Diablo III Preview

If you’d like to brush up on your Diablo III knowledge before heading into the weekend, this brief preview of Blizzard’s next phenomenon on The Armchair Empire should do the trick.

A very interesting new feature coming in Diablo III is the runes system. While the last game used gems that could be socketed into gear, this time around players will be able to use runes that can be socketed into skills to augment their abilities. How they go about this depends on the color of the rune. Just like the colored gems, these runes each do different things depending on their color. This isn’t to say that gems are gone, in fact they’re still there thanks to a jewel crafter that you’ll meet in your travels, and there are even a group of artisans specializing in other types of items that will join your caravan over the course of the game to make you new, fancy gear. At the start of the game, these artisans are still apprentices, but over the course of the game they become better and better at their craft. There’s even a mystic that will eventually join you who can enchant items.

One area that was a nagging concern for gamers in Diablo II was the inventory, as it tended to get filled up pretty fast, especially if you were a pack rat, requiring players to constantly warp back to town to unload all of their goods at the vendor. In this game, Blizzard appears to be taking some steps to remedy the problem. The main inventory doesn’t look vastly bigger than its predecessor, but there is now something called a talisman, where players can hold up to 13 charms. I remember constantly getting bogged down by these charms in Diablo II, so this will be a very welcome change being able to shunt quite a few to another area entirely. It’s important to note, also, that players only receive the stat bonuses of charms when they are placed in the talisman. They have no effect when just sitting in inventory. Finally there is the stash, adventurers’ trusty chest for dumping heaps of goodies and gold into. We don’t know just how much we’ll be able to fit into them yet, but Blizzard does promise it’ll be “huge”.