Well known YouTuber Rhykker shared details after playing a special preview build of Diablo 4. In a nutshell, a special preview build was included in the early part of the game and you can only reach a maximum level of 25 out of 100. There were three classes available to play. The barbarian, the sorcerer and the rogue. He was able to play through the prologue of the game where they were restricted to the fractured peaks region of the world. This is one of the five zones in the game and he was able to go everywhere freely without having to see a loading screen. When he went far out of the area the game simply teleported him back to the fractured peaks.
You start in the dark and scary icy lands of the fractured peaks. Initially you are attacked by wolves (or wargs) and a bear, and later on skeletons appear and eventually you will find familiar demons – the fallen led by the fallen Shaman resurrecting demons. The first quest takes you into a dungeon where you help some poor peasants. It is similar to the den of evil quest from Diablo 2 and at the end of it, you will have to fight the boss.
According to Rhykker, Diablo 4 has the best story line of any Diablo games yet! And now with Diablo 4 we have more story than all past Diablos combined.
The first thing you are presented with on the character creating screen is the campfire where you can select the class of your hero. Then you have tons of customization options. You can pick either a male or female body, you have several faces to pick from, different hairstyles, and accessories, like earrings and so on.
Once you've created your character and started the game you are gently guided through the main story line. Rhykker says the world around the character is full of a variety of side quests, and there are multiple towns and camps to visit and even unlock. That's cool!
You aren't always handheld through literally every step of a quest. For instance, Rhykker encountered a side quest that he could not complete, so after reading the quest log he saw that in this quest the character is required to "Give Thanks" at The Shrine by the road. However, there was nothing to click on or interact with this shrine. Then, Rhykker had an idea. He brought up the emote wheel and saw the give thanks option available there. After he selected that option the quest was completed.However, this quest is the exception rather than the rule, and most quests do not require reading the instructions.
Apart from quests, there are different pop-up events. While you are heading towards your quest sometimes you will suddenly see something spawn in the game world indicated on your mini map. If you go, there then you will be involved in some kind of random event like kill monsters near three ritual altars, fill them with blood within a given time limit etc. And then you have two objectives. A basic objective and a mastery objective. If you complete both of them you will get more awards then if you had only completed the first objective.
We are told by Rhykker that there are also mini dungeons with just one room and full-blown dungeons with complex objectives, with a final boss to fight at the end, as well as treasure goblins you can run into.
Additionally, there are altars of Lilith hidden away in the world. If you find one and click on it you will gain a permanent buff to all your characters, for example a permanent Health buff.
Another activity in the world is strongholds. These are outposts that have been overrun by evil and you need to clear them out via completing some objectives within the strongholds. Once you've done that, they are permanently transformed into something more beneficial for you. For example, it could be a town Hub with vendors and a waypoint, or it could unlock new dungeons. It could even unlock a new recurring event.
And, of course, there are epic scale world bosses to fight. Rhykker tells us, that while most of the content in the game could be finished alone, you would need help of your friends to win one of the epic fights.
Speaking of other players, you run into them inside of towns, but outside of town, you're mostly on your own, and you can invite up to three people into your party. Additionally, you will run into other players during pop-up events since these will attract other players into your area.
Finishing strongholds, dungeons, picking up waypoints, activating Altars of Lilith, completing side quests or simply discovering world areas will grant you Renown Points. This is a new fame system and leveling it up will give you rewards like gold, experience, or even extra skill points. There are five levels of Renown you can achieve per zone, and some of the rewards are account-wide. Which means all the characters in your account will get this boost!
Completing some dungeons will unlock a Codex power which is basically a legendary buff that you can imbue upon a weapon. Therefore, you can specifically hunt out certain dungeons to complete in order to unlock a specific codex power.
During the combat you will find yourself using the evade mechanic quite often. While playing you have the ability to press space to execute a quick dodge, and it has a cooldown period, so you can't just spam it.
In combat you will find yourself wanting to prioritize targets: ranged attackers hit pretty hard and so you may want to run past the melee guys to take out the snipers first.
Rhykker mentions how potion management becomes important in combat. It works as follows. You have one button that you hit to use your potion. Your potion has a number of charges which can be increased over time, but potions operate more like Diablo 3 Health Globes, except with the ability to store them for later. So a health potion drops, you grab it and it fills up a charge assuming your charges are not full. You get these health potions to drop by killing enemies or damaging bosses. There is no time period you have to wait to replenish your potions. You have to fight for it. In a boss fight you see the boss' health bar and there are ticks at different health percentages. Once you lower the boss' health past a tick, it drops potions. So you need to carefully manage your potion use, in order to ensure you have enough potions to last you throughout the full fight.
Death in Diablo IV has a steeper penalty than in Diablo 3. In addition to taking durability damage to your gear, you will respawn all the way back at a checkpoint, rather than at your corpse ! So, in Diablo IV will set you back possibly to the start of a dungeon.
In Diablo IV, each hero class has a different special ability. Overall Rhykker states that each of the classes get something special. For example:
The Sorceress has the enchant system where you can eventually select up to two skills to put in your enchant slot which basically makes them trigger passively. So this is another way of saying that sorceresses basically get two extra skills in their build.
The Rogue lets you pick one of three specializations that each offer a different play style or build options. Some of the specializations require more active play, while others are passive buffs. The Rogue is also able to equip more weapons than the Sorceress. The Rogue can equip two one-handed melee weapons, plus one two-handed range weapons. Whenever you activate a melee skill, you automatically swap to the melee weapons, and when you use a range skill you automatically swap to your ranged weapon. So what this basically means is you have one extra item slot than the Sorceress.
The Barbarian gets the Arsenal system which does a couple of things. First off the Barbarian gets yet another item slot on top of the Rogue, so the Barb can equip two one-handed weapons and two two-handed weapons. In Diablo IV the Barbarian gets more item slots than anyone. Then you can assign specific skills to be used with specific weapons. Many skills have requirements like must use a two-handed weapon or must be dual wielding. On top of that by using different types of weapons like a one-handed sword or a two-handed sword, you get better with that class of weapons, unlocking additional bonuses when using that type of weapon.
Our YouTube friend Rhykker continues by telling us that when it comes to the skill tree, we start off with a selection of basic resource generating skills. Once you put enough points into those, you progress deeper down the skill tree, where you get to pick from a selection of resource spending skills. Then after investing enough points, you are able to move on to other kinds of skills, generally more utility type skills, eventually coming to an ultimate. Throughout the tree there are passive skills that you can put points into as well for Passive bonuses. However, every active skill can have a Max of Five Points put into it and then as an offshoot from that active skill, you can also choose to apply a point to an upgrade, that modifies the skill in some way. If you do that, then there are two other upgrades where you can only pick one skill or the other.
In Diablo IV, we have the following types of items:
- Normal
- Magic
- Rare
- Legendary
- Sacred Legendary
- Ancestral Legendary
- Unique items
We are told by Rhykker that in Diablo IV, there will be no set items. I'm not sure if this is a good idea to remove the set items. In previous Diablos I had fun collecting green set items. This will be interesting to see how removing the set items affects our game play.
Normal items we are told have no magic affixes. As you go from Magic items to rare itesm towards Legendary items, you get more and more random magic affixes. Additionally, legendary items have a random Legendary Power on them. Sacred and Ancestral items only start dropping at high level end game. Unique items are best in slot end-game items, and they are basically supercharged versions of legendary items. They are also supposed to be incredibly rare and we are told by the developers, that the average player can expect to find only a couple throughout an entire season. They only start dropping at much higher levels and they are meant to be pinnacle items for specific builds.
Drop rates for Legendaries seem to be quite low and more than one person said, they reached level 25 without ever seeing one drop, and the developers confirmed that they want to keep drop rates low for Legendaries especially at the lower levels.
So what are the developers saying? Let's say you found an item with a Legendary power on it. If you find a better base item, you can extract this power from the Legendary item, which will destroy the item, and it will create a one time use consumable called an aspect that holds this Legendary power. Now you can take that aspect and put it into either a rare item, which will turn it into a Legendary item with that power, or you can put it into an existing Legendary item, in which case it's going to override that existing power.
Codex powers are basically infinite use aspects. Once you have unlocked a codex power by completing a dungeon, you can always imprint that power into a rare item or a Legendary item. However, these codex powers will always be weaker versions of what can roll on an item. Aspect can only be imprinted on specific types of items, for example, you may be able to apply it to a weapon or jewelry slot but not onto boots.
There are two other ways to improve your gear with the blacksmith and the occultist.
The blacksmith can upgrade your gear a certain number of times, at the cost of crafting materials and gold. This is going to boost the item's base stats plus its affixes.
The occultist lets you to re-roll one affix on an item into either a better role or another random affix.
When it comes to trading items, Legendary and Unique items cannot be traded! Items you've enchanted at the occultist cannot be traded. But pretty much everything else can be traded.
Drops are also personal, so you don't have to fight for the loot as you can only see your own drops.
Diablo IV has a variety of gems which seem to offer more interesting choices than that what is found in Diablo 3. You can upgrade gems and you can remove them from items. Rune words however are gone! In Diablo IV we are introduced to another currency in the game apart from gold called Opals, which cannot be traded because they are like bloodshards from Diablo 3.
There's a ton of different crafting materials to collect, some from salvaging items, some by collecting them in the open world, like grabbing herbs. Herbs in particular can be used at The Alchemist to upgrade your potions. At the Alchemist, you can even craft elixirs which grant 30 minute buffs like increasing your Dodge Chance by five percent and gain experience by three percent.
Diablo 4 will support crossplay, which means, this is AWESOME! It is going to have cross progression between PC and consoles, so we can be on a PC we're playing with, and our buddy on Xbox can play along as well! Then you can take your same character, and go onto your Xbox, and keep playing with that same character as well. Consoles will also have couch Co-op, and the game will not be locked to a region, meaning, if you are in Europe you can play with people in North America.
Wow, I'm blown away. If this has been described, as I have imagined, just hearing this, this is truly amazing!