Trailer playing. A great eveil is receding, but there’s a new festering curse. Lots of werewolf images.
Season of the Malignant
Starts July 20th.
Takes place after the events of the D4 campaign. New threat emerged - malignance, corruption spreading in beast, demon, human hearts. Changing them into blood thirsty fiends.
New character Kormand (ph). Ex-preist of the cathedral of light, diving deeper into the new threat. Finding himself out of his depth.
Will start season in Kyovashad, can start new story right away. Start at level 1 and start following new storyline.
Trying to add more stuff to seasons to appeal to everything a player does - new story, new challenges, new things to fight, new powers and builds, wants to hit all those notes.
New mechanic, the threat - the malignant. Any elite monster can spawn as a malignant monster with additional powers, will expose a heart that can be interacted with to start a ritual. New more powerful version spawned. If you can beat the more powerful version, now it drops a caged heart item that can be used like a gem. Can be socketed into gear, “enormous amount of power” on par with a legendary item.
New builds “stupid powerful, hopefully balanced”
32 new malignant powers. Come in categories (Brutal are blue) and can only go in sockets of matching colours. 3 colours of sockets, 4 colors of hearts. Wrathful hearts fit in any socket, rare and powerful. (Showed off two hearts but my youtube stream decided to auto downgrade down to 280p, so I couldn’t read the effects.)
Super elites buff nearby enemies, want to fight them in higher world tiers to get stronger hearts. Can break down hearts into crafting materials to craft new items like “invokers.” Can use them at specific places (Malignant tunnels) to spawn malignant elites. Specific dungeons with malignants, and can guarantee a specific type of malignant. Targeted farming. Invoker items look like “turkey basters from hell.”
New boss monster, not talking about it too much.
New legendary items and powers.
New unique items.
New items not season exclusive, will show up in eternal realm too.
Season patch will be out July 18th so season can launch on 20th. On 18th, all new stuff will be available on eternal realm (Sneak preview.) As well as new balance changes, features, etc.
Seasonal journey feature. Season journey has 7 chapters, each chapter has a number of objectives to advance to next chapter. (Don’t have to do them all). Collect favor for things like collecting 15 gallowvine, complete any dungeon, complete a cellar, etc. Season journey can let you collect new legendary aspects.
Don’t need the battlepass to have access to season journey.
Battlepass has stuff for free players too, can unlock stuff without buying it.
Special cosmetics, titles, in the season journey.
Can play through original campaign in season and still unlock stuff during seasonal journey, won’t encounter malignant until you progress seasonal story. Some features only available after you beat the campaign.
Can skip campaign to with new seasonal characters if you’ve already beaten campaign. They recommend beating the campaign before the season starts.
Not all seasons will start in Kyovashad.
New mounts and mounts armor - tier 1 battle pass rewared. New transmogs. Free stuff is “low fantasy” stuff like artisans tunic, epic stuff is premium.
Some stuff will be class specific.
Only difference between free and premium battle passes are cosmetics.
Blessings are in the battle passes (free and premium). Smoldering ashes - if you have a character of a specific level, you can take them and use them to seasonal blessings. Invest ashes to give exp boosts, gold boosts, elixir durations, rare salvage material drop chance, malignant heart drop chance. Invest more ashes to improve boosts. Available to everyone, limited based on level of the player so if you were to use tier skips, can’t unlock stuff until you hit level requirement.
Yep, pass skips are a thing.
Emphasizing power that is part of the pass for all players, you don’t have to spend a cent. Premium stuff is transmog only, no items or pay to win.
Renown and fog of war: When season 1 goes live, players can carry over fog of war they’ve explored, as well as all renown earned. Altars of Lillith carrying over. Will have skill points, extra potions, etc at the very start of the season with your character as long as they are unlocked in the eternal realm. Recommend clearing renown before season starts.
Will need to log in with an existing character to migrate data - for example if you have one character with all map cleared, and one alt with partial map cleared, log in with your character with most progress to set your progress baseline, and will unlock all that progress across all your characters. Only have to do it once, can do it once the patch drops on the 18th. If you have one character who has done all of Fractured Peaks, and one character who has done all of Scosglen, log in to both characters to transfer their data over (you will unlock both regions’ progress) and you will unlock Scosglen map data and renown on the Fractured Peaks character and vice versa.
Not the most elegant solution, but they had to implement it quickly based on player feedback. They are “making it work.” Reading lots of feedback. (Could they even be here, right now?!?! Hi devs)
Season one patch “Super chonkers” (very, very large patch)
Credit to u/PNDMike on reddit.
PS: Took it from US forum
already sound very childish. anyway I do not play seasons so I do not care but… not better add a end-game? yes, they took the money already but still, they sold a game in beta phase with 70euro… arpgs in 2023 needs end-games.
The malignant sockets seem cool - but is it 3 months worth of cool? Time will tell. I felt as if none of the people speaking on that stream had any form of communication with each other – like they weren’t on the same page. lol.
They are so on the same page, great chemistry, but huge job differences.
A top dog, franchise owner.
A technical producer
A season producer
A community manager
And some immoral staffers
They had great banter, fed off each other’s answers to generate clarity.
Remember, these are geeks, not reality stars, being filmed is nerve-racking for an average person, now take an introvert tech person and put them in that situation. “Exactly”
So, you are definitely way off on your “read” there. Like, different page entirely from the actual, off…
SO after i read it more carefully i found out you not going to get all renown
you going to get renown for all lilith statues and all fog of war in every zone so it’s like 280 renown for lillith in every zone or something like that and 400+ for fog of war
so that means you still need to farm the last 2 boxes
80 obols and 4 paragon points
but still good changes in season
I’m looking forward to this
I hope i can build some interesting druid build from those new uniques and legendary aspects
It’s not the way I perceived it. Unless they were asking those questions thinking that’s what we would want to ask, which makes sense. But it seemed like they didn’t even know some of the already built in aspects of the game. ‘‘Oh, I thought those chests and whispers already dropped uniques.’’ Just bits like that.
That’s just him being honest, he does not program the game. He is an awesome guy that loves the franchise and plays the game, but he hands over-arching projects over to the appropriate team or person. It is not his job to memorize the minutiae.
That makes them more relatable, if anything.
For instance I did not know they didn’t drop uniques, I had assumed so far I was unlucky. (I’m playing blind, no guides, builds, wikis etc.)
Its sad to see people coping this hard for season 1.
Its gonna be few quests,one boss and that’s it.Completed in less than one hour.
There won’t be any new and amazing gameplay.
You will be doing same stuff you have been doing since release.
New ‘‘gems’’ you get will make builds bit more powerful,but you gonna be playing same builds you are playing now. Same 2 Lilith viable builds per class and that’s it.
Dont get fooled by million youtubers releasing ‘‘viable builds’’ each day,if you pay close attention,they are showcasing builds in NM 35-50 which is FAR from Lilith or NM 100 viable.
Not everyone plays the copy-pasta borefest casual way you described…
Majority of us true fans of the genre enjoy playing the game without cheating. No builds, no wikis, no loot tables, no YouTube video, we get to … what’s it called… “Play and enjoy the game for ourselves”.
So for us, that want to experience the game again with new builds, new twists, it’s awesome.
Not many of us play self found builds.I play what i love playing, i know i will never kill Lilith unless i change spec or complete NM 100 but that’s how it is and i prefer it this way.
Most people i see in the open world ,its like every class ability to spawn a clone,you seen one,you’ve seen them all.
It took me 30 days to get damn Black River,but i coped with the wand and shield.
I cant see myself playing bone spear necro,even tho my NM clear would jump 20+ tiers ahead, i just dont like it because everyone is playing it.
I was hyped for D4 in first and second beta,i defended D4 ,i literally made 200 pots during first and second beta.
I dk what was i expecting,its a new game,it cant have the endgame other arpg games do,because those games exist for a while now.
I was also hyped about s1 because i thought Blizz is going to do something new and innovative,never seen before and i got disappointed again,but i just realized what could they have done?
I mean if you look at every other arpg game,and seasonal stuff,its nothing new mostly,its just seasonal theme and the rest of it its same endgame you have been doing from the beginning.
This is only true if you are copycat and i bet that most people that cry about diablo are copycasts copying builds from maxroll or other content creators cause they can’t read
