Blizzard announced that the fourth season of Diablo IV, called “Loot Reborn,” will start on May 14 at 20-00 Moscow time. The developers promise changes to the item system, a hardening function, and large-scale changes to Hellish Onslaught.
With Season 4, Blizzard decided to move away from the new missions and mechanics approach, opting to rework the core systems of Diablo IV. Many of the changes described below will take effect in the eternal world as well.
Main:
- Reduced the number of item properties (to 3 for legendary items and to 2 for rare items) and increased the effectiveness of these properties
- Replaced properties that depended on meeting certain conditions (for example, +10% damage dealt to special monsters with full health) with those that increase base movement speed, maximum health and levels of basic skills
- Blizzard has significantly reduced the amount of loot that can be obtained from killing monsters so that players spend less time comparing items with each other and are more active in slaying demons
- Forgotten Souls can now be obtained by completing secret quests and, with a small chance, by defeating special monsters
- The cost of changing properties when enchanting will now be limited, the developers have also reduced the amount of materials required to improve items from blacksmiths
- Sacred and rarer items can only be obtained at world level 3, and only ancestor items can be obtained at world level 4. Additionally, Legendary items obtained from defeating enemies above level 95 will always have 925 power
- After extracting aspects from legendary items, they will be stored in the “Code of Power”, and they can be used without restrictions
- The “Code of Power” will no longer take up inventory space – it is now a separate archive that will store the most powerful versions of the extracted aspects
- Tempering mechanics will appear – after you find and study tempering manuals, blacksmiths throughout Sanctuary are able to change your equipment with their help; thanks to hardening you can add powerful properties to it
- Processing will also become available – with the help of this system you can improve weapons using materials obtained in the Pit of Masters
- Infernal Onslaught reworked – now these are events that take over one region of the world and fill it with a huge number of monsters and loot opportunities (now available on all world difficulties)
- New end-game activity – “Pit of Masters”; a multi-level, randomly generated dungeon in which you must kill a certain number of monsters before a 10-minute period expires in order to summon a boss. Each death of a player reduces the remaining time reserve: for the first death you will lose 30 seconds, for the second – 60, and for the third and subsequent ones – 90
- If you kill enough monsters, a portal will open, leading you to the boss arena. Kill him within the allotted time to receive precious processing materials… and the opportunity to descend to the next level of “The Pit”
- The sooner you kill the boss, the more benefits you will receive. If you still have 4-6 minutes left, you will additionally open another level of the “Pit”
- There are a total of 200 levels in the “Pit” – the activity can be completed in a group of up to four people, but the lion’s share of the rewards will go to the one who spends rune shards to open the passage to the Pit
- Andariel will appear – the boss will be placed on the same level as her brother Duriel, and at the same time the probability of receiving super unique items for defeating them will also be the same; she can be summoned in the Hall of the Gallows, east of Tarsarac
- New level 200 variants have been added to all summoned bosses – Tormented Echoes
On May 2, Blizzard will broadcast details of the fourth season of Diablo IV . The developers will talk about useful data collected during testing of Season 4 on the PTR, system features, balance changes and other new features.