Yesterday Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal development team put out a string of blog posts that talked about the game, including the now in session Technical Alpha, and one of those posts talks about character progression.
Character progression is how your chosen hero in Diablo Immortal will grow stronger as you level up. So suffice it to say how you get stronger matters. As you’ll need to increase your strength to properly beat back the evils of the burning hells.
While Blizzard doesn’t go into an insane amount of depth on the topic, it does give some useful details on what to expect. Which is a good thing for prospective players. As there are no shortage of Diablo fans who are skeptical about what this game is going to deliver.
Character progression in Diablo Immortal will work a lot like past Diablo games
It probably seems obvious, but just to clarify things, you’ll be able to make your character stronger in much of the same way you would in any other Diablo game.
You fight demons, you level up, you unlock new skills. Diablo Immortal will even have the paragon system that was introduced in Diablo III. However Blizzard has changed it some to fit this new game.
In Diablo Immortal the paragon system is broken up into ten different talent trees. Four of which will be accessible to players during the Technical Alpha. Those trees will include Survivor, Treasure Hunter, Vanquisher, and Gladiator.
All of which will provide their own unique spin on turning you into a demon slaying monstrosity. The Treasure Hunter for example is the tree to focus on if you want to increase your chances at finding gems and gold. It also increases your XP gains.
Vanquisher meanwhile is the paragon talent tree to dump points into if you want your attacks to be stronger and deal more damage to enemies. If you want more survivability, then dump your points into Survivor. And if you want to have more of a lethal impact against other players, then dump points into Gladiator.
Naturally, since this is still a paragon system, you won’t gain points for any of the trees until after you hit the level cap. Which for the Technical Alpha is level 45. As the paragon system is meant to be endgame content to help you continue climbing up the power ladder.
Additional paragon talent trees will be released over time
As noted Diablo Immortal will eventually have ten paragon talent trees. But the Technical Alpha will stick to four.
Blizzard plans to release more over time. So perhaps it will unlock additional paragon talent trees in later tests. Or at some point after the game’s release further in the future.
You also won’t be locked to one paragon talent tree. The more you gain XP after the level cap, the more points for the paragon system you earn. And you can spend those points how you like. This means if you want some of the benefits of Treasure Hunter to help you gain XP even faster, you can have that. But then you can also augment that with some of the benefits of Survivor so you stay alive more easily.
However, you cannot have multiple paragon talent trees active at once. You can mix and match where the points go. But you can only utilize the benefits of one tree at a time. Which means you’ll have to think about which tree you want active for which situation.
For example, your personal play style might benefit more from higher survivability when in elder rifts. But if you’re a seasoned hero fighting against the burning hells, maybe you can float through the higher difficulty content with less effort. Thus leaving you free to activate another tree.
Paragon talent trees will have passive and active benefits
Though you can only activate one paragon talent tree at a time, there’s still a good reason to put points into multiple trees.
And the reason is passive benefits. Each paragon talent tree will have attributes that are permanently unlocked. Which means you’ll continue to benefit from those attributes even if that particular tree isn’t active.
Each tree will also have specialization skills. These are the benefits that will only be usable if that tree is active. Zeal, is one such ability in the Vanquisher paragon talent tree. This gives you an attack speed boost for every single demon you kill. It stacks too. So the more enemies you defeat, the faster your attacks get. You can only use this though if Vanquisher is the talent tree you are currently using.