How do the different difficulty levels affect the gameplay?

Question

In Diablo III there are four different levels of difficulty:

• Normal
• Nightmare
• Hell
• Inferno

Obviously there will be more and stronger opponents, but apart from that: What exactly are the differences?

Asked by atticae

Answer

There are a few differences that are known, and probably more as well:

1. Higher difficulties mean higher tier loot. Jay Wilson stated that over 70% of all of the armor items in the game cannot even be found in Normal difficulty. So as the difficulty raises so do the armor tiers. One can assume 4 per act totaling 16 tiers. Remeber, tiers don't nesesarily mean better, just different looking.

2. As the difficulty increases the boss monsters become more powerful. More specificially with each increase the monsters can have one more special ability. By Inferno they can have up to 4 special attributes which can make them very difficult to take down.

3. More obviously the standard enemies will scale with the difficulty. This video says that monsters scale much like they do in diablo 2. They all have set stats in which they carry with them as they level. The monsters also have more awareness and abilities as they scale through the difficulties.

4. Also, as the difficulties rise you can upgrade your artisans more as well.

Keep in mind while playing, Normal is made to basically be the tutorial and break you into the game. Experienced D2 players will cut through Normal at ease. The game really does begin to get very difficult, and you'll be wearing your butt on your head once you reach Inferno. Inferno was basically built to murder you. Jay Wilson stated that they took the hardest difficulty that their testers could handle and agreed was fair and they doubled it.

I'm sure there are more differences and I will update this answer as I play and discover more differences.

Answered by Emerica.

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