If you don't spend any money on the game, you can only earn one legendary crest each month. Even buying a battle pass will only be rewarded with Diablo 4 Gold one or two more legendary crests every month. Beyond that, you'll have to buy them directly. Legendary crests work out at approximately $2 and $3 for each. The huge number of gems required to make the most of your character's equipment, especially considering the extremely low drop rates of five-star gems, is one of the reason the total cost to max out your character's capabilities in Diablo Immortal has been estimated at somewhere between $100,000 and $50,000 -in some cases, even more when you're deep into the system of gem resonance. (Rock Paper Shotgun comes with detailed cost breakdown which is on the more conservative end of this scale.)

Diablo Immortal has been given an extremely rough ride in this business model and perhaps in a way, considering popular free-to-play rivals such as Genshin Impact and Lost Ark have a lot of gacha mechanisms to draw in high-priced "whale" gamer. Diablo's renown and popularity with its core PC gaming audience, which has been built over a quarter of a century, is definitely one of the reasons. However, it's also true that this particular system is extremely problematic and the nature of Diablo games could have an impact on that.

If you buy legendary crests, remember that you're not buying a set of the dice, as the case with the FIFA Ultimate Team card pack like. It is a chance to fill the dice with dice, to access the game engine and modify the drop rate (slightly) to your advantage. Its addictive gameplay mechanics are not isolated from the addictive gameplay mechanics, but instead are tied directly into combat and loot drops that are part of the game. Diablo is uniquely well-positioned do this; as my colleague Maddy Myers pointed out, the games that are heavily focused on loot have always had a slot-machine quality that Diablo Immortal's model of business makes the game appear as if it were.

Blizzard has repeatedly tried to emphasize that the monetization of Immortal can be ignored till the end of the game, which is true, and they claim that the vast majority of players are enjoying the game without spending an ounce, which seems plausible. It's not right to say that the main enjoyment of cheap Diablo IV Gold is the fun of exploring the story instead of trying to max out your character. It's also disingenuous to deny that the games have been designed to instill a hunger for hitting the power threshold in their players.