Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred

Like I am with most games, I hate to admit that I'm a love-em-and-leave-em Diablo player. I dipped into Diabo IV at launch and went hard for about a month, ripping my way through the initial campaign and some of the end-game material with single-minded determination. But around the time the first season launched, I droped off. After putting so much time into the base game, I was ready (and, if I’m being honest, was kinda forced by work commitments) to move onto something new.

And so it was that in August of 2023, I deleted Diablo IV from my hard drive, determining that whatever the first season had to offer, I had seen enough for the moment. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the base game. But that thing was huge, and I just couldn’t see myself creating a new character and starting over from scratch so soon.

Fast forward to September 2024, when I decided that enough time had passed. I was indeed interested in playing the new expansion, Vessel of Hatred. Realizing that I had completely forgotten many of the complexities and mechanics of Diablo IV, I figured I would jump back into for a quick refresher before the expansion arrived. And after about ten or fifteen hours pounding through the Season 5 content, I have to wonder: What have I been doing with my life? Diablo IV is awesome now.

I mean, it was good before, but holy lord, Blizzard has made some updates to this thing. While it took me a little while to get my head back around the game’s initial mechanics (Tree of Whispers, the whole Salvage/Augment loop), I was able to get into Season Five’s stuff right along with my program of memory recovery. I found myself happy griding for “Mother’s Gift” orbs, and hooting with delight when I would cash them in, the screen exploding with high-level gear.

Fast forward again, and a week or so later, I wrenched myself away from Season Five to jump into a pre-launch version of Vessel of Hatred. And here, Diablo started smacking me down – hard. I had forgotten just how unforgiving Diablo IV can be when starting from scratch. But on a new server, with no regional unlocks and no free skill points, I was truly starting a new adventure with no built-in training wheels in place. I died in my first few hours – a lot.

I had a pretty good time fighting my way through the game’s initial difficulty. I eventually got my feet underneath me and started kicking demon ass once again, but it took a few hours. Part of what had me discombobulated was determining an effective build with the new Spiritborn class.

Spiritborn is a new character class that focuses on up-close-and-personal damage, which is the antithesis of my usual kiting playstyle. Spiritborn characters can focus on one of four “Spirit Guardians” (or try to mix them up a bit) as their source of power. The Jaguar is a fire damage build, the Gorilla is a tanky defense-based build, the Eagle focuses on lightning attacks, and the Centipede is poison and crowd control. I started with an Eagle build, but quickly found that it just was not working for me. Pivoting to the Centipede and its damage over time attacks, I found my bearings and settled in.

I spent quite a lot of time dorking around with the new seasonal mechanics and getting distracted by the endless hunt for goodies; I was probably level 30 before I even started working on Vessel of Hatred’s storyline. And then once I decided to buckle down and run through the campaign, I kept getting distracted by Helltides, seasonal activities, random encounters, and just about every other sparkling doodad that Diablo could dangle in front of me. As a result, I have no idea how long I spent on the storyline; my best guess is maybe eight hours.

Though I’m unclear on the length of the campaign, I can say that I enjoyed it even more than I did the base game. The tighter narrative structure of the expansion ensured that I knew who every character was, and I never lost track of what was happening. There were zero “who is this guy again?” moments, and I was able to follow all the twists and turns easily.

The new Nahantu region is much larger than I expected, a land mass maybe 30% as large as the original sprawling map slapped onto the southwestern region of the existing contenent. Comprised of deserts and jungles, there are new settlements to discover, and the usual overwhelming number of dungeons, events, and sidequests. There is a lot here; this is an expansion that really expands.

The new mechanics are almost too numerous to list. Out of everythingteh expansion offers, I probably enjoyed the mercenaries the most. There are four very different characters to unlock through questlines of varying lengths. Once obtained, each merc has their own skill tree, and they each unlock a series of powerful rewards the more you play with them. Due to my limited time with the game (all review data is wiped out before the general release – booooo!), I unlocked all four but only focused on building up Raheir, the Shieldbearer. Due to my lack of familiarity with close-quarters combat, having a tank there to yank baddies off me was very welcome.

I also really enjoyed the Kurast Undercity, which is a cool time-attack dungeon. You start with a timer counting down, which can be expanded by killing elite enemies. As you battle your way through each level, you light torches (and kill a zillion dudes), which steadily increases the quality of the loot you get at the end. I got completely clobbered my first time through, but after getting a handle on it, I started making regular runs, increasing the difficulty over time. Good fun to be had there.

One new expansion mechanic that I didn’t spend much time on was the new Runewords system. Runes are random drops that show up after you meet certain criteria. They can only be slotted into gear with two jewelry slots. There are two types of runes that must be paired up for the desirable effect. The first (Runes of Ritual) build up a resource called Offering. When you have enough Offering, the second rune (Runes of Invocation) are triggered.

For example, you could have a Rune of Ritual that builds Offering when you use a certain type of skill, or you travel a certain distance. When you have enough Offering built up, your Rune of Invocation will fire a powerful skill, sometimes a skill that is not normally available to your character type or build. So, you play normally and occasionally this thing just fires off. To me, this felt like much more of an end-game way to expand my build; I was switching out gear so frequently that Runewords felt like more complication than I was willing to mess with. I just stuck with good old-fashioned jewels and skulls. I also never made it to the Dark Citadel, the new 2-4 player instance. I do plan on engaging with it once the general release goes live, though. I’m fully intrigued.

There are all sorts of other changes and updates that will likely be more meaningful to the Diablo faithful than they were to a casual like me. The max level has been bumped to 60, and I noticed that the skill tree looked to be somewhat expanded. And of course, the Season 6 stuff was interspersed amongst all of this expansion content, so it took me a while to parse out what was what. The new season has a fun mechanic that focuses on the Realmwalker, this giant, lumbering AT-AT of a creature that must be taken down to open portals to “Rupture Dungeons”. Completing Rupture Dungeons rewards the player with special potions that deliver a huge increase in XP gains and enable the drop of some orbie-like goodies that can be occasionally cashed in for fabulous prizes. You know how it is; it all ends up resulting in a glorious explosion of loot.

If there’s one thing that I learned from my re-engagement with Diablo IV – both my run at Season 5 and the new Expansion stuff – it’s that Diablo has more hooks than a fishing boat captain. After just a few hours, I was fully engaged, and I frankly had repeat “It’s all getting deleted” to myself over and over again to force myself to eventually stop playing the review build.

If you have been playing Diablo IV all this time, following from season to season, there is no doubt that you’ll be picking this up. It’s a no-brainer. But if, like me, you really enjoyed the base game but then stepped away for a while, this is the right time to come on back and dive into Hell again. There’s so much new stuff to do, all the awesome older stuff is still there, and these billions of demons aren’t going to slaughter themselves. Just because Lillith is gone doesn’t mean you are done. You’re just getting started. Get back to it.