Diablo IV Essences Preview (Pre-Alpha)

Diablo 4 is in the final stages of development and even though the game is not even in official Alpha yet, there is a lot of news that we can share with you about the upcoming gameplay. Read on to learn more about Diablo IV essences, what are and how to use them.

Item types in Diablo 4

Previously it was announced that Diablo 4 will have a new approach to itemization. There will be the following types of weapons:

• common
• magic
• rare
• legendary
• unique

Generally speaking, all of these types are typical for RPGs. But Diablo 4 changes the rules a bit. Common, magic and rare items have craftable modifiers and you can change their properties multiple times. Legendary items are similar to Diablo III legendaries having one or more legendary properties. While unique items in Diablo IV are totally unique and can’t be changed.

+Skill Rank Affixes

In addition, the +skill rank affixes system returns to Diablo 4 from Diablo 2. It means that you can find an item with +lvl to a particular skill. If you haven’t learned the skill yet by equipping such an item you will unlock it with the mentioned +lvl.

For example, the axe above would give +4 ranks to Flay. If you have Flay rank 1 it will become rank 5. If you don’t have Flay it will unlock it with a rank 4.

Who is The Occultist?

The Occultist is an upcoming NPC in Diablo 4 who will make Diablo 4 Essences work for you. The thing is that in Diablo IV you will have the opportunity to extract legendary power from a Legendary item to apply it to the other rare item. That is very handy when you have a good rare item and need some legendary properties that will work with your build. But unfortunately, this legendary power rolled on the other useless item. In Diablo IV you can go to the Occultist and extract the power into the essence.

That will break the item, but you will have an essence that you can use on one other rare item and add the needed legendary power there. This action will not reroll the mods you already have on the item, only add the legendary power.

Although, you may have noticed that essences can be applied to particular types of items. Some of them will need a specific type to be applied.