Diablo 4’s Best Hidden Setting Lets You Automatically Compare Gear

Like the Diablo games before it, Diablo 4 is all about loot. So much of the game revolves around getting the better gear needed to take on its toughest challenges. That’s why it’s so strange that the game’s settings menu includes a way to instantly compare items that isn’t enabled by default.

See, like many modern games, Diablo 4 assigns a power level to all of the items you receive. That power level is supposed to represent the item’s overall stats and bonuses. By default, the game tells you when an item you just picked up has a higher or lower power level than the item you currently have equipped in the same slot. Your instincts will probably tell you to equip the item with the higher Item Power Level. Sometimes, especially in the early game, that will be the right move.

As you progress through Diablo 4, though, you’ll find that Item Power Level isn’t always a great indicator of an item’s actual value to you. What’s often much more important are the stat modifiers and bonuses each item possesses. For instance, a dagger you picked up at a higher level might offer more raw attack power than the one you currently have equipped. As such, the game will often assign that dagger a higher overall power level. However, what if you’re a ranged Rogue who uses Poison and doesn’t care about melee attack power? What if, in that instance, the lower attack power weapon actually gives you more overall Poison damage? In most cases, you’ll actually want to equip the item wiht the lower power level. However, the game obviously doesn’t know that.

Because of that, you often have to spend a lot of time eyeballing two items to see which one is actually more valuable to you overall. On the one hand, it’s nice that the real value of the game’s gear isn’t limited to a simple Item Power Level number. On the other hand, the process of diligently comparing all the loot you pick up to see which stats are more valuable to you can quickly grow tiresome. Thankfully, there is a better way.