Diablo 4 has finally entered into early access and as a proud nerd I have spent most of today playing it. I've been counting down to this day ever since playing the open beta weekends a while back and it feels so good to finally dive into the world of Sanctuary in pursuit of Mommy Lilith. It's okay to call her that because she is literally the creator of the human world in this game.

With act 1 and the first part of the journey complete I decided to sit down and reflect a little bit on my time with the game so far.

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Starting out as a Sorceress

Leading up to today I was still undecided as to which class I wanted to play. I tried them all up to level 20 in the beta and while I found all of them, except for the druid, to be quite fun I decided back then that I would either play a Barbarian or a Sorceress. The choice ultimately fell of the sorceress and so far after playing until level 25 I don't regret that one bit.

The Sorceress is the elemental spellcaster and the glass cannon of the bunch. She can't take a big beating but she can certainly give one. As she levels up she can choose between frost, fire and shock as her elements. I've been switching a little bit back and forth between shock and fire throughout my day but most of it has been spent as a fire sorceress.

I'm running fire bolts to build up the damage over time burn effect alongside firewall, while also using the fire hydras and fireball skills to deal some direct damage that's strengthened by the burn effect. I really like how you're able to customize and specialize your builds in this game. It creates for a lot of variety and creativity. If I want to try out any other skills to see how they fit into my build I can do so with the click of a few buttons. If it sucks I can just go back to how it was before just as quickly. I love this.

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Running through Act 1

Completing Act 1 basically means replaying the same content that was available in the beta. The same content that I played five times over. Even when that was the case I decided I didn't want to rush through it. I've been taking my time to explore and and partake in the different world events that pop up around the map. If you focus on the main quest only you can finish Act 1 in about 2 hours. For me it took around 5 hours.

The story of Act 1 is decent. It acts as an intro to the story and does a decent job of setting up the events to come while also leaving up with a few question that I'm looking forward to finding the answers to. Most of the act boils down to pursuing Lilith who has pretty much been the poster mommy of the game. So far I have to say that she's a pretty intriguing villain. I'm not going to delve into the story any more than this at this point as to avoid spoilers.

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MMO Vibes

So far Diablo 4 is giving off a lot of cool MMO vibes. It's not a full pledged MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft and similar games but it's more of a lightweight. Unlike older Diablo games the world is now persistent and you can meet other players out and about in the world. There are things like events and world bosses that you'll be working together with other players to complete. That is pretty much it though. There are no auction house or group dungeon features present to be able to call it a proper MMO.

In fact it reminds me a bit of Lost Ark at this point. Almost like a perfect combination of Lost Ark and Diablo. It's got the awesome combat and loot system of Diablo coupled with the persistent world of Lost Ark. It also borrows the world progress system from Lost Ark where you complete different activities in certain regions to unlock account wide rewards like extra skill points and bonus currency gain. This is something that I really like as it rewards thorough exploration and completion of the different regions. The world map is quite huge so getting all of those renown rewards is going to take some time to say the least.

I'm very excited to delve into Act 2 tomorrow as that is going to be new and uncharted territory for me. I'll probably be posting frequently about Diablo 4 in the coming time as I delve into more and more features of the game. Judging by how I feel after today I can safely say that this is going to be my main game for a long time.

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^{All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.}

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