After all the trouble the game had with its not-so-great start things went decently after that point. I had my plans for how I was going to move forward and now was the time to see how that went. Some things worked out and I found I was still lacking a bit in others. As always modifications are always needed to take advantage of things.
Since this season I was going with the option to skip over the campaign I needed to focus on nailing out anything I felt was important moving forward. While the campaign always felt a bit slow it at least took you around the entire map and along the way you would finish off quite a few things you needed anyway.
What I had not planned for was just how many levels I'd end up spending working towards the new storyline and the new game mechanics from season content. It was not that the storyline itself was massive. It was quite lacking. It needed to progress through the season journey chapters to move on to the next part that held things up.
The first thing was to pick up any waypoints I’d find myself being close to. I was kind of hoping all the ones I already had in standard would end up transferring over to season play. At the very least they gave us ones at all the major towns, so I was able to quickly get to where the first part of the season storyline was at.
The second thing I even did once I got into the game was to run off towards to new season storyline. They had a dedicated instance that I was constantly having to run back to every time I could progress further along it.
Right away I ended up getting distracted while working on the first part of the storyline. While out and about I ended up stopping to do an event. As soon as that event was finished, and I got a little bit of a reward I went off to work on the main storyline again.
Expect, I noticed almost right away the event was back up again. I ended up repeating this event over and over quite a few times. It was a great way to pick up some quick gear and items. I felt it was worth the stop as it would make things easier to work on from there.
What I was not expecting was how lackluster the storyline ended up being. Quite quickly your player was “bitten” and turned into some kind of vampire. I was hoping for a lot more build-up to that moment. As if you had become some badass vampire killer and then turned into the thing you were fighting. Instead, the characters were more or less chill about suddenly you are having tainted blood.
Then it more or less became it would be awful for you to turn evil, but it would be great if you could just go on a killing spree. It felt to me there was little care about my character and his situation and more about just eliminating vampires.
The game also did a horrific job of explaining the whole vampire power system. At some point, I'm sure I’ll be coming out with some content that goes into things in more depth once I've played around with it for a bit.
While I hate the way you go about randomly unlocking and upgrading vampiric powers. I do love the fact as I was going along I was getting items that I could change the pacts on my gear or even remove them. You need so many packs of the right kinds to have each vampiric power activated. I felt this was a nice, included feature giving you the ability to take gear that has the stats you want on it and not having to reject it if the pacts that rolled on it were not what you wanted.
What I did not like were the materials to add and remove packs of gear taking up that limited and valuable inventory space. Why could it not be included in the separate tab that the rest of the vampire system was in? I have no idea. I’m sure they could have found a creative way to make it work.
One improvement I have been enjoying a lot is them refining the Whispers of tree a bit. The rewards are now more targeted towards the item you select. They also gave it a nice experience boot. I found myself more than twice going out of my way to pick up some quick whispers
A big thing I spent a lot of my time on at first outside of the storyline has been just completing the different chapters. That is once they had the system working correctly after some issues at the start of the season.
Thankfully some of this stuff I already do is out of habit. I tend to always want to run towards and clear any cellars I see. One thing I was however lacking in was collecting Reddamine in Dry Stepps since I had not spent a lot of time in that region. So, there would be a couple of things like that I'd run off and finish them so I could make it to the next chapter.
I did have a couple of strange crashes or disconnects along the way. Thankfully they have since been fixed. There were a couple of times I'd noticed a gold goblin so I'd go chase after it since I am in quite need of all the gold I can get. Right after hitting it, I'd get kicked from the game. It was almost like the goblins had some kind of protection on them. I have now at least managed to take out a few of them and I still run after them like a cat seeing a mouse.
I was also finding myself spending a lot of time in the new event type Blood Harvest. Since I skipped over the campaign, I did need other stuff to grind out some experience. In between breaks from the season storyline, I'd find myself grinding away in Blood Harvest.
The cool thing is Blood Harvest is always up. It will last in a single area for one hour before moving on. So, if you do need to do stuff in an area and want to avoid the Harvest it’s usually not a long wait till it’s over anyways.
I have also found these to be a surprisingly great place to get legendary drops. Along with how dense things tend to be early on levels were quite quick after the time I jumped into one of these. I almost made ta habit of hitting one up everyone it started.
The great thing is Blood Harvest has objectives in it that reward favors for the tree. So, I was finding myself carrying a couple of caches of loot from finishing off what you need. You would get a nice boost of experience as well. Making it even harder to want to turn down one every time I opened up the map.
I also started to hoard the keys that you get during the Blood Harvest. While at first, I was opening all the chests I could with any key I found. After a while, I found I had decent enough gear. It later ended up being a good idea to not spend every key I got as not only do you keep them even after a harvest you keep them even when going into a higher game difficulty.
Final Thoughts
While I did not go super hard in my first twenty-four hours, I was satisfied with how long I was. I plan to be playing a little most days for a while. While others are rushing off and staying up all kinds of crazy hours, I just don’t feel the need for it. It’s kind of nice to take things at a more chill speed and enjoy it.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV.
