Introduction
Diablo III, while featured completely in 3D with a 3D environment, will follow closely in Diablo II's track by using the classic isometric view, fast gameplay, and randomized content for high replayability. Some changes have been made in order to make the game more welcoming to new players, to ramp up the difficulty more smoothly, and to create a "deep and engaging" combat system. The Diablo III developers took inspiration from previous games in the series, as well as World of Warcraft, and other different games such as Zelda and God of War.Remember that if you're a newcomer to Diablo, you can find more related articles in the Basics Category
Character Classes
Blizzard confirmed that the game would ship with five characters, then introduced them over the first three years of development. They are the Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor, and Wizard. All five classes will be playable in male or female versions. The gender difference is purely cosmetic; male and female characters have identical stats and abilities.The classes are very distinct from one another in look and function. All items of armor have a different appearance on each class (there are even some inter-class gender differences, mainly in the chest armor for obvious reasons). The skills are even more different, with around 25 entirely unique active skills for each class. Many of the passive skills were shared between classes during development, but over time they all differentiated as well.
Though all five classes for Diablo III have been revealed, additional classes will be added in the expansions. See the Other classes article for Blizzard quotes on their additional character ideas.
| Barbarian | ||
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The Barbarian - The one returning class is still a mighty brawler, but he's gained countless new tricks, with only a few skills returning, and all of them modified in various ways. |
| Demon Hunter | ||
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The Demon Hunter - The game's ranged weapon specialist, Demon Hunters are fast-moving archers with devastating offensive capabilities and a wide variety of tactical traps and demonic gadgets. |
| Monk | ||
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The Monk - The follower of a thousand Gods, Monks from Ivgorod are holy warriors. Combining fast-hitting, melee-ranged martial arts with holy magics, auras, and defensive tactics. |
| Witch Doctor | ||
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The Witch Doctor - A mysterious class from the jungles of Teganze, the Witch Doctor wields a huge array of magical attacks, as well as the ability to mind control enemies and summon up pets to fight alongside him. |
| Wizard | ||
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The Wizard - An evolutionary improvement from the Sorcerer and Sorceress seen in previous Diablo titles. Wizards boast an impressive array of offensive spells that are useful for every situation, as well as defensive spells and escape abilities that combine to create this murderous glass cannon. |
Skills
The skills and their presentation evolved greatly during the game's development, with the largest change coming late in the beta test, shortly before release. See the skill tree article for a full history. Characters can use up to six skills at once, and may cycle between them with only minimal cooldowns.The biggest change from Diablo 2 comes from the runestone system, which enables every skill to be modified into five different forms, most of which are radically different in function from the base skill. This creates a vast number of possible builds, and with the easy respec system, players can try out all of the skills and rune effects, and switch between them as needed.
Each class has around 25 unique skills, which are unlocked at the rate of about one per level, from level 1 until level 30. Each skill has five rune effects which are unlocked every 5 or 6 levels, thus granting at least one and often three of four new abilities to try out every level up until the maximum level 60.
Passive skills are also unique to each class, and starting at level 10, they are unlocked one every few levels, all the way up to level 60. Characters can have up to 3 passive skills active, adding an additional passive skill slot at level 10, 20, and 30.
Skill Tree Respecs/Resets
In Diablo II prior to v1.13, a character was unable to change their skills and stats once they were allocated. If you made any mistake, the only solution was to reroll. This is changed in Diablo III, and characters can change around their skills as desired, with only minimal cooldowns to prevent this being done exploitatively.Stats/Attributes
The biggest change to Diablo III attributes is their change to an automatically-allocated system. Players can not set their skill points, and instead gain 1 or 2 points in the four attributes with every level up. The Diablo III developers felt the stat allocation in Diablo II was a poor way to provide character customization since players either experimented and "ruined' their character with sub-optimal choices, or else followed a cookie cutter style of build. (This is less of a problem after v1.13 added stat and skill respecs to Diablo II.)In the early days of Diablo III, an inventory-like game system called the Talisman was stocked with items called charms, which added large bonuses to stats, but that system was shelved during development. Another system to add specific attributes was the enchants provided by the Mystic, but that system and the Mystic were also removed during development. As a result, players can only modify their stats with equipment bonuses, including those from socketed gems.
The names and function of the stats changed several times during development as well. (See the attributes article for details.) Ironically, after experimentation with up to five attributes, including a system where each attribute granted more or less identical bonuses to each class, the developers returned to the classic four attributes of Strength, Vitality, Dexterity, and Intelligence. The bonuses provided by these four differ considerably from their Diablo II form.
Skill Runes
Though the skill rune effects remained, the item-based runestone system was entirely removed during the beta, and replaced with a system where all of the rune effects are built into skills. They are thus part of the interface, and are "unlocked" one at a time, usually around 5-9 levels apart. Thus a base skill such as the Demon Hunter's Vault is unlocked at level 12, and the rune effects become available one at a time at levels 23, 31, 40, 48, and 53. (Figures subject to yet further change.)
Monsters
The scale of monsters is greatly increased in Diablo III; demons like the Siegebreaker are not uncommon, and appear in sizes unimagined in previous games in the series.
- The Monsters Article has much more information on the dozens of known monsters.
- Monster bosses are much improved and varied in Diablo III.
- Boss modifiers are new and improved as well, and there are many new and dangerous properties.
Death
Death is less of an obstacle to success in Diablo III than in previous games in the series. Dead players in Diablo III do not lose equipment or gold. They must wait a mere few seconds before waiting to be resurrected by another player in their party or restarting at the last checkpoint (not waypoint) they passed over. In addition, a player will lose a set percentage of their durability upon death (currently 10%) which will need to be repaired either at the Blacksmith or an appropriate vendor.Hardcore mode is an option in the game, and as in Diablo II, dead HC characters stay dead forever. This will not be the case in the Arena, where Hardcore players will be able to duel as much as they like, without having to create softcore characters just to enjoy the arena fully.
One planned feature that didn't make it into the game were specially gruesome player fatalities, which some bosses were to have the ability to inflict when they killed players.
Difficulty Levels
There are four difficulty levels in Diablo III, Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno. Each difficulty level repeats the same game content, but with monsters, items, and everything else increased in level to keep scaling up the challenge. Normal is designed to be fairly easy, especially early on, to usher new players into the game and teach them the ropes without too much challenge. Difficulty starts to increase in Nightmare and Hell, and characters should max out at level 60 around the end of Hell. This controversial design choice removes the grinding to max level play system seen in Diablo and Diablo II.Inferno is where the developers are planning to make things really interesting, with the entire difficulty level vastly harder than Hell, and all balanced to a largely "flat" curve. This should allow players to find challenging and rewarding end game content anywhere in the game, rather than forcing players to run the same few end bosses over and over again, as was the case in Diablo II.
End Game
Diablo III was designed with the end game in mind. The entire Inferno difficulty level is meant as one big PvE end game, with a flat difficulty curve opening up the entire game to high level play. The developers have also considered various systems to reward players for playing normal areas, rather than simply "running" the same few bosses over and over again.While Inferno is meant to be quite challenging, and best played in co-op parties, nothing in Diablo III is being designed to require parties, such as the raid content seen in WoW. Other end game goodies include special Achievements, crafting recipes and items found only in Inferno, and the possible addition of additional high-end content via patches.
As Diablo III will *not* launch with any form of PvP, the long-anticipated Arena will not serve as an end game activity.
Items
Each gear set has a distinctive, organized look, and thus a character wearing all (or most) of say, gear set 14, would have a cohesive, coherent appearance as the items would match each other. The developers have released numerous screenshots of the classes in complete gear sets, and they are stylish indeed. It's less clear, in advance of playing the higher levels, just how often (if ever) a character will have most or all of the same gear set on, or if characters will always be clad in a mixture of different level equipment.
Item quality is similar to that of Diablo II, with item scarcity progressing normal > magical > rare > set > legendary (the new name for unique items). There should be more mixing and matching at the highest levels, with rare, set, and legendary items of approximately-equivalent quality, depending on the random mods they spawn with.
As there are no runes to socket into equipment, there are no runeword items, at least in D3v.
Item Crafting
Crafting returns in Diablo III, in a major game system that combines elements of the item crafting and item gambling systems from Diablo II. Players use the Blacksmith NPC Artisan to create semi-random weapons and armor, including (eventually) set items and legendary items. Each crafted item requires gold and materials, and crafted items all have some pre-set and some random mods, making the item creation a gamble that player may wish to repeat many times, in hopes of spawning an item with better modifiers.The Blacksmith must first know the recipe to create the item, and these are taught to the Artisans by training them to higher levels, as well as by finding crafting plans, including rare ones, as drops from monsters and chests.
Armor and Weapon Types
- Armor: helms, shields, chest armor, gloves, boots, rings, amulets, and belts return. Belts are now just another piece of armor; they do not have any special potion-holding function.
- New armor types: Shoulders, bracers, and pants.
- New class-specific armor types: Mighty Belts for the Barbarian; Cloaks for the Demon Hunter; Spirit Stones (helms) for the Monk; Voodoo Masks for the Witch Doctor, and Wizard Hats for the Wizard.
- Weapons: Axes, Spears, Polearms, Swords, Maces, Bows, Crossbows, Wands, Shields.
(There are no throwing weapons in D3v, and many of these weapon types
have class limitations -- Monks can not use bows/xbows, only Wizards and
Witch Doctors can use wands, etc. See the individual items pages for
full details.)
- New types of weapons: Fists, Daggers (no longer a type of sword).
- New class-specific weapons: Mighty Weapons for Barbarians; Hand Crossbows for the Demon Hunter, Daibos and Fists for the Monk, and Ceremonial Knives for the Witch Doctor.
Other Items Information
- Runes are no longer found in Diablo III. They were never item socketables, but were socketed into skills, until a major system overhaul in early 2012.
- The inventory is much larger than it was in Diablo II, and after numerous permutations, it's settled on a large grid with all items either 1x1 or 1x2 in size.
- The stash in town is large (though it shrunk from 5 to 3 pages during beta testing), and is shared between all characters on the same account. (But not HC and normal characters.)
- All gold and item drops from monsters, chests, quests, etc,
are specific to your character. You only see items you can pick up, and
do not see items for other characters, nor do they see yours.
- Items dropped by a character are seen by all.
- Trading is supported, both between characters and in a much larger way through the Battle.net Auction House, which has two version, the gold and the real money version.
- Potions are much less common than in previous Diablo games. There are no mana or rejuvenation potions, just health, and they come with a long cooldown between uses. Potions are intended for emergency use only, and players must learn to survive with life leech, hit point regeneration from equipment, and by using the health globes that monsters drop. Successful players must be a bit more cautious than they were in previous games of the series.
NPCs
As in previous games in the series, NPCs will feature importantly in Diablo III. Much of the game story will be given by the NPCs, and they will be more interactive, while their speeches will be shorter, more to the point, and can be listened to while playing; you are no longer forced to "stay awhile" to "listen."
Followers: Diablo III's answer to mercenaries from D2, the followers will have their own skillset and inventory that the player can customize.
Artisans: Are special NPCs who craft items and provide other essential services, as well as much dialogue and information about the game world and quests. They are the Blacksmith and Jeweler, after the Mystic was removed during beta testing.
Locations
We have been shown detailed pictures of Skovos (the land of the Amazons), as well as Caldeum and Tristram. Skovos is confirmed to be excluded from the game, but the level of detail they are putting into the universe suggests either a big expansion pack, MMOs, or a film. Ureh is another area that has been shown off by the development team (and was showcased in the original cinematic trailer) which will not be in the release version of Diablo III.
Outdoor areas will be less randomized than dungeons, and the terrain will for the most part be static. Instead, a lot of random scripted events will take place, and some will even be really advanced. They can vary from an escort quest, to a moldy tome, or a big, bad boss monster. You will also find interactive environments with dangerous traps, obstacles, and destructible elements. There will be "numerous" outdoor locations. These portions of the map that are randomised are called events, and can even happen within randomised dungeons.
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