After the open beta of Diablo 4, Associate Game Director Joe Piepiora talks about the most important feature of the game: the loot. Diablo 4 changes how you acquire the best items, but at release, there should be many more legendaries than you have seen so far.
Here’s what the boss says: In a tweet, Piepiora explains that there are many more legendary powers than people think. He says: ‘There are many bizarre, exciting, and completely balanced legendaries to discover,’ with the balancing likely written with a wink.
In the response to a question, it is stated that not even half of the available powers can be found in the Codex of Power. This means that you must find most items yourself and are not guaranteed to receive them.
Shely did not mention specific examples, but we have already found some of these effects in the beta itself. You can find them, for example, in our class builds for Diablo 4.
However, if you are spoiled by the drop rates from the beta, you should not hope for legendary drops so early at release. You found legendaries much more easily during the beta.
We also spoke with Piepiora from MeinMMO, but there about the multiplayer of Diablo 4. We explain the feature here:
Diablo 4 changes how you get loot in an ARPG
How does loot work in Diablo 4? The Codex of Power is a new feature in Diablo 4. You receive certain legendary powers simply as a gift by completing dungeons and defeating their bosses.
These powers, or ‘aspects’, can then be forged onto rare items to make them legendaries. Codex powers are always the weakest variant of a legendary, so found loot is always better.
You can also extract aspects from legendaries through a new NPC, the occultist. This means: if you find a legendary whose effect you like, you can simply remove it and apply it to another item.
However, the aspects obtained this way are only usable once. Codex powers can be used as often as you like. One advantage of the system is that powers are not bound to individual equipment slots but are always applicable to different parts.
Can I reforge every power? No. In a personal interview with Game Director Joe Shely, we talked about the many legendaries, and he also confirmed that many unknown aspects are waiting for us. And legendaries that you might already know from before.
As an example, Shely mentioned the legendary gloves ‘Magefist’ from Diablo 3. Unfortunately, you cannot use these ‘unique items’ to transfer legendary aspects to other items.
However, aspects should always be usable, even if they do not appear in the Codex. The corresponding items do not have unique names. You can find more from the interview here:
Diablo 4: Can you switch off the ‘Shared World’ at some point? We asked the developers
