Getting the exact Diablo 4 items you want to upgrade your loadout can be tough. There’s certainly no shortage of loot in the RPG game, but oftentimes it can feel like you’re sifting through for the proverbial needle in a haystack – except that the haystack in Diablo 4 is made of even more needles. Thankfully, perfecting your best Diablo 4 builds should be getting much easier in future updates.
Speaking as part of its recent Diablo 4 Campfire Chat to address the poorly received recent patch ahead of Season One, game director Joe Shely and associate director Joseph Piepiora discuss some of the plans the team has in store to make it more viable to find the items you want, and in particular Diablo 4 Uniques that are essential to your build plans, such as the Druid’s Tempest Roar helm.
“I grind for a long time for an item, and the item is not an upgrade – this can certainly tend to be true,” Piepiora remarks, listing out several plans the team has to help resolve this. The first is more managerial – “We want to try to reduce the difficulty of comparing a number of different items all at once; this is something the UI team is very passionate about.”
He specifically name-drops loot filters as part of this suggestion, something that will undoubtedly perk up the ears of the more hardcore fanbase, or anyone who’s spent much time playing rival ARPG Path of Exile, which has a very comprehensive such system that allows players to self-determine what items and affixes they want the game to highlight among their drops. There’s no specifics given for what that might look like in Diablo 4, but even a mention of the idea has me excited.
Although there is a nice, new trick for farming Diablo 4 Wrathful Hearts, Piepiora notes that the system team is working on ways to address the general progression of Diablo 4 Ancestral items in World Tier 4, which can feel like they come in a flood early on and slow to a real drip-feed of upgrades not long after moving to the game’s current highest difficulty.
Piepiora also talks about the idea of ‘target farming’ – having certain in-game activities that you can focus on completing that will have a higher chance to drop specific gear types. As an example, he mentions the Tempest Roar, essential to one of the best Druid builds. “We do have plans in Season Two right now to have more content that you can try to target farm in order to find certain Unique items. That is something the rewards team will be thinking about.”
Also coming in future updates are more ways to craft and modify gear, Piepiora says. “Yes, we do want to add more options for players to modify the items they’re getting – we have a very baseline experience in terms of item modification [right now]. We are looking at more opportunities in the future to allow players to do more with their items.” Given how expensive even single stat rerolls can get, hopefully crafting will allow us some more nuanced customization options to turn a great item into a best-in-slot one.
The team also addresses ‘Uber Uniques’ – the incredibly rare items that have dropped just a tiny handful of times across the millions of players farming their way through Diablo 4. Piepiora calls them a “huge spike of power that are not expected to be part of builds,” and explains that the team decided, “We want players to find these, but we don’t want them to expect to find these.”
“Now right now I believe that they are exceedingly rare – and we do want them to feel very, very rare – but I suspect that as we start moving into future seasons, we’ll want to add more ways for players to get them.” He suggests that the drop rates will probably get a little more common as time goes on, which feels like the correct approach to me; it’s better to have made them more rare initially, but they’re just a little too much of a pie in the sky that you’ll never get to try.
In closing, Shely addresses one final, popular method of grabbing yourself some quick loot – Treasure Goblins. “I think we loved how Diablo 3 has, like, ten different types of Treasure Goblins,” he remarks with a smile. “We think that there’s lots of room for there to be more fun Goblin types in future.”
While those might not arrive immediately, Piepiora adds, “We are going to be buffing legendary drop chance from items that will appear from Treasure Goblins – we do want them to feel a little bit more exciting in the moment where they drop.”
It sounds like Diablo 4’s loot won’t just be more plentiful in the future then; it should also more frequently be the things that you want. Or, alternatively, you’ll be provided with ways to turn gear into the upgrades you need. That’s good news; I’m already sifting through more bags of helms, gauntlets, and axes than I know what to do with, but I’d like a few more of them to feel truly special.
As you work your way through Diablo 4 Season 1, make sure you have a good understanding of what the best Diablo 4 Malignant Hearts look like, where to get them, and how best to incorporate them for maximum power.