Discussion Leaked Videos Analysis - Spoiler Alert

[Rush]

Angzt posted this in our Discord so sharing here.

Spoiler

Here's the full imgur album of partial screengrabs which I'll be referring to throughout. If you don't want to open twenty individual links, just scroll through this one. Image quality is all over the place because a) the video quality was, too; and b) some things were only visible for a few frames. I'm not going to link the leaked videos here either, they're not hard to find.

Keep in mind that all this is from a clearly unfinished alpha version of the game. Some things are literally marked as placeholders, [PH]. Much of what we saw here will likely change before release.
We also only saw a mid-level character, so no end-game content was present at all.

Towns & Artisans

• Each town shows the services available in it on its map tooltip. Those are, in order:
  Weapons Vendor, Armor Vendor, Jewelry Vendor, Scroll Vendor, Potion Vendor,
  ???, Purveyor of Curiosities, Stable, Blacksmith, Alchemist,
  Occultist, Salavager, Jeweller (?), Clan Bank, Personal Chest (?),
  Wardrobe
• Vendors are self-explanatory: Spend gold to buy stuff or get gold for selling stuff. See below (or 2nd half of imgur album) for item info.
  One thing to note is that there was a little note on a vendor saying "New Stock Delivery in xx:xx" which seemed to start counting down from 60 minutes. So it's likely that you can't refresh vendors' stock at will.
• The ??? entry, the little bag, does not seem to actually appear as a marker on the map once in town. All the others do. There is one more marker that does appear on the map itself but not in the tooltip: The healer who just maxes out your health when talked to. Possible that this icon is supposed to refer to them but just hasn't been updated.
• The Purveyor of curiosities is essentially D3's Kadala: You can spend a currency called Murmuring Obols to get unidentified items for a certain slot. Worth noting that you do get to choose the weapon type this time around. The Murmuring Obols themselves are acquired by "completing events" throughout Sanctuary. To me, that sounds like bounty-like content which appears ad-hoc in the overworld.
• The Stable allows you to customize your mount and presumably purchase new ones, but only after completing the campaign. You can switch to a different mount, change the saddle, or add a trophy. It doesn't look like the latter two have any gameplay effects.
• The Blacksmith allows crafting of weapons and armor in exchange for certain crafting materials and a gold fee. They will also repair your gear and salvage unwanted items, either individually or in bulk, as we know it from D3. Salvaging items is also required to unlock their appearance for transmogs for the Wardrobe, as indicated by various items' tooltips.
• The Alchemist also has multiple functions: Firstly, you can upgrade your health potions (more on those later) in exchange for crafting materials and gold.
  You can also craft Elixirs and Incense. We only saw very few tooltips here but both appear quite costly. Both can be used to increase some stats for 20-30 minutes, with the difference being that Elixirs only apply to the user while Incenses apply to all nearby players. Notably, the elixir we saw gives a 3% XP boost for its duration in addition to some resistances.
  Finally, the alchemist can also craft (presumably rarer and/or higher level) crafting materials from other materials and some gold.
• The Occultist, as announced in an earlier blog, will deal with extracting the Essence of Legendary items and Imbuing Essence to other items. It looks like those essences are physical items with their own inventory tab, so the functionality is likely different from D:I where you can apply an extracted Essence as often as you want.
• We did not get to see the Salvager, Jeweller, Clan Bank, Personal Chest, or Wardrobe in the videos.
  Each crafter can be Upgraded with higher level Recipes for a sizeable gold cost. We also saw dropped crafting recipes, though.

Character Progression

• We got a glimpse of the Barbarian Skill Tree showing a clustered tree structure. There are large orange nodes which directly connect to each other, but their purpose is not clear. Attached to each of them are a few square nodes which seem to correspond to individual skills, each with 5 levels. Attached to those are two tiers of what I assume are passive bonuses to that skill, each with 3 levels. The larger orange nodes also have a few instances of two tiers of small round nodes attached which are general passive bonuses, also with 3 levels each.
  One of the latter is Defensive Posture which increases damage reduction while Fortified by an additional 5% each rank. More on Fortified later.
  Skill Points can be refunded individually for a gold cost.
• There is an Expertise tab on the character screen which shows a different rank for each weapon type. I expect this to be a Barbarian-exclusive mechanic, but we don't know for sure.
  In the one-handed category we have axes, maces, and swords. Slashing two-handed weapons are axes, polearms, and swords. Two-handed maces make up the entire two-handed blunt category.
  Throughout gameplay, we saw a few pop-ups of certain expertises having increased, so it's likely that you simply gain expertise ranks by using the corresponding weapon. The bonuses that confers were (per rank): 2h sword: 2% direct damage dealt inflicted as bleed for 5s; 1h mace: 1% increased damage to stunned enemies; 1h sword: 1% chance to gain 5 fury when hitting a CC'd enemy.
  We don't know how high those can rank up to, but the level 33 character we saw had the two highest expertises at rank 5. There is also a seemingly empty Technique slot on the tab whose purpose is unclear to me.
• We also saw a Lost Cache being found in a slightly hidden bit of the overworld. Opening that gave a small permanent stat boost to all (likely of that player's) characters on the realm.

Overworld & Questing

• The map shows a few aspects of Area Completion at its very top. The meaning isn't clear for all of them, but a few are obvious.
  Renown appears to be gained by discovering new areas, completing events, finding Lost Caches, and - presumably - completing side quests. It's not clear what to do with it, but it seems to have a fixed maximum. It may just be an overall progression indicator for the whole area.
  The next entry are simply the discovered Waypoints in an area.
  The red pentagram isn't clear, but may refer to the number of overworld bosses defeated.
  The blue exclamation point is seen elsewhere in the game and most likely refers to Side Quests.
  The next symbol, which I can't quite make out, tells you how many sub-areas you have discovered. You don't exactly uncover the map bit by bit in a radius around your character like in past games but in chunks as it’s clearly divided into sub-areas.
  The gate most likely refers to Dungeons cleared as that's what their entrances are marked with on the map.
  Finally, the chest refers to the aforementioned Lost Caches.
  There is also an indicator telling the player that there are Rewards available to collect. But it's unclear what that means as we never get to see it.
• You can teleport to a waypoint from anywhere but that does require and consume a Scroll of Town Portal. Travel between waypoints is free. There's also the Scroll of Wayfinding which teleports you to the entrance of a dungeon and the Scroll of Summoning which brings party members to you.
• Each area on the map seemed to have a minimum recommended level. The player was consistently a bit lower than that but didn't seem to have too much trouble. It's unclear whether enemies will scale upwards with the player, but seemingly they don't scale down below that area level.
• The player stumbled across a Silent Chest on the overworld which required a Whispering Key to open. But none was available, so we don't know what might be in it or what the keys are.
• There were also a few Crafting Resources to be found out in the world. From what we saw, it was mostly (only?) plants that could be interacted with an looted. It's likely that much of the other crafting materials comes from Salvaging items.
• We didn't see any side quests get tackled, but got some main quest content. The player skipped through all the dialogue, so we don't really get a lot of context. The few things we did learn involved an ageing Lorath Nahr (the new Horadrim warrior from D3 A5), trying to find "the secret of immortality" to overcome Elias' (bald guy from the reveal trailer), and several mentions of Mephisto, Lord of Hatred (makes sense, Lilith is his daughter after all).
  The short bits of questing we saw didn't go beyond "go here and click on this, collect that, or fight this thing" but without real context it's impossible to judge. One thing to note is that most quest objectives only marked large-ish areas on the map and finding the actual goal in that area was left to the player.

Combat

• In general, the combat we saw was quite reminiscent of the early levels of Diablo 3. Resource-generating and -spending attacks, the latter obviously more powerful, and some longer cooldown (up to 60s) skills as well. Small enemies often died in 1-2 hits while larger regular enemies lasted a decent bit longer.
  Elite enemies had similar affixes to those in D3, including some on-the-ground effects that you needed to avoid.
• Health Potions function differently from the other games in D4: They heal a little instantly and then more over a few seconds. Importantly, you can only carry a limited number at a time; we saw 5 but that may be upgradeable. Potions don't seem to have a notable cooldown.
  Enemies drop what looks a lot like D3's Health Globes but they actually just replenish one potion. So potions aren't actual physical items anymore.
  Keep in mind that the Alchemist (see above) can be used to upgrade the potency of your health potions.
• We didn't get to see a lot of Skill Tooltips except for a quick glance at Upheaval, a skill we've seen in a previous blog post. It's a Core skill, costs Fury, and deals damage in a large cone. There are some bonus effects on the tooltip as well but it's unclear whether they're on the base skill or added via passives on the skill tree. There's a 20% stun chance and on top it gives the Berserking buff (25% damage, 30% move speed buff) for 2-3 seconds. The skill also seems to allow you to choose which of your 2h weapons to use for it, or leave it on auto which presumably picks the most damaging one.
  There's also a very short look at Call of the Ancients, an Ultimate skill which summons the three named Ancients from D2 A5 with their corresponding abilities for 6 seconds with a 49 second cooldown. You can only have one Ultimate skill selected (= on the skill bar?) at a time.

Items & Stats

• We had a decent look at the latest Inventory Screen which shows the 12 slots for the Barbarian's equipment, some basic stats, four inventory tabs, and a few resources at the bottom.
  The Barbarian notably has four weapons slots as per their Arsenal System which uses different weapons for different skills. That will not be the case for the other classes.
  The stats listed are DPS, Armor, and Life followed by Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, and Dexterity. For a level 32 character, the former were in the mid hundreds (DPS, Life) to low thousands (Armor) while the latter were in the mid teens. There's also a button to bring up more detailed stats but we didn't get to see those.
  The inventory itself has the tabs Equipment, Consumables, Quest, and Essences, with another button to bring up Materials. Equipment includes not just gear but also gems, and recipes. Consumables are scrolls and presumably the craftable elixirs and incenses. Quest items are self-explanatory and Essences are the extracted powers from Legendary items for use with the Occultist. One thing to note here is that all items are the same size, no more inventory tetris.
  Finally, bottom shows three currencies: Gold, a red shard, and Murmuring Obols. Gold is obvious, the Obols are explained above, and the red shards are likely Shards of Hatred, the PvP currency detailed in an earlier official blog post.
• At least for the Barbarian, Willpower increases Resource generation (0.1% per point), healing received (0.1% per point), and Overpower damage (by 0.25% per point).
  Dexterity increases crit chance (by 0.02% per point) and dodge chance (by 0.025% per point).
  Keep in mind that these effects might differ per class, especially the scaling factors. The latter may also change as you level up or be capped somewhere.
• As for items themselves, I'll just point to the later pictures in this imgur album which features a whole bunch of them.
  One thing to note is that while socketable gems (including skulls!) are back, there is no sign of runes. In fact, I don't believe we've seen any runes since they were announced with the game in 2019.
  Some of the rare items are marked as Account Bound (likely meaning not tradeable), seemingly the equipped ones (but there's one equipped at the end which does not immediately get bound). Magic items don't seem to get Bound at all, at least we don't see that. We did not see any Legendaries or Uniques drop but the rare and below quality items were not bound by default.
• Looking at a few of the Affixes, there's plenty of returning ones but also a few new things:
  Fortified Life seems to be an additional life pool that takes 20% reduced damage and gets depleted first. Some items (and skills) have effects when you still have Fortified life remaining. This might be a Barbarian-exclusive thing.
  Vulnerable is an effect that increases damage taken by 20%.
  Overpowering items deal bonus damage based on your total current health.
  Execute seems to be an instant kill-effect(-chance) against non-elite enemies.
  Skill bonuses are also back, taking the form of percentage-based damage bonuses or acting like additional skill points in that skill. It seems that skills fall into broad categories (e.g. Core, Basic, Ulitmate) to which those bonuses can apply. These categories are likely shared across classes. Of course, there are also bonuses to specific individual skills only.
  Finally, we see a single Legendary affix: "Enemies are slowed by 26% for 5 second when you evade through them." Evade being a dodge move available to all classes which is just a short dash on a 5 second cooldown. We also see rare boots that give 100% dodge while evading, implying that you don't get I-frames by default.
• The Loot Frequency seemed to be lower than in either D2 or D3, even while levelling. The player picked up basically everything but still didn't fill their inventory all that quickly.
  Additionally, most dropped loot appeared to be at least usable by the Barbarian (e.g. no shields, staves, or ranged weapons), indicating that some form of Smart Loot is in place.

 

[Makoez]

Great post. I watched the leaked video and i'm positive about the game.
Hope i get an closed beta invite.