We’ve summarized all the information presented during the Vessel of Hatred pre-launch developer update! Check back often for updates!
Stream Highlights
- Blizzard did a special promotion with Trolli in the US, where you can earn exclusive in-game rewards.
- Twitch Drops are coming for Vessel of Hatred. More details can be found here.
- This is the 20th Diablo 4 livestream and it’s also streamed on TikTok for the first time.
- There will be breaks in between the panels because there are many guests.
Here are the times of the global rollout of the expansion.
Patch 2.0.1 Feedback PTR Overview
- Monster Challenge – They decided to move monster difficulty to scale from Torment 1-4, instead of Standard difficulties, leading to more lethal monsters.
- Elites, Unique Elites, and Super Elites deal normalized damage. This makes incoming damage more predictable.
- The Penitent difficulty is available at Level 1. You must beat the base campaign once to unlock it. It’s great for those looking for a challenge.
- Masterworking – Non-Ancestral Legencaries may reach rank 8 (up from 4).
- Tempering – Non-Ancestral Legendaries may be Tempered twice.
- Unique Item Drop Chance – The chance for a Unique item to drop as Ancestral has been tripled.
- Scrolls of Restoration in Season Journey – A scroll of Restoration (Tempering) was added to the final two stages of the Season Journey.
- Torment Goals – Torment 1 all content is available. Torment 4 is aspirational and exciting to reach that difficulty.
- Main Stat Reversion Back to Season 5 – Your main stat now contributes far less Skill Damage.
- Legendary Glyphs – Additive Damage & Multiplicative Damage significantly reduced. They want every source of power to contribute to player power, the glyphs were too powerful and were giving players better bonuses than gear, so they nerfed them based on PTR testing.
Paragon Updates
The following changes have been made to the Paragon board:
- More normal nodes to support legendary glyph radius upgrade.
- Rare and magic nodes adjusted to be more generically useful and powerful.
- Updated rare nodes across the board.
- Doubled all addivite bonuses on rare and magic nodes.
- Increased damage reduction values by 1.5x.
Infernal Hordes
- Problems/Feedback
- Loot was dominating the rewards landscape.
- Frustrating and tedious rewards flow.
- Difficult to target farm Uniques.
- Updates
- Keys are exclusively obtained via drops from a variety of activities.
- Council boss always drops Infernal Hordes Unique items and dungeon boss loot, scales with Torment.
- Chest updates:
- Chest of Greater Equipment — Now provides 200 Aether
- Chest of Materials — Convers all remaining Aether into materials
- Chest of Gold — Remains unchanged
Here are the changes made to the rewards based on PTR feedback:
They’ve made some changes to the Mythic Unique Crafting. 2 Resplendent Sparks will get you a random, usable Ancestral Mythic Unique. Large amount of Common salvage can be used to forge random legendary equipment at the Blacksmith (chance for Unique/Mythic). Sockets can be added to hear with general salvage mats, etc.
Post-PTR Class Changes
Next, members of the team are highlighting some of the class changes that are additionally coming based on PTR feedback!
The following post-PTR changes are coming for Barbarians in Vessel of Hatred.
Druids will receive the following additional changes based on PTR feedback.
Moving on to the Necromancer. There is a lot of variety of Blood, Bone, and Shadow builds, but Minion builds really fel behind from where they wanted them. They also buffed their Defensives.
Next up are Rogues, Blizzard fixed some bugs and buffed Encircling Blades, Bladedancer’s Aspect, and more.
The Sorcerer was the most powerful class on the PTR. People were having perhaps too much fun with Enlightment (the new passive skill). Unfortunately, it was stacking up unitentionally with auto-casts. They fixed that but nerfed it a bit.
The team thanked for PTR feedback as it helps them make the game the best as possible. We do have patch notes going live after the stream. There will be 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 patch notes.
Runewords Learnings
In the 2.0. PTR Legendary Runes were clearly more powerful and only gave multiplicative damage. Some runes had no usaage and didn’t have a good long-term potential.
All runes should be competitive and have a potential home in a build. As a result, they decided to remove four runes that didn’t meet their expecations. These are: Ur, Ono, Met, and Kaa.
Blizzard also made certain changes to Runes of Offering. With the buffs, you should see procs more often.
Season 6 Details
Season 6 starts with the release of Vessel of Hatred. As such, it comes with more skill points, new skills, more Paragon Points, new Legendary Glyphs, New Legendaries, Uniques, and Mythics. Builds that hit levels of power we’ve never seen, new difficulty levels to challenge those builds are coming to the base game without requiring Vessel of Hatred.
Here is the Season 6 key art.
Hatred Rising Zone Events
Cycle frequently around the world. You will see environmental changes, areas will be corrupted by Hatred. Monsters can ambush from portals. Realmwalker is burrowed during warmup time.
The Realmwalker is Harbinger of Mephisto spreading chaos throughout Sanctuary. Carries a portal to a realm of Hatred. Spawns monsters including Hollows, a new enemy from VoH.
Killing the Realmwalker will port you to the Seething Realms — pocket realms of Hatred. Here, you will find more Hatred-infested monsters, including a new goblin. This leads all to a cursed chest. Once you defeat everything, you will finally receive loot including Seething Opals.
Seething Opals give you 15% increased XP and grant activities without monster loot (The Pit, Infernal Hordes, etc) bonuses at the end. The XP bonus stacks with elixirs.
Here are the bonuses you can get:
You need Vessel of Hatred for the socketable opal.
The Zakarum Remnants
A holy order languishing in Hawezar. They are dedicated to Akarat’s teachings. In the past, their order was decimated by Mephisto’s corruption. Few in numbers and spread thin, they need heroes. Brief quest introducing the seasonal loop. They are your reputationt track for Season 6 and provide various reputation rewards.
Spiritborn Passive Updates
Some new passives have been added for the Spiritborn in addition to what we saw already.
They also have an update to the Jaguar primary Spirit Hall
There was confusion between feathers, so they’ve been unified into storm feathers.
If you’re planning to target-farm Spiritborn uniques, this will prove useful!
Kurast Undercity
A new dungeon experience that VoH players will be unlocking during the campaign. It is an intense, multi-floor, time-attack dungeon.
Tributes and Bargains
Tributes – Define the rewards upgrade opportunities of the Undercity, at the cost of increasing the Runs challenge. Applying a Tribute unlocks the option to select a Bargain.
Bargains further customize rewards, at varying Material cost.
Here is the full flow of the Undercity.
Here is a gallery of Tributes.
Kurast Undercity introduces the Portal Prankster, a unique Treasure Goblin. Killing him will reward a bonus chest at the end of the dungeon.
Killing him is very lucrative, but he’s got a mechanic that’s very tricky to deal with. He opens multiple portals and you need to keep close attention to which portal he uses as the timer is decreasing when you’re chasing him down.
Dark Citadel
The first multi-player concept for Diablo 4. We’re going to be fighting the Khazra, they are very evil, taking creatures and using them as batteries.
Once you enter Torment 1, you can complete the quest for the Dark Citadel. The dungeons have multiple boss fights and each take some time to get through.
A marker system has been added to the game. These can be used even outside of the raid.
They also added a Combat Log for the Dark Citadel.
The Party Finder was initially designed for finding players to clear the Dark Citadel, however, all gameplay features will benefit from it in the long run!
When you complete all 3 dungeons, you can buy consumables with citadel coins.
You can buy Scroll of Restoration that lets you restore all Tempering Charges on an item with citadel coins.
There are Torment 4-exclusive sets that you can earn. There’s also this mount.
The Dark Citadel can be done in a group of 2-4 players.
Mercenaries System
Mercenaries is one of the legacy features that we’ve seen in multiple Diablo games. The following 4 mercenaries have been unveiled at gamescom.
Every Mercenary has a skill tree. The first node is a perk. Every skill tree has 6 skills and 12 upgrades.
Raheir | The Shield Bearer is the tank. His skill tree is split up into Tower Shield and Round Shield. The perk you receive is Valiance when you hire him.
Here are some upgrade examples from Raheir’s skill tree.
Varyana | The Berserker Crone – a reformed cannibal that dual wields axes. Her perk is similar to the Massacre bonus in Diablo 3.
Subo | The Bounty Hunter – He uses Long Bow and Crossbow. He reveals enemies on the minimap and he calls out targets. Killing the marked target restores 50% of your Maximum Resource and reduces the Seeker’s Cooldown by 10 seconds.
Aldkin | The Forsaken Child provides the players with a kiss/curse mechanic. The skill is split up into Fire Magic (Burn and Suffer) and Shadow Magic.
Reinforcements will come to your aid at key moments during combat. You select when they appear on the screen and what they do before they disappear again.
Rapport is the progression system for Mercenaries.
Mercenaries Bartering lets you trade items with your Mercenaries. As you upgrade your Mercs, you can earn more items, including Aspects. It’s not exactly target-farming, but it will increase the chances of what you’re looking for. The list includes boss summoning parts, Masterworking recipes, etc.
Closing Words
The new Game Director feels like the community is a part of the team now.
Q&A!
Now’s the time for Q&A!
- When you own Vessel of Hatred on one platform and earn Runewords, but log back to the base game on another, you’re still going to have Runewords, they won’t stop working.
- The team is discussing bringing back the campfire login screen.
- The Altars of Lilith System is returning as Tennants of Akkarat (new statue type). They aren’t giving stats in Vessel of Hatred, they don’t want it to feel like a chore, but more lean toward the collectible area.
- They are sunsetting the Gauntlet. The Leaderboards and their place in the game will be re-evaluated.
- The Party Finder has filters and works beyond the Vessel of Hatred raid.
- You get two opals with each Realmwalker kill.
- Mercenaries progression resets every season, but it’s shared across all characters during the season.
- They’ve done something special for players that go beyond tier 100.
- As soon as you complete the VoH campaign once, you can skip it on alts.
- If you are completely new to Diablo, it’s recommended to complete the base campaign too, but there’s the option to skip it. Blizzard did a story recap for those that want to jump straight in to the Vessel of Hatred campaign.
- They want more players to participate in the endgame. They have added quests that will tell you about all the endgame activities you can complete.
- You will be able to progress through the Citadel even when 1 player drops from the party.
Stream Link
You can watch a VoD of the livestream below.