Diablo 4 Expansion Review Vessel of Hatred DLC Impressions
Oct. 4, 2024Diablo 4 Expansion Review Vessel of Hatred DLC Impressions
In thisDiablo 4 Vessel of Hatred Review, we’ll tell you all about the newD4 expansion, having played theSpiritbornto Paragon 160+, all classes toTorment Ior higher, tried all new and existing activities, and explored every last corner of the new zone.
If you are wondering if the Diablo 4 expansion is worth the price, whether it’s worth you coming back from a one year hiatus, or simply see what’s new, this Vessel of Hatred Review will answer all your Questions. If you decide to play the expansion, make sure to check out ourDiablo 4 Wiki, theInteractive Mapwe have updated, the “Welcome Back” guide I put together to teach old players new mechanics, and the many, manybuildsfor allclassesthat we are releasing starting tomorrow.
Vessel of Hatred picks up the narrative from where the base game’s campaign ended, sending you on the hunt for a missing companion to the southern lands ofNahantu. The area and story are heavily invested into the concepts that make the new class, so you will meet Spiritborn NPCs, visit the Spirit realm, and interact with legendary spirits.
The area will be immediately familiar toDiablo 2players, as we visited it forAct 3way back when. There are many nostalgia trips you can take around, but the feeling of Nahantu’s jungle is quite different to the previous game, so you’ll find it a new experience in general.
Of important note here if you are a completely new player, it seems you can opt to skip the base campaign and go straight into the expansion even if you have no characters on the account. This was the case for me as the review access put us in a unique server without any of my characters, so I assume they have added a “skip” for everyone now. For your second character that has finished the expansion campaign as well, you will be able to skip both the base game and expansion, or base game only.
I want to avoid any story spoilers so I will not say much about what happens with theplot, and instead relay to you that this is typical and committed Diablo writing, and if you play these games you know exactly what you can expect. I personally found Diablo 4 as a whole to be quite well done in bothstory and setting, I really enjoyed the Lilith conflict and felt it was told at a higher than usual level for an ARPG. I also very much enjoyed the contextual storytelling, the smaller NPC storylines, the lorebooks, the town dialogues with random characters.
The expansion gives you more of the same, all with impeccable voice acting, but with a very thematic “tribal” undertone that unfortunately pulled away a bit from the angels and demons theme that the base game championed. This is understandable as the developers would want the expansion zone to feel fresh and original, but I was left disappointed that the demon conflict seemed to come to an unfulfilling or indeterminate ending pending a big grind, more seasons, or perhaps even another expansion.
The Vessel of Hatred expansion is launching alongside a big update to the game that will make many changes to mechanics and add new skills and gear for all classes for free, even without the expansion. This prompted me to ask myself:Well if the patch is free, and Season 6 launching at the same time is also free, what is my 40 USD buying me?Let’s have a look.
The first and most obvious thing, and I think the one that everyone will purchase the expansion for, is the new Spiritborn class. We did a class explanation video already so I will keep this short. You’re getting a very versatile DEX based multipurpose class with four distinct flavors of builds, and so, so SO many build mix possibilities.
I spent the vast majority of the review period playing the Spiritborn class, and I found it to be extremely satisfying. The four Spirit Guardians are very distinct, can be built exclusively thematically (when you stick to only one line) quite well, and allow for a really fantastic amount of synergies among elements and guardians. You have access to almost every damage type, and can customize your build to do some truly extraordinary things. The uniques for the class were varied and felt flavorful, meaning every time I found one it made me think “hold on, what if”. This is not a feeling we had very often with the original game (the utter disappointment ofGloves of the Illuminator!) – so it immediately grabbed me into a creative loop for builds and synergies.
There’s simply too much to say about the Spiritborn to fit it here so you can check out our class preview that is already published, or myBeginner and Endgame progression buildsthat I prepared during early access that will be releasing in the next few days. Needless to say, you’ll see a lot of them because they are just so much fun.
In addition to a new class for the player, the expansion introducesMercenaries. These companions mimic what we had in Diablo 2, but are improved versions with their own skill-lines and reputation progression. You unlock mercenaries as part of the base story and are tasked with recruiting all of them. Then you can equip one as your constant sidekick, and another one to show up every so often when you execute a specific skill or if you are injured or crowd controlled (with a cooldown of course).
Both of them will gain rapport whenever you complete quests, bosses and kill elites with them equipped. That rapport will give you skill points for their trees and slowly unlock bartering upgrades at the Mercenary Den. You use the coins obtained from leveling them up to barter for legendary gear, boss materials and even caches of specific aspect types. Progress made with each Mercenary caries over to your alternate characters as well, so you don’t have to “redo this”.
Overall this is a simple but efficient system and I personally quite enjoyed the new buffs you get from having these companions. Attack speed buffs from one, every enemy and iron node marked on the map for other, they all have their unique qualities and are fun to interact with. The Den is also a bit of a hub to go back to and hear them chat now and then, while offering you specific services. I hope we see more depth to this content in the future, but for now it’s a great start.
The other obvious expansion addition is the massive new zone of Nahantu in the south of the map. This jungle area adds new dungeons that grant Spiritborn aspects exclusively, as well as questing, and two new completely unique endgame activities:The UndercityandThe Dark Citadel. Nahantu as a zone is quite well done, with twisting paths packed with new enemies. It is a big change from the frozen north and the deserted plains you’ve grown most accustomed to, but running through the area can be incredibly tedious as the paths are narrow and there are really SO many enemies. This is great if you are questing as you feel you have a lot to do and there’s always an elite pack around the corner, but if you’re trying to run to a dungeon to get an aspect you’ll probably be annoyed getting stuck in small corners as you try to dodge past all the mobs.
On a much more positive note, one of my favorite inclusions of the expansion is theKurast Undercity. This is by far the activity I enjoyed the most. The Undercity is a special location that you unlock via the main quest. You open a portal and get transported to a dungeon, and you must clear three floors to make your way to a specific boss depending on your Tier. This is all done against a timer, however, so you enter with 100 seconds on the clock and must gather “Attunement” to unlock up to 4 tiers of rewards. Killing special Afflicted enemies will give you a small time boost as you run through.
The time trial aspect alongside the good boss mechanics and the reward system really hooked me here. You have the option of using an “Offering” obtained from nightmare dungeons and bosses that applies conditions to your run, such as ensuring you will get more experience or a class unique. This will also give you a -25% time penalty, but is well worth it for farming. You can additionally “bargain” to ensure thelegendariesdropped at the end have specific affixes such as guaranteed skill affixes or guaranteed defensive aspects etc. The level of customization available with these, the excellent flow of the dungeon and the overall pace of the experience is really a ton of fun.
The bosses at the end of The Undercity are also all new and have unique mechanics revolving around spirit and blood magic. As a traditional MMORPG raider I get quite into that kind of stuff so when I saw I had a spirit debuff and the boss started spamming waves of blood and spirit, I was quick to jump on the spirit lane and avoid all damage, while thinking “omg raid mechanics yay!”. The good news for you ARPG players that don’t want to bother is that yes, you can make your character very OP and stand there and take it if you want.
But since we’re now on the subject of Raids, let’s discuss the new endgame activity, the Dark Citadel. This is a Diablo raid. There’s no other way to describe it. It must be done in a group of at least two, it has wings that unlock progressively, mechanics such as “one person goes through portal and kills boss spirit then the other player summons them back with the boss soul shard in hand so it can be damaged in the real world again”, and it has weekly rewards for completing each wing.
When we had our first look at Diablo 4 years ago, I speculated this game was leaning a lot more into the mmorpg side of things. The launch itself didn’t quite realize that vision, but now that we arrive at a fully fledged party finder and a whole raid area I’m confident to say that yes, Diablo 4 is an arpg heavily trending toward mmo. And I’m not mad about it at all. In fact, this is a fantastic and engaging change that may allow Diablo to echo the longevity that Destiny 2 enjoyed thanks to developer pivots in how to approach game expansion content.
The Dark Citadel isn’t crazy difficult, and you will probably figure out what to do easily even with a PUG or a bunch of randoms. But it does have the beginning of that mechanic depth that makes that kind of content really addictive in the long term, where you want to gather a team and take on this challenge. It also has unique loot and drops, and there’s a vendor that will sell you extremely valuable items, such as ones to reset your tempering rerolls.
I was lucky that we could play among the Fextra team and get the group experience right away, and we had an incredible amount of fun doing it. But like World and Pit bosses, I expect deeper levels of the citadel will have more challenging mechanics so we’ll have to see how these work on Tier 4 when people have less than ideal connections, no microphones, etc. Overall, I hope it works well because it was really a lot of fun.
The last paid addition with the expansion areRunes and Runewords. This is a new system that allows players who have advanced the expansion main quest to get runes from bosses, caches and activities. These runes are tradable to non-expansion players once dropped, and can be matched to generate a runeword and give specific benefits. They are slotted as a replacement to gems, so you have to have something worth losing whatever your gem slot was going to give you.
Runes come in magic, rare and legendary variety, and I found legendaries dropping past Paragon 150 and into Torment 2 and beyond, but would still drop if I went back to Torment 1. They usually work like this Rune 1: Do something and gain X offering. Rune 2: Consume X offering to trigger this effect. So for example I slotted “Cast and Ultimate Ability and gain 150 offering. Consume 25 offering to gain 2% crit chance. Overflow generates more stacks”. This way my ultimate always gained +12% crit.
You can also do some really broken things with these, such as add class abilities from other classes. Let’s say you’re a fat Druid and tired of being left behind. You can now slot the Sorcerer’s Teleport and never have to be shamed for your tardiness again! Miraculous stuff, really. However the true impact of these is only understood in the context of much bigger changes to the game that come withPatch 2.0, which is free for everyone.
Thenew patch brings some very important and impactful changes to the game, so I suggest you refer to our Welcome Back video for information on them, it’s publishing tomorrow and gives a full overview of the free updates (that are really so many). For a simple overview, the entire item power system has been rehauled, damage numbers readjusted, difficulties redone, drops refined, activities streamlined and improved, and really so much more. Honestly it’s such an avalanche of changes that you should try the game out again even if you aren’t buying the expansion.
I would like to wrap up this review by giving you an overview of where I think the game is now based on what I could play during this early access. When I played the game for review (and after) last year, I really loved what they had done because I felt I could immerse myself in exploring this vast world, enjoy above average questing, delight in really superb audio and voiceovers, and admire the beautiful artistic style of the game. I think that feeling was shared by many, but a lot of the game’s momentum was destroyed by specific developer choices made around Season 1, with patch 1.1
I am soooo thrilled I did, because I now feel like I am getting to experience Diablo 4 as a new and improved game, and it has brought back all my hype and appreciation for the game. The expansion pricetag is significant and you would mostly purchase it just to play the Spiritborn, but the mercenary and endgame activities added are definitely worth it for me. But I feel the most important thing is that even if you don’t buy the expansion and simply come back to play the same base game you’ve had for however long, you’ll find a much more rewarding progression path, much easier to understand and put together builds, incredible paths to absolute build domination that aren’t getting nerfed and are instead being rewarded with additional challenge, and much more streamlined and enjoyable endgame activities and tempo.
We had so much fun with the review period that, even knowing our characters were going to be wiped in just a few hours, we were stopping to kill treasure goblins because… well it may have that Greater Affix I want! It’s that kind of game where you get lost in the process and can pick whether you want to play calmly at your own pace or go full sweaty hardcore and feel challenged. I can hear the idle music playing in my head even hours after I have stopped playing, and I may have had a dream or two where I was theory-crafting some new build from a unique I got before logging off.
We did encounter some minor issues such as intermittent lag and some bugs with spawns and party complications. But despite this I have personally had a great time playing this expansion, and the flexibility to move from console couch coop to pc with ease has made it so easy to adapt to my schedule, I feel like Diablo 4 is now only starting to get its long-term wings, and I cannot wait to see where it goes from here!
So what about you? Are you in the never playing again team? Or will you give it a try? Will you just get it on Gamepass? Are you trying the expansion or the class? Let me know in the comments below.
Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred is a sizeable expansion introducing excellent mechanical improvements, systems and activities that are sure to revitalize the game with innovative ideas for the genre, setting the stage for years of player support. Even if you don’t purchase the Expansion, there has never been a better time to return to Sanctuary…
Fexelea
MMO raider by day and guide writer by night, Fex enjoys multiplatform gaming, good books and animes, and streaming with a cold beer.
