For those of us who did not pay extra for early access, yesterday was launch day. After all these years it was finally time for Diablo IV to launch. It had perhaps the most strange launch time in the US I’ve ever played for a game. It was on a Tuesday at 7 PM. That was just strange.

I had already pre-downloaded the game earlier in the week. I’m quite glad they allowed people to do that. Nothing more annoying than launch day to need to download a massive game. They however have had quite a few patches and I’ve been checking daily to keep the game updated.

Some people paid extra to get a head start. While I was hoping they would not have many issues since they did some closed and open betas. I was not going to pay extra to be their final beta test on the early launch.

The plan was to go Sorcerer and hope they did not mess too much with it. I decided to make some changes to my skill lineup. I’ll still have a heavy focus on fire damage. I did want to try out some skills others have been swearing by.

One of them was using Arc Lash as the basic skill. So far I’ve found that I don’t like how closed-ranged the damage is. It has some nice damage and AOE. Most importantly I picked up Flickering Arc Lash which gives me an increase in movement speed when it hits creatures.

Since I’ll be doing quite a lot of exploring and level-up. I wanted a quick build. This was further reinforced when later on I picked a fire shield and upgraded it to give me a movement speed bonus when I had it active as well.

While many are focused on rushing the storyline and trying to level up as quickly as they can. Since some people had an early head start on leveling up I see zero reason to try and rush things by joining a couple of days late at this rate even if I started right on launch day.

For the first day, most things would be quite familiar to me. As they are mostly what I did during Beta testing quite a few times over. While I was hoping to get a bit further than that. The game ended up crashing a couple of times, requiring a couple of updates. Further, me calling it a night after I got a disconnect when I was almost done with a class dungeon.

As far as launchers go they still had a lot better of a launch than most games I’ve played over the years that required you to connect to services and be in an online world. I however feel Server Slam went a lot smoother than launch day did.

I also find just running into these events feels random despite them having a static location around the world. To give me a nice break from whatever quest I was working towards. Since I don’t know their locations by heart It’s a nice surprise when I run into them getting to somewhere.

One thing I have been doing at just about every chance is jumping into every little cellar I can find on the map. While they don’t feel as buffed as they were during the Server Slam. They are quite shorter than a normal dungeon and give you a chance at getting some loot.

I also just love jumping into them to see the different kinds of zones and environments inside them. I’m still very much at a point in this game where I can’t help but get excited over exploration and finding new-looking areas.

The only thing I was not expecting is the weak weapons I’ve been looting for my main and offhand. For quite a while I was stuck just using random magic weapons. Only past level 15 did I loot my first yellow rare weapon. Even then it did not look that great compared to the stuff I was finding during Beta.

So I do feel that has slowed down my progress somewhat. As my damage feels a little lacking than what I was getting in the beta even after the nerfs. I do however feel it being my first character in this game that it’s right around what I would expect compared to other games.

So far I’ve looted a single legendary item. It was some lame ring I did not care anything about. When I do crowd control I get a little more main resources due to the ring. The good news is it’s not wasted. As my arc stuns on occasion and unless I’m incorrect that might count. It won’t be something I have plans to hold onto.

Final Thoughts

I’ll just be super chill and check back the next day or hours later when things start going wrong. It has been quite a long time since I’ve felt Blizzard has come out with anything I’ve wanted to play. I’m going to enjoy it. I have zero need to rush or put myself into situations where I get annoyed with the game.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV. This was during the early access beta. Things are subject to change.