As a lifelong fan of the beloved Diablo franchise, I’ve witnessed the many ups and downs that have been thrown our way from Blizzard. Whether it be the launch of Diablo 2 expansion, Lord of Destruction (ups), or the many issues that plagued the Diablo 3 launch, “There’s no offline mode”? Or “Why is it taking 3 days to log in?” (downs). So when the Diablo 4 launch was just around the corner, I couldn’t have been more excited (and skeptical). I played it for a month or 2 then un-installed it for close to a year. It wasn’t until they released Season 4 (loot reborn) and the announcement for the upcoming expansion that my interest started to pique again and for others as well.
Now with Vessel of Hatred I can safely say that any skepticism I may have had before playing was violently launched out the window. Not only does Vessel Of Hatred have lots of content to delve into, but it’s a lot of fun to play as well.
Spiritborn – Comparable to Monk? Not Really
First and foremost, the Spirtborn. The Diablo franchises new original class, which is fast, agile, and extremely fun to play. It’s hard to come up with a comparison to any other Diablo class, as they really are a class all in their own. They’re fast, like Diablo 3’s Monk and invoke powerful animal spirits like a Druid, but to say they’re similar to either of those classes would be a disservice to what Blizzard has come up with.
The new class has an Aztec like background, focusing on 4 animal spirit guardians to draw on for power. You get to pick 1 major guardian and 1 minor guardian for your class specific speciality. Gorilla, which provides defense in the form of barriers and thorns. Jaguar, fast attacks with fire damage. Eagle, focusing on crit chance and vulnerable damage, and my personal favourite, the Centipede which utilizes poison to not only quickly drain enemies health but also providing self heal.
The Spiritborn’s class specific specialty is one of the better class specialties in my opinion, quite simply for all of the different choices and combos that come with it. Picking a major makes all your skills in your action bar that particular animal tag. Meaning a Gorilla or Eagle skill would also be a Jaguar skill if Jaguar happened to be your major guardian of choice. Picking a spirit minor adds a smaller buff to your repertoire, but even though not as big as the major, still very impactful.
The combinations for skills and class specs are almost limitless. That’s another thing too, leveling up I must have changed my build at least 8 times, and every build whether it was Gorilla/Jaguar, or Centipede/Eagle, was just as enjoyable to play as the last. You won’t be disappointed with the Spirtborn and just how many possibilities there are for custom builds.
Nahantu, Aztrekking In Sanctuary
With the addition of the this new original class comes a new explorable area, rife with new enemies and quests. The Spiritborn hail from the jungles of Nahantu, full of lush green foliage with the odd ancient ruin scattered here and there. It’s a beautiful area, that was easy on the eyes to explore, with lots of available side quests on top of the expansion campaign quests.
It was reminiscent of Kurast from Diablo 2, but being Diablo 4, more open and with more to do. Nahantu doesn’t just bring new scenery and quests to the game, but new monsters and mini bosses as well.
Beware The Water Watcher!
One such enemy “The Slaughterer” is a large four legged beast, like a monstrous deformed Jaguar, that’s just as quick and deadly. When it first bounced at me on my screen, my initial thought was, “awesome,” before realizing it was throughoughly giving me a beat down and had to act with haste to take it down.
Another new beast, “Water Watcher,” was akin to a tall hydra sticking out of the ground, spitting globs of damage at you. I found these extremely annoying with a larger health pool than the other non-elite enemies in Vessel Of Hatred. Luckily they’re stationary and in most instances you can just flee instead of taking the abuse as you slowly chip away at their health. Mind you, this was pretty early into Normal difficulty when my build wasn’t the powerhouse that I ended up with (seriously try out centipede skills).
For The Solo Player
Something I wasn’t too excited about before playing was the new mercenary system. Diablo 2 had one, and I found it lackluster in that version of the game. After unlocking them in Vessel Of Hatred though, my tune changed rather quickly. I found the quests to unlock them interesting, and they kept me engaged. Once unlocked the mercs proved to be quite helpful in the early stages of the game.
Raheir for example, the first one I unlocked has defensive barbarian skills, coming in and taunting enemies, or running in with a shield bash. Varyana is a Berserker with offensive barbarian skills, whirlwind and cleave being among them.
For your ranged mercs, you have Subo and Aldkin. Subo shows his support with traps and bow attacks ala rogue, while Aldkin is a hybrid sorceress/necromancer type with elemental damage and debuffs.
Once level 5 is reached with the mercs, you can begin to trade pale marks (mercenary currency) for legendary equipment and caches via bartering in the mercenary hideout “The Den”. Again, this was a new addition I was on the fence about, but after having them follow me around and help out in combat, I was grateful for the company.
Runewords Make A Return – Set Items Don’t
Speaking of things they brought back, runewords are also now back in the fold, though some changes have been made since our beloved Horadric Cube back in the Diablo 2 days. Now only allowing them in items that can have 2 slots. Some may be unsure to use them or not, as that means giving up the ever important gem slots used for health or crit damage gems.
I found them useful and fun once they activated during combat though, getting the buffs of say, the barbarians challenging shout, taunting enemies and reducing my damage taken was a nice additive. You have one rune that needs to build up offering, once that offering quota is met, the other runes bonus skill/buff is activated.
Some runes give you massive amounts of offering, but aren’t normally spammable skills for offering such a huge… well… offering. Still, I look forward to seeing even more combos with the added rune system as with I do the Spirtborns and their skills.
I know, with the legendary aspects the way they are, it would be a little difficult to incorporate set items and the buffs that come with them into this already packed expansion… but how cool would it be to see a green lettered item drop? Ya know, for nostalgia sake?
Endgame Content… At Launch?
When I waltzed on into Torment 1 (I violently threw myself in), I was nothing short of surprised at seeing multiple new endgame content. There’s the usual suspects, being The Pit, and Nightmare dungeons for upgrading your glyphs and gaining materworking materials. With Vessel Of Hatred also comes the Kurast Undercity, a new timed, multi-level dungeon, where killing certain enemies grants you extended time. There’s also beacons that will bring on a glowing mob to kill, for being granted movement speed bonus and cool down bonus.
Beginning the undercity gives you the option to place a “tribute” into the pre-portal, to activate modifiers, such as less time given for killing mobs, but also granting better rewards, pickable by you, for getting to the boss within the time limit. Uniques specific to your class and offensive legendary aspect pieces being just a small sample. The other, big endgame surprise was, The Dark Citadel. A 2-4 player raid dungeon, that has multiple players unlock gates for each other to clear separate rooms simultaneously, eventually leading you to an end boss.
I can’t tell you the rewards that are granted, because the difficulty was enough that, myself and another colleague were unable to down him. I know, shame shame shame Kyle, but that just speaks volumes about how much there is to do after the quite extensive story.
The level cap has also been raised to 60, with paragon levels then starting at 1, going all the way to 300. I was very relieved at how quickly you earn paragon experience, the crawl from 1-60 took some time and grinding (most likely due to the lower difficulty I was playing on). The paragon system had me from Paragon level 1-80 in just a little over an hour. Which is nice, considering how many paragon nodes there are to fill up now.
Story Campaign – Now With Zero Spoilers!
There’s no story spoilers, but I can say confidently that if you’re a Diablo fan, the story was captivating, with stunning and sometimes frightening cinematics, a good flow of quests keeping you entertained and always on the hunt for build changing items. I was thrilled and surprised, when after finishing the campaign, and checking my playtime, I had clocked in at over 14 hours.
Granted I had done the mercenary quests, but only 1 stronghold (which in itself was a new experience of stronghold that was very exciting), and only a couple side quests, and that brought me to 14 hours. I hadn’t even gotten to endgame yet and had gotten that much time out of a Diablo expansion campaign.
Summary – Say Yes To Hatred!
The short of it is that Vessel of Hatred was full of content, both campaign and endgame. A thoroughly fun and interesting story addition to the base game, with what seemed to me, was more polished graphics (even conduit shrines seemed to pop out at you).
The Spirtborn was extremely fun to play, and that’s putting it mildly. The amount of meta builds that are going to come out of the new class might outnumber all the other classes combined. All in all, a great expansion, worth picking up day 1.
Diablo IV: Vessel Of Hatred was reviewed on PC. Thank you to Blizzard for supplying us with a review code
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