Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred will be the action RPG's first expansion, bringing with it the new spiritborn class and a new campaign set in the jungle region of Nahantu. Blizzard says it's been working on the expansion since before Diablo 4 was released in 2023, and it expects to keep releasing expansions at a regular pace.
In the last few months, Blizzard radically changed how Diablo 4 works in preparation for the changes coming in the expansion. Loot is much more powerful than it used to be and classes, like the necromancer, have been dramatically reworked. The game is almost unrecognizable from the state it was in at launch, which will make the transition to Vessel of Hatred much easier when it drops in October.
Blizzard says it plans to release new expansions every year, each with a new class and a list of changes and features to the game, like the mercenary companions coming in Vessel of Hatred. You won't be required to buy every expansion, but skipping them will leave you on the sidelines watching as everyone plays with the newest toys.
The Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred release date is October 8, 2024 on Steam and Battle.net for PC. Despite now owning Blizzard, Microsoft hasn't announced any plans to make Vessel of Hatred available on its Game Pass subscription service when it launches. The base game is available there, but it's looking like you'll have to buy the expansion along with everyone else when it drops.
Vessel of Hatred will mark a new chapter in Diablo 4, continuing the campaign and updating its existing systems. Blizzard only just started to detail the new features coming with it in the last few months. The first major reveal was the new spiritborn class, which I recently had hands-on with at Blizzard's campus in Irvine, California. The spiritborn resemble Diablo 3's monks if they could also drop a giant centipede god on their foes. I'll go into more detail on them below.
Here are the new Vessel of Hatred features we know about so far:
The spiritborn are a martial arts class who use skills based on powerful animal gods from the spirit realm. They can dart around dungeons with quick dashes and call down spirit guardians to wipe out packs of monsters. Sort of like druids, spiritborn can specialize in a particular animal to gain their unique advantages. Jaguar skills, for example, increase your attack speed, while gorilla skills increase your defense.
Here are the kind of benefits and skills to expect from each spiritborn animal guardian:
Spiritborn are far and away Diablo 4's most complex class. Typically, builds focus on one or two categories of skills, like a frozen orb sorcerer, but spiritborn thrive off of mixing and matching skills from all four of their spirit guardians. Blizzard even says it plans to update the other five classes with skills inspired by what's possible with the spiritborn.
Two new weapon types will be added to the game for the spiritborn: glaives and quarterstaffs. Although Blizzard recently expanded the types of weapons the existing classes can use, it hasn't said whether or not they'll be able to wield these too.
In case you forgot how brutal the world of Diablo can be, Blizzard made a Vessel of Hatred trailer that is so explicit, it needs a content warning for body horror and gore. Neyrelle, the young girl who ends the main campaign with a demon lord in her pocket, experiences a hallucination where her arms and legs are torn off. This three-minute nightmare might win the award for the most disgusting videogame trailer I've ever seen.
The spiritborn class reveal trailer is far less grotesque and gives you a peek at how the class works and what fighting in Nahantu looks like.
Diablo 4 has two ways to play:
Eternal realm: This is the normal version of the game and where all seasonal characters end up after a season ends. All updates except those related to seasonal mechanics come to this mode.
Seasonal realm: The seasonal version of the game features unique mechanics, like season 2's vampiric powers, to spice up the experience for around three months. Seasons require you to start a new character from level 1 but are widely considered the most fun way to play Diablo 4.
No, you don't need to own Vessel of Hatred to continue playing Diablo 4 after it's out. Updates to the game will continue to be free for everyone.
But you do need to own the base game to play it. There's a Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred bundle you can purchase that gives you access to the original game immediately if you're completely new.
Blizzard hasn't explained exactly which features you'll miss out on if you don't own Vessel of Hatred, but we can assume it'll gate your access to the new class at the very least. Diablo boss Rod Fergusson has said in recent interviews that everyone will have access to season 6 when it starts alongside Vessel of Hatred's release. I expect Blizzard will explain the difference between owning and not owning the expansion sometime before October.
Additionally, Blizzard told PC Gamer in an interview that players starting Diablo 4 for the first time with Vessel of Hatred will have an option to skip the main campaign and immediately jump into the expansion's story. That implies you'll be able to skip the campaigns individually so you won't be behind if your friends are already exploring Nahantu.
Warning: Diablo 4 campaign spoilers follow.
Vessel of Hatred's story takes place in Nahantu, a jungle region at the southern end of Diablo 4's world map. Diablo 2 players will recognize it as the Torajan jungle where the city Kurast is located—which you'll be able to visit again in the expansion. Nahantu is the home of the spiritborn, and it's also where Neyrelle, the young girl we meet in Act 1 of the campaign, has taken Mephisto, the expansion's primary antagonist.
Mephisto is particularly bad news because he's one of the series' ultimate villains known as the Prime Evils. These powerful demon brothers (Mephisto, Baal, and Diablo) are always scheming to destroy Sanctuary and never stay dead for very long. Neyrelle has Mephisto trapped in a soul shard but, as we see in the last trailer, he's still able to manipulate stuff while he's stuck in there. Given the expansion's title, I think we can assume that the soul shard's hold on him won't last (they never do!).
Nahantu also happens to be a place where people used to worship the Prime Evils. I'm sure it won't be a problem that Neyrelle is bringing the angriest one there in a Ziploc bag. I suppose Blizzard could be using Mephisto as a red herring for something angel-related happening, but so far there haven't been any hints about what heaven is up to after the events of Diablo 3. The war between heaven and hell is called the eternal conflict for a reason, though, so I'd expect the expansion to either end in angels and demons fighting or to tease a spat between them for the next expansion.
