Blizzard held a lengthy Diablo 4 ‘Campfire Chat’ this week, where the team discussed major changes coming to the game in Season 4. A complete overhaul of itemization, crafting, and enchanting has many excited for what feels like the game’s Diablo 3 “Loot 2.0” update. In addition, a new endgame mode called The Pit sees players racing against the clock in increasingly more challenging dungeons – ala Diablo 3 ‘Greater Rifts.’
3Tempering lets you fine-tune items to suit your build.
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Players can expect massive, fundamental changes that make loot drops feel important and special on the item and loot side. Items are being simplified with fewer and more meaningful aspects while ensuring that only ‘Sacred’ items appear in World Tier 3 and only ‘Ancestral’ items appear in World Tier 4. With less clutter and expanded trading to allow players to trade Legendary and Unique items, this feeds into the new Tempering and Materworking crafting systems.
It works fairly straightforwardly. Tempering is all about adding affixes from special books or crafting manuals – so if you’re a Necromancer who loves minions, you can temper pet-related bonuses. Each class, skill, and playstyle is being overhauled, and item affixes are being updated to celebrate Diablo 4’s kinetic action.
3Masterworking replaces the current item upgrade system for a more meaningful way to grow in power.
On top of this, the news Masterworking system is how you upgrade items, with chances for random affixes to get significant upgrades (changing their color) during the process. Crafting materials are being optimized, and new materials are being added that are tied to the new Pit mode. New endgame bosses like Andariel are coming with Season 4, and players will be given more ways to earn rare items with Uber Bosses for all current big boss battles in the game. The Helltide endgame activity is also getting overhauls with increased monster density and the ability to summon bosses ala Season 2’s popular vampire zones.
In addition to all of this, each class is getting updated, with Blizzard showcasing a new Frozen Orb build for the Sorcerer that looks like a lot of fun. All these changes mean that Season 4 will be delayed until May 14, but PC players can test the overhaul via the new PTR servers, which will run for a week starting April 2. Full Patch Notes (which Blizzard confirms will be absolutely massive) are set to drop next week.