Five things I wish I knew when I started ‘Diablo 4: Vessel Of Hatred’

After an unfortunate delay on release night, Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred is ready to launch this morning, and with it the new Spiritborn class.

I was allowed to play the expansion early for review purposes (8.5/10 was my verdict) and as such I have several dozen additional hours so far compared to the hours I played at launch. So I thought I’d give you some advice to get you started, based on what I’ve played so far.

1) Spirtborn is now OP – This isn’t terribly surprising considering that Diablo 4 wants everyone to enjoy the new class, but even with tuning and new abilities in other classes, Spiritborn is currently on a level all its own, and if you weren’t going to starting with it (I’m sure 90% of people did), I would definitely consider doing this.

While it’s possible that Spiritborn will be curbed over time, Blizzard seems content to unleash its full power for now, and you’ll want to take advantage of that before future nerfs.

2) Dear spirit born animal spirits – You get the choice between tracks for Jaguar, Gorilla, Eagle and Centipede, or a mix thereof. Chances are you’ll probably end up making a mix of two of them, but as it stands right now the poison-based Centipede is the best choice right now with powerful builds that will be meta, at least for a while.

Eagle is probably the second best class, lightning element while focusing on mobility. I personally did a Jaguar Gorilla combo, which was fun for a while, but eventually my damage dropped off significantly as I reached later Torment levels.

3) New difficulty level – With four pre-Torment levels and four Torment levels, things have changed in terms of difficulty in that regard… often things are a lot harder. I and most other reviewers had to play the campaign almost entirely on Normal, something I never did before, but we also had no familiarity with bonuses whatsoever, which didn’t help matters. But if you feel like Hard is too hard to get started, you’re not alone. So far, though, it seems to be going a little smoother than the release, with those extra boosts.

The endgame has also been made much harder with big improvements to enemy health, so the best players in the game don’t necessarily blow through everything like they used to. So if you hit the max and it feels harder than before, that’s how it should be.

4) Don’t overlook your companions – At first I thought companions were just something Diablo 4 added because the game had them before and they thought they would just make them appear eventually.

But these companions are actually quite good, even if you don’t prepare them in the same way as in other games. They can be quite essential to your build. For example, I had a Spiritborn build based on Vulnerable, and the little demon child has an ability that can leave large chunks of enemies vulnerable at a time that has consistently helped me. Others can give your enemies buffs with certain status effects, etc. Take the time to research all their skills and which one suits you best. And they’re also tougher than they seem in terms of survivability.

5) Runes over gemstones – Diablo 4 wants to encourage players to use the new rune system that uses double armor gem slots that you used before. That’s…not great, right? Considering how important they were.

One thing you might miss is that gems have now been adjusted to make them less necessary. For example, a ruby ​​in your armor no longer gives you an important Max. Life percentage, but +Strength. So in that case you might want to use runes in those slots instead of gems, even if gems felt pretty essential before. Some are unchanged, such as jewelry gems for elemental resistance, but with some slots they can’t use runes anyway.

That’s my first piece of advice, maybe I’ll do more later. Have fun! See you there.

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