Today, Blizzard shared an overview of the Diablo IV endgame in a dedicated video presentation hosted by a handful of key developers.
Once the campaign has been finished, Diablo IV will task players with the completion of a Capstone Dungeon. Successfully doing so unlocks a new World Tier, which increases the difficulty of the whole world of Sanctuary but also the experience and the rewards gained.
Of course, the overarching goal of the Diablo IV endgame will be growing your character’s power. The Paragon system is pivotal in that regard, allowing a lot more depth and customization options. Players will be able to rotate the Paragon board, picking up the bonuses they are most interested in relation to their intended playstyle.
On top of the Paragon system, there’s also the Codex of Power system, which was available in the recent beta. The Codex of Power contains the Aspects, usually gained by completing dungeons and useful to empower items with additional effects while also upping their quality to Legendary.
In terms of PvE content, the Nightmare dungeons will be the bread and butter of the Diablo IV endgame. Any of the over 120 dungeons featured in the game can be transformed into a Nightmare dungeon with a Sigil. These dungeons will be more difficult, with significantly increased intensity of the fights, and also feature brand new objectives compared to the non-Nightmare version of the dungeon. Nightmare dungeons are made even more special by the Affixes, which add special conditions to the content. For example, the Hellgate Affix will randomly spawn portals that foes from other regions will use to pour in, making the dungeon run extra challenging.
Even the overworld will be affected in the Diablo IV endgame. Helltide areas are zones where the influence of Lilith is more pronounced, which will be visually represented by rivers running red and meteors falling from the sky. The result of this is empowered monsters, but on the bright side, players can obtain shards that can be redeemed for caches providing nice loot.
Blizzard also came up with a bounty-like system called Tree of Whispers. Players will be directed to complete different bounties throughout Sanctuary and will receive meaningful reward caches from the Tree once they are successful.
PvP is also available in the game, unlike Diablo III. A special area called Fields of Hatred allows Player versus Player combat. Here, players can also gather special shards, though they’ll have to be purified before they can be used. The purification process will alert other players, thus fostering PvP action. If you are successful and take back the purified shards to town, they can be turned in to specific NPCs to get cosmetic items.
The Blizzard developers end by teasing that this is just the beginning, as the Diablo IV endgame and the game as a whole will receive many updates and additions even after launch.
As a reminder, the fourth mainline installment in the Diablo franchise is set to launch on June 6th for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X with full cross-play and cross-progression. The most recent beta, which was a great appetizer for the full game, became the biggest ever recorded for a Diablo title with nearly 62 million hours played.
