Diablo 4 has never been better thanks to Vessel of Hatred and Season 6
I fell in love with Diablo 4 when it launched last year — the visuals are gloriously gritty, the campaign and accompanying cutscenes are spectacular, and the combat is satisfying — but following the main story’s conclusion, I found the final grind to be somewhat dull. At the time, only Nightmare Dungeons and Helltides fleshed out the bulk of Diablo 4’s XP grind to level 100 once you had completed the Capstone Dungeon to unlock World Tier 4 (Torment), the highest difficulty you could play on. Once you had killed the World Bosses a couple of times and ran around after the Tree of Whispers’ Grim Favors, the only thing left to do was mindlessly crawl through Nightmare Dungeons for XP.
Sadly, my love for the game petered off quickly, and while I attempted to return with the five seasons that followed, being forced to start a new character to join in with the fun turned me off after an evening or so of playing. While Season 6: Season of Hatred Rising still requires you to roll a fresh character, the addition of the fantastic, although somewhat disappointing Vessel of Hatred storyline, satisfying new Spiritborn class, and a year’s worth of updates and endgame content additions, has made Diablo 4 the most addictive and moorish (to quote a friend) it’s ever been.
The Vessel of Hatred storyline is a fairly short affair and plays out wonderfully for players who freshly roll the new Spiritborn class — guardians of Diablo 4’s new Nahantu region, which was last explored in Diablo 2. With Lilith defeated, Neyrelle is on the run as she battles to contain the increasingly powerful Mephisto, the Prime Evil Lord of Hated, all the while being hunted as a heretic by the church. Our mission, along with several other companions, including our new rag-tag group of Mercenary friends, head out across Nahantu to save Neyrelle and contain Mephisto for good. It’s great fun, and Blizzard does a fantastic job of making you feel like Sanctuary is balancing on the edge of a blade, but as the pressure mounts, the entire story just seems to end. Sure, Mephisto’s story deserves to be explored further, but its ending feels abrupt, disorienting even. Has it left me excited for what’s to come? Yes. Is that the feeling Blizzard probably wanted to leave me with? Yeah, most likely, but it still sucks.
Thankfully, and most importantly for a Diablo game, it’s the endgame content that has vastly improved my experience, so much so that I’ve found it hard to put the game down. The Spiritborn class, while arguably overpowered, is exceptionally fun to play thanks to the versatility offered by its Spirit Guardians: Centipede, Eagle, Gorilla, and Jaguar. Blending their skills, along with some of the new Unique and Mythic items, you can piece together extremely powerful builds with tons of damage potential but tanky enough to withstand extreme punishment. I’m currently running a Touch of Death build, which offers me plenty of damage reduction from Gorilla skills, but with the power to dish out explosive poison damage thanks to a mixture of Centipede and Jaguar skills. It’s ridiculously fun. And thanks to plenty of endgame activities, I’m now addicted to blowing up Hellspawn in Sanctuary.
At the time of writing this, I’m on the edge of hitting Paragon level 190, and the thrill of the hunt is yet to wear off. With Vessel of Hatred, Blizzard has upped the skill level cap to 60, and reworked Paragon Points so we can level higher for the more powerful gear levels as we tear our way through the new Torment difficulties. Progression feels far more natural now, and you can feel your character slowly increase their power as you move through the additional difficulty levels. At this point, I have all the Mythic, Unique, and Legendary items my character needs, but the allure of a possible Ancestral (the most powerful item type in the game) with slightly better stats dropping sees me return to Sanctuary night after night. I’ve become a loot addict, sighing ungratefully when a Tormented Boss drops a boring rare Unique item instead of an Ancrestral Unique, dragging my spoilt butt to the blacksmith to break down the worthless items.
That’s what Diablo’s endgame should feel like, though, and thankfully Blizzard has reigned in the loot drops so we’re not returning to said blacksmith every two minutes with bags filled with literal junk. Hoping that the next drop could be the one with the tiniest increase in bonus critical strike chance is exciting and euphoric, and thanks to plenty of additional content, it’s now fun to grind. My time is split between running timed runs in the Kurast Undercity dungeon, beating increasingly difficult sprints through The Pit, or heading to the Dark Citadel to take on challenging group content for weekly bonus loot. This season’s Realmwalker, a gargantuan monster that opens a portal to a loot-filled world when defeated, gives me a break from that content to collect Seething Opals to increase my chances of bonus loot or crafting items from dropping from monsters, and I set aside one night a week to spend my Summoning Materials on the challenging Tormented Bosses for rare items. There is so much to do in Sanctuary now, and Diablo 4 is all the better for it.
Diablo 4 really has never been more enjoyable, and while the Vessel of Hatred campaign ends abruptly, I urge anyone playing the base game to make the purchase, as the expansion brings so much more to the game. Now, I and all of those returning Diablo 4 players need Blizzard to give Mephisto some more love, as he really is a good boy.
