Blizzard has spoken about the future of Diablo 4 in a new dev stream. Core topic: content and start of Season 1. MeinMMO summarizes the most important information for you.
When does Season 1 start and what’s in it?
This is the mechanic of Season 1: In the stream, Associate Game Director Joe Piepiora and Lead Game Designer Tim Ismay joined Diablo CEO Rod Fergusson and Community Lead Adam Fletcher to discuss the future of Diablo 4.
Corruption, the main theme of the season, corrupts enemies and makes them stronger. You are to help a new NPC, Corban, to prevent the spread. That’s what Threat is for as a mechanic.
Whenever you meet an elite enemy in the world, there is a chance that they are corrupted. If you kill such an opponent, a corrupted heart appears. If you act with this one, a stronger version of this opponent will appear. But that’s only after the campaign.
Diablo 4: The Official Season Announcement Trailer
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Season 1: Mechanics in detail and Battle Pass
What is the use of mechanics? If you defeat this enemy again, you will get a “captive heart” that works similar to a gem. You use it in sockets and get an enormous boost in power, as the developers promise.
There will be over 32 new “corrupted powers” in total, which are intended to be similar to legendary effects. Hearts come in 4 different categories that only fit in sockets of the same “color” with one exception, which fits in any socket. “Normal” sockets no longer exist.
If you want to specifically hunt for hearts, there are new “corrupted tunnels” as dungeons in which corruption is more likely. These should even make it possible to specifically hunt for certain colors.
This mechanic, like the Battle Pass, requires you to start a new character.
What’s in the Battle Pass? The Battle Pass includes various cosmetic, class-agnostic rewards as well as a new currency. The journey should be more interesting for most players. This works similar to Diablo 3.
The journey grants you progress in the Battle Pass, and each stage also grants you legendary aspects that you would not normally find in the Codex of Power. In this way, the completion of the journey should also give you an advantage.
You don’t have to pay anything for the Battle Pass, there is a free path that also gives you access to content like the journey.
You can purchase seasonal boons with the new Battle Pass currency, the Smoldering Ashes. These enhance all of your seasonal characters with various bonuses, such as increased potency of elixirs.
New Legendaries and Uniques for everyone
In addition to the actual season mechanics, there will be a story that is separate from the main story. The story missions start in Kyovashad and you can start with them from level 1. There are no restrictions.
However, the mechanics and the Battle Pass are currently only available for season characters on the seasonal realm. In addition, new legendary affixes and unique items will also come, which you can also obtain on the eternal realm.
So you don’t need a new character if you just want new loot to work on builds. The patch, which should also bring balance changes, will appear even earlier: on July 18th.
What else has been announced? The first third of the stream was also about the direct predecessor Diablo Immortal. There the first new Diablo class was presented for about 10 years, as the developers say: the blood knight.
Blood Knights are vampiric dark magick fighters that will be playable in Diablo Immortal on July 13th. A similar, dark class was already suspected for Diablo 4.
New classes are also planned for Diablo 4, but they will probably only come here with expansions at some point in the future. There is no more detailed information on this yet. But many fans are already considering what class that could be, one is very popular:
Diablo 4 is one class short of being complete – and it’s the one you want it to be