Diablo 4 Campfire Chat Recap – March 20

During the Diablo 4 Campfire Chat on March 20th, Associate Director of Community Adam Fletcher, Game Director Joe Shely, Associate Game Designer Charles Dunn, Lead Live Class Designer Adam Jackson, and Associate Game Director Joe Piepiora talked about the sweeping changes coming to Season 4, including a massive update to itemization, Affixes, item stats, the Codex of Power, and new in-game systems that will change the way you slay and loot across both Seasonal and Eternal Realms.

They also discussed how to access our first Public Test Realm (PTR) in Diablo IV, available to PC BattleNet users. This PTR allows you to get your first taste of the changes coming in Season 4. The offical Blog notes for this Campfire Chat will be posted next week, so be sure to check back here for that as well!

Please keep in mind that all the information shared below is still in development and anything could change between now and the start of Season 4.

Season 4 PTR

• Season 4 PTR will start on Tuesday, April 2nd and will run for a week through Tuesday, April 9th.
• This PTR will be only PC BattleNet.
• The start date for Season 4 is Tuesday, May 14th.
• Season 3 end date will be postponed to allow more time for the Devs to apply the feedback from the PTR before the start of Season 4.
• Players will have access to a new Diablo 4 PTR Feedback Forum.
• The Devs will also be monitoring feedback on other forums such as Reddit, Twitter, community Discord channels, etc.
• The PTR will offer the following boosting features:
  • Instantly boost each character to Level 100.
  • Instantly deposit of 100,000,000 Gold and 1000 Obols for each boosted character.
  • Full Campaign completion.
  • Instantly unlock all standard Skill Points and Class System Mechanics (i.e. Sorcerer Enchantments)
  • Instantly unlock all standard Paragon Points.
  • Instantly unlock all Paragon Glyphs and upgrade to max level.
  • Clear the entire Fog of War.
  • Renown Reward bonuses will mirror the player’s main account.
  • One random set of iPower 860 Rare gear for each boosted character.
  • The Mount will be unlocked.
  • Legendary drop rates will be doubled.
  • The servers for the PTR will be in the largest player regions, including NA, EU, KR/JP, SEA, and AUS.
  • The Codex of Power will NOT be fully unlocked.
  • The Devs are planning to have a PTR for Season 5; however, future Seasons may or may not have a PTR.

Itemization Updates

• All Itemization updates will happen in both the Eternal and Seasonal Realms.
• Legendary and Unique items that have not been modified can be traded (This does not apply to Uber Unique items).
• Main stat affixes on looted gear will always be Class-specific.
• Quality over Quantity.
  • The loot drop rate will decrease while the quality of loot will improve with Affixes that will be more applicable to the player character.
  • The drop rate for less useful Affixes, such as Life Regeneration and Shrine Buff Duration, will be reduced.
  • The choices between gear Affixes should become more potent.
• The quest for the best items will have a more meaningful journey.
  • Players should not have to simply sift through a mountain of looted gear to find something good.
  • Items with good base stats will be built upon through more crafting modification features.
• Moments of Surprise and Delight.
  • Good loot drops should deliver a better Dopamine hit.
  • It should be more apparent to players when they loot an item that has great potential for improvement.
• Base Item Updates
  • Reduce the number of Affixes that drop on looted gear:
    • Legendary Items reduced from 4 Affixes to 3.
    • Rare Items reduced from 4 Affixes to 2.
  • The intended result is for Legendary Items to regain their prominence over Rare Items.
  • Players should no longer be incentivized to sift through a mountain of Rare Items in search of gear that is better than their Legendary Items.
  • Smaller pool of more potent Affixes.
  • There will be more overlap of the highest quality Affixes in order to offer more options to achieve gearing goals.

• More relevant and potent affixes.
  • Core Skill Affix will roll with only Rank +1.
  • There will also be a rare drop for Rank +2 to All Core Skills.
  • WT3 will drop only Sacred Items.
  • WT4 will drop only Ancestral Items.
  • Affix values will be tuned up to deliver a more discernible improvement in performance.
    • For example, previous Affixes such as Core Skill Damage Increase 6% – 10% will be improved to yield a 20% to 30% damage increase, or even a 30% to 40% damage increase later on in the game.
• New Affixes and positioning of Affixes
  • Resource on Kill
  • Lucky Hit: Apply Vulnerable
  • Life per Hit
  • Max Life on Weapons

Item Power

• Legendary Items that drop from Level 95+ enemies will always be iPower 925.
  • Whispers of the Dead and Helltides will be less of a chore with greater potential item rewards beyond Endgame Boss summoning materials.
  • Players will be able to focus more on the Affixes and will no longer need to concern themselves with comparing iPower.

Gems

• Gems will be simpler, more useful, and have a much longer crafting tail, for example:
  • Emeralds socketed into weapons will now boost Critical Strike Damage across the board, rather than to only Vulnerable Damage.
  • Emeralds socketed into Armor will now boost Dexterity, rather than Thorns Damage.
• The sale value for gems will be increased.

Salvaging

• Salvage, crafting, and rewards have all been retuned:
  • Significantly reduced item drop rates.
  • This translates into less time sifting and more time slaying.
  • Character Inventory will no longer fill up from just one NMD.
  • Salvaging items that drop from Elite enemies will yield more crafting materials.
  • The locations of Crafting and Vendor NPCs in towns will be consolidated for greater convenience.

Enchanting Cost

• The Gold cost of Enchanting items at Occultist will be capped.

Materials Inventory

• Material removal and consolidation.
  • The number of different crafting materials has been reduced.
• Forgotten Souls will now be available from Whisper Caches.
  • Rare global drops from Elite enemies can also now yield a fountain of resources, such as Forgotten Souls, Gold, etc.

Unique Items

• Some Unique Items that scale appropriately will now start dropping earlier in the game.
  • Some Unique Items previously available in only WT3 can now drop from Elite enemies in WT1 & WT2 as non-Sacred.
  • Some Unique Items previously available in only WT4 can now drop from Elite enemies in WT3 as Sacred.
  • There is a rare chance that Uber Unique Items with iPower 925 can now drop from Level 55+ Elite enemies in WT3.

Codex of Power

• The Codex of Power will now be comprised of ALL Legendary Aspects and will continue to reset every Season for the Seasonal Realm.
  • All Codex of Power updates will happen in both the Eternal and Seasonal Realms.
  • Legendary Aspects will be added to the Codex of Power when Legendary items are salvaged; no need to extract Aspects at the Occultist.
  • The highest roll of a Legendary Aspect is what will be permanently stored in the Codex of Power when the item is salvaged.
  • Looted items with a higher quality Aspect will have a crossed-swords marker on the tooltip to indicate that the associated Aspect is an upgrade for the player’s Codex.
  • Legendary Aspects will now have 16 levels of quality that can be tracked in the Codex of Power UI.
  • Higher quality Aspects can be obtained in only higher World Tiers.
  • The ranges of Legendary Affixes will increase based on the item quality, Normal, Sacred, Ancestral.
  • The ranges of most Legendary Affixes have been increased to make the quest for better gear more meaningful.
  • Players can now focus on the quest for better gear rather than managing their inventory.
  • The Codex of Power UI has been extensively reworked, including searching manually, by keyword, and by favorites.
  • The Devs are still looking into more ways that players can target farm their preferred Legendary Aspects.

Tempering System

• Tempering is a new crafting system that will allow players to add Affixes to their items.
  • Tempering Manuals will start dropping throughout the game from most content, so no target-farming is necessary.
  • Tempering manuals will vary in quality based on the World Tier in which they drop.
  • The Affixes obtained from Manuals will be categorized in the same way as the Codex of Power Aspects, such as Resource, Mobility, Offense, etc., and are reusable.
  • The Tempering function will attach Affixes to the selected gear item.
  • Only one Affix can be added to most items Rare and Legendary items.
  • However, Ancestral items can have two additional Affixes added.
    • For example, inserting an Ancestral Legendary item into the new Blacksmith Tempering UI will allow the player to choose two additional mutually exclusive Affixes from randomly assigned Tempering recipes.
  • The Tempering Re-Rolls (a.k.a Tempering Durability) value in the UI will indicate how many chances the player has to re-roll the randomly assigned Tempering recipes, in a manner similar to re-rolling the randomly assigned Enchantment choices at the Occultist.

Greater Affixes

• Greater Affixes are more powerful versions of normal Affixes that will start to drop in the late Endgame.
  • Will appear on only Ancestral Legendary and Ancestral Unique items.
  • 1.5x Multiplier on the max (Primal Ancient) roll of the item Affixes.
  • Each item Affix has a chance to be Greater.
    • This will be called out on the item tooltip with a Roman numeral that ranges from I to IV to indicate how many of the item Affixes dropped as Greater.
  • These will undoubtedly be exciting drops, the benefits of which should be immediately obvious.
  • Greater Affixes cannot be re-rolled into a different Greater Affix at the Occultist.

Masterworking System

• Masterworking is a new late endgame Level 100+ crafting system to upgrade items.
  • Improves the value of your current item Affixes:
    • Players can rank up item Affixes up to 12 times, each of which will slightly increase the value of all Affixes, including Tempered Affixes.
    • A single Affix is randomly and massively buffed at the 4th, 8th, and 12th ranks.
    • This means that players will have three chances to massively buff the most important Affixes on an item.
  • Masterworking can be applied to Legendary and Unique items.
  • Masterworked Affixes can be re-rolled at the Occultist for a different Affix while inheriting the same increased rank.
  • Players can reset their Masterwork upgrades for a significant cost.
  • This process uses crafting materials gathered from The Pit (see below under Endgame Content).

Endgame Content

Helltide Updates

• Will now be available in WT1 & WT2.
• Higher Density
  • New threat meter builds up while killing enemies and the player will be ambushed by more and more enemies as the meter fills up.
  • When the meter is full the player will be ambushed by even more enemies while the meter resets, including a new Hellborne Elite enemy that will drop Lord Zir summoning materials.
  • There will be lots of ambushes and dynamic spawning of enemies.
• New General Features
  • Rare summoning materials will drop during the Helltide and can be used at summoning pedestals to spawn a Bloodmaiden, which is a new public boss event.
  • There will also be many new mini-events and harbingers to keep things fresh.
• New Seasonal consumable called a Demon Heart.
  • Consuming this item will increase all enemies in the Helltide by 10 levels that will drop better loot and more Aberrant Cinders.

The Pit

• Available after completing the first Tier 45 NMD, which will unlock a new Quest that will lead players to collect their first Runeshards.
• Runeshards are a new material that drops from all Endgame content.
• Enter The Pit requires 1 Runeshard by interacting with the Artificer’s Obelisk in Cerrigar.
• The Pit the primary activity for farming Masterwork crafting materials.
• Similar to Diablo 3 Greater Rifts:
  • More than 100 difficulty Tiers that will go well past a Level 100 NMD.
  • The Pit can be run solo or multi-player.
  • Pit Bosses will include Shade versions of main campaign bosses, including Elias and Lilith.
  • Will have a timer that players must beat in order to obtain Materworking materials.
  • Will feature a variety of tilesets and enemy families.
  • No loot drops during the dungeon.

Boss Ladder Updates

• Andariel will be added to the Endgame Bosses roster.
  • Summoning materials are obtained from the Beast in the Ice and Lord Zir.
  • Same drop table as her twin brother Duriel.
• Every Endgame Boss now has a 0.5% chance to drop and Uber Unique Item.
• Stygian Stone is a new Season 4 specific material that will drop from deep within The Pit.
  • These stones will be used to summon Level 200 versions of each Endgame Boss.
  • Level 200 (Ultra) Bosses require 10x the amount of summoning materials and drop 10x the amount of Uniques.
  • Defeating an Ultra Boss will drop an account-bound Resplendent Spark as a first-time reward.
• All Boss summoning materials will drop from a larger variety of Endgame activities.

Class Updates

General

• The amount of normal Unique Items in the game will double for each Class.
• Adding a new Uber Unique Chest Item – Tyrael’s Might.
  • +18 to All Stats.
  • +5% Maximum Resistance to All Elements.
  • +11.2% Resistance to All Elements.
  • 10% Damage Reduction.
  • While at full life your skills unleash a divine barrage dealing damage (this effect is similar to an Artillery Shrine).

• Making flat damage Legendary Items more viable.
  • These items previously did not scale well.
  • They will now scale based on the player’s Weapon damage.
  • Should be much more viable.

• Opening up designs to be more generally useful.
  • Updating existing designs to have fewer restrictions.
  • Procs to skills will be more generally applied.
  • Proc requirements will be simplified.

• Damage Reduction in general is going to be much more rare and special.
• Skill Tags are being updated.
• For example, the Sorcerer Mastery Skills will also be tagged as Core Skills.

Gear

• Gear Balance Changes
• Tibault’s Will damage will be reduced.
• Banished Lord’s Talisman damage will be reduced.

Hardcore

• Elixir of Death Evasion is being eliminated.
• Flame Shield’s Enchantment has been redesigned to no longer automatically activate when taking fatal damage.

• 10% inherent Damage Reduction is being removed.
• The power levels of Charge, Hammer of Ancients, and Unbridled Rage are being reduced.

• Minions will now inherit 100% of the player’s stats.
• Many Book of the Dead upgrades.

• Frozen Orb no longer goes a set distance but, instead, goes where the player directs it to go.
• New Skill tags added.
• For example, Mastery Skills are now also considered Core Skills for better scaling.

What will happen to legacy items after all of the updates?
– Legacy items will be tagged as such and will be unable to interact with the new systems.

Does the Masterworking system improve only the range on rolls or does it also get the item closer to a max roll?
– Masterworking will repeatedly increase the current value of an Affix even beyond the upper limit of the range.

Can multiple Affixes on a single item be improved with Masterworking?
– Most of the rank increases will improve ALL of the Affixes on a gear item by a small amount.

Will the isometric camera be zoomed farther out in Season 4?
– Yes, and the camera zoom will also have a slider in game settings.

When will gear loadouts be added to the game?
– The team is actively working on this.

Will a loot filter be added to the game?
– The desire for this will be partly addressed with all the new Itemization updates.

Will deeper levels in The Pit yield drops with higher iPower and more Greater Affixes?
– iPower on items is still capped at 925 and deeper levels in The Pit will drop more Legendary items, which will increase the chance of getting more Greater Affixes.

Will there be any improvements to the Social systems in Season 4?
– The team is actively working on this.

Will there be any updates to PvP?
– Not at this time.

Can Uber Uniques roll with Greater Affixes and can they be Masterworked?
– Yes to both.

Will the Aspect changes apply to Alternate characters?
– Aspects are partition bound, which means all characters on either Normal or Hardcore modes will benefit from upgraded aspects.

Watch the Diablo 4 Campfire Chat

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