Diablo 4 Campfire Chat Recap – November 30

During the Diablo 4 Campfire Chat on November 30, Associate Director of Community Adam Fletcher, Game Director Joe Shely, and Associate Game Director Joseph Piepiora talked more about the first pinnacle endgame dungeon, the Abattoir of Zir, the first limited-time event, the Midwinter Blight, and provided a brief preview of some quality-of-life changes arriving next year.

The first item the Developers wanted to address is that Blizzard will never bring “Pay for Power” to Diablo 4. This comes on the back of the recent backlash from a supposed survey.

Midwinter blight

• Begins on December 12th, ends on January 2nd, and is the first true holiday event for Diablo 4.
• Will take place in the Fractured Peaks where a horrible storm has descended upon the area.
• A new bard NPC, Gileon, is trying to rouse the spirits of the locals to push back against a new threat that has emerged from the nearby hills, glacier, and mountainous peaks.
• The Wanderer will be sent forward to defeat the Red Cloaked Horror and his minions wreaking havoc and causing a lot of pain and mayhem for the locals.
• Players will collect various trophies as they defeat the minions, which can be used to unlock cosmetics.
• Will include and new Seasonal Elixir that grants a 10% XP buff along with a new Seasonal Aspect that synergizes with the new Seasonal shrines.
• The new Elixir and Aspect will persist after the Season ends, however players will be able to collect them only during the Season.

The Abattoir of Zir

• A new pinnacle endgame dungeon mode for Season 2 that unlocks after completing all seven chapters of the Season Journey.
• The event begins on December 5th and continues through nearly the end of the Season.
• A Tier 1 Abbatoir dungeon will be comparable to a T104 NM dungeon, including Level 155 enemies.
• The dungeon will use existing, random NM Dungeon layouts and will continue to progress in difficulty through a total of twenty-five tiers.
• This will be a place for players to show off all of the power they have collected from Vampiric Powers and farming Unique Items from Duriel.
• The Demo featured during the livestream used a Ball Lightning Sorcerer build that focused on mobility and survivability.
• The tooltip for Blood-Forged Sigils will not display the dungeon afflictions that players may encounter.
• Therefore, it is recommended that players boost their armor and resistances.
• Players will need to defeat random mobs of enemies as quickly as possible in order to beat the timer and summon a boss.
• To that end, no loot will drop during the dungeon and will drop from only the boss.
• Once the player defeats a sufficient number of normal enemies, the dungeon will spawn three Blood Seekers simultaneously while the timer is still running.
• After defeating the Blood Seekers within the allotted time, the timer will stop and an Awakened Glyphstone will appear as usual, which will award 1000 Glyph XP.
• That Glyph XP can be used to upgrade the new Legendary Tears of Blood glyph half way to Level 2.
• That will leave only 199.5 levels to go to fully upgrade the Tears of Blood glyph (tell your family and friends that they won’t being seeing much of you over the holidays).
• Upgrading the Tears of Blood Glyph to Level 3 will require an additional 4600 Glyph XP.
• Monster health scaling will markedly outpace monster damage scaling, so the main challenge is to beat the timer.
• The increased damage output from the Tears of Blood Glyph, as well as the Vampiric Powers, will help a great deal in mitigating the increased monster health.
• ANY PLAYER that dies during an Abattoir dungeon, even in groups, will result in a wipe that terminates the entire run, thus requiring another sigil to be crafted at the Occultist.

Itemization

• The Devs recognize the inordinate amount of “mental bandwith” that players must use to search for good gear items.
• There is also an extremely high variability in the range of stats that drop on items.
• The result is that players have to search through hundreds of items to find just one that is even 80% optimized.
• Contributing factors include the large number of different affixes currently in the game and the fact there there is currently no limit on the number of similar affixes that can drop simultaneously on a single item.
• The Devs are looking at Season 4 to introduce a number of big changes to Itemization so that they can add all at once.
• Many of these changes have already been shared with a select group of Diablo partners and content creators to solicit their feedback.

Season 3 Plans

• Forgottens Souls.
  • The Devs are aware of the difficulty players are currently facing in Season 2 with obtaining Forgotten Souls.
  • One potential solution will be to spawn Helltides essentially back to back.
• Level 925 Gear.
  • Level 925 gear can currently be obtained by players as soon as they reach WT4 by participating in World Bosses or by being carried in Duriel battles.
  • At the same time, players who reach Level 100 lack enough different opportunities to obtain Level 925 gear.
  • Consequently, the Devs are looking at establishing a better balance in the game for obtaining 925 gear.

What is the plan to improve Gold trading for console players?
– The team is working on this issue and hopes to have a fix by Season 3.

Why is the Abattoir of Zir considered to be Seasonal rather than normal content?
– This type of Seasonal content is essentially a Beta at this point.

Will the Abattoir Dungeons drop Sigils or Sigil Powder?
– A sigil will drop after a player has completed the dungeon but not during.

What are the plans for adding a loot filter to the game?
– The Devs agree that this is a baseline feature that should be in any ARPG and they are planning to address this alongside the Itemization changes in Season 4.

What are the plans to add more Butcher-style bosses?
– The Devs are looking at adding more disruptive content to the game.

When will more color palettes be added to the Wardrobe?
– The Devs agree that there is a lot of room for improvement in this area.

Will players ever be able to play the Main Campaign on a higher difficulty?
– The Devs agree that this would be a worthwhile addition to the game.

Watch the campfire chat