The Nephalem fight to keep the forces of either Heaven or Hell from obtaining too much power, doing what they can to keep Sanctuary safe from the forces that seek to bend Humanity to their will.

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Nah, just kidding, that’s all just lore. The Nephalem fight for gear!

We all know that, of course, so one of the most important things that fans have been asking about since the announcement of Diablo IV was how the loot system would be working. There are drastic differences between the itemization systems of Diablo II and Diablo III, so what can we expect?

David Kim, the Lead Systems Designer for Diablo IV, spoke about this in the first part of an announcement back in mid-November. Now he’s back to clarify a few things and to drive home a few points. It’s important to note, as Kim himself stresses, that all of this is very early design and is in no way set in stone, so don’t think any itemization features you read about are the concrete settings for the upcoming game.

Speaking on setting the system apart from previous installments in the series, Kim had this to say: “Our plan is to take the best parts of previous games and improve upon them while introducing new elements to make Diablo IV unique. We don’t want to create an exact copy of Diablo II or Diablo III.”

So what can we expect in terms of changes? Here’s a short list thus far:

  • Higher number of affixes on items of magic (blue) quality or greater
  • Three new stats, including Angelic, Demonic, and Ancestral power
  • Replacing Ancient Legendaries from the game with a new system
  • Adding in new consumable items, dropping in late endgame and usable on non-legendary items
  • Implementing an “elective mode for items”
  • Highlighting rare-quality items instead of having legendary-quality trump all others

That’s only a brief overview of everything that Kim has mentioned, and there’s still plenty more coming down the pipe. Still, at first glance, this all sounds pretty great.

One of the biggest complaints about Diablo III is that players often felt forced to use a specific set of items in order to have the best performance. While there was a massive variety of items, game metas made it feel like only a few were useful. This new system seems to replace that style.

Even better is that the RNG-based Ancient/Primal Ancient legendary system will be replaced. It’s the height of annoyance to finally get the item you’ve needed, but to have it not rolled out in the best stats possible. Replacing that obnoxious system is already a massive improvement.

There’s going to be more to be announced as the months roll on, and Diablo IV isn’t anywhere near complete yet. Hopefully, we’ll have more features to feast on before the year ends.

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