My impressions of Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred as a returning player

I had only played the first two seasons of Diablo 4 before I took a long break from the game, and I just returned to the brand-new world of Lord of Hatred expansion, with all of the changes and additions that the game has gotten since launch. What was my experience like? What can you, a player, in a similar situation to mine — someone who dropped Diablo 4 a while ago but is interested in returning for LoH — expect to find in this new expansion? How does it compare to the previous D4 experience?

Read on to learn my impressions of Lord of Hatred from leveling a Sorceress, the class I was most familiar with, from scratch — into the new campaign, with all the new systems and system changes I missed along the way.

The really good stuff: The story, the new skill trees, and more

First of all: the story is good. I feel like it has a similar level of quality to the base Diablo 4 story, before Vessel of Hatred. Expect some twists, and expect some things going bad and characters suffering — it is Diablo after all — but it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some nice surprises along the way.

But my favorite aspect of my time with Lord of Hatred was definitely the new skill tree. There is so much more possible variation to your character; so many more possible builds are available right from the start. Gone are the boring passive skills; instead, as you level, you’ll unlock several branches to each skill, giving you one of two or three options to further change that skill. These are unlocked slowly, not all at once, so you’re never overwhelmed: you might pick Fireball now, then pick one from two possible enhancements to it next level, then pick one more enhancement from two more in a few levels, etc. Those small changes add up, and you’ll find yourself playing with skills that you adapt to your favored playstyle sooner rather than later, which adds agency and replayability.

Leveling feels fast — definitely faster than how I remember it from vanilla D4. Most of the enemies you face along the way seem like they’re less annoying in Lord of Hatred: you don’t get annoying stuns or exploding little guys as often, at least initially. Your experience feels optimized, more “arcade-like” rather than gimmicky. And the story is engaging enough that those levels just fly by.

Another nice addition in this expansion that I got to play around with is the loot filter. Sure, it’s a more advanced feature that will definitely be more useful during the endgame, when you’re no longer interested in picking up everything that monsters drop. But even at a lower level, you could set up a loot filter that lets you make items of a certain type, or that have certain properties, show up with a different color, for instance, so that you can identify them at a glance, and know you’re picking up something useful.

Many systems were added over time, but there’s little in-game information about them

There was definitely more that felt good than bad with my brief Lord of Hatred experience, but I do have some small points of criticism as well. Mostly down to a certian thing: Diablo 4 ended up adding many systems over time, and they’re all there, expecting to be used, but there isn’t a lot of explanation or guidance about them in-game.

The game has an intricate Mercenary system, which was added in the previous expansion, Vessel of Hatred. As such, nothing in Lord of Hatred would naturally lead me there. Were I a completely blind returning player, I might not even have known that the system existed. The place where you get Mercenaries, The Den, wasn’t even marked on my map by default; I had to search on external sites to find that info and know where to go to hire my first merc. However, it’s hard to say if this was simply an artifact from playing on a test server, or if it’s also gonna be like that in the live game for players who never played Vessel before.

Runewords were present, but the system was not explained, for the very same reason as Mercenaries: this was also a feature that came with the previous expansion, Vessel of Hatred, so there really wasn’t much hope that I’d get any explanation about it at all while playing through LoH content. There are Runes of Ritual and Invocation, and a system with Offerings, but nothing explained to me what exactly all of that was. Again, I was able to find the relevant info on external websites, but not at all in-game.

Because the Vessel of Hatred expansion is included with Lord of Hatred, and the game allows new players to skip straight to Lord of Hatred content, I probably won’t be the only one with this problem.

The new Talisman system, which allows you to equip Charms, was an actual LoH feature, and introduced organically as I played. Right at the start of the campaign you get a Seal that unlocks some Charm slots, and as you level, you’ll simply put Charms into your Talisman for passive bonuses. Later on, this will allow you to also get powerful Set bonuses, but the idea was very easy to grasp — even though I’m still not quite sure what a “Phoba,” a “Fer,” or a “Mlor” — some of the names for the different types of Charms — are. But I don’t think the naming scheme matters much as the interesting powers you can collect.

All in all, it would have been nice if some older systems that either evolved or were added since the last time I played got a better, more immediate explanation, that didn’t require me to search on external sites to figure things out. But it’s just a minor grievance, honestly.

The overall impression was positive, and I’m eager to return to Diablo 4

It was a bit disappointing to find out that we still need to do those quests to unlock class features, like Enchantments for Sorcerers. I had to temporarily put the intriguing LoH campaign on hold to go to Nevesk at level 15 and complete that old dungeon — that put a dent on the otherwise excellent pacing the campaign had thus far. Those class features should honestly just be unlocked automatically with levels at this point.

Later, as I tried max level content, most of it seemed similar to what we had before: the Tree of Whispers, Helltide, World Bosses, The Pit, Nightmare Dungeons; all was there, and it felt familiar enough. This part of the game already felt very optimized and diverse, so it’s most likely a good thing that it feels the same. There are also some endgame activities that I wasn’t familiar with because they were introduced in while I wasn’t playing, such as Infernal Hordes and Kurast Undercity, but sadly I couldn’t devote any time to those, since they weren’t really part of what I was focused on — the new expansion. Still, it’s good to know that a returning player has even more endgame activities to do than before.

Some new Lord of Hatred systems like the Horadric Cube and War Plans only get unlocked near the end of the campaign, or after you complete it, so I didn’t get to tinker with them much. And some old features were clearly upgraded since I’d last played, like item upgrades and Masterworking (at the blacksmith), which seemed more straightforward than the last time I played. It’s hard to keep track of all the changes, but systems definitely felt like they had some rough edges smoothed out, feeling simplified in a good way.

While I mostly focused on playing a Sorceress, I also tried playing a Warlock for few levels, and that class looks absolutely fantastic; the visuals are great, and I’m excited to jump into the expansion with one once it’s officially released.

One final note is that there’s still no Rebirth system, like Diablo 3 has. Diablo 4 seasons haven’t been as compelling to me as D3 seasons were, since you no longer get a new class set with fun new powers each time, so I’d love to be able to just keep playing my same character instead. But this is, again, just a small frustration that won’t really diminish my enjoyment much.

All in all, my impressions of Lord of Hatred as someone who dropped Diablo 4 after the first two seasons, only playing it very sporadically since then, were definitely more positive than negative. All of the qualms I had with the layers of systems were, frankly, minor, and not really detrimental to my enjoyment.