The first major expansion for Diablo 4 is finally upon us, with a brand-new class—Spiritborne—a new zone to explore, unique gameplay mechanics, and major reworks and overhauls for core gameplay systems that totally revamp how you play Diablo 4. It’s a lot to ingest, and it’s easy for new and returning players to feel overwhelmed. Well, to help you out, we’ve compiled a few of the things you should do before Vessel of Hatred!
Change Campaigns
After purchasing and downloading Vessel of Hatred, upon release, you’ll want to start a brand-new character to dive into the expansion and subsequent season. However, the game doesn’t jump straight into the new content. You need to tell it where to go.
At the end of character creation, you can ‘Change Campaign State’ to ‘Start with the Vessel of Hatred Campaign,’ and you absolutely should choose this option. Otherwise, you’ll start either in Kyovashad once again, like every other prior season, or you’ll begin the main Diablo 4 story mode from the beginning. Well, you’ll still start in Kyovashad, but there’s a quest in the main city to kickoff the new expansion.
Acquire Renown and Altars of Lilith
You’ll want to run through Sanctuary acquiring every single Altar of Lilith and increasing your Renown within each zone. Every Altar provides a unique buff, usually additional stat bonuses, like Dexterity or Strength, along with the occasional Murmuring Obol capacity increase or an extra Paragon Point. They’re worthwhile, as starting a new character with all of the Altars provides you a significant power buff straight out of the gate.
Furthermore, Renown allows you to claim bonus XP, gold, skill points, additional Potion Capacity, Max Obols, and Paragon Points from the Region Progress hub, which is, once again, a nice power buff for a new character!
Focus on Mercenaries
After starting a new character and venturing from Kyovashad to Nahantu, the blacksmith Rahair will introduce you to the new Mercenary mechanics, which allow you to bring an NPC companion along with you. They’re immensely useful when you want to play solo and clear content quickly. Oh, and a second one will occasionally pop up to deal damage before disappearing into the night.
But first and foremost, before you get too excited and leap headfirst into the Vessel of Hatred campaign, complete the Mercenary missions to increase your rapport with each new character. The unique abilities each Mercenary unlocks with Rapport XP really does make a difference in the new content.
Related: How to Fix Error Code 75 in Diablo 4
What You Need to Know About Vessel of Hatred
Before diving into all of the new content available in Diablo 4, there’s a few things you should know beforehand, as a lot of key changes come to the game alongside the new expansion, including:
- This first expansion includes a level squish, bringing the max player level down from 100 to 60.
- The World Tier difficulty system is completely revamped and now includes Torment-like tiers instead of World Tier I-IV.
- The max Paragon level is now 300.
- Everyone receives two new character slots.
- Every class receives additional Skills and Passives
- Party Finder is finally in the game for group content.
- Seasonal content and rewards
Specifically to those who purchase the expansion, you will receive:
- Nahantu
- Spiritborne
- Vessel of Hatred campaign
- Runewords
- Dark Citadel
- Mercenaries
- Kurast Undercity
- Vessel of Hatres-specific resource trading mechanics
Did you know Diablo 4 made over $1 billion in revenue? It’s a positively staggering amount but not surprising in the least bit considering the cost of cosmetics available in the in-game store!
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