Diablo has traditionally had three difficulties, Normal, Nightmare, and Hell. One of the few online games I can name with fully instanced game rooms with multiple difficulties, but as the metagame grows, even Hell Mode doesn’t provide a suitable challenge. Blizzard has responded to this with Inferno mode.
Inferno is a term commonly used to describe Hell’s flames, lava, and brimstone, and Blizzard plans to have this difficulty live up to its namesake. Inferno Mode will have enemies that break the level cap, rare monsters and champions will be much more common as well as having powerful special qualities. Many Diablo players reading this will be drooling at the mouth because a champion monster always drops the best loot, and higher difficulties are needed to access the best of the best.
Only a minority of items available in the game appear on normal, with the rest of them, including the greatest weapons in the game, appearing on the higher settings. This alone makes Diablo, which has a heavy emphasis on the quality of your gear, the kind of game where finding out the most efficient ways to get huge amounts of drops makes you King for a day. Anyone who has played Hell Mode in Diablo 2 knows that every second counts, and that tactics and cooperation are very important when fighting the infinite legions of Hell itself.
An improvement revealed by Blizzard to turn the tide in the favor of the player when fighting against the enemies on the highest settings without resorting to blanketing the place in meteors is that followers have been improved. Followers in Diablo 2 are nothing more than a liability and are better used as a distraction instead of an ally, but the AI of followers has been greatly improved since Diablo 2 and their power has also been greatly increased in response to this.
If you are not aware of the difficulty differences, I’ll sum up Hell Mode for Diablo 2. In Hell Mode, aside from monsters being beefed up, your resistances are all reduced by a total of 100, you lose 10% of your EXP needed to level on death, hirelings and summons are nerfed heavily against bosses, crowd control becomes near-useless, your beloved mana and health leech is slashed to 30%, the areas become far larger, and the game generally makes every attempt to kill you within its power. You can only imagine what shenanigans Inferno Mode will pull.
Here’s a quick cinematic for your enjoyment as well.
Chris Hernandez
You were right, I am drooling at the thought of epic loot drops while playing Inferno difficulty. I can’t wait.