Five Things I Wish I Knew When I Started ‘Diablo 4: Vessel Of Hatred’

After an unfortunate delay on release night, Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred is ready to launch this morning, and with it, the new Spiritborn class.

I got to play the expansion early for review (8.5/10 was my verdict) and as such, I have a few dozen extra hours in so far compared to those playing at launch. So, I figured I would give you some advice to get you started here based on what I’ve played so far.

1) Spirtborn Is OP Right Now – This is not terribly surprising given that Diablo 4 wants everyone to enjoy the new class, but even with tuning and new skills across other classes, Spiritborn is sort of in a power level all its own right now, and if you weren’t planning to start with them (I’m sure 90% of people were) I would definitely consider doing so.

While it’s possible that Spiritborn is reined in over time, for now Blizzard seems to be content to unleash its full power and you will want to take advantage of that before any future nerfs.

2) Best Spiritborn Animal Spirits – You are given the choice between heading down tracks for Jaguar, Gorilla, Eagle and Centipede, or a mix of them. Chances are you will probably eventually do a blend of two of them, but as it stands, the poison-based Centipede is the top choice for the moment with powerful builds that are going to be meta, at least for a while.

Eagle is probably the next best class, lightning element while focus on mobility. I personally did a Jaguar Gorilla combo which was fun for a while but eventually my damage dropped off significantly as I reached later Torment tiers.

3) New Difficulty Curve – With four pre-Torment levels and four Torment levels, things have changed on the difficulty side in that…oftentimes things are a lot harder. I and most other reviewers had to play the campaign almost entirely on Normal, something I never did previously, but we also had zero renown for bonuses, which did not help matters. But if you’re feeling like Hard is too hard to start, you’re not alone. So far, it seems to be a bit smoother than release, however, with those extra boosts.

The endgame has also been made much more difficult with big boosts to enemy health so the best players in the game aren’t necessarily blowing through everything the way they used to be. So if you hit max and it feels more punishing than before, that’s how it’s supposed to be.

4) Don’t Overlook Companions – At first I thought that companions were sort of just a thing that Diablo 4 added because the game had them previously and they figured they’d just have them show up eventually.

But these companions are actually pretty good, even if you’re not gearing them up the same way you did in other games. They can be pretty core to your build. For instance, I had a Spiritborn build based around Vulnerable, and the little demon child has a skill that can make large swaths of enemies vulnerable at a time which consistently helped me. Others can give you buffs to enemies with certain status effects, etc. Take time to examine all their skills and which one might be best for you. And they’re tougher than they look in terms of survivability as well.

5) Runes Over Gems – Diablo 4 wants to encourage players to use the new rune system which takes advantage of double armor gem slots that you were previously using. That’s…not great, right? Given how important those were.

Well, one thing you may miss is that gems now have been modified to be less necessary. For instance, a ruby in your armor no longer gives you important Max Life %, it gives you +Strength. So in that instance, you may want to be using runes in those slots over gems even if gems felt pretty essential previously. Some are unchanged, like jewelry gem slots for elemental resist, but with single slots, they can’t use runes anyway.

That’s my early advice, I may do more down the line. Have fun! See you out there.

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