How do loot, crafting and the item system work in Diablo 4? We answer all the important questions.
The release date of Diablo 4 is approaching with great strides, already in June we can finally dive into the dark world of Sanctuary and spend our nights hunting for the best loot.
But what does the loot in Diablo 4 actually look like? And what kind of items can we find? In this article we answer all the important questions about the item system in Diablo 4.
Content List
- What items can you equip in Diablo 4?
- What rarities do items have in Diablo 4?
- What are affixes in Diablo 4?
- What are Legendary Items / Legendaries?
- What are Unique Items / Uniques?
- What is Item Power?
- How can items be improved with crafting in Diablo 4?
- How does the Codex of Power work?
The most important answers about the item system of Diablo 4
Table of Contents
What items can you equip in Diablo 4?
Each character and class has the same equipment slots where found items can be equipped:
- Helmet
- Necklace / Amulet
- chest protector
- Belt
- pants
- shoes
- Two rings
- One two-handed weapon, two one-handed weapons, bow and quiver, or one-handed weapon and secondary hand weapon/shield.
With this, the equipment slots are again exactly as you already know them from Diablo 2 and Diablo 3.
What rarities do items have in Diablo 4?
The items found are divided into the following rarities:
- Common / Common (White)
- Magic (Blue)
- Rare / Rare (Yellow)
- Legendary / Legendary (Orange)
- Unique / Unique (Brown)
Just like in the previous installments of the series, legendary and unique items will be rare at first. However, as you progress through the game and level up, you will be able to find special items more and more often.
Common items have no affixes, magical items have one affix, rare items have three affixes and legendary items have up to four affixes.
What are affixes in Diablo 4?
Affixes are the bonuses that items of rarity level Magic or higher grant to your character. Possible bonuses include more life, more primary stats such as strength or intelligence, more resistances or more movement speed.
What are Legendary Items / Legendaries?
Legendaries are much rarer than magic or rare items, but offer a great advantage: legendary affixes.
These affixes are sometimes very different from normal affixes, because they do not only grant your character stats. Some legendary affixes can change certain skills or massively strengthen certain builds.
Blizzard has already revealed some Legendary Items during its quarterly updates, from which we can see sample effects:
- When standing within your own damaging ground effects, increase your damage by x percent.
- Your chill effect triggers x percent faster, but you deal x percent less frost damage.
- Meteor gains x% increased chance to critically hit vulnerable enemies.
- Increases the duration of your defensive skills by x percent.
You can find out what a skill Meteor is and what is meant by defensive skills in the skill overview for Sorceress.
What are Unique Items / Uniques?
Veterans already know the Uniques from the predecessors, unique items like the Harlequin Crown or the Stone of Jordan should be familiar to every series veteran.
What are the Unique Items?
These unique items not only have a special look, but also always have the same properties: the same affixes, the same sockets and the same unique bonuses.
These items are very powerful and most are specific to a Diablo 4 class. Through the December 2022 press beta, some uniques are already known. For example, the fan site (Maxroll.gg) describes three unique items they discovered during the beta.
Their unique effects are as follows:
- Flamescar (Sorceress): When you channel Burn, you periodically shoot embers that are attracted to enemies and deal 469 fire damage.
- The Butcher”s Cleaver (Barbarian): Incapacitate your target for [1.0-3.0] seconds when performing a critical strike.
- Melted Heart of Bliss (all classes): Get +100% bonus to maximum resource. When you take damage, you also subtract [3.0-6.0] resources for every 1% of life you would have lost instead.
What about the Mythic Items / Mythics and Sets?
Originally, Blizzard had planned to bring particularly powerful mythic items into the game. These could have had up to four legendary affixes per item. However, as already announced at the end of 2020, these were removed before the release and replaced by the Uniques.
The popular set items are also missing at release, as we have already reported to you. However, these are to be implemented later as part of the Live Service.
What does Item Power / Gegenstandsstärke mean?
The item power of the equipment determines the range of values that are rolled on the equipment. The higher your character level, the better the item power of your found loot.
For example: You capture a magic weapon that grants you extra strength. At low item strength, it may grant you 5 to 10 extra strength points, at a higher level 10 to 15.
As an example: You capture a magic weapon that grants you extra strength.
But not only the affixes, also the basic values like damage (for weapons) and armour (for armour) are influenced by the item power. So an ordinary weapon of the same type always has a higher basic damage with higher item power.
How can items be improved with crafting in Diablo 4?
There are several ways to improve your found items with crafting:
- Gemstones can be inserted into sockets to give certain bonuses or increase stats. Runes and Rune Words were also planned, but like Mythic Items, were initially dropped.
- At level 10, the blacksmith is unlocked. Here you can upgrade all items up to five times by using gold and certain materials. Each upgrade increases the item power by five points.
With the Codex of Power you can collect and transfer legendary affixes. Read more in the next section.
How does the Codex of Power work?
There are many dungeons in the Diablo 4 Open World. Each time you complete one, you will receive a new legendary affix that will be stored in your Codex of Power.
You can then have these legendary affixes imprinted on rare or legendary items by the occultist in town, rare items will become legendary.
However, this process has some disadvantages:
- Not all legendary affixes can be found in the dungeons. Some particularly powerful affixes can only appear on legendary items that you have captured from enemies.
- The legendary affixes on items made with the Codex of Power always turn out as low as possible. Example: You want to imprint a legendary affix on a weapon that can normally increase your attack speed by 20 to 40 percent. With the Codex of Power, the value in this case will always be only 20 percent.
