Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard is spilling more Diablo 4 details before the game’s final open beta launches.
Blizzard Entertainment’s latest developer video for Diablo 4 dives into customisation and character classes ahead of the upcoming ‘Server Slam’ open beta. There are plenty of ways to not only slaughter demons in a way that befits your playstyle, but to look extremely good doing it too.
Here’s the new developer video:
In case you’re unfamiliar, Diablo 4 lets you customise your character’s playstyle in a few ways. Skill trees provide access to skills, passives, enhancements and more abilities as you level up. Basic, core and ultimate skills are all available in the open beta, but Key Passives only unlock at Level 32 and dramatically affect how your other skills work. Once you hit Level 50, you’ll access the Paragon Boards and use Paragon Points to unlock new ability nodes and further finetune your character’s combat prowess.
Diablo 4 also has quite a lot of cosmetics. Eight trillion appearance combinations, to be exact! Each class has unique hairstyle options next to eye colour, body marking and accessory options. The game also has transmog options, which allow you to wear specific gear without being affected by their stats. That means you can wear whatever gear you want without letting it affect the way you look. Otherwise, you’d look silly constantly switching out gear based on whatever you’ve just picked up.
In terms of gear, you have the usual Legendary items that grant powerful bonuses, but you also have Unique items. These are unlike Legendaries in that the bonuses they provide cannot be transferred to other items, and can completely change the flow of a build. You can only pick these up in Nightmare and Torment World Tier difficulties. These include Unique items from previous games such as Windforce. Besides this, you can get Skill Rank bonuses which increase Skill Ranks past Level 5, extract Legendary bonuses to apply to other items, and craft items to modify them yourself.
Diablo 4’s upcoming ‘Server Slam’ open beta launches next month, running from 12pm PDT on May 12 to 12pm PDT on May 14. This is your last chance to get hands on with all of the game’s character classes before the full release in June, so don’t waste it. Feedback and balance fixes from the previous beta will be carried over to the Server Slam, so this is also an opportunity for players to try out the new and improved Druid and Barbarian classes.
Players had previously criticised both of these classes for feeling underpowered in Diablo 4’s early hours compared to the far more damage-heavy Necromancer and Sorcerer classes, but things have changed. The Necromancer and Sorcerer have had their abilities nerfed, while the Druid and Barbarian now have certain skills buffed up. If you base your class choices in the full game on the previous open beta, you’d be missing out.
There are a few more things to note about the Server Slam. Firstly, progress will not be carried over from previous betas, and progress from this beta will not be carried over to the full game either. Levels are still capped at 20, and Legendary item drop rates will be decreased to reflect their actual drop rates in the full game. Don’t expect to be overflowing in Legendary gear this time around. If you happen to make it to Level 20 and defeat the World Boss Ashava, which is a tough ask, you'll also get a special 'Cry of Ashava' Mount Trophy that can be brought over to the full game. Good luck!
Diablo 4 launches on June 6, 2023.
