Legendary powers are an important part of Diablo games, offering some of the strongest power upgrades for any class. These legendary effects directly affect the core identity of your skill choices and playstyle. It’s no surprise to say that Diablo 4 has legendaries. However, the feature is very different to how it plays from other ARPGS. Instead, the Diablo 4 legendary uses a mixture of crafting legendaries, along with the best-in-slot legendary and unique drops you will look for. Therefore, the Diablo 4 legendary system is going to work rather differently. On this page, we will help teach you all about the legendaries in Diablo 4, along with how D4’s new Codex of Power feature works.

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Players can beat back the demons of hell using legendaries gained via Diablo 4’s new Codex of Power legendary feature. Image via Blizzard Entertainment.

Diablo 4 Codex of Power Explained¶

The Diablo 4 Codex of Power is a new feature in the series. As players go about the open world, clearing dungeons, they will get rewards for doing so. These dungeons reward players who complete them with specific legendary affixes, and there are many of them. When you unlock them, you can visit an NPC in Kyovashad and apply an affix to legendary or rare pieces of gear via the Codex of Power.

But, the Codex of Power will always roll the lowers stat modifier on your legendary affixes. Therefore, getting an authentic legendary drop in the world will 99.9% of the time be better than the affix you slot into your gear via the Codex of Power.

However, there’s a twist. Rare pieces of gear can have five normally rolled affixes on them, whereas base legendary pieces only have four. This means that if you can get a great roll on a rare that suits your build really well, and then apply the appropriate legendary codex power on, it will likely always be better than a higher rolled legendary piece of gear, presuming that hasn’t god-rolled as well. It is one where min-maxers will need to look at their stats and see how their numbers change, and decide from there which is better, a 4 piece legendary, or a five-piece rare.

The other thing we need to note is that the codex of power legendaries in Diablo 4 can only be applied to specific types of armor slots. All Codex legendary powers are naked via a type, such as offensive, defensive, resource, utility, and mobility. The result is that players will need to choose which of their gear pieces receive the legendary, rather than slapping full offensive legendaries of their spells in. You can get an idea of where you can apply types of legendary affixes, and an idea of their effectiveness.

As you can see, there’s an element of restriction of what you can and cannot do with your crafted legendary items in Diablo 4. The idea seems to be to give casual players, or those new to a class, the chance to try and find a build that can work early on. However, for the min-maxers, this system is something you’ll be jumping back and forth to as you spec your builds for the endgame, and for those messing around with hardcore, theory crafting, or ladder climbing if and when that feature launches.

Diablo 4 Legendaries Explained¶

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Players can visit the Occultist to modify legendary affixes using Diablo 4’s Codex of Power system. Image via Blizzard Entertainment.

The regular D4 Legendary feature works somewhat like how the system of old. As you explore the game, players will naturally get drops by smashing hoards of enemies together, whether it’s in the game’s new open world, dungeon, strongholds, world bosses, or any other system. The result is that players can get their hands on some very strong items.

The interesting part of this is that legendary drops are how you will get the best versions of these legendary powers. The reason why is that the drop may roll anywhere between its lowest value and its highest value. Therefore, farming for the strongest legendaries will be part of your end-game grind.

In addition, some of the D4 legendary powers are only obtainable through the traditional farming method. Therefore, the likely best-in-slot legendary powers are going to be locked behind the drop chances, rather than those you can easily slot in at the Codex.

Lastly, the other major thing we know about legendaries is that there drop chances are going to be rare. Blizzard wants legendaries to feel more like legendaries, especially the ones with rare affixes on them. The result is that some players may find the strongest build for a class may only be achievable for a short time. In reality, you’re likely going to have a farm character capable of trying to generate the maximum amount of pulls for the best chances of farming legendaries in the game and stashing them if you care about that.

Oh, and players cannot trade the legendaries, Therefore, legendaries will be a grind for each player who cares enough about the ultimate min-maxing potential of the game.

So, for the most part, the majority of builds will rely on the easily obtainable Diablo 4 legendaries that you get via the Codex of Power. This about sums up the idea behind the new Diablo 4 legendary system and Codes of Power.