An ancient evilthreatens to engulf Sanctuary in darkness, and new heroes have been called upon to face challenges the world has never seen before.

True to the franchise’s roots, Diablo IV will deliver visceral combat, gruesome and varied monsters, an epic hunt for legendary loot, and endless playability and progression. Players will find a lifetime’s worth of adventure scattered across a land rooted in unique ecologies and inhabited by dangerous new foes. They’ll delve into randomized dungeons packed with unpredictable adversaries and unimaginable treasures. While continuing to fully support solo and coordinated party play, Diablo IV will also provide opportunities for groups of players to encounter each other in the same shared world—whether to tackle bigger challenges . . . or possibly even slaughter one another in player-vs.-player combat.

In Diablo IV, players will attempt to bring hope back to the world by vanquishing evil in all its vile incarnations—from cannibalistic demon-worshipping cultists to the all-new drowned undead that emerge from the coastlines to drag their victims to a watery grave. For the first time in the series, Sanctuary will be a contiguous, seamless landmass comprising diverse regions ranging from the burning desert of Kejhistan, to the verdant werewolf-infested forests of Scosglen, to the harsh and rugged wilderness of the Dry Steppes.

Being decked out with the most powerful gear and demon-stomping weapons is one of the core features of any Diablo game and the team is ready to share how things are changing in Diablo IV and what players can expect as they hack and slash their way through Sanctuary filling up their bags with loot.

Progress on the game continues at a steady clip and Blizzard are excited about several big updates and revisions that the team’s worked on for a long time that we are trying to complete before the holidays.

Lead Game Designer Joe Shely opens the gates of Hell even further and dives into one of the most anticipated topics from the Diablo community: Itemization. 

Items are the lifeblood of Diablo. They are the element of the game that captures your imagination and keeps you playing and wondering, “What if?” after you put the game down. Whether it’s anticipating the next piece of perfectly rolled godly gear or kicking around item combinations in your head like a mad scientist, items are undoubtedly a major part of what makes Diablo so compelling and so different from other games.

Understanding how important it is to get itemization right, we paid special attention to early player feedback about this part of the game. We knew that many more iterations awaited between what we showed you at BlizzCon 2019, our follow-up blogs, and the final game release. We also knew from past Diablo entries that we will need to have the time and resources to make these iterations—thankfully, we have that baked into our current schedule. Getting all of your feedback encouraged us to move some of that iteration time forward so that we could get our newest direction in front of you sooner.

We’ve reviewed every aspect of itemization from top to bottom and reworked elements that we felt weren’t living up to their potential—from the individual stats that our classes tap into to the visual representation of items in your inventory. Of course, it’s still early and we still have lots more playtesting and iterating to do, but we think this direction puts us down a more solid foundational path and we couldn’t be happier to share it with you today.

Today we're going to look at some changes to items in Diablo IV and update you on a few things we've shared in our previous development blogs. In deciding what changes to make, we focused on three core ideals:

• First, we want to strengthen class identity by providing intuitive fantasy hooks. Items and skills that lean into the fantasy of your class are best.
• Second, we want to support deeper customization through our itemization. Items should support and enhance your class, not define it.
• Finally, we’re landing on overall depth somewhere between Diablo II and Diablo III. We aim to provide years of things to discover and countless ways to build a class.

Skill Tree

Since releasing the last quarterly blog post on the skill tree, we've been reviewing all of your feedback. Our team has also had a lot of hands-on time with our skill trees in frequent internal playtests, including an extended progression playtest. Based on this, we're confident that it's a solid direction, so we're going to iterate on it and make further improvements. For example, we're increasing the clustering of related skill nodes, so players don't have to go across the tree to find skill upgrades for their builds.

The ability to re-specialize or 'respec' your skills is a tricky one to balance. Like many of you, we want choices to matter and characters to feel different from each other—not just one click away from being identical to all the others. We also want to encourage players to experiment with different skills when they start playing, and discover builds that are right for them. In Diablo IV, you will be able to respec your skills and passives. The number of times you can do this will be unlimited, but it won’t be free. It will be easy to do when you first start a character; as your character grows, the effort and cost required to respec will grow too. In the end-game, changing your build will require a significant investment, to appropriately match the time and effort you’ve put into defining your character.

Primary Stats

In our last blog, we agreed with your feedback that too much of a character's power came from the items they wore. And we liked the imagery conjured by the phrases “Angelic Power” and “Demonic Power,” but they didn't reinforce the fantasy of what being a Barbarian, a Sorcerer, or a Druid is all about. So we went back to our roots and looked at the classic RPG elements of early Diablo games. What are you really doing when you wade through a horde of monsters and emerge a level higher on the other side? You're training; you're practicing a skill; you're getting better at what you do. Becoming stronger, and smarter.

After gaining a level, our barbarian has received 5 Stat points and 2 Skill points to spend.

When you gain a level, you'll receive points to spend in Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, or Willpower, along with your skill points. Of course, most Barbarian builds are going to benefit from a healthy measure of Strength, but as you build out your character and decide on skills and synergies you'll want to mix in other attributes.

As a Barbarian, each point of Strength will increase the damage of your skills, while Willpower improves Fury generation, and Dexterity grants critical chance. Meanwhile, as a Sorceress, Intelligence increases skill damage, Willpower grants critical chance, and Dexterity hastens mana recovery. Each stat also confers a secondary defensive bonus.

You can supplement your character's stat build with items to give you a little more Willpower here, a little more Strength there, but the vast majority of your stats will come from how you choose to spend your points.

And here's where it gets really interesting. Many of the nodes in each class skill tree have additional effects if you meet specific primary stat thresholds. You'll get the baseline effect of these nodes when you spend the skill points to unlock them, but get enough of the corresponding primary stat and the bonus effect will activate.

You'll want to think carefully about how to allocate your stat points to activate these effects.

Weapon Types

As we hinted at in our last blog, we're making substantial changes to core itemization.

We’ll start by looking at the many different weapons available to classes in Diablo IV. Our weapon types look visually distinct and have meaningful effects on gameplay through features like the Barbarian's Arsenal. We've also done a lot of work in the game engine to make weapons feel more real and physical, like the Barbarian carving a trough through the ground with their mace during Upheaval.

Characters in Diablo IV use their weapons to perform skills and channel magical power.

But something was still missing. Wands should be faster than quarterstaves, and swords and maces should do different things. To see what that feels like in action, we've added weapon speeds and inherent characteristics to all weapons in our latest internal test environment.

Two different weapon choices for a level 20 Sorceress.

In general, one-handed weapons excel at letting you attack and reposition quickly, while slower two-handed weapons deal more damage. You can really feel the differences between them.

You can opt for a Staff to cast more damaging Frost bolts, or a Wand to channel them more quickly.

In addition to speed, each type of weapon has an inherent physical characteristic. For shields this is block value, meaning that any shield you find in Sanctuary is going to have block, in addition to any magical affixes it may have. As physical properties, these traits are consistent across all weapons of the same type and cannot be modified.

The physical characteristics of a weapon are shown above the separator in item tooltips. Here we see examples of a shield, wand, and axe.

You might notice another thing about these items: they're high-resolution renders of the actual equipment. In a game like Diablo, icons are important. They often contribute as much to the identity of a cool piece of loot as the in-game representation on your character. Items that don't appear on your character, like rings, are defined by their icons. We've upgraded all of them.

Item Qualities

We’ve also made some exciting changes to the game’s item qualities. Philosophically, we like the clarity of analysis afforded by clearly understood item tiers. In other words, we think players of all skill levels benefit from not having to scrutinize every single item that drops to see if it might be an upgrade for them—blue Magic items are good, but yellow Rares are usually better. There’s a great feeling of progression when you graduate into items with greater complexity, more powerful effects, and cooler looks as you level up. And the game-changing powers found on the Legendary items in Diablo III are exciting and offer many possible effects that just aren't possible with regular affixes.

That said, we don't want to end up in a place where the right decision is to ignore every item that doesn't have a glowing orange sky-beam.

So, we're making a lot of exciting changes here. We’re increasing the potential power of individual affixes on Magic items. We're increasing the maximum number of affixes on Rare and better items in the endgame. Legendary affixes now roll randomly (Yes, really!) on Legendary Items. And Unique items will replace Mythics.

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Magic items can now have the most powerful regular affixes, while Rare items get up to five, and Legendary items have four regular affixes and one legendary affix.

Legendary Affixes

You can think of Legendary items as Rare items with one affix replaced with a legendary effect. These new legendary affixes work just like regular affixes, in that they can roll randomly on different items and in different slots. Many can be used by any class, while some are specific to a particular class.

Can't decide between making your Chill effects Freeze faster or more damaging ground effects for your boots? No problem! Legendary affixes aren't restricted to a specific slot.

You'll notice a variety of our affixes in the examples above, including elemental resistances and sockets for gems and runes, which can appear on items in place of another affix. And of course, Attack comes from your weapons while Defense comes from your armor. With the increase to the maximum number of affixes available on items, we'll also be adding new affixes to the game to make sure there's plenty of diversity.

Uniques

Unique items are making a comeback in a big way in Diablo IV. We're embracing the fantasy of these build-around items with completely fixed affixes, heavily thematic and usually class-specific powers, and distinctive looks.

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Three Unique items available at level 20. A Unique will always appear with the same affixes.

We still like the idea of Mythic items, but we don't want to create an item quality that invalidates all others, so they're out for now. One of the things we loved most about them was the promise of getting random legendary powers on an item, so we folded that into our baseline legendary design.

With the addition of the skills and passives tree, primary stat points, and changes to items in Diablo IV, we can’t wait to see all the builds you’ll create. Maybe you'll focus on skills augmented by Uniques we designed, create something from scratch out of different legendary affixes, discover a creative pairing of primary stats with specific skills, or even incorporate the odd Rare or Magic item to maximize a specific affix to great effect.

We’re excited to read through the community feedback on the updates in this blog. As always, please remember that none of this is final as the game is still actively in development. Your constructive discussions around these features will continue to help Diablo IV, and we greatly appreciate your support and thoughts about the game. We will continue working on itemization throughout the development of Diablo IV and we are looking forward to seeing you at BlizzConline next year! We have lots to share in 2021 regarding some of our other features and we can’t wait to tell you all about them.

-Joe Shely,

Lead Game Designer, Diablo IV

Diablo IV’s first three character classes are:

• The Barbarian, known for their unparalleled strength and brutal melee combat,utilizes a new and more powerful system in battle, Arsenal, which arms them with the ability to carry and rapidly switch between four different weapons at a time by assigning them to individual attacks.
• The Sorceress hearkens back to their Diablo II roots and shapes the elements to obliterate their foes by impaling them upon jagged spikes of ice, electrocuting them with bolts of lightning, or raining flaming meteors from the sky.
• The Druid is a savage shapeshifter whose updated playstyle empowers them to fluidly transform between werewolf, werebear, and human form to unleash the raw power of nature’s furyon the forces of the Burning Hells.

These three iconic characters honor the legacy of the franchise and exemplify how Diablo IV builds upon the series’ history by preserving the core Diablo fantasy while allowing players to explore untapped gameplay possibilities with fresh inspiration. Players will be able to experiment and discover countless character builds through customizable talent trees and skills, a deep loot system filled with legendary and set items to collect, runes and rune word combinations, and even personalized mounts for traversing the open world.

Diablo IV is being developed using modern technology that pushes the franchise to dark, new depths. This technology is at the heart of everything players will see, hear, and feel—delivering much higher fidelity and a more engrossing experience. It opens up countless possibilities for the Diablo series, from smooth character animations, such as the Druid’s fluid shapeshifting, to the seamless, vast overworld players will travel across in search of the next loot-filled underground dungeon. Ultimately, Diablo IV will ground players in a grittier and deadlier world.

Diablo IV is currently in development and will be coming to PC, PS4, and Xbox One.