Diablo II: Resurrected PTR 2.5—Terror Zones Now Live

 Diablo IV Quarterly Update - August 2022

Season 27: Light's Calling

Season 27 introduces Light's Calling. Valiant Nephalem who recover Angelic Crucibles, a new consumable item, may use them to Sanctify any equippable Legendary item, infusing it with one of three new class-specific powers at random. The Angelic Crucibles lean into the expertise of each class, further exemplifying its respective prowess.

Season 27 begins on Friday, August 26th at 5:00pm in each region. Season 27 goes live on all Consoles world wide at 5:00pm PDT, the same time as PC in North America. For timezone conversion, visit this site!

Table of Contents

• Season 27: Light's Calling
• Discord Server
• Haedrig's Gift & Seasonal Rewards
• Seasonal Conquests
• Season 27 Starter Guides
• Level With A Cause
• Challenge Rift Week 270
• Patch 2.7.4 Notes

 DiabloFans Discord

Join us on our Discord server! It's the perfect place for finding people to group with, get your questions answered, and stay up to date on the latest news! You can join our server by clicking on the banner below, or by going here! 

If you don't use Discord you're missing out, but you can also find people to play with by using our forums! 

 Haedrig's Gift & Seasonal Rewards

Completing Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of the Seasonal Journey will reward you with three of Haedrig’s Gifts. Each Gift contains a few pieces from one of your Class Sets. Players can only unlock one Class Set in this manner per Season across Hardcore and Non-Hardcore, so choose wisely!

The set you will receive depends on the class of the character you’re playing when you open each Haedrig’s Gift. To collect a full Class Set, you’ll need to open all three on the same character.

Here are the sets granted by Haedrig’s Gift in Season 27:

• Barbarian – Wrath of the Wastes
• Crusader – Roland’s Legacy
• Demon Hunter – Unhallowed Essence
• Monk – Raiment of a Thousand Storms
• Necromancer – Bones of Rathma
• Witch Doctor – Helltooth Harness
• Wizard – Tal Rasha’s Elements

In Season 17, Blizzard began re-introducing previous Seasonal rewards to make them available to players who may have missed them the first time around. This means that for Season 27, awards originally available from Season 15 are returning to the Season Journey.

Blizzard is continuing to provide new End of Journey rewards as was introduced in Season 17, with two new cosmetic rewards for those who complete the entirety of the Season Journey. These rewards will be the Laurels of Knowledge portrait and the Cadaverous pet.

 Seasonal Conquests

 Want to prepare your Conquests plans for Season 27? Here are all the conquests you'll face this season!

• Sprinter & Speed Racer
  
• Avarice & Avaritia
  
• Boss Mode & Worlds Apart
  
• The Thrill & Superhuman
  
• Masters of the Universe & Master of Sets
  

 Season 27 Starter Guides

Any players looking to level quickly and get the best start to Season 27 should browse the selection of starter guides from various content creators below!

Weapon Upgrade & Gambling Suggestions:

If you wait to complete the weekly Challenge Rift for after Season 27 begins, you will be able to begin your season with a stack of materials and gold to jump start your progress! Because of this, it's possible to upgrade a level 70 rare crafted weapon to a legendary and extract that power into your cube to give yourself a damage modifier for leveling. Additionally, with the starting Blood Shards you can gain access to specific items from Kadala at level 1. You will find our item upgrade and blood shard gambling suggestions for the start of this season below!

Ultimate Seasonal Starter Guide:

Level With A Cause

Level With A Cause (#LWAC), a coalition of streamers from the Diablo III community, will be uniting once again for a charity fundraising event during the first three days of the Season 27 opening weekend in Diablo III. This marks the team’s 16th event over the last few years. Several Diablo III community members will be holding live-streams during this weekend in support of this charity drive. During these live-streams, viewers will be able to donate to the SaveTheChildren charity organization. 

Level With A Cause was founded prior to the start of Season 11 of Diablo III and has been a mainstay of the opening weekend of each new season since that time. The LWAC team has raised over $100,000 to date for deserving charities such as Save The Children, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and Take This. LWAC hopes to continue to grow and raise even more money for charities in the future. If you are a streamer looking to participate, more info can be found on the LWAC website. As a viewer, you can simply search for LWAC within stream titles on Twitch during the August 26th to 28th event.

​

In the U.S. and around the world, Save The Children gives children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. When crisis strikes, they are always among the first to respond and the last to leave. They do whatever it takes to save children, transforming their lives and the future we share.

You can donate to the Level With a Cause charity event here!

Challenge Rift - Week 270

Challenge Rift Week 270 is live! Because Season 27 begins this Friday, we advise that you DO NOT complete the challenge rift until after you've made your seasonal character! This week the Challenge Rift features the Wizard! If you are curious how Challenge Rift builds are chosen each week, you can view this official blog post!

Patch 2.7.4 Changes

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment (Official Post)

Patch Notes

Below you will find the patch notes for the upcoming update to Diablo III: Patch 2.7.4.

Note: All changes apply to all versions of Diablo III, including PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC unless otherwise indicated.

Season 27

Season 27 introduces a new type of consumable item called Angelic Crucibles. Once uncovered by Nephalem, these heavenly artifacts can be used to Sanctify any equippable Legendary item. Sanctifying an item reforges it to have perfect Ancient-level stats on all affixes while also preserving the item's Legendary Power. In addition, this process adds one of three new powers unique to each class.

Season Theme Details:

• Angelic Crucibles and Sanctified items can only be acquired in Seasonal play and will not transfer to your non-seasonal character when the season ends.
• Angelic Crucibles can drop anywhere in Sanctuary at level 70.
• Players can obtain as many Sanctified items as they would like, however, only one Sanctified item can be equipped at a time.
• Sanctified items can be Sanctified again using another Angelic Crucible.
• No stats are preserved when Sanctifying an item.
• Only level 70 equippable items can be Sanctified—crafted items cannot be Sanctified.
• Followers cannot equip Sanctified items.
• The drop rate of Angelic Crucibles has been doubled.

Developer's Note: We heard your feedback regarding the Angelic Crucible drop rate. . . then we doubled it.

New Class-Specific Sanctified Powers

Barbarian

• Whirlwind pulls in and holds all enemies within 25 yards.
• Hammer of the Ancients hits in all directions around the Barbarian. Every tenth cast of Hammer of the Ancients unleashes a powerful shockwave.
  • The shockwave now deals 10x damage.
• Hitting enemies generates stacks of Tempest Rhythm. Activating Wrath of the Berserker consumes 50 stacks of Tempest Rhythm and startles enemies within 16 yards, causing them to take 2% increased damage per stack for 20 seconds. Max 50 stacks.

Crusader

• Blessed Hammer now crackles with energy, damaging enemies within 15 yards of its path. All runes but Dominion now throw the hammer in a direct path in front of the Crusader.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Blessed Hammer to stop when hitting allies.
• Every two seconds, call down Fist of the Heavens on a random nearby enemy. After casting Steed Charge, this effect occurs more rapidly for five seconds.
  • Updated the visual effects of the Fist of the Heavens Sanctified power to differentiate it from Fist of the Heavens cast by players.
• After casting Falling Sword, you descend from the sky with two Archangels that can cast Consecration and Condemn.
  • Updated the Archangels abilities to not benefit from bonuses and removed the Heaven's Fury skill.
  • Archangels no longer take damage.
  • Removed the cooldown to spawn Archangels when casting Falling Sword. A maximum of two Archangels can be present at a time.
  • The damage done by Archangels has been reduced.
  • The Archangels will no longer cast Condemn and Consecration immediately upon being summoned.
  • The Archangels damage has been reduced 33% of its previous value.

Demon Hunter

• Strafe now casts the last non-channeled Hatred spending ability cast.
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the Strafe sanctified power to stop casting the Hatred spending ability.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Multishot visual effects to fire in the wrong direction.
• Casting Vengeance unleashes a barrage of rockets that deal damage equal to a percentage of the maximum life enemies possess. The number of rockets fired increases over 30 seconds. Elites and Bosses receive less damage per rocket.
  • Fixed a bug in the tooltip to correctly state that damage is equal to a percentage of maximum life, not current life.
• Firing Cluster Arrow no longer drops explosive ordinance. Instead, it concentrates its explosive force into piercing rays of light.
  • Updated the Cluster Arrow tooltip to clarify the power and potential interactions with other skills.
  • Adjusted the animation to feel more fluid.
  • Updated the Cluster Arrow visual effects and sounds.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Cluster Arrow from proccing Restraint and Thrill of the Hunt.
  • Fixed a bug where Cluster Arrow didn’t properly cost 40 Hatred.

Monk

• Casting Wave of Light now summons a bell at the target location that deals damage when any player attacks the bell. Up to five bells can be active at one time.
  • The Shattering Light rune now respects which way you’re facing when you strike the bell, and your bells can no longer proc your own bells.
  • Updated the tooltip to reflect that other players can attack summoned bells.
  • Added sounds to the Wave of Light Sanctified power.
  • Bells no longer count as kills to other players.
  • Bells now despawn if not destroyed within 10 seconds.
• All Way of the Hundred Fists combo punches use the second stage combo punch. Consecutive hits from Way of the Hundred Fists increases its damage by 2%. Max 350 stacks.
• The target of your Seven-Sided Strike is barraged with spiritual punches for 15 seconds. This can only affect one enemy at a time.

Necromancer

• Your Golem now picks up corpses within 20 yards. Each corpse it stores allows you to cast any corpse spending ability with the max number of corpses consumed per cast. Up to 30 corpses can be stored.
  • Updated the tooltip to clarify which Corpse skills are impacted by the Sanctified power.
• Enemies within 50 yards are constantly assaulted by the Army of the Dead - Unconventional Warfare while this item is equipped.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an unintended interaction with Fate's Vow and the Army of the Dead Sanctified power.
• Hitting enemies with Death Nova five consecutive times adds a spirit that afflicts an enemy every fifth cast of Death Nova. Up to three spirits can be sent at a time.

Witch Doctor

• Enemies affected by Locust Swarm are also Haunted. When you cast Piranhas, all Haunted enemies within 60 yards are pulled into the pool. A lesser enemy stunned by Bogadile is instantly killed. Elites and Bosses stunned by Bogadile take massive damage.
  • Added a visual effect to indicate the area where monsters are pulled in by Piranhas.
• Horrify becomes an aura that causes enemies to receive 100% more damage and deal 15% less damage in addition to its other effects.
• You summon two Gargantuans and three Zombie Dogs periodically. Gargantuans gain the effect of the Restless Giant rune. Zombie Dogs gain the effect of all runes. Enemies hit by Sacrifice are Immolated, causing them to take 100% more damage from your Pets.

Wizard

• Your Storm Armor charges over 30 seconds. Casting Storm Armor at full charge releases a powerful thunderbolt, instantly killing a random enemy within 30 yards. Bosses and Elites are not killed but take significant damage.
• Arcane Orb now periodically spawns up to four orbiting charges that will generate an additional orb when cast. All charges from the Arcane Orbit rune now detonate at the same time.
• Magic Missile fires 10 missiles and gains the effect of the Seeker rune.
  • Reduced the number of Magic Missiles from 20 to 10.

Developer's Note: With the Lords of Hell Season, we explored what Nephalem would do if they possessed the powers of Hell. This season we invite players to witness what Nephalem can accomplish with the powers of Heaven. Our goal with the 21 unique class-powers was to introduce changes to skills that can redefine the way you play a build or set. We're excited to see how players will harness the powers of Heaven in Season 27.

General Updates

• Adventure Mode is now unlocked for all accounts by default. Players are no longer required to complete the Campaign to access Adventure mode.
• Default difficulty selection has been updated to be consistent for all players and platforms. All players now have access to Normal-Torment 6 difficulties by default, and upon reaching level 70 with a character, players gain access to Torment 7–Torment 16.
• Uber Boss Realms now automatically close 60 seconds after the Uber Bosses have been defeated. Additional portals to the same Uber Boss Realm can now be opened in a single game session.
• The Experience rewarded upon completion of an Echoing Nightmare has been reduced by 83%.

Developer's Note: With Echoing Nightmares transitioning from a Seasonal theme to a permanent feature moving forward, we felt it was necessary to dial back the Experience rewards to avoid players feeling obligated to maximize their time spent inside the activity. Our vision for Echoing Nightmares is to be a fun bonus activity, like the Vault, that serves as a good source of loot and Augment materials. We've also made several changes to Adventure mode and difficulty unlocks—these will align the Diablo III experience across all platforms for new players and should make it easier to jump into your preferred activity. Lastly, we improved the Uber Boss flow so that players and groups can kill multiple rounds of bosses without having to remake games.

Item Changes

General

• Guardian's Jeopardy (2-piece bonus): Your melee damage reduction is increased by 1% per 1000 base Vitality from equipped items. Your missile damage reduction is increased by 1% per 1000 base Strength, Dexterity, or Intelligence from equipped items depending on your class.
• Guardian's Jeopardy (3-piece bonus): You gain an additional 100% of your base Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality attributes from equipped items.

Developer's Note: We've heard from players that the Crafted 3-piece sets have had some of the most significant impacts on itemization, so we're introducing another to add more choice.

Crusader

• Armor of Akkhan (2-piece bonus): Judgment has no cooldown and gains the effect of every rune.
• Armor of Akkhan (4-piece bonus): Attacks from Phalanx Avatars reduce the cooldown of Akarat's Champion by 0.5 seconds, and also apply Condemn when attacking enemies that is affected by Judgment.
  • Fixed a typo in the Armor of Akkhan 4-piece bonus.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed any attack to proc the 4-piece bonus to reduce the cooldown of Akarat's Champion.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the damage bonus of Akkhan's 6-piece to sometimes not work with Phalanx Avatars.
  • Updated the visual effect of Phalanx Avatars proccing Condemn to reduce visual clutter.
  • Updated the AI of Phalanx Avatars to prioritize targets around the player.
  • “Increases Phalanx Damage” affixes and the Enforcer Legendary Gem can now benefit Phalanx Condemns.
• Eternal Union: Increases the duration of summoned Phalanx Bowmen and Bodyguard indefinitely.

Developer's Note: Our goal with the Armor of Akkhan rework is to narrow the focus of the set to give a distinctive identify, highlighting a fantasy where the Crusader is the Knight-Commander, passing judgment on the enemies of the Light.

Necromancer

• Trag'Oul's Avatar (2-piece bonus): Blood Rush and Siphon Blood gains the effect of every rune. Your Life-spending abilities no longer cost Essence.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Siphon Blood - Power Shift rune damage bonus to be multiplicative.
• Trag'Oul's Avatar (4-piece bonus): While at full Life, your healing from skills is added to your maximum Life for 45 seconds, up to 300% more.
• Trag'Oul's Avatar (6-piece bonus): Your Life-spending abilities deal 10,000% increased damage and your healing from skills is increased by 100%.
• Iron Rose: Attacking with Siphon Blood has a 100% chance to cast a free Blood Nova. After cumulatively losing 10% of your maximum Life, your Death Nova deals 40% increased damage for 60 seconds. This effect stacks up to 10 times.
• Bloodtide Blade: Death Nova deals 300-400% increased damage for every enemy within 25 yards, up to 25 enemies.
• Funerary Pick: Siphon Blood drains blood from 2 additional targets. Each target takes 250-300% increased damage from you unless there is only 1 target, then it gains double the increased damage. The bonus from Siphon Blood - Power shift is now 20% per stack and benefits all skills.

Developer's Note: We wanted to recapture the Blood Necromancer fantasy of Trag'Oul's Avatar and increase its effectiveness against single targets.

Wizard

• Delsere's Magnum Opus (2-piece bonus): Casting Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Magic Missile, Shock Pulse, Spectral Blade, Electrocute, or Arcane Torrent also casts Slow Time at them. This effect will not trigger if the target is already inside a Slow Time bubble. The cooldown of Teleport will reset while you're inside bubbles generated from this set or cast by you.
• Delsere's Magnum Opus (4-piece bonus): You take 75% reduced damage while you have a Slow Time active. Allies inside your Slow Time gain half benefit.
• Delsere's Magnum Opus (6-piece bonus): Enemies affected by your Slow Time and for 5 seconds after exiting take 12,500% increased damage from your Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Magic Missile, Shock Pulse, Spectral Blade, Electrocute, and Arcane Torrent abilities.
• Crown of the Primus: Slow Time gains the effect of every rune except Point of No Return and permanently follows you.
• Tal Rasha's Elements (2-piece bonus): Damaging enemies with Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning will grant immunity to that element and cause a Meteor of the same damage type to fall from the sky. The same meteor cannot happen twice in a row.
• Tal Rasha's Elements (4-piece bonus): Arcane, Cold, Fire, and Lightning attacks each increase all of your resistances by 50% for 8 seconds.
• The Smoldering Core: Lesser enemies are now lured to your Meteor impact areas. Meteors deals 40-50% increased damage on consecutive hits to the same target. This stacks up to 10 times.
  • Fixed a typo in The Smoldering Core's tooltip.
• Mirror Ball: Magic Missile fires 2 extra missiles and deals 400-500% increased damage.
• Mempo of Twilight: Meteor Shower rune is now applied to all casted Meteors and deals 300–400% increased damage.

Developer's Note: Delsere's Magnum Opus has been feeling weak, clunky and isn't meeting the desired gameplay flow, so we've streamlined the playstyle to make it more engaging, allowing Wizards to feel like masters of time. The core of Tal Rasha's Elements has changed over time, so we're revisiting it to reintroduce a playstyle that utilizes Meteor.

Monk

• Inna's Mantra (6-piece bonus): Gain the passive abilities of the five runed Mystic Allies at all times. Attacking enemies creates your chosen Mystic Ally that lasts 15 seconds, up to 10 Mystic Allys. The damage of your Mystic Allies is increased by 900% for each Mystic Ally you have out.
• Bindings of the Lesser Gods: Enemies hit by your Cyclone Strike take 150-200% increased damage from your Mystic Ally for 5 seconds. Split Fire Allies gain 3 times this bonus.

Developer's Note: Inna's Mantra Monks have been riding high on the waves of success for several seasons, so it's time to bring in the nerf shark.

Demon Hunter

• Strafe: Updated base skill to allow any equipped weapon, rather than requiring a Bow.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that prevented the Legendary Spear Empyrean Messenger from dropping.
• Captain Crimson's Trimmings: Fixed a bug that caused the 3-piece set bonus to occasionally drop off.
• Updated Bone Spike and Siphon Blood tooltips to reflect the appropriate damage values.
• Fixed a bug that caused Sanctified items to not always roll with Ancient-level stats.
• Fixed a bug where Slow Time and Archon Slow Time stacked.

We’ll see you in Sanctuary, Nephalem!
-The Diablo III Team

Diablo II: Resurrected PTR 2.5—Terror Zones Now Live

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment (Official Post)

Welcome back!

 

Our next testing period, PTR 2.5, goes live on August 25 at 10 a.m. PDT. We’re excited to share that for this PTR we will be debuting Terror Zones—an experimental feature—and introducing a variety of bug fixes to address feedback the community has provided us.

---

Quest Log

Terror Zones

PTR Focus and Details

Patch Notes

How to Participate

---

Terror Zones

The journey to level 99 is a celebrated experience for players and quite the milestone if achieved—a rite of passage, even. We want to offer an alternative to repeatedly farming Baal, Diablo, or Nihlathak. We also want the journey to level 99 to be accessible to a larger population of players, full of variety, and most importantly, challenging—this is where Terror Zones come in. As we get into details, please note that players can choose to opt-out of Terror Zones if desired.

 

When playing a Terror Zone-enabled game, every hour, the armies of the Burning Hells will focus their demonic might on specific zones, terrorizing them. The monsters in these zones will be at least two levels higher than your current level or their original level, up to a maximum per difficulty. The experience received and the loot dropped by killing a terrorized monster will be based on this new level. In addition, terrorized monsters will also grant additional experience points.

 

Here are the level details for each monster type per difficulty:

 

Normal

• Base: +2 levels up to level 45
• Champion: +4 levels up to level 47
• Unique: +5 levels up to level 48

Nightmare

• Base: +2 levels up to level 71
• Champion: +4 levels up to level 73
• Unique: +5 levels up to level 74

Hell

• Base: +2 levels up to level 96
• Champion: +4 levels up to level 98
• Unique: +5 levels up to level 99

The base player level used for the above calculations are taken from the creator of the game. If the host leaves the game, a new player will be selected for the base.

Upon entering a Terror Zone-enabled game, you'll be informed of the current terrorized areas through a message sent to you via the Chat Box. When the time for new terrorized zones draws near, you will be informed of the impending changes via the Chat Box.

 

In addition, you will be informed that you’re entering a terrorized area by several indicators:

• Unique iconography next to a terrorized monster's name
• On-screen text and messaging
• Special audio cue
• In-game text on the auto-map

Here’s a complete list of all the zones that can become terrorized during the PTR:

 

Act I

Blood Moor and Den of Evil

Cold Plains and The Cave

Burial Grounds, The Crypt, and the Mausoleum

Dark Wood

Black Marsh

The Forgotten Tower

Jail

Cathedral and Catacombs

Tristram

Moo Moo Farm

Act II

Sewers

Rocky Waste and Stony Tomb

Dry Hills and Halls of the Dead

Far Oasis and Maggot Lair

Lost City, Valley of Snakes, and Claw Viper Temple

Harem and Palace Cellar

Arcane Sanctuary

Tal Rasha's Tombs

Act III

Spider Forest and Spider Cavern

Flayer Jungle and Flayer Dungeon

Lower Kurast

Kurast Bazaar, Ruined Temple, and Disused Fane

Kurast Sewers

Travincal

Durance of Hate

Act IV

Outer Steppes and Plains of Despair

River of Flame

Chaos Sanctuary

Act V

Bloody Foothills

Frigid Highlands

Glacial Trail

Crystalline Passage and Frozen River

Arreat Plateau

Nihlathak's Temple, Halls of Anguish, Halls of Pain, and Halls of Vaught

Ancient's Way and Icy Cellar

Worldstone Keep, Throne of Destruction, and Worldstone Chamber

*Please note that during the duration of the PTR, changes to the behaviors of Terror Zones may occur based on learnings from testing and player feedback.

---

PTR Focus and Details

To support player testing and content exploring, we will be providing character templates in a variety of popular builds at varying levels. As the PTR progresses, please be aware there may be periodic maintenance, outages, or updates based on player feedback. Any changes implemented during this PTR period to Terror Zones or other gameplay aspects are not set in stone. We are testing Terror Zones as a new, experimental feature with the expressed desire to inject additional fun into Diablo II: Resurrected. To ensure Terror Zones provide an experience that best serves our players, we will need your assistance and urge you to provide any feedback you may have.

 

There will be an in-game survey located on the Diablo II: Resurrected main menu screen where you can provide feedback around Terror Zones. Alternatively, you can leave your feedback in the PTR Feedback forum. If you discover any bugs, please report them in the PTR Bug Report forum.

Gameplay/Quality of Life

• Added additional warning text to the mercenary confirmation prompt if your previous mercenary still has items equipped.
• Damage value for the Paladin’s Thorns aura is now present on the character menu.
• Dead Finger Mages now reset correctly to their original state when revived by Necromancers.
• Fixed an issue where casting delays could desync at very high ping.
• Fixed an issue where monster unique mods were triggering from another unique mod's trigger. For example, monsters that were both lightning and fire enchanted created an explosion every time they were put into hit recovery (Ex: repeatedly hit by Warcry).
• Fixed a rare issue where item names on the ground would erratically flicker and shift while pathing around them.
• Fixed an issue where players and monsters were able to walk through doors that visually looked closed.
• Fixed an issue where certain Rune Words could not be repaired in the same game session they were created.
• Fixed an issue where loading a character on a console that was created on PC was causing texture and lighting issues on console.
• Fixed an issue that would occur when binding a skill to a multi-key binding (Ex: Ctrl + X, Alt + X) the action bound to the first key became unbound from that key.
• Fixed an issue where the game name and password were not properly updating and displaying in-game when toggling the setting for showing it.
• Fixed an issue where updates to stats, skills, or quests were displaying when no updates were available.
• Fixed an issue where hardcore character names were not displaying in red text on the character list.
• Fixed an issue with the Legacy Graphics gamble refresh icon containing graphical artifacts and corruption.
• Fixed an issue where single and dual-wielding basic attacks with Claw weapons could have inconsistent attack speeds.
• Fixed an issue where flags associated with previous characters (Ladder, Hardcore, and Classic) would persist for newly created characters in the Legacy Graphics Character Creation Screen.
• Fixed an issue where the “buy” button legend in the vendor window would not display on the first weapons tab.
• Fixed an issue where certain VFX were causing graphical corruption when fighting Uber Diablo.
• Fixed an issue where Iron Golems could lose the aura granted by the item they were created with when the Golem was frozen.
• Chosen game settings now persist in lobby game creation and filtering rather than being reset.
• Fixed an issue where Iron Golems created in a previous game would disappear instead of teleporting to you.
• Fixed an issue where performing a weapon swap during a trade would sometimes freeze the game.
• Fixed an issue where visuals effects granted by set bonuses would sometimes toggle on and off.
• Fixed an issue where environmental screen-space VFX were not playing.
• Fixed an issue where Iron Golems summoned through a charge of the skill (Ex: granted by Metalgrid) would disappear when performing an inventory update.
• Fixed an issue where Iron Golems created by a charged skill would not save between games.
• Fixed an issue where players on console and controller would sometimes get the red-flash indicator for health loss while performing an inventory update.
• Fixed an issue where the Horadric Cube could not be quick-dropped if there were items in it when playing on console or with a controller.
• Fixed an issue where similar items weren't grouping together when auto-populating into the belt while using a controller.
• Fixed various issues when quick-moving a belt with items in the additional belt slots it provides while using a controller.
• Fixed an issue where you sometimes couldn't quick-equip an item that has its requirement met by another equipped item.
• Fixed an issue where an item with requirement reductions would sometimes still show as requirements not met when equipped on a mercenary.
• Fixed a desync with mana values when the consumption and regeneration of mana happened in a short frame window.
• Fixed an issue where Quick Cast would sometimes restore the previous skill to the wrong mouse button.
• Act V Dual-Wielding mercenaries now accurately animates two attack swings instead of one.
• Fixed an issue where there were no corresponding Suicide Minion versions of the three guest Minion variants. These guest Minions will no longer visually transform into a skeleton and continuously stack explosion damage when whipped by Nihlathak or an Overseer.
• Fixed an issue where Fist of the Heavens could unintentionally be used when it was bound on controller or assigned to left click on M+KB.
• Fixed an issue where pets summoned by "chance to cast" skills on items would disappear after performing an inventory update.
• Fixed an issue where Ravens summoned by charged skills would disappear after a few seconds.
• Necromancer
  • Difficulty penalties for life drain now apply to the Blood Golem's attacks.
  • Fixed an issue where Blood Golem was not correctly stealing life from a PvP opponent.

Localization

• Updated gender pronoun strings that referred to the player from “his / her” to the neutral counterpart “their.”
• Added a prefix for online Uber Diablo messages received in offline games.
• Added localization translations for the automap tooltip.
• Fixed an issue where the maximum gold in-game text for Polish, Russian, Mexican Spanish, and Portuguese languages were exceeding their bounds in the UI.
• Fixed a variety of equipped skill names that were exceeding their bounds in the UI for the Russian and Polish languages.
• Removed unnecessary spacing between tabs on PC in the quest log, waypoints, and player stash UI screens when playing with a controller while using the large font option.
• Changed the date formatting for Japan to be displayed as Year / Month / Day.
• Fixed a typo in the Japanese translations for quick equip and unequip to mercenary tooltip.

PC-Specific Fixes

• Added functionality to revoke and undo friend rejection so it’s no longer a permanent rejection.
• Fixed an issue where the "/friends list" chat command was being truncated after 256 characters.
• Removed the ability to bind the Print Screen key.
• Fixed an issue where if the players opened chat after dying with Legacy Graphics active, all controls stopped functioning.
• Fixed an issue if a linked item in chat exceeded one line, the item was unable to be selected and shown.
• Fixed an issue where if a player entered the lobby, then entered a game, the difficulty selection would be blank upon returning to the lobby.
• Removed the scroll bar and buttons from the autosuggest menu for chat commands.
• Fixed an issue where if a skill was bound, then the key was removed from the skill binding, the unbound skill would still display without a binding.
• Improved the scrolling on the ladder season, ladder type, and class drop-down in the ladder tab in the online lobby.
• Fixed a tooltip that incorrectly stated “Show game name and password” to correctly state “Show game name.”
• Fixed an issue where the latency indicator visual in the lobby was off center.
• Fixed an issue where if the player activates controller mode while in the lobby, the latency indicator visual would disappear.
• Skills can now always be set to the left or right slots, regardless of if you meet the requirements to use them.
• Fixed an issue where rings were always quick-equipped to the right-hand slot, even if the left-hand slot was open.
• M+KB can now quick-equip and quick-unequip items to and from their character and mercenary.
• Fixed an issue where dragging an item onto a mercenary's portrait was not swapping their currently equipped item.
• Text-to-speech now uses Voice (installed on Windows) which corresponds to the voice language selected (Set in Battle.net launcher).
• Text-to-speech option reads out all chat commands regardless of channel.
• Text-to-speech, when reading an item link, will now only read the item text instead of including various numbers and letters.

Stability

• Fixed a crash on PC that occurred when resizing the client window while in the lobby.
• Improved game join and game create backend request for a smoother player experience.
• Various game stability improvements.

---

How To Participate

To participate in the public test, you must have a Diablo II: Resurrected game license attached to a Battle.net account in good standing (Ex: one that hasn't been suspended or banned). In addition, you will also need to download and install the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app if you have not already done so.

• Step 1: Restart the Battle.net desktop app.

   

• Step 2: Navigate to the Diablo II: Resurrected tab on the left-hand menu.

   

• Step 3: On the Diablo II: Resurrected screen, there is a drop-down menu right above the "Play" button (note that this may say "Install" if you do not have Diablo II: Resurrected currently installed). Select "PTR: Diablo II: Resurrected" from this drop-down menu before proceeding.

   

• Step 4: Click Install to begin the installation process.

   

Your PTR account will be created automatically if you do not already have one. The PTR is available in all supported languages, and accounts from all regions are eligible to participate. For additional assistance with installing and launching the PTR, click here.

---

Thank You for Playing

Our team is incredibly thankful for your continued support and collaboration. We look forward to seeing you continue to slay demons in Diablo II: Resurrected for many years to come!

If you want to learn more about Diablo II: Resurrected, check out our website here, or for real-time updates, follow our official Twitter @Diablo.

Diablo IV Quarterly Update - August 2022

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment (Official Post)

Diablo IV Quarterly Update—August 2022

Blizzard EntertainmentAugust 18, 2022

 

 

Hello and welcome to our third Diablo IV Quarterly Update of 2022. We hope you enjoyed last quarter's dive into the playstyles of our final launch class, the Necromancer. That blog and our previous updates can be read here if you missed out.

 

Today we'll be talking about some of what’s coming to Diablo IV after the game ships. This is often referred to as a live service, and we have ambitious plans here. Our associate game director for live service, Joseph Piepiora, and our director of product, Kegan Clark, are here to talk details. Everything they describe is in addition to delivering the complete Diablo IV experience, the rich endgame features you expect at launch, and regular expansions that continue the story.

 

Many of you enjoy the Seasons in Diablo II: Resurrected and Diablo III and have asked for more extensive season support. We agree one of the most fun ways to play Diablo is through Seasons, so we're making the first one available soon after launch and building a dedicated team to bring you up to four Seasons a year, each with major new features, questlines, enemies, legendary items, and more.

 

Diablo IV's Seasons are modeled after those of Diablo III. When a new season begins, all the characters from the prior season are moved to the Eternal Realm, where you can keep playing, leveling up, and collecting loot. To play in the new season, you’ll create a fresh character and experience the new seasonal features and content while leveling up alongside other players. This, along with capping paragon points in Diablo IV, ensures that your effort and skill—measured by both dexterity and theorycrafting —determine how powerful your character becomes. It also allows players who missed the last season to participate. This season design requires that all sources of character power come from playing the game, so you will not be able to pay for power in Diablo IV.

 

You can read about our monetization philosophy below, along with details on how the Cosmetics Shop and optional Season Pass support and enhance Seasons.

 

We hope you enjoy this update and look forward to your thoughts and reactions. Later this year, we'll be testing our endgame systems. We'll also be testing features that enable players who have completed the game's campaign to flag it as completed for new characters they create and allow characters on the eternal realm to contribute to seasonal progress. Finally, stay tuned for a winter blog.

We're grateful to have you with us on this journey. Thank you for playing the games we make.

 

-Joe Shely,
Game Director, Diablo IV

---

Table of Contents

• Seasons
• New Content
• Refreshing the Meta
• Improving the Game
• Live Events
• Season Journey
• Season Pass
• The Shop
• Closing Thoughts

---

Seasons

Hello, Heroes of Sanctuary! My name is Joe Piepiora, the associate game director responsible for game systems and our live service. Today I finally get to talk about our high-level plans for Diablo IV’s seasonal content updates. We are in the exciting position of delivering the high-quality, quarterly releases Diablo IV deserves.

 

As our game director Joe Shely noted earlier, we are pursuing a seasonal reset structure for our live game—Diablo is a game about choice and possibility! We feel it is at its best when you get a clean slate to start from in a season, picking a class, customizing your build, and chasing down items that support it along the way. This affords us several advantages and chief among them is that we can really shake the box of Diablo IV with each season, creating unique experiences with each of our quarterly releases.

---

New Content

We think it is important that players see that the game is changing in meaningful ways. Each season will be released with a fresh new gameplay feature and questline that introduces new challenges, mysteries, and possibilities into the level-up experience. This is something players should begin to experience before the end of their first hour of play. One of the benefits of our seasonal direction is that it enables fun, new ways to play throughout your character’s progression.

 

Each Season's new questline will reveal more of the world of Sanctuary and your character’s place in it. Here, we get an opportunity to introduce new characters or revisit old ones while exploring the lore and content of the season.

---

Refreshing the Meta

Diablo IV is a vast game—we want to ensure that we are keeping existing content and features in a place where they remain fun and challenging to participate in. To that end, we will always be evaluating the state of the game to regularly revitalize older stomping grounds.

 

One clear example here is looking at the relative balance between classes, builds, and powers. Diablo is a game that is about creating exciting, overpowered builds, and while we don’t want to balance the fun out of the experience, we don’t want to create situations in which imprecise tuning squash creativity.

 

We will also be constantly adding new legendary and unique items, paragon boards, glyphs, and more that will continually refresh the meta and create new build opportunities.

---

Improving the Game

With each season we’ll be looking into ways to simply improve the player experience. As a live product, we intend to hold Diablo IV to an exceedingly high standard. We are here to build a live game that we can be proud of, and the best way to do that is by engaging our players directly.

 

Based on feedback that we receive, the team will identify quality-of-life features and polish work that can be done to improve the overall game experience and invite the community to vote upon their priority. While we cannot always flip a switch to tackle something immediately, you can rest assured that we will be active in improving the quality of the game experience for years to come.

---

Live Events

Sanctuary is a living world filled with people, creatures, and factions striving to meet their own ends. Attentive players should be on the lookout for new live events that will crop up each season. An example of a live event might be the warning of an impending invasion of the Drowned, which may last a weekend, or the arrival of a strange peddler amidst the crags of the Dry Steppes. These events provide gateways to new adventures and unique rewards.

---

Season Journey

Alongside our major season releases, we see the return of the Season Journey. Players are pushed to explore Sanctuary anew, earning limited-time rewards with each chapter of the Season Journey that is completed. Completing the Season Journey is quite a feat, with the final step demanding the character overcome an extremely difficult encounter with an especially deadly foe. With future Season Journeys, we are regularly adding pinnacle-level difficulty challenges for players to complete, proving their worth and earning unique cosmetic rewards besides.

 

Like Diablo III, the Season Journey is free for all players. Completing Season Journey objectives also grants progress toward the Season Pass, a new feature with a battle pass-style progression that advances alongside the Season Journey, enabling players to earn even more rewards just by playing. The Season Pass has both free rewards (cosmetics, premium currency, and gameplay boosts) and paid rewards (cosmetics and premium currency only).

---

Season Pass

Hey everyone, I’m Kegan Clark, director of product for Diablo IV here to talk about our approach to live service monetization in Diablo IV. As we’ve discussed previously, Diablo IV will be a full-price game with a Cosmetics Shop and Season Pass—none of which provide any pay-for-power options. Our goal in designing our in-game purchases is that we want to create beautiful things which add value to players’ experience of the game.

 

The scale of Diablo IV Seasons is much more ambitious than what we've done in the past on Diablo III, with a large development team dedicated to Seasons after launch. Diablo IV will be supported by an army of developers for years to come. With all the exciting plans we have for Seasons, we want them to be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of whether they buy anything from the shop. I’m grateful for the opportunity to finally share more with the community about our live service model.

 

Seasons will add all-new gameplay, quests, challenges, meta changes, and quality-of-life improvements. The Season Pass recognizes players’ dedication, with greater rewards unlocking as you play more throughout the Season. There will be a single track of rewards with Free Tiers that are unlocked just by playing the game and leveling, and Premium Tiers which provide no in-game power or advantage over other players. The Free Tiers of the pass will provide gameplay boosts to all players—things which make the journey of leveling up a fresh seasonal character faster and more streamlined. In contrast, the Premium Tier rewards are focused on aesthetics, providing a huge value in the form of cosmetics and Premium Currency. Many of the rewards embody the seasonal theme, helping players show off their participation in that Season.

 

Let’s talk more about what players can expect:

 

The Season Pass has Free Tiers and Premium Tiers. Throughout the pass players can earn a variety of rewards for free, just by playing. At any point during the Season, players can purchase the Premium Pass to unlock the ability to earn Premium rewards tiers containing seasonally themed Cosmetics and Premium Currency.

 

The Season Pass awards cosmetics. Like the Shop, these don’t affect gameplay. Additionally, certain cosmetic types are exclusive to the Season Pass.

 

The Season Pass awards Premium Currency. Players can spend this currency on cosmetics offered in the shop.

 

The Season Pass awards free Season Boosts. Boosts accelerate players’ progress for the duration of the Season. For example, a Season Boost might accelerate XP earned to make leveling multiple characters within a season faster. Because they affect gameplay, Season Boosts are free rewards for all players. We want to be clear that players can’t unlock Season Boosts more quickly through purchases--there is no way to unlock more boosts, or boosts at a faster pace, by spending money.

 

Players can purchase Tiers-but they won’t speed up getting Season Boosts. Players can’t upgrade Season Boosts just by purchasing Tiers, because they’ll also have to earn level milestones to apply them. All other Tier rewards can be unlocked instantly by purchasing Tiers. In other words, there’s no way to shortcut getting Season Boosts by buying Tiers; they must be earned.

The Season Journey accelerates Season Pass progression. While any play style can progress through the Season Pass, min-maxers can focus on Season Journey objectives to advance more quickly.

---

The Shop

The way we approached designing the Shop and the cosmetics within it was by thinking about the experience we want players to have. We want buying things to feel good--before, during, and after purchase. So, if players choose to buy something, it should be because they want to, not because they feel like they have to. It should also be clear to players exactly what they are getting before they choose to buy, with no unpleasant surprises.

 

The Shop’s cosmetics build on top of the foundation of a huge variety of transmogs from weapons and armors players will find in-game. It’s also important to us that the Shop is grounded within Diablo’s world, so our cosmetics are holistic fantasies, the individual components of which can be mixed and matched with transmogs from armors acquired in-game for endless customization options.

 

A screen capture of the Shop's internal beta.

 

Let’s talk more about what players can expect:

 

The Shop sells cosmetics for Premium Currency. Cosmetics give players even more options to customize the visual appearance of their characters. Nothing offered in the Shop grants a direct or indirect gameplay advantage. So, while many of these may look like powerful pieces of gear, they have no in-game stats.

A screen capture of the Shop's internal beta.

 

The Shop is optional. Players can experience all core and seasonal gameplay features without spending money. Our goal is for players to enjoy going to the Shop, buy something when it catches their fancy, and walk away happy with what they bought.

 

The Shop is transparent. It’s important that players know exactly what to expect before making a purchase. We’ve built preview functionality that enables players to closely examine every detail of the cosmetic on their own characters before deciding to make a purchase.

A screen capture of the Shop's internal beta.

 

The best-looking cosmetics aren’t exclusive to the Shop. Diablo IV will ship with hundreds of transmogs unlockable from drops in-game, including dozens of armor sets of the highest visual quality. There are incredible pieces—Unique and Legendary quality items—for players to find without ever going to the Shop. The Shop offers more diversity of choices, not systematically better choices.

 

A screen capture of the Shop's internal beta.

 

Armor Transmogs in the Shop are usable on all characters of that class. Many of the cosmetics in the Shop are class-specific fantasies, which wouldn’t necessarily make sense visually on other classes. Once you unlock a cosmetic from the Shop for a given class, you can use it on every character of that class on your account. There are special cosmetics exclusive to the Season Pass which celebrate the theme of the Season and look similar across all the classes.

 

The most important guiding principle behind the Shop and Season Pass is to create something players love, look forward to, and appreciate being part of the game. Cosmetics in Diablo IV create new ways for players to express themselves and never provide advantages in-game. Players will experience all the fun of Seasons, whether they spend anything or not. We intend to continue our dialog with players about Shop and Season Pass, and we’ll always listen and seek out the community's feedback about it. It is our sincerest belief that we can work together with the community to keep Diablo IV a living, evolving world for many years to come! Thanks for reading, we’ll be sharing more soon!

---

Closing Thoughts

Wrapping up this Quarterly Update blog, we want players to take comfort in knowing Diablo IV will continue to evolve its offerings post-launch. The introduction of new Seasons, alongside live events, and a returning Season Journey will work in tandem to breathe variety into the game, while also reinforcing its core principle: empowering players to experience Sanctuary as they see fit. We cannot wait for you to explore these systems in the future!