Yesterday, the Diablo 4 developers held a Campfire Chat to discuss details about the Diablo 4 Season 4 Itemization.

This was the biggest Diablo 4 info dump since launch, and they haven’t even scratched the top of the iceberg of everything Season 4 is going to provide players. As a matter of fact, we still don’t know what the theme is, what Season 4’s name is, or any of the mechanics.

Diablo 4 Season 4 Campfire Chat video

Nevertheless, the amount of changes coming to Diablo 4 will revitalize the core of the game with better loot, new crafting system to upgrade your items up to 12 ranks even if your item rolls the maximum % value upon looting it, you can upgrade that max % value up to rank 12 with the Masterworking system at the Blacksmith.

Obtaining the materials for the Masterworking upgrades drops exclusively from the Artificer’s Pit — a new endgame content that has a 10-minute countdown. It feels a lot like Diablo III’s Greater Rifts where you have to traverse several floors in a dungeon against the timer to catch up with the progress bar and fill it to 100%. At that point, the Guardian’s Lair portal spawns and you can teleport to fight the Guardian.

The Master Chest spawns when you defeat the Guardian, giving you access to Masterworking materials that you use to upgrade your Legendary Items, Uniques, and/or Uber Uniques.

To put it mildly, Season 4 will be equivalent to the Reaper of Souls of Diablo 4. For those who never played Diablo III, or abandoned ship before the Diablo III expansion, this comparison is meaningful. Josh Mosqueira directed the Reaper of Souls — an expansion that overhauled and saved Diablo III back in 2014.

The changes to be introduced in Diablo 4 Season 4 are massive, and will give new life to the game. By removing the junk from our loot table, we get better upgrades, the stash and inventory will be better managed, and we get more endgame content.

I transcribed most of the slides and wrote down some of the highlights of campfire chat discussion.

Diablo 4 Season 4 Itemization

The Diablo 4 Season 4 PTR will take place through April 2-9 for PC Battle.net only.

Future PTRs won’t be only on PC. The platform will vary from case to case.

Season 3 end has been extended to May 14th.

There will be a Season 4 PTR blog sometime before April 2.

Season 4 PTR will have the option to start a Level 1 character, but there will also be an option to instantly boost your new character to Level 100.

The Season 4 PTR will grant players 1 million Gold and 1,000 Obols upon login per character created.

The PTR provides the following:

  • Skill Points
  • Mount
  • Paragon Points
  • Fog of War clearing
  • Campaign Completion
  • Altar of Lilith Points
  • Random set of rare gear
  • Class System Mechanics Completed (i.e. Enchantment for Sorceress)
  • All Paragon Glyphs unlocked and Maxed to Rank 21
  • Legendary Drop Rates Doubled
  • There will be a PTR Feedback & Forums

Itemization and Crafting Changes coming to the Eternal Realm and Seasonal Realm.

  • Quality over Quantity: Goal is to give you loot useful to you rather than endless streams of junk
  • The best items have a journey associated with them.
  • Base Item Updates
  • Additional Updates
  • Codex of Power Updates
  • Tempering – New Customization System
  • Greater Affixes on certain powerful gear
  • Masterworking – Once you obtain these Greater Affixes in gear, you will be able to unlock the gear’s full potential.

BASE ITEM UPDATES

Smaller pool of affixes

More relevant and potent affixes

  • Example: Ranks of a single Core Skill
  • Only Sacred items in World Tier 3
  • Only Ancestral Items in World Tier 4
  • Affix values are punchier so they can be felt
  • Reduced number of affixes: Legendary Items will have 3 affixes. Rare Items only 2 affixes.
  • Goals: Quality over Quantity. The Best items have a journey.

As part of these changes, the developers will allow trading Legendary Items and Unique Items. However, Tempering or Masterworking a Legendary Item or Unique will make them Account-Bound.

Uber-Unique Items won’t be Tradeable.

ADDITIONAL UPDATES

Legendary items dropped from monster level 95+ are always 925 Item Power.

Gems are simpler, better, and have a much longer crafting tail.

Salvaged Gems will grant more Gold.

Salvage, crafting, and rewards all retuned

  • Significantly reduced item drop rates. Less time sorting; more time slaying.
  • Item rerolling gold cost capped
  • Material removal and consolidation
  • Forgotten Souls (used in Enchanting) will be more accessible from Whispers of the Dead Caches, rare drop globally from any Elites in the game.

Uniques earlier in the leveling experience:

  • Many Uniques can drop in World Tier 1 and 2
  • All uniques can drop in World Tier 3
  • Uber Uniques can start dropping from monster level 55, drops at 925 item power.

Season 4 introduces brand-new baseline rare affixes that might appear in items that you haven’t seen before. Example: [x] Fury per second. Life per Hit. Weapons now have Resource Cost Reduction and Bonus Attack Speed. Note: Not sure if Adam was joking about bonus projectiles.

In World Tier 2 you get 20% Bonus XP. In Season 4, you get 50% Bonus XP instead.

In World Tier 3 you get 100% Bonus XP. In Season 4, you get 150% Bonus XP instead.

In World Tier 4 you get 200% Bonus XP. In Season 4, you get 250% Bonus XP instead.

Whispers of the Dead Cache now has a chance to drop a random Uber-Boss summoning material. Not just Malignant materials.

Events and Elites anywhere in the world have chance to drop Uber-Boss summoning materials.

New gameplay setting: normal zoom or further zoom-out.

CODEX OF POWER

All Legendary Aspects of the game will now be in the Codex of Power.

You can upgrade Codex of Power aspects up to 16/16 to get the highest value. As you find a new version of an Aspect that has higher value %, that replaces the one you had in the Codex of Power and can imprint it any time.

TEMPERING

Tempering is a new Crafting system that allows you to add new affixes to your items.

Tempering Manuals:

  • Drop from most content, not target farming.
  • Tempering attaches one affix from the Manual. Up to 2 Affixes cap.
  • Can reroll affixes, up to the item’s Tempering Durability. Up to 4 reroll cap.

You can Temper Legendary Items and Rare Items, but you can’t Temper Unique Items or Uber-Unique Items.

GREATER AFFIXES

More powerful versions of normal affixes.

  • 1.5x Multiplier on the affix’s max roll.

Exciting drops, immediately obvious.

Only appear on Ancestral Legendary and Unique Items. You can only get Greater Affixes from items that drop. You can’t enchant a normal affix into a Greater Affix; but you can enchant a Greater Affix into a normal affix.

MASTERWORKING

Improves the value of your current affixes:

Late game crafting system to upgrade Legendary Items and Unique Items.

  • 12 upgrade ranks
  • Most ranks slightly increase the value of all affixes
  • Every 4 ranks, a single affix is massively upgraded.

CLASS UPDATES

  1. High volume of meaningful Class Updates.
  2. Making flat damage effects more viable: Dustdevils, Earthquakes, etc.
  3. Opening up designs to be more generally useful.

We’ll also be talking about PTR balance and Hardcore updates.

Tuning is still in flux.

MEANINGFUL CLASS UPDATES

Adding double the normal amount of Uniques. In Season 4, each Class gets 2 new Unique items.

New Uber-Unique: Tyrael’s Might

In Season 4, Damage Reduction stat is harder to come by in items, making this stat very valuable whenever it drops.

CLASS UPDATES

Moving the needle – instead of only damage/health going up and down, updating systems and designs.

Sorceress skill tag updates:

  • Mastery Skills are Core Skills.
  • Frozen Orb getting a lot of love:
    • No longer goes a set distance, goes to where the player directs it to.
    • New Unique.

Necromancer minions being more powerful and exciting:

  • Minions will inherit 100% of the player’s stats (Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Damage, etc.) Not only Necromancer Minions, Druid Wolves, and all other types of Minions, too.
  • Many Book of the Dead upgrades. Either big number or functionality change. Including visual animations and effects.

GAME BALANCE

The landscape of everything is changing pretty drastically:

  • Itemization is changing a lot of how power player works and how things work in the game.
  • Many Class updates will change things a lot
  • Expect a shakeup of how all Classes and builds perform.

Not doing a normal list of everything that could be perceived as a nerf today, you’ll be able to see everything in the PTR.

Some things that you can expect:

GENERAL

  • Tibault’s Will damage is being reduced.
  • Banished Lord’s Talisman damage is being reduced.

BARBARIAN

  • 10% inherent Damage Reduction is being removed. Damage Reduction in general is going to be much more rare and special.
  • Removing the effectiveness of Charge.
  • Hammer of the Ancients.
  • Unbridled Rage damage is being reduced.

SORCERESS

  • Bug Fix: The Evade cooldown reduction affix was triggering off of free casts from Unstable Currents, allowing for near infinite uptime on Teleport Evades. This has been fixed – the affix only works with intentional casts now.
  • Bug Fix: Esu’s Ferocity used to apply to Critical Strike Damage to all damage types – now it only applies to Fire damage as intended.
  • There are more Bug Fixes for Sorceress not mentioned during the Campfire Chat.

CLASS UPDATES

These are only some examples. There are far more in Season 4 not mentioned here.

Barbarian: The Windlasher Aspect now casts a Dust Devil every time you cast Double Swing, instead of two after casting Double Swing twice. Triple if you cast Double Swing twice within 2 seconds. This means you can spawn more Dust Devils.

Druid:

  • Prime Lacerate: lacerate hits Heal for 3% Maximum Life, doubled on Critical Strikes. The first Critical Strike is guaranteed and deals 150%[x] increased damage.
  • Supreme Lacerate: Whenever Lacerate Critically Strikes, your Shapeshifting Skills deal 4%[x] increased damage for 10 seconds, up to 40%[x].

Sorceress:

  • Frozen Orb now explodes wherever the player’s cursor is. An Aspect causes conjurations to spawn when Frozen Orb explodes, and each conjuration also casts Frozen Orb.

Rogue:

  • Inner Sight: Attack marked enemies to fill up your Inner Sight gauge. Attacking non-marked enemies fill it at 5% of the normal rate. When it’s full, gain unlimited Energy and 25%[+] Critical Strike Chance for 4 seconds.

Necromancer:

  • Reaper’s wind-up attacks now reduce one of your active Cooldowns by 3 seconds.
  • Cold Mages’ attacks apply Vulnerable for 4 seconds
  • Your Iron Golem’s slam attack also pulls in enemies.
  • All Golems: When you are Crowd Controlled, the active attack of the Golem now makes the Necromancer and the Golem unstoppable for a few seconds.

FLAT DAMAGE EFFECTS

Before Season 4 Flat Damage Legendaries did not scale very well.

  • Damage was fixed – now they scale based on the player’s Weapon Damage. For example, the Legendary Aspect on your Gloves deals 5,447 Lightning Damage. When you increase the damage of your Weapon (either a new upgrade, or via Masterwork, or Enchanting), that same Glove Aspect might scale to 6,523 Lightning Damage.
  • Should be much more viable now.

OPENING UP DESIGNS

Updating existing designs to have less restrictions. For example, Azurewrath (1H Sword): Lucky Hit: Your Core Skills have up to a 20% chance to Freeze Enemies. Now this works with any Skill, instead. This allows the Unique to be used in builds that don’t have a Core Skill active in the Skillbar.

For Rogues – Opportunist’s Primal Gauntlets (Legendary Item): When you break Stealth with an attack, you drop a cluster of exploding Stun Grenades around your location. In Season 4, this tooltip reads: When you enter or break Stealth, you drop a cluster of exploding Stun Grenades around you. It also adds a new benefit never seen before: Your Grenade Skills deal 39% [25-40]% increased damage.

HARDCORE UPDATES

We’re removing the Elixir of Death Evasion from the game. We’ve also redesigned Flame Shield’s Enchantment.

Before – Flame Shield: Flame Shield automatically activates when you take fatal damage. Can only happen once every 120 seconds.

After – Flame Shield: Flame Shield automatically activates after cumulatively losing 100% Maximum Life. Can only happen once every 30 seconds.

PTR FEEDBACK

We’ll be watching PTR feedback carefully!

Please let us know what you think, what’s exciting and what’s not working.

For Classes we’re particularly interested in:

  • Tuning and balance
  • What changes made the game more fun for you?
  • What changes didn’t hit the mark and why?
  • What would you like to see that didn’t make it in?

HELLTIDES

Shows up in World Tiers 1 and 2.


Higher Density

  • New threat meter builds up while killing monsters, spawns Hellborn (enemy player classes).
  • Lots of ambushes and dynamic monster spawning

New Content

  • Rare summoning materials drop during the Helltide, use to summon the Bloodmaiden – a public event boss.
  • Many new mini-events and harbingers to keep things fresh.
  • The Hellborne drops materials to summon Lord Zir. These can also drop Legendary Items.
  • There is a chance that Treasure Goblins drop a random Uber-Boss summoning materials (i.e. Lord Zir, Duriel, etc.)

BOSS LADDER UPDATES

A new challenger awaits, Andariel.

  • Summoning parts come from Beat in Ice and Lord Zir.
  • Same drop table as Duriel.

The Andariel fight has been updated with the classic poison nova, and several red circle runes fill the battleground damaging players standing on them.

Stygian Stones start dropping deep within the Pit – a new feature. You can collect these Stygian Stones to later summon high-level versions of the bosses found in the Pit.

You will get better rewards from those higher-level Tormented Pit Bosses. They drop a Resplendent Spark the first time you kill any of them.

Once players have completed a Tier 45 Nightmare Dungeon (Level 100 monsters), players unlock a quest that will require to collect Runeshards from various content types around the world. These Runeshards can be turned in at an Obelisk in Cerrigar to open up access to the Artificer Pit.

Each Pit run has a randomized layout and randomized monsters. There are no Nightmare Dungeon Affixes in these Pit runs. Instead, players have to push through the Pit against the 10-minute timer. Similar to the Abattoir of Zir.

In the Abattoir of Zir, whenever a player died, they would get ejected from the dungeon. In the Artificer Pit, whenever the player dies, the penalty is 30 seconds off the timer progress.

When the progress bar reaches 100% by killing large amounts of monsters, this opens a red portal into the Guardian’s Lair to fight the boss.

After killing the boss, a Master Chest spawns containing Masterworking materials.

Important: The majority of the Masterwork materials are obtained from the Artificer Pit.

There are three types of materials (required for Masterworking your equipment) that drop from the Mastery Chest at the end of the Pit after killing the Boss:

  • Obducite (Pit Tier 1-20)
  • Ingolith (Pit Tier 21-40)
  • Neathiron (Pit Tier 41-100)

You get more amounts of Neathiron (the legendary material) as you complete higher Pit Tiers.

Another reward from killing the Pit Boss is Stygian Stone. These Stygian Stones are used to summon level 200 Tormented versions of each boss ladder boss – with higher % chance to drop Uber Unique items.

Q&A

What will happen to current items after this rework?

All current items will be flagged as Legacy Items. These can’t interact with Grand Affixes, Masterworking and Tempering.

Does the Materworking adjust the total range of the roll, or get you closer to a max roll?

Masterworking increases the current value. If you looted an item with the max roll, it will just keep increasing. An example, you got an item with a value threshold from 50-100, and you roll a value 100. Every time you upgrade the item, you will increase it beyond 100 by a factor of +5.

Can multiple affixes increase per Masterwork, or only one affix per Masterwork?

When you are Masterworking, most of the ranks will increase all of the affixes on the gear by a small amount. But when you hit those thresholds: Rank 4, Rank 8, and Rank 12, a single random affix will get a much larger boost. Because this happens 3 times throughout your journey from Rank 1-12, in theory all these 3 boosts might happen in the same affix if you get lucky; or it might be spread out throughout the other affixes.

Was the camera all zoomed out in the Dev build?

Actually, in Season 4, the camera will be more zoomed out. You will have an option to toggle between the normal zoom (default) and the new zoom out view. It is a new gameplay setting.

Any plans for character Loadouts?

We’ve been listening to a lot of feedback since the Gauntlet. It is a topic the team has been talking about to introduce at some point, but we have nothing to announce today.

Any intention to review Class optimization: higher Skill Points, or higher Paragon Points beyond the default 50?

Nothing right now, but stuff we have discussed as a team for the upcoming expansion, maybe.

Will it be possible to toss a new icon in the map whenever an item with Greater Affixes drops on the ground?

We want to listen to feedback. Right now, Greater Affix items have a roman font number next to the item name you see on the ground onscreen. This will get a revision before Season 4 goes Live. We welcome feedback on how this feels. We want those moments to be exciting when those occur.

Can you play in the Pit with a Party?

Yes, you can party up in the Pit with other players.

Will we see Clan updates or Social updates?

We have been discussing updates for these, and we might be able to talk about them soon, but nothing to announce for Season 4 at this time.

Uber Uniques can’t be Tempered, but can they roll Greater Affixes and Mastercrafted?

Yes. Uniques and Uber Uniques can roll Greater Affixes, and Mastercrafted. If they roll the Maximum Affix value when looted, you can Mastercraft it beyond the Maximum Affix.