At Gamescom 2024, the Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred booth housed in the Xbox area was a dominating presence. Its lofty and leafy outer walls, and Spiritborn-guarded double doors broke open to our own taste of what’s to come when Diablo 4’s first expansion arrives on October 8, 2024. During my time in the booth I got to play a few builds of the new Spiritborn class, but the demo left me hungry for more.
While I got to sneak a peak at the landscape of Nahantu— the newly revealed mercenary system and Dark Citadel coming with the expansion were noticeably absent. Luckily for me, Rod Fergusson (General Manager of Diablo) and Gavian Whishaw (Executive Producer) spared me some of their time to sit down and chat everything about Vessel of Hatred, the new Spiritborn class, Mercenaries, and crucially — what’s next for the franchise? I wanted to know what the game world would look like for non-paying players, how mercenaries differ from previous game versions, and if further expansions would always be a map expansion or perhaps something more… cataclysmic? Without further ado, here’s everything I packed into my time with Rod and Gavian.
Spiritborn — choose your fighter
The Gamescom 2024 Diablo 4 booth let the public get their hands on the Spiritborn class for the first time. For 20 minutes you got to choose from four builds centred around each of the spirits you can summon with the class. Jaguar, Eagle, Gorilla and Centipede. I had the most fun with Centipede, and Phil Spencer seemed to enjoy taking the Jaguar for a test drive. I wanted to know what Rod and Gavian’s favorite Spiritborn build was so far.
Gavian Whishaw: When I started playing the Spiritborn. I started with all Jaguar, but I found it was really fast, so I started baking in some Gorilla just to slow it down and have some control around the area, with the Smash. The Gorilla Ultimate looks super cool. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but he just chest pounds and then crushes everything around. But because I’ve been playing the demo, the Centipede feels really good and has a lot of interesting, more complex interactions that I have to work out more. So that’s my journey so far with the Spiritborn.
Rod Fergusson: I’ve been doing double Centipede, but then we did a Dark Citadel play test and they gave us builds that we didn’t make ourselves. I got Jaguar. And I was like, oh, wow. So I think I’m going to be Jaguar/Centipede, because I like Necro and I like minion builds. The Centipede has that pestilence cloud where you plant the seed in them, kill them, and then this cloud of poison chases down people and kills them. And I’m like, all about that.
Can a jack of all trades be someone’s favorite class?
The Spiritborn seems an incredibly versatile class, and something I touched upon in a chat with my friends over at PureDiablo when the class was initially revealed, was that generally a class in Diablo meets a certain specificity that appeals to each player, and given that the Spiritborn is trying to meet so many different playstyles with it’s 4 Spirit choices, can a jack of all trades really be anyone favorite class? I wonder if players may jump into Spiritborn to try something new but ultimately return to their mains for a more traditional class feel, I asked Rod if they envisaged many becoming a ‘Spiritborn main’ when Vessel of Hatred launches.
Rod Fergusson: We had people up that visited the campus that got to play, and then we’ve seen in the booth [at Gamescom], it’s really interesting to see people come around to like, ‘Oh, this is it has such a versatility’. Because the thing is, when you’re playing the demo, you see these four different versions.It feels like there are four different classes, but they’re the same class, just four different builds. You could switch between them however you want, even the build demo downstairs, you can go in and change stuff that’s there and try it out to mix it up even more. I think that versatility is great. It has a little bit of everything. I’m a kind of a crowd-control AOE person. That’s why I like Centipede, but it has that sort of speed of the Jaguar, and it has the range of the Eagle and the defense and stuff. So I think there will be people who are Spiritborn mains, for sure.
The mercenary interactions will impact what builds come out on top for Spiritborn and other classes
So, speaking of Spiritborn builds, which do you envisage will be the strongest when the game launches and the public gets their hands on the class? Let’s talk in terms of Pit 150. Which Spiritborn is going to be the first to hit that?
Gavian: We see this a lot when we release a new season, and I think we’re going to see it when we release the Spiritborn. Right away, there’s going to be assumptions about which is the most powerful and what’s going to work the best. But then people are going to get more comfortable with the build and start mixing and matching stuff, especially with, you know, itemization. And then I think we’ll see, like, new things start to pop up with what’s stronger.
Rod: It’ll be interesting how the mercenaries play into that, because you can use the mercenaries to also augment your build. Like Aldkin, who’s like the Cursed Child, when you build up your rapport with him, you can go down a skill tree, you can actually make him to be focused on fire. So if you’re a fire Sorc with a fire mercenary, you can actually get more synergies around that. I think the dark horse on this might be the Centipede, because of all the poison synergies that are in the game, I think there’s going to be something really cool just killing everything through poison and stuff like that.
Gavian: Any if you paired that with Raheir, who’s the mercenary that does, like, a lot of blocking? Yeah, I think that would be super fun.
Spiritborn class quest
Having just played Druid for the first time, it stood out to me how much longer and more thorough their class quest is compared to other ‘complete a dungeon and talk to this dude’ quests for the other classes. What can we expect from the Spiritborn class quest?
Gavian: If I had to rank it, I would say in terms of being in depth, it is between what the Sorcerer needs to do and what the Druid would do. More than Sorc, less than Druid!
Will the Spiritborn visually outshine other classes?
Something that stood out to me immediately from the Spiritborn gameplay reveal, and after playing the class myself, is just how visually striking its moves are. Now, of course, this will stand out because it’s new, and I’m not as acclimatized to it as other classes, but I think, especially with the Ultimate moves, it definitely visually may outshine the other classes. I wanted to know if the developers thought the rework and new skills coming from other classes would somewhat bridge the gap.
Gavian: Well, I think from a skills perspective, the effects and the feel would be quite different than the other classes. I think from a look on screen, like the armor set, I really love the Spiritborn because it’s different, unique, and plays into the fantasy of being a martial class, which is about movement. And so you don’t wear a lot of heavy armor, but you have really cool armor that allows you to move around on the screen a lot. So I think it’s going to stand out because it’s so different and looks so good.
One of the cool things, it’s not part of the expansion, but it’s part of Season 6, is that we’re adding a new skill to every class with a new passive as well. So the other classes will get new things to do and look at as well.
Rod Fergusson
Rod: We put a lot of effort into the visual effects for Spiritborn because we wanted to connect the Spirit Guardians to the moves. And so the feeling of the Jaguar having a fire influence, the Eagle having an enlightening influence. Gorilla being physical, and Centipede being poisoned. We really wanted to feel those things. So we definitely leaned into that. And so I think what’s great is that as we do new things, we start to elevate things, you know, to push us and go like, hey, we can go back and make this a certain way but sometimes you have to optimize as well.
When one of the things that we’ve been doing, you know, people look at Season 5, Helltide, and go like, why wasn’t it like that at the beginning? Part of it was just that many monsters on screen with that many visual effects—we had to optimize the game all the time, both from a design perspective and a technology perspective.
Yeah, we’re going to be continuing to do that, but at the same time, you know, these are things where you go ‘Oh, this looks really cool. We can go and boost other things as we go.’ One of the cool things, it’s not part of the expansion, but it’s part of Season 6, is that we’re adding a new skill to every class with a new passive as well. So the other classes will get new things to do and look at as well.
Mercenaries, how tough are these guys? Turns out very.
In Diablo 2, if your Mercenary died you had to pay a hefty gold price to revive them or lose the equipment you had gifted them forever. In Diablo 3, there wasn’t really a penalty if a ‘Follower’ died. They just got back up again. Where do Mercenaries in Diablo 4 fit in terms of repercussions to the player for death, if there even is one?
Gavian: I’ve asked them to do horrible things in battle, and I haven’t managed to kill one yet. So you actually can’t kill them.
You can actually have 1.5 mercenaries on the battlefield…
Can we change the cosmetics on our Mercenaries? How much can we customize them? How does the Merc system work when you’re in a party? Gavian and Rod addressed these questions.
Gavian: No [to the cosmetics question]. Just to reiterate, each Mercenary has their own skill tree that you level up through playing, so you can customize their playstyle and how they interact with you and the enemies while you’re fighting. So that’s where the customization is.
Rod: They also each have a different inventory of things they can trade with you. So as you build up rapport with them, you get a sort of a Mercenary currency that you can go to the Pale Hand hideout, where the four mercenaries are hanging out and you can get into a trade agreement with them. And so you can trade the currency with whichever Merc has the thing that you want to get access to, in terms of what’s available. So there’s different ways to play it.
You kind of have one and a half Mercs because you can pick one Merc to come with you and one Merc to reinforce you.
Rod Fergusson
There’s also the Reinforcement system, because basically, you can only have them with you when you’re solo. So if Gavian and I are in a party, we won’t have Mercs with us, but we can still have the Reinforcement feature where you can set a condition like, when you’re really low on health, or just cast a basic skill, and that condition then triggers. Oh, you want Raheir to come in and protect you, or you want Subo to volley a bunch of arrows or whatever. So you kind of have one and a half Mercs, because you can pick one Merc to come with you, and you can pick one Merc to reinforce you.
(at this point I interjected with a remark about the Reinforcements being a ‘Guardian Angel’)
Rod: Totally. So when you actually party up with friends, you can still keep your ‘Guardian Angel’, you just don’t have your merc with you.
Note: I asked if the ‘Rapport’ we build with our mercenaries needs to be built each Season or if it will work similarly to ‘Renown’ in that once we’ve fully unlocked the rewards, they don’t need to be done again. The team will return to me with an answer, and I’ll update this article once I have that.
No you can’t run The Dark Citadel solo, even with a merc — but that’s why we have a Party Finder
I wanted to clear up some questions about The Dark Citadel, the ‘raid’ activity coming to Diablo 4 when Vessel of Hatred launches. A co-op activity that’s designed to be completed by 2-4 players, but can we circumvent this with the Mercenaries so it can be completed solo?
Rod: No. It’s purposely designed for group play, with at least one other person. It’s ideal to play this as 4, but you can play it as 2, like it’s doable as 2. One of the things about Party Finder is that we’re adding this to the whole game, not just the expansion, but Party Finder will allow you to find other people to play with.
One of the things about Party Finder is that we’re adding this to the whole game, not just the expansion,
Rod Fergusson
You can be very specific; I’m going after one of the Wings in the Citadel. What I love is the fact that the Party Finder actually now shows up on your map. So when you go to do a Nightmare Dungeon, you can actually advertise this as a Party, and then people can join you to go into the Nightmare Dungeon. So it’s a great way, for example, if I’m trying to improve my Glyph XP, somebody’s doing an 80 Nightmare Dungeon, I can join them.
I followed up with some clarification on whether the difficulty level of The Dark Citadel scales depending on the number of players participating.
Rod: Yeah it will scale. So one of the things we’re doing with Season 6, is what we did for Season 4 for loot. For Season 6 we’re doing that for progression. We’re doing a stream on August 29 that’s going to go into all the stuff that we’re doing for progression and you’re going to hear changes to Paragon, difficulty levels, experience, how you level up. So the question around difficulty levels and Dark Citadel will be kind of answered in that stream because basically, there’ll be new ways to play Dark Citadel based on the changes we’re doing to progression
So, Season 6 will also be the Season of Progression Reborn?
Excitingly, and perhaps terrifyingly for those of us who write Diablo guides for a living, August 29 is going to bring a whole swathe of new information on what’s to come with Season 6 and the Vessel of Hatred expansion. As if a new campaign quest, class, map area, Mercenaries, and PvE activities were not enough, we’re about to get a whole shake-up to progression in Diablo 4 in what will be Patch 2.0. We know it’s going to be huge because they will also be running a Public Test Realm (PTR) prior to the Season start to test the changes.
I asked Rod and Gavian what pain points they were looking to address with this upcoming overhaul.
Rod: There’s a complexity to the Paragon system that’s hard. The leveling system is sort of where, you know, you go from 50 applying skill points, to now 51 hitting dots along the way to get Paragon points. I think [we will be addressing], what does that mean to be level 50 and level 100? So there’s a notion of how do we deal with leveling and skills, versus leveling and Paragon? Yeah. So those are the things we’re trying to address; you’ll hear all about them in the stream.
I asked if this means all the character build guides are going to have to be rewritten. As someone who finds the Skill Tree quite intuitive, I am pouring one out for Maxroll and Icy Veins who I always defer to for Paragon board guidance.
Gavian: You will have to freshen up some of the guides for sure. We think you’ll like the end result.
The Dark Citadel harks back to Season of the Construct (but in the best way)
I asked some further questions about The Dark Citadel. Can this be done without voice chat for our more reserved Diablo players? This led to some interesting perspectives on Season of the Construct and how the team had learned from its unpopular, but fixed fast, trap mechanics.
Rod: Yes, there’s, there’s a system there where we’re putting markers in so you can communicate through the emote wheel. But [in Dark Citadel] there’s a lot of visual cues in that. The biggest communication is really like, who’s going up, who’s going down, or who’s going left, who’s going right, that kind of stuff. And so if you take the cue, oh, that person took off left, I’m gonna go right. Then the way that you communicate an event is about to happen, the game kind of visually does that for you. You will definitely benefit from having the ability to chat, but we’re trying to find ways to shortcut that on the emote wheel.
Gavian: I think that game mode, more so than any other for group play, has really interesting strategic choices that you have the opportunity to make. When we played it, there were several times where we, you know, sort of stopped and it’s like, okay, what are we doing here? Let’s strategize. Let’s get on the same page.
Rod: There are things that are, like, ad clearing moments, and there are boss moments. And so if you’re like, just an ad clear build, you’re gonna struggle in the boss clear. And if you’re just, like, a single point damage, you can struggle in the ad clear moments. And so the types of variety of combat, and that’s something we really learned from Season 3 [the Construct], and we tried to introduce the traps. We got a lot of feedback around, “Hey, see what you’re going for here, but you’re really slowing down the combat by making me stop to wait for things to rotate” So we took that information when we designed Dark Citadel, and said ok, how do we create mechanics that actually kind of reinforce and enhance the combat, instead of making people stop and wait and slow down? It keeps you fighting, you want to be constantly moving through any activity.
Will we ever get leaderboards outside of The Gauntlet?
Leaderboards and Diablo go together like bread and butter, tea and biscuits, Barbarians and a hammer. However for Diablo 4, we still only have a leaderboard for one activity, The Gauntlet. Could we see leaderboards for anything else in the future? First to 100, first to kill Uber Lilith? Or simply, am I ahead of my friends in The Pit?
Rod: We’re still looking through all that. We learned a lot from the trials that we had, and we found there were things that weren’t expected for us. We were trying to kind of replicate what happened with Diablo 3 and how you would go and say, “What’s the best build for doing the Greater Rifts?” And you go, “oh I’m gonna go make that build and stuff”. And one of the things that we allow in the game is for people to mark themselves as private. So what was happening is you get, like, half the leaderboard marked as private, and you’re like, “Oh, what’s the best build? They won’t let me see them, and I can’t tell.” So we ended up with a leaderboard of a bunch of private so that aspirational, or the learning from it wasn’t as strong as we wanted. So and then when we released The Pit, we saw actually The Pit became more of that peacocking side, versus The Trials. People are like, “I just hit 140 with a Druid.” And it actually became really great for us as developers, because it became this sort of standard level playing field for builds where we could go, “Hey, everyone, you notice that this no Sorc has made it beyond 90?” Can we balance and change? And so we’ve been using The Pit results, to talk more about how strong relative we are in the builds. I think you see that now with the Sorc. We went from the Season of the Barb up to now Season of the Sorc and The Pit was a great way to test that.
Rod: There are lots of ways to do that kind of stuff [Race to complete activities like the Citadel, etc]. I think we’re trying not to reinforce the race thing, because we don’t want it to be the, oh, something has to be the first unlock for everybody. We’re not trying to do the WoW thing. So it’s just, it’s a co-op [The Dark Citadel], as opposed to kind of leaning too hard into it initially. But you know, we have lots of things for lots of years to go, so these are all great ideas.
Gavian: I think, like everything we do, player feedback drives a ton of our choices. So very interested to hear what people have to say when they start playing it [The Dark Citadel] and really get into it.
Glyph XP… outside of Nightmare dungeons?
Rod: We’ll have lots more to share on that. So glyphs will be part of the stream next week. And trust me, I’m always beating on the the design team about Glyph XP somewhere else.
Gavian: If we had our way, yeah!
Tempering was added as a crafting mechanic in Season 4, and with it, something else for the Diablo community to complain about. Bricking items. You have a limited amount of times you can temper your item, and if you max out your attempts without getting the roll you want, you have essentially ‘bricked’ the item rendering it trash and in need of replacing. Season 5 alleviated this somewhat by giving us extra temper rolls for Greater Affix items, though it is still possible to have awful RNG. While I agree that bricking an otherwise perfect item feels bad, I also don’t like the idea of everything being freely handed to us in the game when the community gets noisy. We do need to have those annoying moments to make the times we do get our perfect items and perfect rolls feel sweeter, will the Scroll of Retempering being added in Vessel of Hatred at least come at a cost?
Rod: Based on Raxx’s comment in the Xbox stream, people thought that it was only available through The Dark Citadel. That’s not the case, but it will be something that you have to go after, and farm for. We want those things, like a triple greater affix is such a rare item, and then for you to not get your temper, that’s what, you know, we’re trying to deal with. The super rare case where you get the kind of a unicorn item. Like the basic one where there are no greater affixes, I’m with you. I’m just like, Okay, I’ll go get another chest piece. But when you get that triple greater affix, you’re like, I’ve only seen one this season. Yeah, that feels bad. So this is, I think, more for that case.
What’s next for Diablo 4?
While I know the Diablo team can’t tell me exactly what is coming next, I assume work is already underway for the next expansion given previous comments by Rod referring to expansions in the plural sense. With this in mind, what could the next expansion look like for Diablo 4? With game events like World of Warcraft: Cataclysm in mind, I asked if there would always be a map area expansion like we are getting with Nahantu or if we could see other DLC, such as fundamental changes to the game world.
Rod: Yeah, it’s hard to talk about. In order to be able to continue at a regular cadence, we have to work on them. For example, when we launched Diablo 4, you know, a year ago, we were already working on Vessel of Hatred. We were already working on Season 1 and Season 2 at the same time. And so that’s how our development structures. I like to picture it as swim lanes; we have the Live team, the Shop and the Battle Pass team, Season Odds, Season Even, Expansions. And so yeah, we have to work on the next thing while we’re working on the current thing. But you know, what’s in each thing, we’re not trying to set a precedent that those four ingredients are always going to be the same four ingredients whenever we do it. So we’re always trying to look at listening to players, what’s their response to it, especially once Vessel of Hatred comes out, hearing all the feedback from that will have a huge influence in terms of what we do moving forward.
I like to picture it as swim lanes; we have the Live team, the Shop and the Battle Pass team, Season Odds, Season Even, Expansions. And so yeah we have to be working on the next thing while we’re working on the current thing.
Rod Fergusson
Gavian: I mean, the most immediate thing really, is launching Vessel of Hatred, and then getting the feedback for how players are reacting, and then we react to that. I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done since we launched Diablo 4, about really tuning into the community and listening to the community. I think if you look at what we’ve done to the game, the changes that we make to the game, and the speed with which we make the changes, I’m very excited about applying all that to Vessel of Hatred.
Rod: I think classes is going to be something of an opportunity. Because bringing a new class to the game means you can replay all that content in a different way, and I love the fact that you can go back and play the main campaign as the Spiritborn. Because we recorded all the dialog of the story with the Spiritborn characters.
I love the fact that you can go back and play the main campaign as the Spiritborn. Because we recorded all the dialog of the story with the Spiritborn characters.
Rod Fergusson
So that, you know, whenever we look at when we have big content updates, that opportunity to bring a new class to the game is exciting, and that’s why we really want to take this moment to do something new and fresh. We know there’s high demand for classic characters too, and we’ll have opportunities to kind of meet that demand in the future.
What happens in Nahantu stays in Nahantu, but none-DLC players will also have things to look forward to
While many hardcore fans will already have purchased the expansion, because you know, sweet cat mounts — there will always be a portion who will understandably wait until the holiday season, or perhaps longer to take the plunge into new content. What will the world of Diablo 4 look like for a player that doesn’t purchase the DLC?
Rod: The best way to think about it is that the expansion starts at the bridge to Nahantu. And so anything that happens in Nahantu, whether it’s the Kurast Undercity or the Dark Citadel, the Spiritborn, anything inside Nahantu is part of the expansion, but we’re still doing lots for the player, like Party Finder. The new skills for the classes, all the progression changes we’re bringing to Season 6. Season 6 will have its own event or quest line, to go and do stuff like we are used to. So even if you don’t get the Vessel of Hatred, you’ll still have the Season experience the way that you’re used to. And what’s nice is that, if you get it later, because we know you want to play with friends, you don’t have to play the main campaign to play the Vessel of Hatred. So we have a ‘previously on’ video to say,”Hey, this is what happened before this.” You know, if you’ve forgotten, because you spent a year away, and you can go in and go, all my friends are playing right now in the Vessel of Hatred DLC, so I’m going to go there first, and then maybe I’ll go back and play the main campaign. And you can do that.
Gavian: I’m actually quite proud of the level of complexity to cover up a lot of different states that the players can be in. I think we’ve done a really good job. If you tune in to the live stream, I think you’ll see that even outside of Vessel of Hatred, there’s a lot of very cool stuff coming.
I’m actually quite proud of the level of complexity to cover up a lot of different states that the players can be in. I think we’ve done a really good job. If you tune in to the live stream, I think you’ll see that even outside of Vessel of Hatred, there’s a lot of very cool stuff coming.
Gavian Whishaw
Rod: The thing we really focused on was that by bringing in the expansion the way we are, there can be very different player journeys going into it. So that’s what we’ve had to account for. You could be a level 1 Spiritborn going and starting the Vessel of Hatred. You could be an Eternal player with a level 100 Druid who wants to do Vessel of Hatred. You could be a level 50 seasonal character who wants to do the Vessel of Hatred. And so the story in the campaign, and design of the encounters and everything has to take into account all the different player journeys that are happening at that moment. So that’s definitely gotten the complexity around testing all that. But we wanted to make sure that anybody can start the Vessel [DLC] whenever they wanted.
Tune in to the Campfire Chat for more on the 2.0 PTR
While I learned much from my time with Rod and Gavian about what’s to come in October when Vessel of Hatred drops on October 8, it’s clear a few cards were kept close to their chest and understandably so ahead of the upcoming livestream. Later this week, we can find out more about a huge character progression update coming with Patch 2.0, more on the specifics around The Dark Citadel, and details on the Public Test Realm (PTR) dates to test out some juicy updates. You can catch that on live on Thursday 29 August at 11 a.m PDT / 2 p.m EDT / 7 p.m BST on Youtube, Twitch and X. I’ll be following along over here at Windows Central to summarize for those that can’t catch the stream. Most importantly, though, I’ve gleaned that whether you buy the DLC or not, it seems that the game world will be full of huge fundamental changes for us all to enjoy, and I can’t wait to find out more on Thursday.
Until then, Diablo fans!
