Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Closed Beta Preview, Part One

The first installment in what we presume will be a multi-part feature for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is online over at AusGamers, with this initial article focusing on the expansion pack’s inclusion of “Loot 2.0”. This alone might be enough to have me dabbling back into Diablo territory again:

Without the auction house to spend all your gold on new items means that some other fundamental aspects need to change outside of making loot drops feel like something out of a dream. First up is upgrading the in-game merchants from a useless collection of pixels that are used strictly for selling items for gold, to actual merchants, meaning they sell weapons, armour, plans, and other items that are useful. Second is an overhaul to the crafting system, by making it worthwhile. This means that crafting components will drop pretty regularly to make better use of the blacksmith and any item plans you may come across. But this isn’t a case of just making everything easier and more abundant, as both item and gem creation has been expanded upon and made a lot more difficult to create the higher level gear or gems.

Loot 2.0 is a big change to the core Diablo gameplay, as even the item stats have been overhauled (again) to take into account the more sought after higher level attributes like Life On Hit, Life On Kill, Critical Damage, and so forth. Item comparisons are now divided into three groups, damage, toughness, and healing which take into account a larger variety of attributes. These big changes made across the board work wonders into instilling new life into a game that was feeling more than a little stale of late, as well as probably winning over players who gave up on the game pretty early on. Even with improved item drops and legendary items that you’ll actually get to see and use, sometimes it’s even the little things that can make you take notice. Health potions are no longer tiered and now come in a single variety called just that, health potions, which heal your character for 60% of their life. You also no longer have to pick them up, as they’re now automatically acquired like gold.