Diablo III will give a new meaning to the term “harder than hell”. Announced today at Gamescom, Diablo III will introduce a new end-game mode that will test the strength (and sanity) of even the most hardcore Diablo players. The new difficulty goes by the name “Inferno”, and it sounds like quite the doozy.
In the new mode, which is only accessible to players who have attained the level 60 player cap, every single enemy you encounter will be at least level 61 or higher. For those who don’t know math, that means every single enemy you face will be a higher level, by at least one level. Simple math, and game mechanics, tell us that this is going to be a very hard difficulty.
To put this in perspective, in Diablo II players could reach level 99, but the highest level monster in the game was 85. And I’m sure we all remember how hellish that was. Now just imagine a mode where that 14 level gap wasn’t there, and instead the monsters are at a minimum one level higher.
Monsters will get an increase in health, damage, damage resistance, and aggression in the Inferno mode. On top of that, they’ll get new abilities making not only the bosses tougher, but minions as well. This new mode sounds like suicide to me, but the results are well worth it. Those daring enough to venture into this Inferno mode will have the opportunity to loot the very best armor, weapons, and runestones in Diablo III, some of which are exclusive to this mode only.
Blizzard Entertainment game director Jay Wilson told Kotaku, “The idea was that we wanted a difficulty mode where the entire game was viable. So you don’t have to pick and choose key areas [to replay].” I assume he was referring to the repetitive Mephisto and Baal runs into Diablo II. With that being said, don’t expect to get all this loot in one run.
“We do expect there to be a certain amount of… runs to get items, but we wanted players to do it over a lot more content,” Wilson said.
These Inferno mode-only weapons and armor will be visually distinct as well. Blizzard will give players brand-new art for Inferno-level loot in Diablo III. It should be patently obvious, visually, when someone is sporting elite items that were dropped during Inferno gameplay, Blizzard says.
So what do you think? Is the new loot in Diablo III worth this insanely sounding Inferno mode? I enjoy a good challenge.
