With the release of Vessel of Hatred, Diablo IV has seen its most significant changes since its original launch in June 2023. Adding a completely new region, Nahantu, along with a wealth of added characters and modes and a brand-new story, the expansion pack is the very definition of a game changer. But it goes even further than that, bringing in entirely new ways to upgrade items, a revamp of the World Tiers, new animal-morphing classes, and a new level cap. However, we meet change without fear, offering a litany of guides to get you up to speed.
For instance, Diablo IV now has NPC Mercenaries you can hire to come with you on your brawling, but you’re only going to find them by following a specific series of quests. Then there are those Spiritborn classes that let you pick between being able to possess the powers of a Jaguar, Eagle, Gorilla, or Centipede…Wait, centipede? No, we’ve checked, that’s definitely correct—and apparently one of the best choices for end-game content.
And this all follows on from piles of massive changes earlier this year, which saw the introduction of loot-fest The Pit, a new way to improve loot called Tempering, the addition of Mythic Uniques, and Infernal Hordes to battle. It’s mayhem!
But worry not, as here we’ve collected every guide we’ve published for Diablo IV’s big changes, which will see you flying toward the new level cap in no time at all.
Image: Square Enix, 505 Games, Capcom, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios / Sega, Blizzard, Sega, Blizzard, Kojima Productions, Screenshot: Capcom
It’s the start of a new month, which means there’s a host of hot, new games coming your way. It can get overwhelming, scanning through the various game marketplaces to decide what you should spend your hard-earned money on, so we’ve gathered 34 games coming out this month that we’re stoked for. We’ve also spotted some great sales you may want to take advantage of, like Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, the original Resident Evil trilogy, Diablo 4 ahead of its huge expansion, and a bunch of turn-based RPGs at a steal.
We also beg you to check out Yakuza 0 before watching the upcoming Amazon Prime series, let you in on the things we wish we knew before playing the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, and highlight everything Hideo Kojima is working on. Click through for all the helpful hints of the week. You’re welcome.
Microsoft has officially rolled out Game Pass Standard, the Netflix-like subscription service’s new middle tier, and with it revealed which games will and won’t be included at the start. Among those missing are Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 3, Diablo IV, and some other notable blockbusters like Starfield.
The Week In Games: What’s Coming Out Beyond Starfield
Announced earlier this summer, Game Pass Standard is $15 a month and includes access to online multiplayer as well as a library of hundreds of games that can be downloaded and played on-demand. The big difference between Game Pass Standard and Game Pass Ultimate, the now $20 a month version, is that the former won’t include certain day-one additions to the library until up to 12 months later or even longer in some cases. The most notable example is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which will only be part of Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass PC when it launches on October 25.
But a list of the existing libraries for each tier also reveals other discrepancies for games that already came to the service. Modern Warfare 3, added last month, is notably absent. As is Diablo IV, added in the spring with a new expansion, Vessel of Hatred, coming October 8. Valorant, Riot Games’ hero shooter that recently came to console, is free-to-play but locks certain characters behind a paywall. The Game Pass version that unlocks them all for free is part of Ultimate but not Standard.
There are some smaller day-and-date games missing as well. Flintlock, the colonial-era Soulslike, came to Game Pass in July but isn’t included in Standard’s library. Neither is Another Crab’s Treasure, the cartoony Soulslike that joined in April. Still Wakes The Deep, the horror walking sim that arrived in June, is also absent. It seems like a lot of recent day-one Game Pass releases, including Microsoft’s own Age of Mythology Retold, won’t be hitting Standard anytime soon, despite arriving on the service before the split was official. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II isn’t there either, nor Starfield which came out over a year ago.
When will we see these games and others make it to the middle tier? That’s the most confusing part of all. For now there doesn’t seem to be one standard approach, with all releases being staggered by the same number of months. Even for Microsoft’s own first-party releases, it seems like their arrival on Standard will happens when it happens. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, for example, might not hit Game Pass Standard until it first arrives on PS5 in the spring.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s now possible to quickly and easily play the original 1997 Diabloon your PC or phone via a simple website. Just load it up on your browser and you can start killing demons and skeletons like it’s the ‘90s all over again.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
The original Diablo was developed by Blizzard North and released in January 1997 for PC. Its single dungeon, evil monsters, creepy town, and loot-filled catacombs forever changed the action RPG genre. Today, the OG Diablo might seem a bit small and simple compared to the wild open-world adventure we find in 2023’s Diablo 4. But Diablo’s vibes are still unmatched by any of its sequels, and now you can experience the classic ARPG for free on your phone or PC browser.
As spotted by PC Gamer, a new website has popped up that lets you play the shareware version of the original Diablo in your browser. This new web-based port of the game was built using Diablo’s original source code, which was previously reconstructed by GalaXyHaXz and the Devilution team and can be found on GitHub.
Blizzard / Izie
Now, keep in mind that unless you own Diablo and upload the “DIABDAT.MPQ” file, you won’t have access to everything found in the retail release. Still, the shareware version of Diablo lets you play as a warrior who can’t talk to NPCs, but can kill demons and loot weapons in the dungeon under the church in Tristram.
In my testing, this browser-based port of Diabloplays really well. I had no issues exploring the dark corridors and killing zombies and skeletons. Just toss your old Diablo save and DIABDAT.MPQ file onto a service like Google Drive or a USB stick and you can play Blizzard’s seminal ARPG anywhere with an internet connection.
In fact, you could be playing Diablo right now on the device you are currently using instead of working or reading the last sentence of this blog.
Last week, Microsoft laid off 1900 video game workers across its various studios. This included cuts at recently acquired Activision Blizzard. And one employee, before being laid off, used a Blizzard company perk to walk away with nearly 10 years of World of Warcraft subscription codes.
Diablo IV’s Strongholds Are A Great Way To Level Up This Season
The video game industry’s terrible 2023, which saw thousands of people laid off across multiple companies, has continued into 2024. As of January 29, according to Kotaku’s layoff tracker, nearly 6,000 cuts have been made at places like Unity, Riot, Bethesda, Twitch, Discord, and Activision Blizzard. One developer at Blizzard realized what was happening and took advantage of a company perk before losing access.
As spotted by PC Gamer, on January 25, the same day the layoffs at Blizzard happened, former product lead Adam Holisky tweeted that once he “realized what was happening” and that he was one of the nearly 2,000 people losing their jobs that day, he made sure to “jump into Keyring and use all the 1-year [pre-paid World of Warcraft] subscription codes” he had yet to activate.
He then shared a screenshot that shows that he doesn’t have to pay for his World of Warcraft subscription until October 14, 2033. That’s one hell of a parting gift and beats a watch or pizza party, that’s for sure.
“Free game time is a well-known employee benefit,” Holisky added on Twitter. “I just never used all the codes I got over the years. It’s nothing sketchy or immoral.”
I reached out to Holisky and he explained to me that Keyring is an internal system at Blizzard where employees can access digital game codes that they “earned for whatever reason.”
He clarified that he had stockpiled these one-year codes while working at Blizzard for nearly five years. Another employee who was laid off at the company tried a similar tactic, but it seems so many others were trying to get their codes before getting laid off that they all crashed the Keyring service.
So Holisky was like Indiana Jones sliding under the door and grabbing his hat at the last second, except the stone door is horrible layoffs causing 1,900 people to be out of work and the hat is a decade of key codes. And while a decade of WoW subscription time is a nice prize, I assume most folks would rather have a job instead.
Just in time for the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Blizzard is letting you playDiablo IV for free for one full week on Steam right now. That’s a pretty sweet deal among a crop of other pretty sweet deals that Valve is offering as part of the PC gaming store’s massive annual Autumn Sale.
Blizzard tweeted on November 21 that the action-RPG has a free trial going on until November 28. If you head toDiablo IV’s Steam page right now, you can get the demon-slaying, loot-hunting game for the low until the end of the week.
“Give thanks and drag your friends to Hell,” Blizzard said. “Play Diablo IV for free on Steam, from now until November 28th at [10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET].”
This free Steam trial coincides nicely with a gold and XP bonus Blizzard is also running in Diablo IV. Dubbed Mother’s Blessing Week, folks playing the game will earn 35 percent more gold and experience points until November 27. This bonus applies to everyone, including people running amok in the Eternal and Seasonal realms, as well as players across all four World Tiers (Diablo IV’s interpretation of difficulty setting). Blizzard really wants this game to take over your Thanksgiving holiday, it seems.
Diablo IV—out now on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox—is running its second season of content, the Season of Blood. The new update, which brought the game to Steam on October 17, adds gameplay changes (like revamping inventory management) and story content while promising an easier grind so folks can level up faster. It’s the first of many seasonal drops, which will be interspersed between yearly paid expansions. The first DLC, Vessel of Hatred, arrives next year, bringing with it a new class to play and a new region to explore.
At BlizzCon 2023, Blizzard announced it’s preparing to enter what it’s calling World of Warcraft’s “Worldsoul Saga,” a multi-expansion story arc in the MMORPG that it plans to roll out over the course of the next three expansions.
Diablo IV’s Strongholds Are A Great Way To Level Up This Season
During the convention’s opening ceremony, Warcraft Executive Creative Director Chris Metzen explained that the Worldsoul Saga will bridge the gap between the first 20 years of World of Warcraft and whatever Blizzard has planned next for the long-running MMORPG. The tenth expansion, titled The War Within, will kick things off and will be followed by the eleventh and twelfth expansions, called Midnight and The Last Titan, respectively. The next three expansions form a trilogy that will usher in the next era of World of Warcraft storytelling.
After Metzen outlined the next three expansions, Blizzard showed a cinematic trailer for The War Within, which featured long-time World of Warcraft figures Anduin and Thrall getting into a heated discussion before the camera panned to the Sword of Sargeras, a giant sword that was stabbed into the surface of Azeroth during the events of the Legion expansion.
Blizzard Entertainment
Following this, Blizzard showed a trailer running down new features, including new zones to travel around in Azj-Kahet, Isle of Dorn, The Ringing Deeps, and Hallowfall. Players will also be able to take part in cooperative PvE instances called Delves, transfer progression between multiple characters through Warbands, and take advantage of expanded Hero Talents. Check out the trailer below:
Blizzard Entertainment
The War Within will launch in fall 2024. While past World of Warcraft expansions have launched around two years apart for years, Metzen says Blizzard is looking to release Midnight and The Last Titan with less downtime between. However, he didn’t give a specific timeline. It’s possible World of Warcraft’s next three expansions could launch annually, and that the next era of the MMO could be a reality in the next few years. Before that, however, World of Warcraft now have three more expansions to look forward to.
During Gamescom’s Opening Night Live presentation, Blizzard took to the stage alongside host Geoff Keighley to announce that Diablo IV’s next update, Season of Blood, will start on October 17—just in time for Halloween.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Much like Diablo IV’s current update, Season of the Malignant, Season 2 will introduce five new and returning endgame bosses, and will also come with changes to renown rewards, gem and stash storage, and resistance and status effects. While the studio didn’t divulge details on what those updates will be just yet, Blizzard came through with a new trailer showing off what to expect come this October.
If you thought that looked kinda gruesome, well, I’m right there with you. With vampire hunter Erys at your side, it’ll be up to the two of you to put an end to a new threat roaming the lands of Sanctuary. Erys is voiced by Gemma Chan, who you might recognize from Captain Marvel (Minn-Erva), Raya and the Last Dragon (Namaari), Crazy Rich Asians (Astrid), and Eternals (Sersi), among other films and TV shows. Revealing that this is her first video game performance, Chan, alongside Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson, briefly talked about the “badass warrior companion” Erys, some “cool vampiric powers” at your disposal, and a “big bad vampire lord” you’ll face at Season of Blood’s end.
But that’s not until October 17. For now, Season of the Malignant is still going on, and unfortunately, things haven’t been going well. After a controversial change to player power level, the studio addressed the community by promising to not make classes weaker, which Blizzard is aware leads to a “not fun” experience overall. Here’s hoping things go better with Season of Blood.
It’s been two months since Diablo IV came out and players are airing their frustrations with the game, particularly now that season one is underway. One of the most contentious aspects of the loot-hunting action-RPG right now is inventory management, which has become a hot topic in the community.
Diablo IV, like previous entries in Blizzard’s storied franchise, features a massive amount of loot; expect a constant deluge of gear drops from bosses and chests and dungeons as you travel the world of Sanctuary. With a total of 110 inventory slots, your bag will inevitably run out of space. And that’s fine, until you need to make room for that awesome armor or weapon you just snatched. There are some options for clearing your inventory, but the process is so cumbersome and tedious that players are feeling burnt out from over-micromanaging their wares, a feeling I’ve experienced during my own playtime.
The problem with managing Diablo IV gear
The Diablo IV subreddit is inundated with folks decrying inventory management. With post titles like “Comparing items and clearing inventory is overwhelming” and “Inventory management is burning me out from this game,” it’s clear folks have grown weary of frequently rummaging through the in-game bag. Part of the problem is you can’t dismantle or salvage items anywhere in the world. Maybe it’s to make the game feel more lifelike, but to break gear down into other resources, you must travel to a blacksmith at any of Sanctuary’s many towns. This not only interrupts the loot-kill-loot loop by forcing you back to a borough to tend to equipment, it also wastes time as you head back to a town by either backtracking on foot/horseback or sitting through a long loading screen when teleporting. Either way, with a full inventory, looting becomes impossible until you clear more space in your inventory.
Diablo IV’s Strongholds Are A Great Way To Level Up This Season
Diablo IV’s Strongholds Are A Great Way To Level Up This Season
Aside from salvaging, you could drop useless things to make space for better loot. However, while doing so is easy with a few button presses, it’s ultimately a self-defeating endeavor as every piece of gear can be sold or broken down, which is far better for your longer-term bottom line. Maybe you can’t use that level 75 dagger with your Sorcerer, but the iron or cash you can turn it into are necessary and vital for character growth, particularly for upgrading your current equipment. And this process of inspecting every item to determine whether to break it down, drop, or sell has been at the forefront of players’ minds.
Diablo IV players are tired of rummaging their bags
In a popular August 8 Reddit post, user FullStackNoCode joked that fiddling with inventory in Diablo IV is “like having to pee every five minutes.” They went on to explain that they’re “tired of running to town” just to manage the bag, saying a solution could be to allow players to sell or scrap items immediately.
“That’s all just busywork anyway, and highly annoying,” FullStackNoCode wrote. “Then, our bag space could be reserved for things that we want to be looking at/thinking about.”
Image: Blizzard
Another popular post from July 21, a day after Diablo IV’s Season of the Malignant started, saw user jlarue2010 say this new content update should be called “season of inventory management.” This is in reference to malignant hearts, season-exclusive items offering statistical buffs for your characters such as strength or defense that also happen to take up inventory space.
Players are also bumping up against the limits of their item stash, a separate area which lets you easily transfer items between your characters. A popular July 26 post from user Protocide559 explained how they won’t start a second character due to their stash already feeling tight just from saving gear for their current Druid. Diablo IV’s seasons require you to start new characters to participate, but because of the limited storage space, Protocide559 said they’re sticking with their pre-Season One Druid and refusing to play multiple characters like they did in previous Diablos.
“[Blizzard will give you a chance to buy more storage space. Don’t worry,” user vague_diss joked in reply.
Diablo IV’s inventory will get better, just at a later time
For its part, Blizzard has addressed some parts of bag management. Gems, items that can be slapped onto gear to provide buffs such as health on kill or additional gold collecting, will take up less inventory space in a future update. The company also said storage upgrades are coming, but again, at a later time. It’s great that inventory management will become less frustrating as time goes on, particularly considering how tedious it was in previous Diablo games. In the first Diablo, for example, your inventory was divided into a grid. A gem would take up one slot while an axe might take up three, thus filling up quicker. The series has moved beyond grid-based inventories, but Diablo IV’s inventory limitations are still finding ways to annoy players and interrupt game flow.
This happens to my partner and I all the time. We’ll grind dungeons for minutes on end, only to stop right in the middle of it to scour our inventories to make space for the new thing that just dropped because we ran out of space. We do this for what feels like every 10 or so minutes as our bags fill up nonstop, repeating the process of inspecting and culling. It becomes draining after a while, especially when Diablo IV can’t stop spilling loot all over the place.
As promised, Blizzard held a livestream today, July 28, going over what Diablo IV players ought to expect from the game’s upcoming 1.1.1 patch. During the stream, the developers laid out their overall philosophy behind the expected changes, and got into some specifics about what to expect when it lands on August 8, 2023.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
The Diablo IV community hasn’t been particularly happy with recent changes to the wildly popular action RPG. Shortly before the game’s first season, Blizzard pushed a patch that made sweeping changes to classes and quality of life features that’s been largely seen as a net negative. Players felt that the unwelcome adjustments made the game grindier, among other things. Last week, Blizzard acknowledged that the changes weren’t great and promised to never release a patch of that nature ever again. While full notes for the upcoming patch are expected to arrive next week, August 2, today’s stream gave a good sense of what to expect, with some changes to player power and a few reversals of controversial changes. You can watch the whole stream here:
Blizzard
Sorcerer’s and Barbarians, patch 1.1.1 is for you
Early on in the stream, lead class designer Adam Z. Jackson said that the Sorcerer and Barbarian will see the most changes.
“We know that Sorcerers typically have a tough time when they start getting pushed into later Nightmare Dungeon tiers, so we’re going to be looking at ways to increase [late game survivability] specifically.”
Jackson also said that the team is pinpointing what they call “kiss curse mechanics,” which is when the player gains “a really cool power or effect and then we kind of take something or nerf some other part of you, usually for balance reasons to make sure that it’s not out of control.” One example of this is an expected change to the Serpentine Aspect:
“[The Serpentine Aspect] is the one where you can spawn an additional Hydra, but it reduces the duration of your Hydras. That’s no longer going to reduce the duration. It’s actually going to increase it.”
Jackson said that the Barbarian’s early game experience will also get a boost. One concrete example of this is an improvement to Fury generation. In a slide shown during the stream, Bash, Flay, Frenzy, and Lunging Strike all see their Fury increased.
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
Jackson said the Barbarian ought to expect other improvements to the late game experience with alterations to Unique items that’ll swap existing effects for more useful ones.
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
While the other classes can expect some updates, they won’t be as comprehensive as Sorcerer and Barbarian. Still, increases to Spirit gains for the Druid ought to be welcome.
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
Blizzard aims to start expanding build options for Diablo IV in future updates
During today’s stream, Blizzard expanded a bit on how it wants to see build options change for Diabo IV. Jackson spoke to this directly:
“Vulnerable and Crit are really, really strong right now. A lot of the meta is about [making] an enemy vulnerable, and then you do bonus damage to them, and then you stack as much Crit Strike damage chance and Crit damage as you can, and then you blow them up. [Diablo IV] actually was foundationally made with other types of builds that aren’t only those in mind. We have “Damage Over Time” […] we also have “Overpower” as a mechanic in our game. [We want those damage types] to have parity with Vulnerable and Crit Damage.”
Jackson said that the long term goals with Diablo IV are to ensure that “if you’re an Overpower build, or a Crit build, or a Damage Over Time build, you’ll be relatively equal in power to all the different types of ways to play. This will be in addition to improving how skills and effects scale as players increase in level, potentially opening the door to late game builds that make use of typically discarded abilities. What might that look like? Jackson gave a couple of examples:
“We have a lot of legendary powers and effects that spawn ‘a new thing.’ An example of this is the [Barbarian’s legendary power that] spawns earthquakes or dust devils. Another one is the Necromancer [can] leave shadow trails on the ground that deal damage. These [effects] deal what we call ‘flat damage’ which is [where] we give it a damage number and then that’s how much it does. And that damage number scales with player level. But we find is that a lot of these [effects] are really good in the early and mid game […] but then when you get to the really late game, they kind of fall of really hard. And what we want to do is find ways to add scaling so that the player can opt into making a build out of these things. So if I want to be an ‘Earthquake Barbarian’ or a ‘Dust Devil Barbarian’ I can actually do that.”
Another key way the team is looking to expand build options is to mitigate how many skills require specific scenarios to function. One such is the Sorcerer’s chain lightning, which currently sees bonus damage when the lightning bounces off of you. 1.1.1 will change things so that you gain bonus damage when Enhanced Chain Lightning bounces off of anything.
Teleporting out of dungeons will take 3 seconds again and treasure goblins are getting better
In a complete reversal, the controversial change from dungeon teleportation from three to five seconds is getting reversed. Game Designer Joe Shelly said that the original intention of the change was to mitigate players teleporting themselves out of tough encounters and boss fights. Given the community’s reaction over this change, however, teleports are back to three seconds.
And while associate game director Joe Pieopiora discussed how the Treasure Goblin’s Legendary drop rate was actually 50 percent, player frustration over infrequent encounters with them led to a perception that it was far lower. Starting at level 15, Treasure Goblins are now guaranteed to drop a Legendary.
Other quality of life updates
As discussed during last week’s stream, monster density for Nightmare Dungeons and Helltides are going up. During the stream, the devs showed off a slide of what the increased monster presence will look like.
And while bosses will see their health boosted, at level 35 and up you’ll be guaranteed a Legendary item drop. Legion events will also see a guaranteed Legendary drop.
On the technical side, patch 1.1.1 is also expected to address a specific VRAM issue for PC players, so the game should be more stable.
Patch 1.1.1 is expected to arrive on August 8, with final patch notes coming on August 2.
While exploring dungeons in Diablo IV, you might encounter The Butcher, a terrifying and hard-to-kill demon boss who’s been a staple of the series since the original game in 1997. But if you get lucky, you might be able to easily kill this legendary baddie if he gets stuck behind a locked door. I’d feel bad for the guy, but he’s been getting trapped like this for nearly three decades now.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Released in June, Diablo IV is the latest entry in Blizzard’s popular and long-running demon-killin’ action-RPG franchise. The game offers mostly the same classic looting and dungeon-crawling action you’d expect from a Diablo game, with some of the same enemies and classes from past titles returning for this latest entry. Also returning is one of Diablo’s most famous bosses: The Butcher.
This big demon first appeared way back in 1997 and also showed up in Diablo III in 2012. He’s a fan of big cleavers, killing adventures and asking for fresh meat. He’s scary and has been wrecking Diablo IV players when he randomly (and rarely) shows up in a dungeon or basement. However, old-school Diablo players might already know his weakness: doors. And it appears not much has changed in 2023.
What makes this funnier is that back in the first Diablo, The Butcher was known to commonly get stuck on random bits of terrain or even, like in 2023, get trapped behind doors. And just like today, back then players would take advantage of the helpless Butcher and beat the demonic shit out of him until he died and spit out some loot.
As far as I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable way to force the ol’ Butcher to spawn behind a locked door. But if it happens to you, don’t feel bad as you murder him. You’re just taking part in an old, time-honored Diablo tradition.
If you’re jumping into Diablo IV for the very first time, you may not know which class to start with. And since each season in Diablo IV requires you to make a new character, if this isn’t your first rodeo you might want to check out a class you haven’t played before.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Either way, it can help to brush up on some basics, review what your class options are, and take a look at some solid builds.
How to pick a Diablo IV class for the very first time
Diablo IV is a game with a lot of numbers and choices, but don’t be too intimidated by the wide variety of builds and opportunities available to you.
The Necromancer is an excellent first choice for beginners. We’ve got a list of three solid Necromancer builds that give you a variety of options for commanding the forces of the undead.
Between the exploding Corpse Necromancer, Summoner Necromancer, and Bone Spear Necromancer, you’ll get a solid grasp of how to build out and wield this class.
How to build a Sorcerer in Diablo IV
The Sorcerer is a satisfying and approachable class to jump into a new character with. We’ve put together a list of three different Sorcerer builds focusing on different elements for your consideration.
Whether you pick the Fire, Lightning, or Frost sorcerer, you’ll be able to take your character to level 50 with our builds, bending elemental forces to your will.
Our guide covers the Storm Druid, Pulverizer Druid, and Shapeshifting Druid with specific considerations for werebear and werewolf form.
Barbarian builds for Diablo IV
The Barbarian might be a very straightforward, kill-everything-in-your-way class to pick, but don’t let that fool you: Like other classes, they’re surprisingly versatile. But if you just want to cover your basics, take a look at our guide for Barbarian builds. We focus on the Whirlwind, Bleed, and Upheaval Barbarian in our list.
The extreme amount of damage output makes the Barbarian an essential role in just about any party. But even if you’re playing solo, you’ll have a blast mopping up room-fulls of enemies.
But don’t let the Rogue’s steeper learning curve turn you away from what can be a very fun class to throw down with. You might stumble a bit in the beginning, but once your Rogue starts demolishing their foes, it’ll feel that much more rewarding.
Diablo IV’s multiple options for character builds, which can combine to create some unique synergies in a multiplayer party, might be complicated to understand at first. Once you build your first character, however, you’ll get a better sense of what ability types to focus on and will find more opportunities to experiment with future builds.
The last 48 hours of Diablo IV has been a little chaotic following wildly controversial changes to player power level in the game’s first pre-season patch. Now, developer Blizzard is doing a bit of damage control, taking to a livestream on July 21 to try and explain its decision-making process, as well as what changes it’s making in response to the overwhelmingly negative feedback.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Diablo IV’s latest patch, 1.1.0, dramatically reduced player power across the board. Changes include reductions to XP earned for various activities, as well as a diminished role to status effects like Vulnerability that have played a central role in class builds. It was a tumultuous set of changes to say the least, all documented in an exhaustive list of alterations via the official patch notes. As promised, Blizzard held a livestream today to address these changes, as well as provide some updates on future changes to the game—particularly in response to the negative feedback on the previous patch. You can watch the whole stream here:
Blizzard / Diablo
Reducing player power: ’We know it is bad. We know it is not fun.’
On the stream, Blizzard’s associate director of community management, Adam Fletcher, immediately responded to the overwhelmingly negative feedback in response to the patch, acknowledging that missteps were made and that the reduction to player power has wrecked the fun of the game for some players.
While Fletcher stated that Blizzard had specific goals in mind with the most recent patch and that it wanted an opportunity to explain why it made these changes, some good news is that the team doesn’t “plan on doing a patch like this ever again.”
Blizzard plans on ‘always providing patch notes well beforehand’
While the most recent patch did dramatically reduce player power and strike at the heart of the developing meta, one of the most chaotic elements of it all was how suddenly the patch notes arrived, how lengthy they were, and how it felt like there was absolutely no heads up as to what was going to happen going into the game’s first season, which started on July 20.
As a way to get ahead of future issues like that, Blizzard has promised to provide patch notes “well beforehand,” estimating that notes will hit about a week before a new update. The game’s next patch, version 1.1.1, is expected to arrive sometime soon, and Blizzard will discuss the specific details of that patch in another livestream chat next Friday, July 28.
Changes to player power explained
Though some may find Blizzard’s explanations for the dramatic, across-the-board nerfs lacking, associate game director Joe Piepiora explained that the reductions to player attributes like cooldown rates and status effects like Vulnerability were done to try and amplify player choice. On the cooldown rates specifically, Piepiora said:
[Cooldown reduction (CDR) is the most powerful stat] in Diablo IV, and the reason for it is obvious: When you’re able to get CDR to a certain point when using certain class mechanisms, you’re able to get effectively instantaneous active skills. That can give you unlimited resources, can give you unlimited movement speed, can give you unlimited damage resistance, and it begins to dwarf the effectiveness of other options when you start trying to take these things into account.
During the stream both Piepiora and game director Joe Shely recognized that overpowered builds and mowing down tons of enemies is core to the action-RPG power fantasy. However, the team is presently concerned that player choice in builds is dying in favor of go-to metas, meaning that if you don’t emphasize cooldown reduction, or optimize builds to send foes into Vulnerable status, you’re operating at a disadvantage.
Vulnerability, which saw its damage modifier reduced significantly in patch 1.1.0, according to Piepiora, became the only way to really start dealing damage to enemies at certain levels of play. This, the team said, is not in line with their vision of the game, and in many ways they believe it’s the result of the outsized influence of high-level Nightmare Dungeons, which Piepiora said is one of the areas of endgame content that tends to demand very specific builds without much room for customization and choice.
The reality is that Nightmare Dungeons are dramatically overtuned from where they actually need to be based upon the role they fill in the game itself. So Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons are excruciatingly difficult for most classes to be able to actually get through and as a result it begins to winnow the opportunities and options that players have when they begin to engage with content at that Tier. You need to lean on very, very specific builds, very specific setups with access to things like near-instantaneous cooldowns for some skills in an effort to actually make it through those spaces. And that was never really the intent of that content.
Apparently Nightmare Dungeons will see changes on at least two fronts: The density of hordes will be increased to play into the power fantasy of destroying vast amounts of enemies and, in respect to Piepiora’s statement that the crushing level of difficulty they pose is having too much of an effect on build choice, difficulty will be reduced, bringing Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons down to about the current difficulty level of Tier 70 Nightmare Dungeons.
Patch 1.1.1 is expected to address some of the concerns
During the stream the team stressed that the goal was not, in fact, to reduce the speed of the game and slow progress, though many have felt that changes to game systems like an increase in the amount of time it takes to teleport out of dungeons seems to suggest otherwise. Commenting on that very change, Shely said the team will continue to evaluate changes like this, but stopped shy of saying why, exactly, that specific change was instituted in the first place.
The next patch, 1.1.1, is expected to address a wide variety of the issues present in the current build of the game. Blizzard revealed some such changes, like an extra tab in stash size to mitigate concerns over inventory management, and a 40 percent reduction in respec costs so players can more adequately respond to changes in the game’s meta while also having more choice over build variety as the game progresses. Other specific details, such as changes that have wildly reduced the power level and strength of certain classes more so than others, will be explored more in depth in next week’s livestream.
The team stressed that it doesn’t want to take powerful skills and items away as abruptly as it did with the most recent patch, and pledges to offer more alternatives when potentially sweeping changes come about in the future. A hotfix is scheduled to arrive later today (July 21), with patch notes expected to hit Diablo IV’s website shortly before it goes live.
It’s not uncommon for live-service games to make sudden changes like Diablo IV did here, but community frustration over poorly communicated and executed changes can easily build up over time to create burnout and resentment. Time will tell how quickly Diablo IV recovers from this latest kerfuffle.
Diablo IV has six Uber Uniques that are the rarest and some of the most powerful items in the game. Players have spent hundreds of hours without ever coming across them—until now. A trick for easily earning them was recently discovered and Blizzard has now removed the items from the game entirely to try and stop the madness.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Previously only farmable in Nightmare dungeons, Uber Uniques were added to the game’s Helltide event in the latest patch, an in-game event where a particular zone on the map turns blood red and fills up with extra tough enemies. Players quickly found out that there was a way to significantly increase their chances of getting the Harlequin Crest, better known as Shako, one of, if not the, most powerful item in Diablo IV. That’s because characters like Barbarians don’t have many Unique helmets, meaning Helltide chests that only give out helmets are much more likely to grant those players Shakos instead.
“Just do Helltide and open the helm chest over and over and over and these are dropping like candy,” said YouTuber Raxxanterax in a how-to video about the trick. Players rushed to try and snag their Shako before Blizzard nerfed the exploit, and the Diablo IV forums and subreddits immediately began to fill up with success stories and memes. Players who chose the night of July 6 to not log on to the game were kicking themselves, while others who got Shako called on Blizzard not to take their cheesed Uber Uniques away.
It didn’t take long for Blizzard to step in and remove Uber Uniques, including Shako, from the game entirely until a hotfix goes live. Naturally, there were debates about whether this actually constituted an exploit, versus players just seizing on a seeming oversight in the game’s design following the latest patch. Others complained about how fast Blizzard reacted to what is arguably an innocuous issue when other quality of life features are still missing from the game.
On the bright side, once the hotfix goes into effect, Uber Uniques like the two-handed sword The Grandfather and the Ring of Starless Skies will be easier to earn overall since they’ll now drop in Helltide activities, as well. While players still might not earn them even after dozens of hours of end-game farming, at least they can have a change of scenery from their standard Nightmare dungeon runs.
Diablo IV’s first season, meanwhile, goes live on July 20. Players will have to start entirely new characters but also have access to a whole new raft of season-specific abilities and builds. Hopefully the action-RPG’s most devoted players manage to earn at least one or two of their most coveted Uber Uniques by then.
Update 7/7/2023 7:38 p.m. ET: Blizzard has released the hotfix and brought Uber Uniques back online. It says only 142 accounts in total earned them while the Helltide chest exploit was live and the studio doesn’t plan to take them away from players. However, if something like this happens again in the future it might in order to keep things fair. Here are the full patch notes:
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where Uber Unique items had an unintended higher chance to drop from Helltide Chests.
Developer Note: With the above change, we have re-enabled Uber Unique drops in Diablo IV. In total we have discovered that only 142 accounts obtained an Uber Unique between the launch of 1.0.4 and when we disabled Uber Unique items from the game on the evening of July 6th. We do not plan on removing these items from the accounts. In the future, we may need to take action to maintain fairness within the game when a bug or exploit impacts the gameplay of others.
Gameplay Changes
Helltide Chests will now have the chance to drop any Unique and not be restricted to specific item slot limitations from any chest.
Developer Note: With the above change players will now be able to find Unique items from ALL Helltide Chests. Uber Unique items also have a chance to be found from all chests.
With so many skill trees and loot combinations, Diablo IV has no shortage of ways to eviscerate your foes and make them fear your mathematical superiority. Players are still finding all sorts of incredible Unique-rarity items, and certain of these weapons and armors are proving to be exceptionally worth hunting down.
I’ve coordinated with our resident Diablo IV experts to take stock of what’s been discovered thus far. Here, you’ll find a collection of both class-agnostic and class-specific items with which to enhance your build. We’ll also let you know where you’re likely to find these weapons and armors. Of course, given the nature of the game, most are random drops across different tiers.
Diablo IV is a big game. With multiple classes and tons of skill-tree options, a big-ass map with tons of shit to kill, and so, so much loot to equip, sell, upgrade (rinse and repeat, for eternity), there’s a lot to keep in mind, and so much more that the game kinda-sorta doesn’t tell you.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
So let’s go over some of the many features and other unique bits of knowledge the game doesn’t directly spell out for you. Some of these will save you time, others will help you optimize your build. Let’s dig in.
Elite Affixes indicate unique enemy powers
If you’ve come across an enemy and seen terms written before their names like “Vampiric,” “Terrifying,” or “Frozen,” know that those probably aren’t just nicknames given to them by their exes. They’re an indication that you’re facing an “Elite” enemy with unique attributes.
You can find a full list of the Elite Affixes from this wiki. These include terms like “Cold Enchanted,” which means the creature chills any target it touches, and “Hellbound,” which allows the creature to summon a statue that binds your character in chains. That sort of thing. Try to be prepared before you tangle with these weirdly named foes.
It’s okay (and beneficial) to upgrade some gear early on
Diablo IV is likely to hit you with that familiar RPG conundrum: “Should I sell this gear, or upgrade it?” The best answer isn’t always obvious, and the game certainly isn’t going to tell you what you should do with your own gear.
Here’s the good news: It’s not that big a deal. Upgrading early weapons and armors may not be a long-term strategic masterstroke, but it will help you learn the game and get comfortable with its systems. The first couple levels of upgrading an item at the blacksmith are relatively cheap, and in a game like Diablo IV every percentage point matters. While you’ll undoubtedly find better gear the longer you play, getting some firsthand experience with the upgrade system will help you determine what better gear to buff later on.
Not every class is great for beginners
While you can select any class from the beginning, if you are yourself a beginner, you might want to avoid certain classes. The Rogue, for example, while cool as hell, is a tough class to play as your first Diablo character (especially solo, as this game loves to swarm you with enemies).
We recommend kicking off your first Diablo IV adventure with the Necromancer or Sorcerer. Then, once you’ve a better handle on what the Diablo experience is, you’ll be better informed to grab the reins of harder classes.
You can search your skill tree via keywords
Diablo IV’s skill trees can be very, very intimidating at first. Good news: You can search abilities via keywords in the skill tree menu. Say you want to focus on a specific status effect or type of elemental damage? Selecting from the list of keywords is a great way to get a sense of how your build can make the most of such features, highlighting abilities that will relate to that keyword. This it will help you plan ahead so you don’t just stare at the tree menu with a pocket full of unspent ability points.
Don’t sleep on elixirs
Elixirs can make a serious difference when out slaying nasties on the battlefield, especially more complex and dangerous foes. You’ll need to visit an alchemist to craft them. Potions like the “Elixir of Lightning Resistance,” which lets you resist lightning attacks by 20 percent for 30 minutes (in addition to an XP boost), are excellent to pop when going up against specific enemies.
Stock up on elixirs and get ready to use them to meet specific challenges. But you can only carry 33 at a time, which means you may want to consider where you’re heading out to and which foes you’re likely to be fighting depending on how much space you have.
You should hang out with other people
Diablo IV is online only; let’s all collectively groan about that for a moment. But seeing other people, even if you’re playing solo in this dark fantasy world, isn’t a bad thing: You’ll earn an extra 10 percent experience for everything just by being around other people.
Who knew it would be beneficial to be around other people for once?
You should finish the main quest ASAP (but take breaks with side-quests)
Diablo IV really puts the spotlight on its main quest, with elaborate cutscenes, a very dominant antagonist, and plenty of “what’s gonna happen next?” intrigue. You absolutely should try and finish it as soon as you can…but it ain’t the worst thing if you don’t. In fact, it’s a good idea to move on from the main path every now and then (don’t worry, Lilith won’t really care).
Not only does the main story hit you with a couple of difficulty spikes that you’ll likely want to get yourself better equipped and specced out for, but finishing side-quests is a solid way to unlock more portions of map, with waypoints that’ll make traveling around quickly a breeze.
Also, take time to raid different Strongholds, which aren’t all created equal. The Tul Dulra or Onyx Strongholds, for example, unlock waypoints, additional vendors, more side-quests and a dungeon. But the Hope’s Light stronghold nets you a side dungeon and little else. Crusaders Monument in Hawezar just gives you 100 renown.
Some strongholds are far more rewarding of your time and the only way to really know which is best is to get out there and clear a few out—or do a Google to see what’s inside ahead of time.
Read a synopsis of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls to make sense of everything
Lilith? Sanctuary? Horadrim? What do these words mean, and what the hell is going on in this world? Diablo IV features a campaign that should mostly make the big story beats of its narrative obvious, but if you find that not everything makes sense, go on and read a good synopsis for 2014’s Diablo III expansion, Reaper of Souls.
Though Diablo IV doesn’t pick up right after that one, it does contain some critical world building that will help demystify certain aspects of the plot.
Being vulnerable is really, really bad
During my early hours, I kept seeing this cracked symbol coming and going on my health orb. And while I figured out that probably was Not Good™, it turns out this debuff is worse than its simple HUD icon might suggest. When an enemy inflicts you with vulnerable, you’re going to take an extra 20 percent damage. That, in a word, sucks. The only way to make your character less melty is to Run Away™ for about three or four seconds for your health orb to return to normal.
Enemies scale to your level
So ya got killed a few times. Time to go and level up so you numerically devastate your foes just by looking at them, right? Well, not so fast, Diablo IV’s enemies will scale to your level. And enemies in Strongholds will scale to a level above yours.
What does this mean? Well, you can’t just level your way out of poor tactics. While being more powerful is generally a good thing, you still need to take the time to understand how your character works and how your build is coming together. That’s the key to victory, not just grinding forever until your numbers get bigger.
Turn on advanced tooltips
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
Advanced tooltips made for one of the most essential parts of our guide to Diablo IV’s settings. By turning on advanced tooltip compare and information in the gameplay settings of the main menu, you’ll get a sense of how good every roll is. Each item’s stats will feature a bracketed range of possible outcomes, so you’ll know whether your found item rests on the better or worse side, making keep/sell/salvage/drop decisions that much easier.
Salvaging and extracting is an excellent use of useless loot
Whether you’ve found loot that’s uninteresting or has outgrown its utility, don’t just throw it on the ground (littering is bad!). Instead, you should take that old gear to be salvaged by a blacksmith. The resources that result will then be of use for upgrading the items you want to keep. They will be much more useful than any gold you’d get through selling the gear.
While you may benefit from selling a lot of useless loot early on to get your gold count up, stocking up on upgradables is better, as the equipment you’ll find on the battlefield will almost always be better than what you can buy from a shop. And salvaged materials will go directly toward upgrading gear that’s actually worth it.
And just as you should be salvaging lower-power gear, be sure to save unused legendary gear for extracting. By bringing these items to the Occultist, you’ll be able remove their Aspects, which you can then use to boost Rare items into Legendaries. And extracting often nets you better Aspects than what you get from dungeons, at cheaper material cost to boot.
Grab that gallowvine
Gallowvine is an essential ingredient in potions and elixirs. Become a gallowvine hoarder. You can never have enough gallowvine.
Don’t like a quest? It’s safe to abandon it
I abandon things all the time (in real life and Diablo) and it’s never a bad idea to abandon quests that are either distracting or uninteresting. You can always pick up an abandoned quest again later. Do yourself a favor though and take note of the quests you’re abandoning, so you can look up the names later to figure out where to pick them up a second time if it slips your memory.
Key story and world progress is shared across different characters
Once you finish the main story, you won’t need to do it again for future characters. Also, once you wrap the main story and start getting to work on endgame content like Grim Favors, you’ll unlock those activities for all subsequent characters you make. The same is true of major city waypoints.
This is good news if you’re not sure whether or not you’re digging your current character and are debating whether or not you should keep going. As we said in our general tips round-up, starting out with a so-so build is far from a bad thing, and it’s worth it to explore. Any time you spend working toward story completion or unlocking new waypoints is time well spent, even if you don’t fully love your current character.
Save irrelevant gear for your future characters
One time, my Rogue picked up a wand. Worried that it’d call me a slur, I got rid of it. But it turns out that by doing so, I was potentially screwing over any future Sorcerer I’d decide to build. Right after the game’s prologue, you’ll get access to your stash in Kyovashad. Anything you put in here is retrievable by other characters you’ll create later on.
So if it’s not a burden to carry around gear that’s not for the class you’re immediately playing, consider stashing it. Your future, other yous will thank you.
Diablo IV is a gargantuan experience, but these basic tips will help you wrap your head around it a little more. What other unmentioned, unexplained features have you found helpful?
Diablo IV was dealing with a DDoS attack, a message on the game’s main menu screen confirms. As a result, players kept getting disconnected from the alway-online action-RPG during one of the highest traffic periods of the week.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
“We are investigating the login issues affecting Diablo IV and working to resolve these as soon as possible,” read a message from the Battle.net customer service account tweeted early on June 25. “Players may experience queues while we work on the issue.” Later in the day, however, the company confirmed it was still investigating the issues, and that the game was in fact dealing with a DDoS attack. DDoS refers to distributed denial of service, meaning it’s a type of cyber attack, and refers to when a system is flooded with interactions so that actual users can’t user the intended service.
“We are currently experiencing a DDoS attack, which may result in high latency and disconnections for some players,” read an in-game announcement greeting confused players. “We are actively working to mitigate this issue.” Blizzard didn’t immediately provide any additional information or timeline for when the DDoS attack might stop or online play might resume as normal. Some players have reported being unable to play for nearly 12 hours.
Social media, including the game’s popular subreddit, were predictably filled with players who would normally be logging on to play on a weekend morning posting about how they’re just continually refreshing the game’s main menu and customer service help accounts instead. Of course, depending on how you play Diablo IV, continually clicking the same button over and over might not be that different.
Forunately, if you’re reading this now, chances are very good that you can actually log into the game. According to Blizzard, after hours of downtime, the DDOS attacks it was monitoring have “ended.” However, in case some people are still having login issues, Blizzard recommends checking this out.
While that’s good news, the situation overall is an unfortunate but familiar risk for any always-online game, and underlines what a bummer it is that there’s no offline way to play Diablo IV as a completely single-player experience. Diablo III was always-online as well, and in the years between the two games it’s become a much more commonplace requirement as more games pivot to being live services. Diablo IV has really leaned into that shift, including a controversial decision to force players to start a new character from scratch each season if they want to progress their corresponding battle pass.
Then again, it wouldn’t be a Diablo launch without something for players to argue about.
One quest line in Diablo IV is drawing in players not just for good loot, but because it has a strong mental health message that makes it feel meaningful beyond the actual perks.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
The quest starts with A Question of Self and follows Taissa, a character who is dealing with a mental health struggle tied into Diablo’s world. We don’t need to get into spoilers here, but according to senior quest designer Harrison Pink, Taissa’s story, even down to the flavor text on the equipment you receive for seeing it through, was meant to deal with mental health and grief.
In a thread on Twitter, Pink explained that the quest line was about “overcoming grief and trauma,” and how you can’t force progress by brute forcing it.
At the end of the quest, you receive the Mark of the Conclave, which is an amulet that includes a letter from another character initially meant for Taissa, and it includes words of encouragement for her that have been comforting to Diablo IV players. There’s a whole Reddit thread of folks talking about the message and how they’re dealing with their own mental health struggles. The flavor text for the amulet reads:
Healing is a journey. A series of steps. Some days you may stumble, but so long as you continue to put one foot in front of the other, you will reach your destination.
Blizzard Entertainment / Coooley
On top of having a lovely message, the Mark of the Conclave is actually a pretty good accessory to have. As YouTuber Coooley explains, the accessory can boost your Life stat, and because it’s a Rare item, you can reroll its stat boosts with the Occultist. Doing this means you can have a huge addition to your Life. So if you haven’t done these quests yet, take the time. You’ll get a good side story and leave with a great accessory.
If you’ve been murderin’ your way through dungeons inDiablo IV recently, you’ve likely killed a lot of monsters, found a lot of loot, and also ended up with a half dozen (or more) gems in your inventory taking up space that weapons and armor could occupy. That can be annoying, and some players have asked for a gem bag. While that’s not happening, Blizzard understands the frustration and confirmed a change is coming in the future.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
Released earlier this month, Diablo IV is the latest action-RPG in Blizzard’s long-running demon-looting franchise. While I wish the game had an extra skill slot and players have complained about some issues with XP, overall the game’s release has been much smoother than most big games in 2023, as well as Diablo 3’s historically bad launch. But even a great game can be improved, and Blizzard acknowledged today that gems are causing a bit too much “inventory tension” in the game’s current state.
“The idea is to change the way you acquire gems so that they show up in your materials or currency tab, rather than your inventory,” explained Shely. “And then the way that will work is you go to craft your gem in the same way that you do today, and you just use a certain amount of that material, similar to the amount of equivalent, actual gem inventory slots that you’re using now, but as materials.”
When is Blizzard changing how gems work in Diablo IV?
What this should mean is that your inventory won’t be filled up with unused gems after every dungeon as they will live alongside your other crafting materials. (Which is really how this should have worked in the first place…)
But don’t expect this change to happen too soon, as Shely was clear that this is something that won’t be added to the game until “around season two.” With seasons in Diablo IV lasting around three months and the first one starting sometime in July, it’s likely this gem change won’t happen until October or even early November. Still, it’s nice to hear something is being done.
During the livestream, it was also confirmed that crafting resource limits are being increased, which should help people hoard more gems when the change to how they are stored goes live in a few months. In the meantime, I’ll just keep tossing them into my stash.
![Diablo IV Pulls Rarest Items After Fans Find Easy Exploit [Update: They’re Back]](https://reportwire.org/wp-content/uploads/https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200/fb1c6264e86662150718bb038fc2a146.jpg)
