Partying

Parties allow up to six people to play together. Players can create or join public parties by clicking on the Notice Board in town, or by pressing S to open the Social window. Players can also invite someone to a party by selecting a player's name in chat, clicking on them in town, or typing /invite playername in the chat console.

Effect on monsters

Monsters gain extra life for each additional party member after the first:

The original life amount is used for the purposes of determining the length of stuns and status ailments – this means monsters will not be harder to stun/freeze/etc when fighting in a party.

It is believed that monster's extra life gain is only affecting nearby ones, therefore players leaving map before new monsters are encountered have no effect on their life.

Effect on loot

Each player after the first adds the following bonus:

Bonuses to item rarity or quantity from modifiers on player gear are only counted from the player who lands the killing blow. This bonus is multiplicative with any player bonuses to rarity/quantity. Any quantity bonus from a map is multiplicative with all other modifiers.

Item drops from monsters are calculated based on the number of players nearby (13 metres - around six tiles, which is approximately a screen) rather than the number in the instance. The quantity of drops is based on the minimum of the number of players who were around at the start and end of the fight. This means that if you spawn a boss alone before bringing in friends to help (or if the friends leave during the fight) then it will only drop enough items for one person.

Maps

The chance of a non-unique Map dropping is not affected by party size. They are affected by the quantity and rarity bonuses provided by the Map they are dropped inside of.

Unique maps are dropped as part of the normal Item drop system and not governed by the same rules as other non-unique maps so they do get the party bonus.

Effect on experience

See experience in party for more information.

Effect on flasks

Party members of a character landing the killing blow on an enemy will gain flask charges if they are nearby. This is not true for all +Life and + Mana gained "when you deal a killing blow" modifiers; only a character actually landing a killing blow will trigger those effects.

Benefits of partying

Parties allow players to share all benefits of buffs that apply to allies and all debuffs to monsters. Some examples include:

• auras

  • Discipline gives allies in radius flat energy shield.

• curses

  • Elemental Weakness Lowers enemies resistance to elemental damage. Making them take more damage.

• ally specific bonuses from items, gems, etc.

  • The Druggery allows nearby allies to recover life from the users flasks.

Downsides of partying

When partying with characters, downsides can happen that a solo player would not have to encounter. Some of these challenges are temporary and can be worked around. Some problems like lag may be permanent for some players. These examples will focus mainly on problems that may occur with a party with strangers.

• Curses - Curses can over-ride each other based on the curse priority rules. This can be fixed by having everyone in the party agree to only let 1 player apply all of their curses and nobody else is allowed to curse.

• Pace - The speed at which different individuals prefer to kill or move can vary based on the individual. The variance in the speed of different characters is high enough that it may take some time to find players who enjoy your pace to party with.

• Lag - Lag is a colloquial term for anything that slows down things in the game like big drops in Frames per second or temporary screen freezes. It is not necessarily referring to internet speed, though that can be a source of lag. What does or does not cause lag can sometimes be relative to the speed of the individual computer, but the resources used can be expected more accurately. Things which use up much more resources from GPU and CPU are more likely to lag the party in general. Therefore this list will show some of the most resource intensive builds that are known for causing more lag than average builds.

  • Minions - Minions can lag more than the average build even with small numbers. The resources used are much higher if the player is using a large army.

  • very Fast Attack or cast speed - The speed at which you use skills affects resources used.

  • Note - More resources being used may not always be the source of the lag.

• Damage scaling - Some sources of damage scaling can be lowered from certain optional game mechanics used in builds. For Example:

  • The Impaler - This keystone passive will block impale damage from other players. This only affects parties where multiple characters are using impale damage.

• Item Drops - Different players prefer different loot allocation options. Also different players may have different expectations of picking up expensive drops. This can make it take longer to find a group who has the same expectations for item drops as you. Some examples of these expectations in group play include:

  • Loot FFA and sharing - These groups use Loot Free for all option. Anyone can pick up any item at any time with this loot allocation. This loot option is good for not leaving anything behind and picking up items as fast as possible. The downside is faster players may get better items. The no sharing part means anyone can pick up anything and you don't have to share, even if expensive items like exalted orbs drop. Some players may also expect high value drops to be shared. If you are unsure you can ask the group what their expectations are when joining.

  • Short-Allocation - Short allocation makes it so items are reserved for individual players for a short duration of time. After that short duration is over anyone can then pick up those items. This allows slow players a chance to get good gear, while also not leaving items behind, because some people pick up items other players don't.

  • Permanent Allocation - All items are permanently allocated. This option makes it so very slow players do not lose out on the chance of getting valuable items, at the cost of items being left behind that other players could use, because some people pick up items other players don't.