Today Blizzard Entertainment had plenty of news to share about Diablo IV and its cousin Diablo Immortal, including details of the former's Season 1.
First of all, during the livestream, we learned that patch 1.04 will launch this afternoon. While it's not as big as 1.03, it includes several changes responding to feedback from the players. As an example, Helltide Chests will have a chance to drop unique items.
Moving on to Season 1, we get to see the trailer. The season is titled "Season of the Malignant" and starts on July 20, 2023.
The story starts after the events of Diablo IV's main story as a new corruption named Malignants starts to spread throughout Sanctuary corrupting all kinds of creatures including demons.
Any time you encounter any elite monster there is a chance that it spawns as a malignant version with new power. When you kill it, it drops a heart that you can interact with and spawn an even more powerful version of that elite. After you kill that version, it'll drop a "caged heart" which can be socketed in gear. It has an "enormous amount of power" comparable to a legendary item.
There are 32 new malignant powers labeled by colors that can be socketed only in the corresponding sockets. There are three different colors but four types. Wrathful ones actually can be socketed in sockets of any color.
You can also break the caged hearts down and get crafting materials that can be used to create various things including Invokers which can be used in Malignant Tunnels where you can find more Malignants. At the end of these tunnels, you can use Invokers to spawn Malignants with hearts of specific colors.
The season also comes with new legendaries and uniques. Interestingly, these will also appear in the Eternal Realm and these will be available on July 18 when the patch releases alongside the new improvements and tweaks. It's just the seasonal content that actually launches on July 20.
You can track your battle pass and progress through the season with the Season Journey, which is split into 7 chapters. Each chapter has a number of objectives that grant Favor Drops, item rewards, and new legendary aspects. The Favor Drops can be used to unlock the levels of the Battle Pass. You don't need to complete all the objectives to advance through the chapters. You can do so by completing only a subset of them, which means you can skip the content you're not interested in.
You can earn Favor Drops also simply by playing outside of the season, including the main campaign. Speaking of the battle pass, which includes both free and paid premium items, the gear you can earn is class agnostic besides the weapon transmogs. Everything included in the paid tiers is exclusively cosmetic, with all the gear being transmogs.
There are 27 free tiers in the Battle Pass and they include Smoldering Ashes that can be used in the Seasonal Blessings systems that can offer a series of boosts to all of your characters.
To access the new season, starting on July 18 you'll have to log into the game with your characters which have the most progress and renown. This will propagate that progress throughout your whole account like unlocked Altars of Lilith, cleared fog of war, and so forth. These elements will be shared with all of your characters including the seasonal characters that you'll create for Season 1.
It's worth mentioning that if you have characters that have different progress, you should log them all so all the progress from each of them can be shared account-wise.
Players are encouraged to finish the campaign, find all the Altars of Lilith, and clear the fog of war by the beginning of Season 1 if they have the time to do so.
On top of the Diablo IV news, we also get the reveal of the new class coming to Diablo Immortal. The Blood Knight is coming to the mobile game on July 13. It's the first new class added to the Diablo universe in nearly 10 years. Do you guys not have phones?
You can check out the trailer of the Blood Knight below.
Diablo IV is now available for PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4. Of course, you can read our full review of the game, in which our Austin Suther mentioned that Diablo IV "delivers exciting and accessible ARPG gameplay, a stunning world and engaging narrative to experience, and so many activities to keep you hooked for hours on end."
