6 Things I Wish I Knew Before Playing Diablo 4: Vessel Of Hatred

Once the main Vessel of Hatred story quest takes you down to Nahantu, you’ll run into the blacksmith Rahair. He wants to introduce you to his Mercenary friends, from whom you’ll select one person to follow you around and fight by your side persistently, and another who’ll show up if you perform a specific action every 20 to 30 seconds. While the narrative will put you on Neyrelle’s trail immediately after opening the new Den hub area, we highly recommend pumping the brakes, getting the gang together before you do anything else.

That is to say, do the Mercenary missions first. One, because they’re narratively pretty excellent, somewhat akin to Mass Effect 2’s Loyalty missions. The demon child Aldikin’s heartbreaking life after the death of his parents is the most affecting of them, and Subo is just a sneaky asshole, but the winner is Varyana, a cannibal barbarian crone with a score to settle. Just a quintessential tough old bird. She rules.

But two, the earlier you can start pumping Rapport XP into your mercs of choice and upgrade their support abilities, the better. The bottom tier abilities for all of these folks are invaluable in the later stretches of the DLC. Not to mention, eventually Rahair will move his daughter Fayira into the Den. Why’s that important? Well…