How To: Minimise Town Time

In this guide, I'll be going through how to minimise time spent in town, and explaining when to visit town in the first place.

How to Minimise Town Time

There are four main parts to this:

1. Knowing when to visit town
2. Planning what you'll do in town
3. Prepping your inventory before you even portal in
4. Vendor Regexes

Knowing When to Visit Town

Each act has good and bad moments to return. Ideally, you only go back when you're about to hit a major power spike or when a quest physically requires it - for example, returning to grab the spikes from Renly after defeating The Rust King.

Unnecessary trips to town are one of the biggest time-wasters during the campaign, so the goal is to align your returns with natural breakpoints. I'll outline the optimal return times for every act later in the guide so you know when to portal back.

Planning What You'll Do in Town

When you do return, go with a plan:

• Which vendor you're checking and what items you're looking for
• Which NPCs you're turning quests in with
• Which reward you're going to take

One of the biggest mistakes is wandering around town clicking on every NPC with an exclamation mark just because it's there. Treat town like a checklist: get in, execute your plan, get out.

Prepping Your Inventory

Prepping your inventory means organizing it before you even go back to town. This avoids the "post-portal pause" where you stand in town staring at your inventory trying to figure out what you want to keep or sell.

A simple system works best:

• Left side: items you want to keep
• Right side: items you plan to vendor

This way, when you arrive in town, you instantly know what to do with every item. Dump the right side into the vendor, and you're done.

Vendor Regexes

Having a vendor regex is a huge time saver. Instead of hovering over every item to check if it's usable, you can instantly spot anything worth buying because it will be highlighted. This makes vendor checks take single digit seconds.

Each build will need a different regex depending on which stats, or bases it cares about. For example, attack builds, spellcasters, and minion builds all look for different keywords.

Here's an example of the regex I use in Act 1 for my Ballista Grenades Leaguestarter:

"cross|mov|[egdl] da.* a|s.* skills"

This regex highlights:

• Crossbows,
• Movement Speed,
• Bases with added damage to attacks (for gloves)
• Items with skill gem modifiers

Act 1

Note: These aren’t the only valid times to return to town, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to go back at every point listed. Use these as guidelines, not strict rules.

The ones in bold mean they're not forced by quest state, but I recommend to go back, either to check for gear, or hand in an optional quest.

• After killing The Rust King - Mandatory trip for quest progression (grabbing spikes from Renly)
• After killing Lachlann - A great chance to get a weapon upgrade, as we hit a breakpoint in item levels
• After Freythorn - Another great chance to get a weapon upgrade, and we need to portal out to get out of the zone anyway
• Before Geonor - To pick up our level 5 skill gem, and check for a weapon upgrade before Geonor
• After Geonor - To make our way to Act 2

Act 2

Act 2 is self explanatory. We only go back when we're forced to do so to progress.

• After killing Rudja - We need to go back to town to progress the quest state
• After The Halani Gates - We need to go back to town to progress the quest state and go to Keth
• After Buried Shrines - We need to go back to get to Mastodon Badlands
• After The Bone Pits - We need to go back to get to Valley of the Titans
• After The Titan Grotto - Again, we need to progress the quest state to get to Deshar
• After Spires of Deshar - Here we can get our passive points, and progress to The Dreadnought
• After Jamanra - To make our way to Act 3

Act 3

• After The Venom Crypts - To hand in the quest and check vendors
• After The Azak Bog - To hand in another quest to receive a charm
• After The Matlan Waterways - To make our way towards The Drowned City
• After Apex of Filth - After killing the boss in this zone, DO NOT PORTAL BACK. Take the checkpoint from the boss to the waypoint, and then use the waypoint to go to The Drowned City, and then walk in to town from there. You'll find yourself right at the Temple of Kopec
• After Temple of Kopec - We need to return so we can go to Utzaal
• After Doryani - To make our way to Act 4

Act 4

• After completing all three islands + the passive point island - To talk to The Hooded One and make our way to Arastas
• After Benedictus - To progress to Ngakanu
• After Tavakai - To make our way to the Interludes.