The mystic allows you to "re-roll" a specific attribute of any item, assuming you've got the necessary materials. Reaper of Souls focus on near-instant gratification is most obvious in its new craftsperson, the Mystic. It's all about more: more gold, more loot, more action, more monsters, and all right now. Where Diablo 3's fights and progression were a great modernization of the action RPG formula, Reaper of Souls makes it looks measured and austere in comparison. The result of all these system changes and tweaks is a more immediately gratifying game. There's a consistent theme in these new abilities, almost all of which are focused on damage, and lots of it.
But every class gets more cool stuff via Reaper of Souls, with an increased level cap at 70 and new active and passive abilities. This includes the Crusader, a new class capable of dealing huge amounts of damage and taking even more. The story here is a little less cliched than the main game, and also manages to work in a good amount of new backstory and character development for major characters and every player selectable class.
Reaper of Souls continues Diablo 3's story with a new act set in Westmarch, as the angel Malthael enacts a plan to permanently end the war of souls that's acted as a fictional backdrop for the series as a whole. Players will also more often find items specifically tailored to the character class they're using when they find that gear - demon hunters will find weapons and accessories that often has bonuses to their unique skills, as will barbarians, witch doctors and the rest. While Blizzard has previously tweaked Diablo 3's item drops in response to player input, Loot 2.0 dramatically increases the amount of magic, rare and the most-coveted legendary and set items found in chests and through conquering monsters in-game.
That patch was so-named for changes in Diablo 3's "drop-rate" - the rate at which items spawn in the world, and what kinds of items players will find.
This adds small bonuses to higher level characters, but the real change can be felt with lower-level alts - the changed system makes it much easier to play new characters and level them up faster, and play more challenging difficulties sooner.Ī major portion of Reaper of Souls' additions to Diablo 3 came in late February for free in the form of "Loot 2.0," a significant retooling of the game's underlying mechanics and systems. As you gain paragon levels, you assign a point in one of four categories. The Paragon system now applies account wide - meaning every character regardless of their base level reaps the benefits of paragon experience. In fact Reaper of Souls adds so much content and so many changes to the existing game - much of which you don't actually have to pay for - that I found myself wondering if there might be such a thing as too much good stuff.ĭiablo 3's post-cap experience system has been rebooted for Loot 2.0 and Reaper of Souls. There's hardly an aspect of Diablo 3 that Reaper of Souls doesn't change, all in the name of player satisfaction. The Paragon system? Reset and applied account-wide to every character. But Blizzard has been saving the biggest changes for Reaper of Souls, Diablo 3's first expansion.īlizzard has a history of making major changes to their games in the wake of extensive player feedback, and Reaper of Souls is no exception. Just a few months later, Blizzard added the Paragon experience system and new player selectable difficulty tweaks along with regular patches.
It's not like the developer has been ignoring Diablo 3 since the controversy of its launch in 2012, or its subsequent massive sales success.