Diablo 4's second expansion, Lord of Hatred, is on the horizon, but not everything included will be immediately useful.
Aside from the new classes and questline, the Diablo 4 version of the Horadric Cube, first introduced in Diablo 2, is one of the big selling points of the Lord of Hatred DLC. If all goes well, it could shake up endgame itemization in a way that people have been asking for for years. For the uninitiated and in the simplest of terms (I go over it in more detail here), the Cube lets you use items you'd otherwise salvage to upgrade gear or create entirely new items, opening up an unprecedented level of gear customization and dramatically expanding the loot economy.
For the new issue of PC Gamer magazine, associate game director Zaven Haroutunian really hammered home how central the new Cube is to Lord of Hatred. The Diablo 4 iteration is such a big deal that Blizzard packed junk items into Lord of Hatred just to help players make better use of the Cube.
"I think players are going to shock us with what they’re going to do with it," Haroutunian said, adding that those pesky item drops clogging up your inventory, wasting your precious clicking strength, and waiting to be salvaged will soon have a "second life" thanks to the Horadric Cube. "I will say that with Lord of Hatred, there’s at least one item we’re intentionally putting in there that’s basically useless because we know it’s going to be a target for the cube," said Haroutunian.
The return of the Cube in Diablo 4 is accompanied by a separate and nearly as transformative loot change that'll bring low-level loot back to the endgame with one huge caveat: it'll drop with the chance to have a greater affix attached, yet another design tweak purposefully designed to feed into the Horadric Cube, as it means the chump change you pick up in dungeons will have the chance to become your new main weapon, chest piece, or shield. That should, in theory, make endgame runs a whole lot more interesting, which is presumably high up on Blizzard's priority list as a lack of depth is one of the main pain points for high-level players. We'll find out when Lord of Hatred launches on April 28.
