Diablo 4

5:08 Diablo 4 is Blizzard Entertainment's online action RPG, released on Jun 6, 2023 for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, on Steam since Oct 17, 2023 and on Nintendo Switch 2 since Sep 15, 2026, and now in its 15th season, Season of Hell's Legacy, with two expansions, Vessel of Hatred and Lord of Hatred. You pick one of eight classes, carve through demons in a shared open world called Sanctuary, and chase better loot through a campaign and an endgame that changes every season. The clip, from Blizzard's own footage in GameSpot's Lord of Hatred overview, shows a hero fighting waves of demons in Echoing Hatred, Lord of Hatred's endless-wave mode. Diablo 4 is a paid game, not free to play: the base game costs $49.99 on Steam and is included in Xbox Game Pass.

Quick facts

What Diablo 4 is

Diablo 4 is the fourth main game in the Diablo series, which began with the first Diablo in 1996. Blizzard sells it as "the ultimate action RPG experience with endless evil to slaughter, countless abilities to master, nightmarish dungeons" (Steam). You see your hero from above and fight with a handful of skills on a bar, a health orb and a resource orb, while monsters drop gear of rising rarity. Unlike the earlier games, Sanctuary is one open world shared with other players: you meet strangers at world events and in towns, can party with up to three others, and on consoles can play two-player couch co-op on one screen. The game is always online on every platform, even when you play alone, and progress follows your Battle.net account across PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch 2 (Platforms and Crossplay). New characters can start with the base game's campaign, jump into an expansion's story, or, once the campaigns are done, skip straight to the endgame (Blizzard). A first-time route is on Beginner's Guide.

It is a live game. Blizzard sells a base game and paid expansions, then adds a free season about every three months, each with its own mechanic, story and Battle Pass. When Microsoft completed its purchase of Activision Blizzard on Oct 13, 2023, Diablo 4 became a Microsoft game, which is why it joined Xbox Game Pass in Mar 2024 as the first Battle.net game on the service (Game Pass).

The story so far

Spoiler warning: this section names how the base game and both expansions end.

0:44 The three stories form what Blizzard calls the Age of Hatred. Fifty years after Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls, a ritual brings Lilith, the Daughter of Hatred and co-creator of Sanctuary, back into the world. The player, the Wanderer, is marked by her blood and follows her with the Horadrim scholar Lorath Nahr and the young Neyrelle. The base campaign ends with Mephisto trapped in a soulstone and Lilith defeated, and Neyrelle carrying the stone away. In Vessel of Hatred she takes it into the jungles of Nahantu, where the Spiritborn Eru betrays the party and Mephisto takes the body of the prophet Akarat as his new vessel. Lord of Hatred moves the story to Skovos, the birthplace of humanity; in its launch trailer Lorath says Skovos "is where Lilith and Inarius created mankind", before the Paladin's line, "I am your reckoning". In Blizzard's own account of the ending, Neyrelle and Lorath both die, and with Lilith's help Mephisto is stabbed through the heart and banished into the Void, unable to return to Hell (Windows Central, reproducing Blizzard's text). The full story is on Story and its ending on Lord of Hatred Ending; who is who is on Characters.

Since then the seasons have carried the story on. Season of Death Awakening (Jun 30, 2026) declared that "The Age of Hatred has ended" and introduced a Cult of the Dead; later seasons lead toward the Amazon and a confrontation with the Aspect of Death (Blizzard).

Classes

27:59 Diablo 4 has eight playable classes as of Oct 21, 2026. Five came with the base game: the Barbarian, Druid, Necromancer, Rogue and Sorcerer. The Spiritborn, a jungle warrior who channels four animal spirits, came with Vessel of Hatred, and the Paladin and the Warlock with Lord of Hatred. At Blizzard's Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight the team called the two a pair: the Paladin stands for "light and purity" and Warlocks are "their darker counterpart, antiheroes harnessing the power of Hell". Blizzard sums up the Warlock as "They do not serve Hell, they weaponize it" (Blizzard). The Spiritborn, Paladin and Warlock need the expansions; Lord of Hatred includes Vessel of Hatred, so it unlocks all three. Every class, with its resource and mechanic, is on Classes, and named builds from dated sources on Builds.

47:47 A ninth class is coming. At the BlizzCon 2026 opening ceremony on Sep 12, 2026, Blizzard announced the Amazon, from Skovos, the home of the Amazons: she wields the bow and brings "an entirely new weapon" to Diablo 4, the javelin, and arrives as a paid Amazon Class Pack in the first half of 2027. Blizzard has announced no price or exact date for it, as of Oct 21, 2026.

How a character grows

7:17 A character levels to 70, the cap since Lord of Hatred and Season of Reckoning on Apr 27, 2026, for every player (Blizzard); the cap was 50 at launch and 60 from Vessel of Hatred. Skill points go into a skill tree that Lord of Hatred rebuilt for everyone, owners or not, with more than 40 reworked choices and over 80 new options per class. Past the cap, power grows on the Paragon boards, grids of nodes with Glyphs that you level in the Pit. Difficulty is chosen, not earned by levels alone: Normal, Hard, Expert and Penitent, then the Torment tiers. IGN's Lord of Hatred review calls the "12 tiers of end-game difficulty, up from just four previously" insane in the best sense; how each tier changes monsters and drops is on Difficulty and Torment, and how to reach the cap fast is on Leveling Guide. Since Vessel of Hatred you can also hire one of four Mercenaries to fight beside you.

The endgame

30:01 Most hours in Diablo 4 are spent after the campaign. Lord of Hatred organized that time with War Plans: at a command table in Temis, Skovos's capital, you build "a playlist of up to five activities" from six endgame modes and pick the rewards, and each activity grows its own tree of modifiers as you play it. The modes are these:

• The Pit: a timed dungeon of rising tiers, where Glyphs level and Masterworking materials drop.
• Infernal Hordes: waves of demons in 60-second rounds, with a boon or a bane to choose between waves.
• Helltide: an event that floods a region with stronger monsters and chests opened with Cinders.
• Nightmare Dungeons: dungeons made harder by Sigils with modifiers.
• Lair Bosses: summoned fights with bosses such as Duriel, Andariel and Belial, for keys you farm (Bosses).
• The Kurast Undercity: Vessel of Hatred's time-attack dungeon.

Two rare tests sit beside them. Echoing Hatred, the mode in the opening clip, opens with a rare Trace of Echoes and throws waves of random monsters, and sometimes several bosses at once, until you fall, capped at 150 waves since patch 3.1.0. The Artificer's Tower ranks seasonal characters on leaderboards. World Bosses such as Azmodan appear in the open world on a schedule. The overview is on Endgame.

Items and crafting

34:55 Gear comes in Common, Magic, Rare, Legendary and Unique rarities, and since Season of Death Awakening any Unique can become Mythic, the rarest quality (Mythic Uniques). Legendaries carry Aspects you can save to the Codex of Power, and the Blacksmith tempers and masterworks items. Lord of Hatred added two systems from older Diablo games, as the Spotlight explained: the Talisman, which holds Charms whose matching sets unlock set bonuses, and the Horadric Cube, a crafting tool that can reroll affixes, raise rarity and turn ordinary items into Uniques. A loot filter with up to 25 rules arrived with it for everyone. Every recipe and vendor is on Crafting.

Seasons

42:08 A season is a free update that starts a new Seasonal Realm, where everyone begins a fresh character, or since Sep 15, 2026 reuses one through Rebirth, and plays with a temporary mechanic; at the end the characters move to the Eternal Realm. The current one, Season of Hell's Legacy, the 15th, began on Sep 15, 2026 at 9:30 a.m. PT, announced at the BlizzCon opening ceremony as the start of "30 years of darkness". Deckard Cain returns as a lost soul and leads players into Waking Nightmares, remade moments from earlier Diablo games: Tristram Cathedral, the Worldstone Chamber and the Durance of Hate, with Baal, Mephisto and Diablo waiting inside. Blizzard calls it "the centerpiece of our 30th Anniversary celebration" (Blizzard). Blizzard has not announced when it ends, as of Oct 21, 2026. Its guide is Season of Hell's Legacy, and every season since Jul 2023 is on Seasons.

29:55 A 16th season is confirmed but has no name or date yet (Season 16). At BlizzCon's "What's Next" panel, Live Service Design Director Dan Tanguay said the seasons will now tell a story arc: after the death cult of Season 14 and the returning dead of Season 15, the coming seasons lead up to the Amazon's release and a confrontation with the Aspect of Death. Each season's changes arrive in a patch, listed on Patch Notes.

Expansions

0:00 Diablo 4 has two paid expansions. Vessel of Hatred (Oct 8, 2024) added the jungle region of Nahantu, the Spiritborn, Mercenaries, Runewords, the Kurast Undercity and the co-op Dark Citadel. Lord of Hatred (Apr 28, 2026, Apr 27 at 4 p.m. PT in the Americas) finished the Mephisto story on Skovos and added the Paladin and the Warlock, War Plans, Echoing Hatred, the Talisman, the Horadric Cube and fishing. IGN's review opens by saying it delivered on Vessel of Hatred's cliffhanger with "a tight, satisfying campaign, two new classes" and an endgame so full the reviewer sometimes forgot systems existed. Lord of Hatred includes Vessel of Hatred, so one purchase covers both. Blizzard says no more expansions are currently planned: Senior Game Director Brent Gibson told PC Gamer the team is "all focused on [Diablo 4] seasons and getting to Diablo 5" (PC Gamer). The regions of both are on Regions.

Price and business model

Diablo 4 costs $49.99 for the Standard Edition, or $69.99 as the Age of Hatred Collection with both expansions; Lord of Hatred alone costs $39.99, $59.99 or $89.99 by edition. It launched at $69.99. Beyond that, Blizzard sells a seasonal Battle Pass and cosmetics in a shop for Platinum, its real-money currency; in 2022 it said it would sell cosmetics and a season pass, not item power. Free play has come only through time-limited trials and Game Pass. Prices, editions and what each includes are on Price and Editions, and the shop on Battle Pass and Shop.

Platforms

44:58 Diablo 4 launched on PC through Battle.net, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, reached Steam on Oct 17, 2023, and on Sep 15, 2026 came to Nintendo Switch 2 as the Age of Hatred Collection, with both expansions, alongside Season of Hell's Legacy, as Joe Shely announced at BlizzCon. Every version shares cross-play and cross-progression through a Battle.net account. It is not on Mac, the original Nintendo Switch or phones; Blizzard's mobile Diablo is the separate Diablo Immortal. The base game is on Xbox Game Pass (Ultimate, PC Game Pass and Game Pass for Console) since Mar 28, 2024, but the expansions are not shown as included (Game Pass). A PC needs at least a GeForce GTX 660 class card, 8 GB of memory and 90 GB on an SSD (PC Requirements).

Reception

Critics rated Diablo 4 highly: 86 on PC, 86 on PS5 and 91 on Xbox Series X on Metacritic, and a Top Critic Average of 88 on OpenCritic. Lord of Hatred holds 84 on PC, and the Switch 2 collection 83. It was "Blizzard Entertainment's fastest-selling game of all time", with $666 million in sell-through in under a week, and it won Online Game of the Year at the 27th D.I.C.E. Awards in Feb 2024. Players have been harder on it: Steam users rate the base game "Mixed", 65% positive of 80,188 reviews as of Oct 20, 2026, after criticism of the Jul 2023 class nerfs, launch shop prices and the always-online rule. Scores, sales and player numbers are on Reception, and how it was made on Development and Release History.

Diablo 5

1:38 Blizzard's next game in the series, Diablo 5, was announced at BlizzCon on Sep 12, 2026 for Spring 2029, but the team told IGN that Diablo 4 stays fully supported, pointing to the Amazon, Season of Hell's Legacy and the Switch 2 release. Diablo 5 is set 100 years after Diablo 4, after a "Golden Age" that followed Mephisto's defeat, in a Sanctuary that Diablo has conquered. What is known about it is on the Diablo 5 viki, and how the two connect on Diablo 5.

Frequently asked questions

Is Diablo 4 free? No. Diablo 4 is a paid game, $49.99 for the Standard Edition on Steam as of Oct 20, 2026; it has been free only during time-limited trials, and the base game is included in Xbox Game Pass.

Is Diablo 4 on Game Pass? Yes. The Diablo 4 base game has been on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass and Game Pass for Console since Mar 28, 2024; the expansions Vessel of Hatred and Lord of Hatred are not shown as included and are bought separately.

What is the current season of Diablo 4? The current Diablo 4 season is Season 15, Season of Hell's Legacy, which began on Sep 15, 2026 for the series' 30th anniversary.

When does Diablo 4 Season 15 end? Blizzard has not announced an end date for Diablo 4's Season of Hell's Legacy, or a date for Season 16, as of Oct 21, 2026.

How many classes are in Diablo 4? Diablo 4 has eight classes: Barbarian, Druid, Necromancer, Rogue and Sorcerer in the base game, the Spiritborn from Vessel of Hatred, and the Paladin and Warlock from Lord of Hatred. A ninth, the Amazon, comes as a paid Class Pack in the first half of 2027.

Do I need the expansions to play Diablo 4? No. The Diablo 4 base game, the seasons and the reworked skill trees work without an expansion; Lord of Hatred, which includes Vessel of Hatred, adds two regions and their campaigns and three classes.

Can you play Diablo 4 offline or single player? You can play Diablo 4 alone, but not offline: it needs an internet connection on every platform, including Nintendo Switch 2.

Is Diablo 4 worth it in 2026? That is a judgment, but critics remain positive: Lord of Hatred scores 84 on PC at Metacritic and PC Gamer gave it 90, saying it "revolutionized what it's like to play Diablo 4", while Steam users rate the base game Mixed (65% positive, Oct 20, 2026).

Sources

• Diablo IV official site, Blizzard Entertainment, read Oct 20, 2026
• Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred, Blizzard Entertainment, read Oct 20, 2026
• Diablo IV on Steam, Valve, read Oct 20, 2026
• Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred on Steam, Valve, read Oct 20, 2026
• Steam user reviews for Diablo IV, Valve, read Oct 20, 2026
• Diablo IV on PlayStation, Sony Interactive Entertainment, read Oct 20, 2026
• Diablo's Next Era Revealed at BlizzCon 2026 Opening Ceremonies Recap, Blizzard Entertainment, Sep 12, 2026
• Diablo IV: What's Next Panel Recap, Blizzard Entertainment, Sep 13, 2026
• Celebrate 30 Years of Diablo in Season of Hell's Legacy, Blizzard Entertainment, Sep 12, 2026
• Prepare for the Reckoning: Lord of Hatred Draws Near, Blizzard Entertainment, Apr 23, 2026
• Master Hell Itself with the Warlock, Blizzard Entertainment, Mar 5, 2026
• Hunt the Death Cult in Season of Death Awakening, Blizzard Entertainment, Jun 23, 2026
• Diablo IV Patch Notes 3.1, Blizzard Entertainment, Jun 23, 2026
• Diablo IV Launch Sales Record, Activision Blizzard, Jun 12, 2023
• Diablo IV, Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred and Diablo IV: Age of Hatred Collection, Metacritic, read Oct 20, 2026
• Diablo IV, OpenCritic, read Oct 20, 2026
• Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred review, PC Gamer, Apr 21, 2026
• No more Diablo 4 expansions are planned, PC Gamer, Sep 12, 2026
• Diablo 4: everyone that died, Windows Central, Jun 25, 2026
• Microsoft seals $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, The Daily Beast, Oct 13, 2023
• The D.I.C.E. Awards 2024 winners and finalists, Shacknews, Feb 15, 2024
• Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred Gameplay Overview, GameSpot, Feb 11, 2026 (video)
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• Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred Review, IGN (video)
• Diablo 5 To Launch With More Classes Than Any Other in the Franchise, IGN, Sep 13, 2026 (video)