Diablo 4 Season 4 delayed, major crafting changes incoming
Under construction.
Blizzard has delayed the fourth season of Diablo 4 by a month, to a new release date of 14th May.
The game's third season, Season of the Construct, will be extended for an extra month, as announced in the developer's latest Campfire Chat stream. The reason for the delay is to allow the team to apply feedback from the Season 4 Public Test Realm (PTR), which will be live from 2nd to 9th April.
"We're pushing it back a few weeks to ensure that we get all of the feedback from this PTR and we apply it to Season 4 to make sure that all of these new system changes that we're doing are right and work for the community based off of everyone's feedback," said Adam Fletcher, Diablo community lead.
Further, the PTR will only be available on PC Battle.Net, which Fletcher said allows the team to be "more agile". He added that the PTR may be available elsewhere in future.
So what changes will Season 4 bring to Diablo?
The biggest change is to what Blizzard calls "itemisation" - essentially player loot - where it is now aiming for greater quality over quantity, to remove the amount of inventory junk for players. Blizzard said it wants players to invest in a journey with items, to feel a sense of power progression.
Legendary and Rare items will now have fewer affixes (buffs, essentially) giving them more space to grow, however Blizzard is also introducing Tempering as a new crafting system to add affixes to items.
Enemies will now drop Tempering Manuals, which contain multiple affixes around a theme, or build type - movement speed, for instance, or spell types. At a blacksmith, one of these affixes will be applied to items at random, though these can also be re-rolled.
This can be boosted further through Masterworking, a late game crafting system that allows players to upgrade the existing affixes on their gear by up to 12 ranks.
Both Tempering and Masterworking will now replace Diablo 4's old upgrade system. Essentially, these systems will provide more powerful customisation opportunities for players to really tweak their builds.
Other changes to items include: items with specific stats will only drop for the classes they benefit; Legendary and Unique items not crafted can be traded with other players; they will also drop at lower levels and world tiers; Legendary aspects will be available in the Codex of Power; and more.
Further, changes have been made to endgame activities. Helltide events will appear in all world tiers with a higher density and will include a new Bloodmaiden public event boss; The Pit of the Artificer will have randomised, timed dungeons for rare crafting materials; and new "Tormented" bosses will have a higher chance of dropping rare items.
In all, these are major changes coming to Diablo 4 to extend its life further.
And if you're yet to play it, Diablo 4 arrives on Xbox Game Pass (console and PC) on 28th March.