Diablo 4 clear cut: Season 4 sees the game fundamentally overhauled

The last Campfire Chat from Blizzard had it all! The team has announced permanent changes coming to the game with Season 4

Blizzard didn’t promise too much when they talked about massive changes for Diablo 4 . In the livestream on March 20, 2024, the team talked in small groups about the future of the action role-playing game and what permanent changes will be coming to the game with the launch of Season 4.

As it turns out, that’s quite a lot. After that, Diablo 4 could almost feel like a new game You can watch the full Campfire Chat in the video, but we also summarize the two-hour session here.

These changes will all be implemented together with the start of Season 4 on May 14, 2024 . However, there may still be minor changes, depending on feedback from the experience on the new test server.

The item search has been completely revised

Let’s start with what are probably the most important changes to the loot system. One of the areas of Diablo 4 that is most often criticized. This is how the game will change in a few weeks:

Fundamentals

• Less items: In principle, slightly fewer items will drop in future, but the items will generally be of a significantly higher quality.
• Fewer affixes: The total selection of possible affixes will be reduced, and at the same time there will now be fewer affixes on items. In return, each affix should feel much more powerful and be much more noticeable. The main affix on each item is always aligned to your class.
• Bigger affixes: In the late endgame, more powerful versions of known affixes may appear. These affixes can be up to 1.5 times more powerful than normal affixes. They only appear on sacred legendaries and unique items.
• Guaranteed quality: At world level 3, sacred items are dropped without exception, but at world level 4 only ancestral items are dropped. In addition, enemies at level 95 or higher only drop items at the highest strength level.
• More Valuable Gems: Gems will be simplified and no longer rely on complex conditions as often. They should be more powerful than before, but will take longer to craft. In addition, sold gems now bring in more gold.
• VSimplified materials: There will soon be fewer materials, and there will also be Forgotten Souls in Whisper Chests and from certain elite enemies.
• More unique items: Unique items will drop earlier in the game in some cases, including at World Level 1 and 2. There are also more unique items that can be collected at World Level 3, including the powerful Uber Uniques.
• New unique items: 10 new unique items will be added to the game, plus a new Uber Unique called Tyrael’s Might.

Code of Power

• All Aspects: You can now add any legendary aspect to the Codex of Power and access it. It is enough to disassemble a legendary item to add it to the Codex, you no longer need to extract it and there are no more crystals.
• Upgrade Aspects: The currently strongest version of an Aspect will always be stored in the Codex when you use the corresponding item. However, you can only find the most powerful variants of aspects at the highest world levels.
• Quality levels: It is possible to level up legendary affixes up to 16 times to increase their strength.
• New interface: Basically, the entire codex menu has been completely revised and equipped with new features.

New crafting system

• Tempering: The new crafting system is called Tempering and allows you to add affixes to an item.
• Instructions: To do this, you need to find instructions in the world. The instructions contain various affixes of different quality that you can add to your items. Once you have found a guide, you can use it again and again.
• Imprinting affixes:&nbspYou can always add an additional affix to rare and legendary items, but ancestor items allow you to imprint two additional affixes. You can also reroll values when imprinting, but only a few times.
• Masterworking: With this endgame crafting system, items are improved by upgrading their affixes up to 12 times. A random affix is massively improved on the 4th, 8th and 12th upgrade. This works for legendary and unique items.

More changes to the game

In addition to the item system, Season 4 will also optimize and change many other areas independent of loot. These include new activities that you can engage in

Endgame

• Flood of Hell: The Flood of Hell also appears in the first two world levels. There will also be a higher density of monsters. There is also new content, such as material to summon a new boss – the Blood Maiden.
• The Pit: The Pit is another dungeon type being introduced to the game, which will become available once you have completed the first Nightmare Dungeon at Tier 45. To enter The Pit, you must collect rune shards. It is suitable for collecting material for masterworking. It is reminiscent of the Greater Rifts from Diablo 3, where you can collect stones that you can use to summon particularly powerful versions of boss enemies. These Ultra bosses may drop material to craft Uber Uniques.
• Andariel: The lesser evil appears in an Uber variant and can be summoned. It drops the same items as Uber-Duriel, so it can also drop Uber Uniques.

Balance

• Hardcore: It becomes more difficult not to die in Hardcore mode. The elixir of death escape disappears completely and the flame shield is weakened.
• Classes: Each class is being reworked. For the Barbarian, for example, some skills do less damage and the Book of the Dead is being reworked for the Necromancer.

There are many, many more changes in this update. For example, you will soon be able to zoom the camera out further. We’ll share the full patch notes with you as soon as they’re available. Until then, let us know in the comments what you think of the changes!