal character without completing any campaign. What you can't access is the seasonal content. This starts after you complete the campaign - so you won't see malignant creatures or the quest line or gems or whatever until you've completed the campaign.

I'm a self-checkout hater, but that's mostly because I'd rather dump my groceries on the conveyor and zone out while someone else gets paid to do the work. If I do self-checkout, I have to do everything myself and then it complains and I have to get staff to come fix it and it's all so stressful.

Finishing the campaign unlocks the campaign skip for new characters. Seasonal characters will not be able to access seasonal content (malignant hearts, extra story, etc) until the campaign is complete or skipped... so unless you feel like playing through the whole campaign again, you'll want to complete it with your eternal character first.

Malls Balls would have to be the thing, right?

Please no helicopters.

Cinder drop rate is a confirmed bug, so at least they'll fix that.

The mystery boxes were definitely worth running if you were looking for legendary aspects. 2+ legendaries per mystery box, I usually got 4 or 5. It didn't take very long to get 175 cinders and you collected lots of obols at the same time.

Now at 250 cinders it's just going to be slower. Ugh.

Is it possible that allowed her to choose seasonal when she set it up? She can’t remember what she chose.

Unless the character was created pre-season, there's nothing that would stop her from selecting seasonal realm on character creation. It's also the default for new characters.

The most likely answer is "she created a seasonal character".