Gear Systems and Itemization Overview in Diablo 4

Diablo 4 no longer has shoulder slot items, as removing them allowed more freedom for the art team to design chest pieces which do not necessarily need to have shoulderpads and such. This removes a lot of options for building a unique transmog look, as shoulder pieces are the most significant part of a character's look in Diablo 3, and mixing and matching them with the rest of your gear was a major part of D3's cosmetics. The greater freedom in designing chest pieces, however, should make up for that fact and give us much more varied options for that particular gear slot.

Diablo 4 introduces the Mythic item rarity as the most powerful gear obtainable. So far we have only seen 1 example of a mythic item, and it was one that doesn't have an associated visual, as it was an amulet. It is still unclear whether mythics will be of all available item types, but if they are, their looks will also be something special. Seeing as you can only have 1 mythic item equipped, they would most likely have very unique visual effects to go with them, and be the pinnacle of character fashion in addition to their power. However, they also might not be transmogrifiable at all, similarly to how World of Warcraft legendaries were not for a long time.

While no specifics has been announced yet, we do know Diablo 4 will have microtransactions, and as with the vast majority of games that have them, that almost certainly means purchasable cosmetics. We are definitely going to see some sort of system of spending real-life money on gear looks in Diablo 4, and we even have a brand new system added to the series which expands on the way in which we can customize our characters: the mounts.

We already know mounts in Diablo 4 have cosmetics available, which almost certainly means that there will also be microtransactions for them. In the various Blizzard interviews, all devs have been evasive when asked about MTX, but have repeatedly confirmed that they will be present to some degree, meaning that the game has been designed from the ground up with them in mind. Mounts seem like the perfect place to introduce a lot of them, with the various trophies we saw added and the mount skins themselves presented.

Let us now examine the various looks we got to see for all three classes announced so far, from in-game to concept art.

In-game

Concept art

Image courtesy of GameInformer

In-game

Concept art

Image courtesy of GameInformer

In-game

Concept art

Image courtesy of GameInformer