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Diablo 4’s Season 2 update feels like a pre-planned “triumphant comeback” arcQuality-of-life upgrades galore, plus vampires
Quality-of-life upgrades galore, plus vampires
Image credit:Activision Blizzard
Image credit:Activision Blizzard
Diablo 4has been on the back-burner amid the chaos ofBaldur’s Gate 3andStarfield’s launches, but much like an arch-demonness putting together the pieces of an inter-planar conspiracy, Blizzard have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. The action-RPG’s next big round of additions, the Season of Blood, launches on 17th October alongsidethe Steam edition of the game. It introduces a new season journey and questline, a new season event, and some skulking new enemies of the Nosferatu persuasion.
The new questsounds quite fun from the promotional materials. It sees you investigating a mysterious outbreak of punctured necks, recruiting a local Van Helsing named Erys, and tracking down a Dark Master, while harnessing 22 juicy new vampiric powers care of some pact armour. The latter range from turning into a cloud of bats, through cursing people, to treating yourself to a spontaneous bloodbath so as to enhance your channeled skills, The trade-off is that you’ll have to acquire yet anotherDiablo 4resource, potent blood, to perform these tricks.
Image credit:Activision Blizzard
Still, Diablo 4 players seem far more excited about the new season’s accompanying quality-of-life overhaul, Diablo 4 update 1.2.0, and with good reason. Diablo 4’s first season and associated updates were a disaster: as Hayden (RPS in peace)wrote at length, the season made the monsters grindier, the characters squishier, and nerfed some of the most popularDiablo 4 buildsto boot. Blizzardwalked back a few of the nerfsfollowing an outcry, with Blizzard’s associate director of community management Adam Fletcher promising tonever do an update like it ever again, and the Season 2 revamp continues that trend.
Dungeons will be more random of layout, to make re-running them less monotonous, and will drop objectives closer to the critical path, so there’s less backtracking. Nightmare Sigils will teleport you directly into the Nightmare Dungeon, to “expedite” the demon-slaying. Inventory and stash management are getting a clean-up, with a new search bar and filters. Gems will count as crafting resources to free up inventory space, while stashes are being added to smaller waypointed towns, saving you the need to visit capital cities, where the shops will be easier to find. Mounts are going to be quicker and less prone to getting stuck on things. Dismounting will take five seconds, not 10.
There’s a lot more of that kind of thing, but I’ve now used up today’s last surviving neurone, so I’ll let you sink your fangs intothe source.
Image credit:Activision Blizzard
But really, if there’s anything at all that fascinates me about Diablo 4 it’s the “triumphant comeback from a humiliating fall” narrative that’s now forming around the game, as news of the quality-of-life changes percolates through the festering compost of the internet. We’ve had a few of those comeback stories lately. The obvious one isCyberpunk 2077, now popularly deemed to be a Good Game, but there’s also Baldur’s Gate 3, to a lesser degree. Larian annoyed a lot of players with the game’s third major patch, but theyclawed back some goodwill with the latest hotfix, and are presently dining out on the line that they’re a studio who “listen to their community”. I wouldn’t be surprised ifPayday 3 follows a similar trajectory.
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