Here's a look at the new region and game features in Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred expansion, including mercenaries, Dark Citadel, and more. This action RPG launches October 8 on Xbox, PS5, PS4, and PC.
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00:10In Vessel of Hatred, we travel south to Nahantu,
00:14a region with both deep ancient jungles and vast sprawling plains.
00:18It's the last stretch of land in Sanctuary's eastern continent,
00:21and we've packed it full of experiences for every type of player.
00:25In this expansion, there's a whole lot to explore under the dark canopy of Nahantu.
00:33Nahantu is the southernmost region of the eastern continent that Diablo 4 has been taking place in.
00:40It's the last region that we haven't visited yet so far in the game,
00:44but it is one that we've been to before in Diablo.
00:47There's lots of new areas. We have six in total.
00:50Four of them are jungle-themed, and then we have two that are red rock canyon,
00:54but each one of them has their own unique identity.
00:57When you first arrive in Nahantu, you're in this place called Lingering Hatred.
01:01This is high treetops canopies where you're almost walking amongst the branches high above the jungle floor.
01:07Imagine a thick canopy that the light is just barely poking through.
01:11The whole area has been infected by this thing called the Hollows infestation.
01:15The Hollows are a new enemy that's associated with Mephisto.
01:18They themselves are kind of like a tar-like substance creature born straight out of the depths of hell.
01:23It feels a little twisted. There's a sickness to the area itself.
01:28Humans have ventured into this deep part of the jungle where there's all this poisonous plants and flora.
01:34The dregs actually started experimenting with eating these hallucinogens,
01:38and it put them into this aggressive psycho rage.
01:42The dregs were pretty fun because we were able to push more variety in the monster family.
01:46You have one of these tall dregs and then half of a body of another dreg on top of it,
01:51kind of controlling it and telling it where to go and tossing poisonous bombs at the player.
01:57When you come across it, it's very memorable.
01:59And then we've also got the area of Tenghazi where you've got the Tenghazi Plateau,
02:04which is full of these red rock plateaus and canyons.
02:08Imagine getting up above the land.
02:10Those gigantic walls have pockets inside where monsters could live.
02:15It offered up a lot of opportunity to bring back a monster family like the Lacunae.
02:20We're bringing them back in a new way here as a fully fleshed out monster family with multiple classes.
02:25What a more brute force looks like, what a caster looks like.
02:28They are very much apex predators, and we're definitely in their territory.
02:33And then there's a little sub area called the Skittering Earth.
02:36The name alone makes your skin crawl.
02:40It's bug infested, and you can see how the bugs have destroyed the jungles and kind of input their influence on it.
02:47Within the Field of Giants, you have these giant corpses of these long dead demons
02:52that humans have begun to mine a way out for their resources.
02:56While they've got a lot of use out of them, they're also toxic to the land around it.
03:00The notion of massive demons walking sanctuary a thousand years ago is really thought provoking.
03:08Plateau's also got just this beautiful color scheme to the lighting.
03:11It's really lovely to be there.
03:13And then horrific at the same time. You know, it's great.
03:18The Mercenaries in Vessel of Hatred are a group of people who we like to describe as ordinary people with extraordinary skills.
03:26They have the same level of will to fight against the demons of hell.
03:31And there's four mercs that you can collect over the course of the campaign.
03:34Starts with Rahir, a blacksmith and a shield bearer, he's a more defensive fighter.
03:38He's able to go in there and soak up damage, use his shield as a bulwark against the enemy.
03:44You meet him early on in the campaign and he's one who introduces you to the Mercenary Network.
03:49You end up finding acquisition quests for three other mercs that you can find throughout the course of the story.
03:54Subo, the drunken archer, is going to work really well for people who want someone who's out of the main melee,
04:01in the back, offering utility and that kind of ranged support.
04:04Then we have Varianna, a berserker crone, who's a melee combat fighter, close range.
04:09A really cool combat meter, a massacre meter, where you need to keep killing enemies to get the meter to be filled.
04:15She's got a bunch of really interesting utility skills that you can kind of build in.
04:19Finally, we have the demon child, Aldkin, who's a magic user,
04:22who can transform himself from human form to demon form and join you in combat.
04:27There's this really great reinforcement ability where you can take one of the mercenary skills
04:32and attach it to one of your powers so that when you use that skill it calls them in to do a specific skill.
04:38With the mercenaries for Vessel of Hatred, one of the things we are expanding on is the skill tree.
04:43For Diablo III you had a very basic type of mercenary,
04:47but this time you can actually push a little bit more into the skill tree
04:52and make the mercenary the way you would want to play.
04:55Going through each mercenary progression arc and outfitting their skill tree so that it's complementary to your character build,
05:01I think that's where the fun in the mercenary system really lies.
05:09The Dark Citadel is a new in-game feature that's coming in Vessel of Hatred.
05:14It's an entirely cooperative player experience.
05:18All the mechanics within it are based around you working together with your party members
05:23to solve the challenges and face the First Khazrah hordes within.
05:27One of the outcomes of the Mage Wars is this giant crater
05:31and all the souls that were kind of lost in it from those wars.
05:34The goal of the First Khazrah, who are kind of the original Khazrah,
05:39they're using the powers within the Citadel found within this crater
05:45to perform experiments to try and bring back their Dark God.
05:49Only recently, people have started going missing.
05:52They head into the Khazrah region, they disappear never to be seen again,
05:55so it's clear that whatever they're planning is about to come to fruition
05:58and your job as the player is to get in there and stop it.
06:01Citadels are a place where we take what is the best part of Diablo, combat,
06:06and we test it in a different way, which is adding in cooperative mechanics
06:10that you have to manage on top of that.
06:13For example, a boss has an attack, and as a player, you have to collect an item
06:17that allows you to reflect the attack back at him,
06:19so there's a little bit of a Twitch-level mechanic there
06:21where you actually have to time your reaction shot.
06:24What's interesting about it is when you get multiple people in there,
06:26we're each responsible for reflecting that shot once,
06:29so we all have to sort of master the timing of that move.
06:32You can't do that kind of thing without coordinating as a team,
06:34and that's sort of the example of what Citadel gameplay feels like.
06:37When designing the Citadel, we designed a lot of really cool bosses,
06:41and so one of the things that we did is we took that design
06:44and made, like, armor sets for each of the classes.
06:47That way you feel like you took their armor,
06:49and you feel like you're wearing a little bit of them after your victory.
06:53We also have a currency that's dedicated to Citadel,
06:56where as you play through, a vendor can be interacted with
06:59to buy custom cosmetics that are unique to the Citadel.
07:03You can play with two people, but the ideal experience is for four.
07:07In order to facilitate that, we've built an all-new Party Finder feature,
07:11and the community has been pretty vocal about wanting this for a long time.
07:15It made a lot of sense to us to pair it with this new Citadel mode.
07:18It really is an activity that's geared towards people
07:21who love to play together with their friends or with strangers
07:25and enjoy that cooperative gameplay.
07:29I cannot wait for players to get into the world.
07:32I'm really just excited for people to see
07:34all the little hidden storytelling elements that the team has fit in.
07:39There's interesting things to find and see and discover around every corner,
07:43and it's just a really great experience getting to explore Nahantu.
07:55CITADEL CINEMAS