MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus has been playing Diablo 4 regularly since its release. Probably more than most casuals, yet less than all the pros. His insight: after a certain level, the actually boring, “rare” items suddenly become much more interesting than their legendary counterparts. This has its pros and cons.
What is the endgame in Diablo 4?
- Starting at level 50, you will enter an area in Diablo 4 where you only level up Paragon and mainly improve builds.
- The grind then mainly focuses on specific activities in the endgame like nightmare dungeons, dungeon grind for XP, and co.
- However, since about level 70, I have noticed: I pay much more attention to the “yellow” items than to legendaries. How comes?
That’s why I’m excited about yellow items: Diablo 4 has an interesting system with legendary aspects. This allows me to remove powers from legendaries and transfer them to other items.
This makes rare, i.e., “yellow” items suddenly much more valuable than at the high levels of Diablo 3 or in Diablo Immortal. Because it is much more likely to find a strong yellow item than a legendary that directly represents an upgrade.
From world tier 4, ancestral items can be found in Diablo 4, which have better values than all other counterparts. If I now find a yellow item with particularly good values, I keep it and store it until I can upgrade it to a legendary.
If you want to know how good an item is “rolled”, you need to activate 2 settings in Diablo 4.
When farming, this means that I always take a close look at which of my found items is better than what I am currently wearing before selling or breaking them down. This takes a bit longer, but is part of the player experience for me: I have to decide much more carefully what is worth it for me.
Legendaries are still important, but now I’m more flexible
The most important questions for me are: do the values fit my build, and can I stack additional damage buckets that will make my damage explode?
I play my own Blizzard build for the Sorceress, which I have been refining since around level 40, seeing how I can get better. Accordingly, values like frost damage or skill points in certain skills are important for me.
Legendaries remain a fundamental part of loot. Whenever one drops, I check whether the effect helps me and is better than what I already carry. Then the item is taken to the occultist, and I keep the aspect on hand until I find a yellow item that I can upgrade with it.
Through the system, the joy of finding a legendary is somewhat dampened, but yellow items are no longer just junk. And when one of the particularly rare “uniques” appears, it directly results in even more dopamine.
You can find the best builds in our tier list for Diablo 4. You can see some older gameplay from my build here.
Where do I get the best items? At the moment, I farm for maybe 1-2 hours a day, and I invest more playtime in secondary characters to check out all classes before season 1. To avoid getting bored, I vary my farm:
- 2-3 nightmare dungeons, with which I can also upgrade glyphs
- Hell Tides as a reliable source for legendaries and yellow items
- World bosses when they’re available
Additionally, I check all vendors approximately every hour, because especially good items can also be sold here. It hardly gets easier to obtain upgrades, even though my gold is currently running low.
However, the very best items are only available under certain conditions and only from special enemies, at least according to the current state. Here you need enormous luck for a really good roll:
Diablo 4: 21 unique monsters will bring you the mightiest items – item power over 840
