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AtGamescom 2024, theDiablo 4: Vessel of Hatredbooth housed in the Xbox area was a dominating presence.
Without further ado, here’s everything I packed into my time with Rod and Gavian.
The Vessel of Hatred booth at Gamescom 2024 was part of the Xbox area, which was bigger than ever with ABK titles now under the Microsoft wing.
Jaguar, Eagle, Gorilla and Centipede.
The Gorilla Ultimate looks super cool.
And I was like, oh, wow.
So I think I’m going to be Jaguar/Centipede, because I like Necro and I like minion builds.
And I’m like, all about that.
Can a jack of all trades be someone’s favorite class?
The Vessel of Hatred booth at Gamescom 2024 was part of the Xbox area, which was bigger than ever with ABK titles now under the Microsoft wing.
I think that versatility is great.
It has a little bit of everything.
I’m a kind of a crowd-control AOE person.
There were different coins available depending on your favorite Spirit at the Gamescom Diablo 4 booth, I collected all four!
So I think there will be people who are Spiritborn mains, for sure.
Let’s talk in terms of Pit 150.
Yeah, I think that would be super fun.
Phil and Sarah got to try out the Spiritborn, Phil played Jaguar and said it was “a lot of fun."
More than Sorc, less than Druid!
Will the Spiritborn visually outshine other classes?
So I think it’s going to stand out because it’s so different and looks so good.
The centipede build has been hugely popular with the Gamescom crowd
So the other classes will get new things to do and look at as well.
And so the feeling of the Jaguar having a fire influence, the Eagle having an enlightening influence.
Gorilla being physical, and Centipede being poisoned.
The Spiritborn is very visually striking, especially against the backdrop of Nahantu’s jungle scenery
We really wanted to feel those things.
So we definitely leaned into that.
We can go and boost other things as we go.'
The mercenaries will be tougher than the player character in Vessel of Hatred, by which we mean they won’t die.
So the other classes will get new things to do and look at as well.
Mercenaries, how tough are these guys?
How much can we customize them?
The mercenary Rapport system will allow you to trade with your mercenaries
How does the Merc system work when you’re in a party?
Gavian and Rod addressed these questions.Gavian:No [to the cosmetics question].
So there’s different ways to play it.
- Rapport with each Merc will need to be earned each Season to fully unlock their Skill trees.
It’s purposely designed for group play, with at least one other person.
What I love is the fact that the Party Finder actually now shows up on your map.
The Paragon boards in Diablo 4 do feel like they add a superficial complexity, in that I don’t both reading them anymore and follow guides to complete. Will Patch 2.0 change this?
For Season 6 we’re doing that for progression.
Rod:There’s a complexity to the Paragon system that’s hard.
So there’s a notion of how do we deal with leveling and skills, versus leveling and Paragon?
We think you’ll like the end result.
Can this be done without voice chat for our more reserved Diablo players?
But [in Dark Citadel] there’s a lot of visual cues in that.
It keeps you fighting, you want to be constantly moving through any activity.
Will we ever get leaderboards outside of The Gauntlet?
Leaderboards and Diablo go together like bread and butter, tea and biscuits, Barbarians and a hammer.
Rod, Phil and Sarah about to take the bridge into Nahantu
However for Diablo 4, we still only have a leaderboard for one activity, The Gauntlet.
Could we see leaderboards for anything else in the future?
First to 100, first to kill Uber Lilith?
There’s more to come for Diablo 4 in Patch 2.0 and we’ll find out about this in the Campfire Chat on Thursday
And you go, “oh I’m gonna go make that build and stuff”.
And one of the things that we allow in the game is for people to mark themselves as private.
They won’t let me see them, and I can’t tell.”
People are like, “I just hit 140 with a Druid.”
Can we balance and change?
I think you see that now with the Sorc.
We’re not trying to do the WoW thing.
Glyph XP… outside of Nightmare dungeons?
Rod:We’ll have lots more to share on that.
So glyphs will be part of the stream next week.
The super rare case where you get the kind of a unicorn item.
Like the basic one where there are no greater affixes, I’m with you.
I’m just like, Okay, I’ll go get another chest piece.
Yeah, that feels bad.
So this is, I think, more for that case.
What’s next for Diablo 4?
Rod:I think classes is going to be something of an opportunity.
Because we recorded all the dialog of the story with the Spiritborn characters.
I love the fact that you might go back and play the main campaign as the Spiritborn.
Because we recorded all the dialog of the story with the Spiritborn characters.
The new skills for the classes, all the progression changes we’re bringing to Season 6.
I think we’ve done a really good job.
I think we’ve done a really good job.
So that’s what we’ve had to account for.
You could be a level 1 Spiritborn going and starting the Vessel of Hatred.
You could be an Eternal player with a level 100 Druid who wants to do Vessel of Hatred.
You could be a level 50 seasonal character who wants to do the Vessel of Hatred.
So that’s definitely gotten the complexity around testing all that.
But we wanted to check that that anybody can start the Vessel [DLC] whenever they wanted.
