Diablo IV’s second major expansion, Lord of Hatred, drops this Tuesday April 28, and Blizzard has published the full PC specification breakdown ahead of launch. The good news: the floor is low and the game scales well. The less good news: if you want the full ray traced experience in 4K, Blizzard is pointing at RTX 40-series and RX 6800 XT-class hardware.
At minimum, you’re targeting 1080p native resolution — or 720p render resolution — at 30fps on Low settings. That calls for an Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD FX 8350 on the CPU side, with a GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon R9 280 handling visuals, paired with 8GB of RAM. Blizzard notes the game will attempt to run even below this threshold, including on integrated GPUs and HDDs, but performance will be “significantly diminished.” The SSD requirement is listed for the minimum tier and above — unlike many spec sheets that bury the storage note in fine print, Blizzard flags it explicitly.
The recommended tier targets 1080p/60fps at Medium settings and steps up to a GTX 970 or RX 470 with a Core i5-4670K or Ryzen 1600 and 16GB of RAM. High settings at 1080p/60fps asks for an RTX 2060 or RX 5700 XT alongside a Core i7-8700K or Ryzen 2700X — this tier also introduces ray tracing, though Blizzard specifies you’ll need to scale back reflections, shadows, foliage, and particles and accept 30fps for RT to be viable at this hardware level. The Ultra 4K tier requires either an RTX 3080 (RTX 40-series for full DLSS 3 support) or an RX 6800 XT to hit 60fps at 4K/Ultra. That last note about RTX 40-series for “fully supported DLSS 3” is worth flagging: DLSS Frame Generation specifically requires RTX 40 or 50 series, so owners of RTX 30 hardware get upscaling but not the frame gen multiplier.
Notably, Lord of Hatred includes dedicated presets for handheld gaming PCs. The Steam Deck has been verified by Blizzard, and Windows handheld users on devices like the ROG Ally or Legion Go have specific preset options targeting stable performance at reduced resolution and settings. Given how active the Diablo community is on handhelds — the game’s isometric camera lends itself well to the format — this is a welcome inclusion rather than an afterthought.
The expansion brings Mephisto’s campaign to the Skovos Isles, two new classes (the Paladin and Warlock), a raised level cap of 70, Torment I-XII difficulty tiers, set bonuses, transmutation, and an overhauled endgame. It also bundles Vessel of Hatred for anyone who hasn’t made that purchase yet. Preloads are live now on Battle.net, Xbox, and PlayStation; Steam preloads go live on launch day.
The base game’s spec requirements haven’t changed substantially since launch — this is an expansion and runs on the same engine — so if Diablo IV already runs well on your machine, Lord of Hatred should as well. Let us know your rig and your class pick in the forums.