Rejoice with the Occultist in Diablo 4, and hopefully put those days of grieving over legendaries behind you whenever the game launches. You can find the lengthy quarterly update for the game here, the important points of which we summarize as follows:
ITEMIZATION
- +Skill Rank affixes will return, which will grant the associated ability if you haven’t learnt it.
- Legendary powers will appear on multiple item slots, so you don’t need to obtain any specific piece.
- Diablo 4 gets the Occultist who can extract a legendary power from a Legendary item, to implant the “Essence” into another Legendary item.
- Extracting destroys the item. Implanting will overwrite an existing power.
- Essence can be stored.
- Does not apply to Unique items.
- Different monsters will have tendencies for different item types.
PARAGON BOARD
- Unlocks for each class at level 50.
- Make selections as you progress through the board, “attaching” new boards at “gate tiles”. Boards can be rotated from a Gate Tile.
- Tile types:
- Normal: Standard stat boosts.
- Magic: Uncommon, more diverse benefits.
- Rare: Significant boosts, unlock additional powers at attribute thresholds.
- Legendary: Unlocks new Legendary Power, available at the center of a Paragon Board after the first one.
- Glyph and Sockets
- Sockets can contain Glyphs.
- Embed Glyphs into a Paragon Board to get bonuses depending on how many active tiles are around it.
- Glyphs can be levelled up when exploring certain dangerous dungeons to extend radius of effect.
The Occultist definitely sounds very desirable, to cut down on the time you might spend farming your stuff in Diablo 4. Meanwhile, the Paragon Board promises a highly personalized build for characters you invest in.
As always, the team says they always listen to player feedback, so if you have any particular thoughts, do so through their various channels.