Reaching Diablo 4's level cap will take around 150 hours of grinding

Ahead of an upcoming open playtest, Blizzard have released their latest developer design video on Diablo 4, this time tackling player choice and the action RPG’s different classes. My favourite detail is that you can become a werewolf and “do werewolf things”. Although getting to that stage may take a while, as associate game director Joseph Piepora recently said it would take around 150+ hours for an average player to hit the Level 100 cap. Sounds like a week’s worth of content then.

The first “player choice” you make, will be selecting one of five character classes. There’s the close-range Barbarian, the ranged elemental mage the Sorcerer, the stealthy Rogue, the dead-summoning Necromancer, and the Druid, who can transform into the aforementioned werewolf. They’re all fan-favourite classes from previous Diablos, but they’ll likely have bigger loot and/or flashier AOE abilities this time around.

Lead producer Melissa Corning says that “if you’ve played a previous Diablo game and you enjoyed a certain playstyle, you can actually bring that into Diablo 4,” no matter what class you go with.

The above video also shows off Diablo 4’s “near endless” customisation, letting you sculpt the characters you imagine in your mind. Apparently, each class has some unique hairstyles, though, so your class might somewhat affect their faces.

The most interesting tidbit for hardcore Diablo players is the description of the Paragon Board, an endgame table that you can use after filling out your other skill trees. It looks absolutely stacked with tiny nodes, allowing you to spend Paragon points and delve into the minutiae of character builds. You can check out more details in Blizzard’s blog post, but the video above is pretty comprehensive too.

Hopeful hack-and-slashers have one more chance to try out Diablo 4 before its summer launch with a “Server Slam” between May 12-14th.