Town Portal Scroll

A Town Portal is a spell that opens a portal to the closest Horadrim magical gateway. This spell was learnable in Diablo I, but could only be cast from scrolls in Diablo II. It is not found in Diablo III.

Diablo 3 Town Portals

There are no town portals in Diablo III. The D3 Team felt they were an exploitive game mechanism that made it too easy to escape from danger. In Diablo III characters must stay in the fight, or try to flee on foot.

To make travel easier in Diablo III, there are more Waypoints than there were in Diablo II. There are also various conveniences to make it less necessary to return to town. These include the Scroll of Wealth, the salvage cube and various conveniences from the merchant NPCs in the Caravan.

Jay Wilson commented on this during an interview at Gamescom 2010:

Gamona.de: There are no town portals in Diablo 3. What’s the alternative for easy travel?

Jay Wilson: We’ve put in several things to offset the lack of Town Portals. The most obvious are more frequent Waypoints. These give players more opportunities to return to go back to town. We’ve also added salvaging to let players break items down into small parts that stack up in your inventory. We’ve also added a Scroll of Wealth that allows you to sell items right on location.