Diablo 4 is almost upon us a long-awaited and highly anticipated return for this decade-spanning series. If you are curious about whether killing demons and casting spells in a dark fantasy world is your kind of thing, then we’ve got everything about Diablo 4 that you really need to know.

Release Date, Platforms & Editions

Diablo 4 is an ARPG in a series that spawns as far back as 1996. It’s a sequel to 2012 Diablo 3 and will again be developed by Activision Blizzard.

Diablo 4 will release on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 along with Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on June 6, 2023.

There are three different editions of Diablo 4: Standard Edition, Deluxe Edition and Ultimate Edition. The corresponding prices of different editions are $69.99, $89.99 and $99.99. The Standard Edition comes with the Light Bearer Mount and Cross-game Items. The Deluxe Edition includes the mount and mount armor and seasonal pass unlock. And the Ultimate Edition will come with the Wings of the Creator Emote and a 20 Tier Skip on the Battle Pass.

Story & World

Diablo 4’s background story is actually a continuation of Diablo 3. At this time, thirty years have passed since the Diablo 3 events. Millions of lives have been lost due to the brutal atrocities of Heaven and Hell. Lilith, Daughter of Hatred will rise again to save the people of Sanctuary and take back her own land.

In Diablo 4, you can experience a variety of game content. Of course, these game contents are all based on the open world of the game. In this open world, you can explore five distinct regions in sequence: Scosglen, Dry Steppes, Fractured Peaks, Hawezar, and Kehjistan. You could be in swampy bogs one second and frosty cathedrals the next. Although you can experience all kinds of fun in these areas, you will also face many unknown dangers at any time. All in all, if you want to experience all of Diablo 4’s basic campaigns (including sidequests and endgame content), you’ll need to spend at least 35 hours.

Across the open world, you’ll discover towns like Kyovashad, which will be safe spaces filled with vendors and quest givers. Then, there are camp locations known as Strongholds, which can be found off the beaten path in the Sanctuary. These locations will be filled with monsters, but once defeated, will become safe spaces filled with NPCs and will act as a new Waypoint location.

In fact, sometimes you will be pleasantly surprised to find that some Strongholds will have hidden dungeons. These dungeons are actually a pretty nice bonus tier for players. Not only can you get extra loot here, but you won’t feel bored when killing enemies. Because the enemy types in each Stronghold are different, you won’t face the same enemies over and over again.

Whenever you go, however, you will always be a part of this online shared open world, meaning that you are not able to play Diablo 4 offline. If you’re playing with friends like previous entries in the series, you can slay demons and conquer dungeons in four-player squads. You can also play Diablo 4 and couch co-op on console versions of the game. But sadly, this feature is not available on the PC version.

However, the game will feature both cross play and cross progression, meaning that you can play with your friends on other platforms or work on your characters on those different platforms once you’ve connected your Battlenet account.

While dungeons will remain private spaces for Solo or Co-op play, the open world and social hub spaces like the aforementioned town of Kyovashad will fill up with other players. You’ll also come across public events. It’s very similar to Destiny, where world bosses will appear. These guys are meant to be tough and require the help of a lot of other players wandering to defeat them.

If you feel like taking the fight to other players rather than helping them, then you can always travel to the Fields of Hatred. These are your PVP areas throughout the world fields with monsters to slay and loot to collect, but you’ll be fair game to other players wandering these regions, too.

In these fields, you’ll collect Shards of Hatred, which must be redeemed before leaving a process, which will mark you as a target for other players. If you fail, you’ll just lose your shards. So, it’s relatively casual. But if you do succeed, you can use these shards to purchase items from special vendors to cut out your character.

Classes & Builds

Characters, builds, and customization are very important to the Diablo 4 experience. This entry will actually include character customization, so you can diversify the look of your character.

Once you’ve honed in on their look, you’ll have five different classes to choose from: Barbarian, Sorceress, Rogue, Necromancer and Druid. As you may have picked up from these names, that allows you to choose between more magic learning characters or your typical steals and shoots type. Let me break down these class types.

Barbarian, which is likely the class I’ll go for, is your melee skirmisher, wielding one or two-handed weapons. These are your DPS, which are great for getting up close and personal and are solid all-rounders for those unsure of the playstyle they want to don.

Sorceress is the magic wielding glass cannon, who controls fire cold and lightning attacks. You want to be on the move with this one and keep that mana filled, so you can keep casting your spells.

Rogue is the stealthy type, mixing up close and long range weaponry with a dexterous mobility to ensure that you are forging attacks and getting into all the right places.

Druids are your shapeshifters, which are a brilliant hybrid between melee and casting playstyles. You’ll be able to shift into wolves and bears for short periods of time for brittle bouts of damage whilst wielding earth and storm magic.

Lastly, we have Necromancer, Summoners of the Dead. You’ll be able to call on dead soldiers to your aid, bring back fallen enemies, or drain their power and dispel curses. In my eyes, this is your support character that’ll help you keep things under control.

Customization goes a little further than a simple class preset, however. With an expansive skill tree with both active and passive skills to acquire, you can bend your classes and its build to your whim. And you won’t necessarily be stuck with their skill choices you make, either. You can respect your character down to a specific skill. However, it will cost you and become more expensive the deeper you go. So, while it’s an option sometimes, it may be better to just start a new character.

Evolving from what characters experienced in Diablo Immortal and Diablo 3, Skeleton abilities are no longer tied to armor. So, you’re able to switch them out without completely changing your character’s build. Armor will come in different tiers of power progressing through Normal, Magic, Rare, Legendary, Ancient Legendary, and Mythic.

Each armor piece will come with an attack and defense stat with additional stat bonuses included with the higher tier pieces of gear and the armor variety doesn’t stop theirs. You can also customize the color of your armor pieces with dies that are said to be grounded within the world of Sanctuary, which basically means you shouldn’t be cutting about in a magenta armor piece as you talk to a desperate survivor in their little brown rags.

Lastly, for this section, the inventory system has been simplified, removing the need to play a mini game of Tetris with your various weapons and armor pieces. Just chuck it in and you can auto sort it with the click of a button.

Endgame

You may be wondering what’s in store for the Diablo 4 endgame experience.

The first level ceiling of the game is level 50, which will build up your basic skill points and will typically be reached with campaign completion.

However, from levels 50 to 100, which is the max level of Diablo 4, you’ll earn Paragon Points for the returning Paragon System. Here, you will be able to apply buffs and start increases to your character for the endgame, meaning there will be a massive variety of builds to craft.

It is so big in fact that the devs have stated that on a playthrough a max level Necromancer for example, will have only unlocked around 40 of the skill tree, meaning that if you’re playing with another player in the same class, they shouldn’t all play the same and there’s also big potential for leveling up new versions of the same class.

As your strength increases, the difficulty of your game will also increase. The setting of World Tiers just reflects this point. In Diablo 4, World Tiers is divided into 5 tiers. The higher the tier, the higher the difficulty. At the beginning of the game, you can automatically unlock World Tier 1 and World Tier 2. And the rest of the World Tiers will be unlocked after you complete certain dungeons. The rewards you earn are also tied to World Tiers. The higher the tiers, the better loot you will get, the more Diablo 4 Gold you will earn and the higher XP you will boost.

Once you’ve completed higher tiers, you’ll be able to successfully unlock events like Nightmare Dungeons. These events are actually an upgraded version of regular dungeons. Therefore, their difficulty will be greatly increased. It’s worth noting that Nightmare Dungeons come with a variety of modifiers that will change the way enemies play. So, there is still a certain difference between this kind of dungeon and the classic dungeon, because you need to plan slowly according to the actual situation. Only then can you reap lots of loot and come out alive.

Bounties are returning to Diablo 4 in the form of the Tree of Whispers, which will give players weekly world objectives to work through and rewards to collect. But if that wasn’t enough post campaign content for you, seasons will return from Diablo 3 with full battle passes to work through, which are expected to include time limited gear and possibly even mechanics if Diablo 3 is anything to go by at least.

These will vastly improve the replay ability of the game and give you something to strive towards each week. That does touch on something. However, that isn’t exclusive to the battle pass. Endgame loot is really what you’re striving towards. This is a little slasher, after all. And the new Mythic tier of armor for the endgame will allow you to take that customization experience to the outer reaches and they look pretty cool as well.