It’s been close to a year since I last booted up Diablo IV. I know the base game has improved a lot since launch and the seasonal updates have been keeping the community busy, but personally, the changes didn’t do anything to reinvigorate my interest in returning. That was until I got to try out Vessel of Hatred, the game’s first major expansion.
This paid add-on is just what might get me back into the game. Not only does it continue Diablo IV’s story and expand the map, but it also introduces Diablo’s most interesting class yet, the Spiritborn.
What I like about the Spiritborn is that it’s an incredibly versatile, jack-of-all-trades sort of class with near-endless build possibilities and combinations. It’s a class that’s not necessarily constrained by an archetypal role or specialty, affording you more freedom and flexibility than perhaps any other class in the game. You can mix-and-match skills and create synergies that you might have once thought impossible. For example, you can create a tanky, damage-absorbing Spiritborn that debuffs enemies and deals damage over time with poison attacks.
The Spiritborn’s main class mechanic, Spirit Hall, which unlocks at Level 15, allows you to choose two Spirit Guardians to serve as your patrons. Your main Spirit Guardian will alter all your skills to use its keyword and grant you unique passive buffs. Meanwhile, your second Spirit Guardian will provide you with secondary passives that can cover up any gaps in your build. Alternatively, you can choose the same Spirit Guardian as your patron twice to get a different set of passive bonuses.
There are four Spirit Guardians to choose from, and each has their own unique skill tree: the Jaguar, the Gorilla, the Eagle, and the Centipede. The Jaguar is an offensive Spirit, focusing on your attack speed and damage output. The Gorilla, on the other hand, is a defensive Spirit, focusing on your capacity to stay alive longer. The Eagle is all about mobility and precision, focusing on movement speed and amplifying your evade skill while dealing high-impact damage from afar. Finally, the Centipede is all about poisoning and debuffing your enemies, focusing on damage over time and crowd control abilities.
At first, the number of options seemed overwhelming to me. However, once I decided on choosing the Gorilla as my main Spirit and the Centipede as my secondary, everything started to click together. For me, that’s what so far has been most fun about playing the Spiritborn class: experimenting with different build combinations and seeing what might suit my playstyle best.
Thematically, I’d say the Spiritborn is closest to the Druid, with its affinity for animal spirits, while mechanically, it’s closest to the Monk, with its fast and explosive acrobatic attacks. But overall, the new class is wholly its own and unlike any others seen before in the franchise, which makes it that much more interesting.
The new region of Nahantu, which you get to explore in Vessel of Hatred, is also a standout, in my opinion. Its dense jungles, teeming with never-before-seen hellish monstrosities, provide a fresh setting for all the demon-slaying action and a welcome break from the red-rock canyons, dingy dungeons, and empty desserts that the franchise is mostly centered on.
I also like the new Mercenaries feature that lets you recruit computer-controlled partners to fight alongside you, which unlocks during the main campaign of Vessel of Hatred.
Each of the partners you can recruit through quests have their own unique backstories and skills. They’re great to have around when, say, your friends can’t play and you need an extra blade.
So far, I’ve sunk close to five hours into Vessel of Hated, and I enjoyed every second of it. While it doesn’t do anything game-changing, the fresh content definitely breathes new life to the game and gives more casual fans like me a compelling reason to book a return trip to the world of Diablo.
Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred arrives on October 7 for PlayStation, Xbox Series, and PC. – Rappler.com
