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August 30: I've added three new sections that go into detail about Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred's new mercenary companions, co-op dungeon, and runewords system.
The Diablo 4 expansion Vessel of Hatred will be the action RPG's first expansion, bringing with it the new spiritborn class and a new campaign set in the jungle region of Nahantu. Blizzard says it's been working on the expansion since before Diablo 4 was released in 2023, and it expects to keep releasing expansions at a regular pace.
In the last few months, Blizzard radically changed how Diablo 4 works in preparation for the changes coming in the expansion. Loot is much more powerful than it used to be and classes, like the necromancer, have been dramatically reworked. The game is almost unrecognizable from the state it was in at launch, which will make the transition to Vessel of Hatred much easier when it drops in October.
Blizzard says it plans to release new expansions every year, each with a new class and a list of changes and features to the game, like the mercenary companions coming in Vessel of Hatred. You won't be required to buy every expansion, but skipping them will leave you on the sidelines watching as everyone plays with the newest toys.
When is the Diablo 4 expansion release date?
When is the Diablo 4 expansion release date?
The Diablo 4 expansion release date is October 8, 2024 on Steam and Battle.net for PC. Despite now owning Blizzard, Microsoft hasn't announced any plans to make Vessel of Hatred available on its Game Pass subscription service when it launches. The base game is available there, but it's looking like you'll have to buy the expansion along with everyone else when it drops.
What's new in the Diablo 4 expansion?
What's new in the Diablo 4 expansion?
The Diablo 4 expansion will mark a new chapter in the dark fantasy action RPG, continuing the campaign and updating its existing systems. Blizzard only just started to detail the new features coming with it in the last few months. The first major reveal was the new spiritborn class, which I recently had hands-on with at Blizzard's campus in Irvine, California. The spiritborn resemble Diablo 3's monks if they could also drop a giant centipede god on their foes. I'll go into more detail on them below.
Here are the new Vessel of Hatred features we know about so far:
- New region: The campaign is set in Nahantu, a jungle located on the southern tip of the map
- New class: The spiritborn will be the sixth class and fight with martial arts and spiritual animal guardians
- Mercenaries: You can recruit specialized NPC companions to fight alongside you and give you unique buffs
- A PVE co-op dungeon: A new endgame co-op dungeon will have multiple boss fights and unique rewards
- New skills: Each class will receive new skills, Paragon boards, and Paragon Glyphs to play with
- New dungeons: Several new dungeons, monsters, and bosses will crawl out of hell in the expansion
- Runewords: New rune items will drop that can be combined to create custom skills that can even come from other classes
How does the Diablo 4 expansion's new class work?
How does the Diablo 4 expansion's new class work?
The Diablo 4 expansion will add the Spiritborn class to the game. They're a martial arts class who use skills based on powerful animal gods from the spirit realm. They can dart around dungeons with quick dashes and call down spirit guardians to wipe out packs of monsters. Sort of like druids, spiritborn can specialize in a particular animal to gain their unique advantages. Jaguar skills, for example, increase your attack speed, while gorilla skills increase your defense.
Here are the kind of benefits and skills to expect from each spiritborn animal guardian:
- Eagle: Movement speed and ranged skills
- Gorilla: Damage reduction and melee-range skills
- Jaguar: Attack speed and mobility skills
- Centipede: Life steal and poison skills
Spiritborn are far and away Diablo 4's most complex class. Typically, builds focus on one or two categories of skills, like a frozen orb sorcerer, but spiritborn thrive off of mixing and matching skills from all four of their spirit guardians. Blizzard even says it plans to update the other five classes with skills inspired by what's possible with the spiritborn.
Two new weapon types will be added to the game for the spiritborn: glaives and quarterstaffs. Although Blizzard recently expanded the types of weapons the existing classes can use, it hasn't said whether or not they'll be able to wield these too.
How do the Diablo 4 expansion's mercenaries work?
How do the Diablo 4 expansion's mercenaries work?
Mercenaries are NPC allies you can recruit in the Diablo 4 expansion campaign. You can bring one of them to join you in combat and and hire a second one to lend a hand when you use a specific skill or are affected by something specific in battle.
There are four mercenaries to choose from:
- Raheir: A shieldbearer who can protect you with a barrier
- Veryana: A melee fighter who gains power by killing several enemies in a row
- Aldkin: A child who can transform into a demon for powerful ranged and AOE attacks
- Subo: An archer who can rain arrows on enemies from far away
As you use each mercenary, you'll gain trust, or rapport, with them. As your rapport increases, you'll earn skill points to use in their unique skill trees, access to more item caches, and improve at bartering with them to buy items.
You can choose one mercenary to join your party and a second one to be your combat reinforcement. A combat reinforcement calls upon your chosen mercenary to activate a skill when you either use one of your own skills or are affected by things in combat, like getting stunned by a monster.
How does the Diablo 4 expansion's co-op dungeon work?
How does the Diablo 4 expansion's co-op dungeon work?
The Diablo 4 expansion will introduce the Dark Citadel, a challenging co-op dungeon that requires at least two players to enter. Anyone who has reached max level will be able to complete the dungeon every week for an item cache reward, but you can also repeat it for a new unique currency to spend on cosmetics and other items, like a scroll that lets you reroll tempering stats on a piece of gear.
The dungeon will be split into multiple wings, or sections, so you won't have to finish it all at once. Blizzard says the bosses will be pretty tough and require you and your group to work together.
A party finder system will be added to the game to help you find groups to join for The Dark Citadel and many other activities.
How do the Diablo 4 expansion's runewords work?
How do the Diablo 4 expansion's runewords work?
Trading runes: All runes are tradeable between players
Rune crafting: 3 of the same runes can be crafted into a different rune (with the potential to be a higher quality)
Mythic unique item crafting: You can craft a powerful Mythic unique with 1 resplendent spark and 10 identical runes from each rarity: magic, rare, and legendary.
The Diablo 4 expansion will add Runewords, which are new items that essentially let you create your own skills. Although they've existed in earlier Diablo games, Diablo 4's version of runewords are unique.
Once you unlock runewords during the Vessel of Hatred campaign, runes will start dropping from enemies. There are two categories of runes: ritual runes and invocation runes. When you combine two in an item socket, they form a runeword. Half of the runeword will cause certain things you do to build a resource called offering and the other half will trigger an effect that uses up your offering.
Let's say you have a Yax rune which builds 100 offering every time you use a healing potion. Combine it with a Eom rune (the 'YaxEom' runeword) and every time you heal yourself your skill cooldowns will be reduced by .25 seconds. And that's a rather simple one. There are runes that only require you to move a few meters or cast a skill that can activate effects like turning your evade into a sorcerer's teleport—that's right, everyone will be able to borrow skills from other classes using runewords.
Blizzard has a list of all the runewords on the Diablo 4 website.
Diablo 4 expansion trailers
Diablo 4 expansion trailers
In case you forgot how brutal the world of Diablo can be, Blizzard made a Vessel of Hatred trailer that is so explicit, it needs a content warning for body horror and gore. Neyrelle, the young girl who ends the main campaign with a demon lord in her pocket, experiences a hallucination where her arms and legs are torn off. This three-minute nightmare might win the award for the most disgusting videogame trailer I've ever seen.
The spiritborn class reveal trailer is far less grotesque and gives you a peek at how the class works and what fighting in Nahantu looks like.
Do you have to own the Diablo 4 expansion?
Do you have to own the Diablo 4 expansion?
Diablo 4 has two ways to play:
Eternal realm: This is the normal version of the game and where all seasonal characters end up after a season ends. All updates except those related to seasonal mechanics come to this mode.
Seasonal realm: The seasonal version of the game features unique mechanics, like season 2's vampiric powers, to spice up the experience for around three months. Seasons require you to start a new character from level 1 but are widely considered the most fun way to play Diablo 4.
No, you don't need to own the Diablo 4 expansion to continue playing after it's out. Updates to the game will continue to be free for everyone.
But you do need to own the base game to play it. There's a Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred bundle you can purchase that gives you access to the original game immediately if you're completely new.
Blizzard hasn't explained exactly which features you'll miss out on if you don't own Vessel of Hatred, but we can assume it'll gate your access to the new class at the very least. Diablo boss Rod Fergusson has said in recent interviews that everyone will have access to season 6 when it starts alongside Vessel of Hatred's release. I expect Blizzard will explain the difference between owning and not owning the expansion sometime before October.
Additionally, Blizzard told PC Gamer in an interview that players starting Diablo 4 for the first time with Vessel of Hatred will have an option to skip the main campaign and immediately jump into the expansion's story. That implies you'll be able to skip the campaigns individually so you won't be behind if your friends are already exploring Nahantu.
What is the Diablo 4 expansion story about?
What is the Diablo 4 expansion story about?
Warning: Diablo 4 campaign spoilers follow.
The Diablo 4 expansion story takes place in Nahantu, a jungle region at the southern end of Diablo 4's world map. Diablo 2 players will recognize it as the Torajan jungle where the city Kurast is located—which you'll be able to visit again in the expansion. Nahantu is the home of the spiritborn, and it's also where Neyrelle, the young girl we meet in Act 1 of the campaign, has taken Mephisto, the expansion's primary antagonist.
Mephisto is particularly bad news because he's one of the series' ultimate villains known as the Prime Evils. These powerful demon brothers (Mephisto, Baal, and Diablo) are always scheming to destroy Sanctuary and never stay dead for very long. Neyrelle has Mephisto trapped in a soul shard but, as we see in the last trailer, he's still able to manipulate stuff while he's stuck in there. Given the expansion's title, I think we can assume that the soul shard's hold on him won't last (they never do!).
Nahantu also happens to be a place where people used to worship the Prime Evils. I'm sure it won't be a problem that Neyrelle is bringing the angriest one there in a Ziploc bag. I suppose Blizzard could be using Mephisto as a red herring for something angel-related happening, but so far there haven't been any hints about what heaven is up to after the events of Diablo 3. The war between heaven and hell is called the eternal conflict for a reason, though, so I'd expect the expansion to either end in angels and demons fighting or to tease a spat between them for the next expansion.
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