Diablo III Preview and Interview

In addition to another hands-on preview of Diablo III at Shacknews (this one covering the Demon Hunter), there’s an article-style interview with lead technical artist Julian Love on IncGamers. First, a snip from the preview:

The new skill system, revealed in its revamped form at BlizzCon, includes only active spells. Passive bonuses and relegated to Traits, which are not earned every level. I leveled up a few times during my session and did get to take Multi-Shot, which would fire a lot arrows in an arc in front of my character. It was easily my best area damage spell and actually drained my energy enough that I couldn’t spam it endlessly.

With the nixing of Town Portal, the developers have added more ways to sell or destroy loot in the field. The first, a Scroll of Wealth, will instantly transmute an item into its corresponding merchant value. It isn’t quite Torchlight’s pet, but does allow you to clear up some inventory space. Finally, players can salvage items in the field to create stackable crafting components for the game’s artisans. Charms will also be streamlined with each player getting a “Talisman” that holds charms and will grow in capacity as a player levels up.

And then a snip from the interview:

We spoke about skill runes for a bit, mostly taking turns marveling at how cool they were and how big of a difference they made. They are nothing like socketing an item in D2, in terms of just adding a bit to what’s already there. Runestones completely change skills in D2, making them vastly more powerful and useful, or totally changing their approach. They really can make your character, even at low levels.

For example, I found the starting Witch Doctor quite weak, with just the slow, single-shot Poison Dart, the slow, not very powerful Zombie Charger, and the tanking, but not very killing, Mongrels. When I stuck in some runes though, things changed greatly. Neither of the two runes I had in my inventory to start with did anything very interesting to Poison Dart, but one added poison damage to the Mongrels, which turned them green and just about doubled their damage output, and when I got to level 10 and added Firebats, a rune (Indigo, IIRC) in there increased the range, damage, and speed of the bats, turning them into very effective killers. I found the skill very weak at its starting level, but even with just the one level 1 rune, it instantly turned into a very effective attack, arguably overpowered, since in almost every encounter I’d just get my 3 mongrels tanking, hold down right click, and send out a steady stream of homing, speedy, deadly Firebats that would essentially clear the screen.

I related those thoughts (in abbreviated form) to Julian, and almost mentioned how the wizard’s Magic Missile went from peashooter to shotgun with an Indigo rune turning the single shot into a 3-shot blaster (at no increased AP cost), and he just nodded and smiled. As he and the other guys presented in the opening panel, runestones are really, really important and effective. I don’t see any character ever using any skill in the base, default level. Literally ever; every single runestone improves a skill over the default; the challenge will be finding or crafting your runestones to high levels, and deciding which type works the best in a given skill, depending on what you want to do with it.