Diablo IV Season 2 Developer Livestream Recap

October 4th, 2023

With the first Developer livestream behind us there is a lot to go over so let's get into it.

Season of Blood Overview

Story
- Our New Main Villain is Lord Zir, he commands all those infected with vampirism within Sanctuary
- Eris, a vampire hunter, is our guide through the story, she's been hunting Lord Zir for a long time and needs our help
- The story begins with the player character contracting vampirism, however, the blood of Lilith saves us from falling under the influence of Lord Zir

New Features

New Dungeons have been added, some will be discovered throughout the story, and one, featured at the end, is the lair of Lord Zir
Many existing Dungeons will also be changed to reflect the influence of Lord Zir
Vampire Powers
- Players have become part vampire
- You'll gain access to 22 unique vampire powers
- The powers, unlike malignant hearts, are geared away from being class-specific, so everyone will be able to make efficient use of any powers they choose

Vampiric Curse
- A new status that, when a creature is killed, their soul drops and can be collected
- When you use your next defensive ability the souls are unleashed and damage enemies around you.
- Other vampiric powers take advantage of this system in different ways
Fueling Vampire Powers
- Players will unlock the ability to equip new and more powerful vampire powers through the "Pact" system
- Pacts appear on armor, every armor piece that drops will have pacts associated with it
- Each vampiric power requires a certain combination and number of different armor pacts to equip
- As players do certain activities they'll have the ability to remove pacts from armor pieces and place them on other armor pieces
  - You can also get untied pacts to drop from the new blood harvest event and the new blood seeker enemy type (discussed below)
New Monsters
- Lord Zir commands a new army of minions
  - Shadow Vampires
  - Blood Skeletons
  - Blood Seekers

Blood Seekers
- while the player character is infected with Vapirism they are protected from the influence of Lord Zir due to their consumption of the Blood of Lilith.
- Blood Seekers are other infected heroes who find themselves in a less fortunate situation. Blood Seekers are each of the player classes with different ability sets. They can appear pretty much anywhere from the overworld to dungeons. When killed they drop a massive amount of blood, including potent blood, a currency for unlocking new vampiric powers.

Blood Harvest Event
- Similar to helltides, areas of Sanctuary have fallen to the influence of Lord Zir
- There will always be one blood harvest event active at all times and you can participate in a blood harvest in any world tier
- New Blood Harvest Materials:
  - Bloodlers (Bloodseeker Bait, will spawn large groups of them)
  - Vampiric Keys (will allow you to free prisoners and open caches throughout the Blood Harvest)
  - Hunters Acclaim: Drops during Blood Harvest events, can be spent at a new vendor to unlock gear and other items
  - All Blood Harvest Materials will persist unlike Helltide materials
  - Blood Harvest difficulty and rewards increase at higher world tiers
New Changes For The Eternal and Seasonal Realms

Bosses
- Echos of Vershan
- The Beast in the Ice
- Grigoire The Galvanic Saint
- Duriel King of Maggots
- Lord Zir
The new Bosses will be at varying difficulties with Uber Lilith still being the single most challenging boss in the game
Each boss will have a unique path to summoning, stemming from the endgame activities
- For Example: if you want to hunt Vershan, you need to complete whispers, he’s beneath the Tree of Whispers, so keep doing them and eventually you'll get essence from them and you can go beneath it to summon Vershan, he’ll be surrounded by malignant enemies so be careful
- At World Tier 4 you'll still be able to fight Vershan but, now he'll drop the materials to summon Duriel King of Maggots
- Duriel will be the second hardest boss in the game, you'll need high poison resistance, but killing Duriel will be very rewarding since the boss has a higher-than-normal chance to drop Uber Uniques
- The Beast in Ice: after you complete nightmare dungeons higher than T30, components can drop that can make a new special NM Key that brings you to the beast in ice
- Lord Zir: There is a story version that you'll fight, but also a more challenging version in world tier 4 that you can summon by killing World Bosses and doing Legion events
- Boss materials are tradeable
- Each boss also has their own unique loot table, including uniques, making unique farming possible

Quality of Life Updates

Scrolls of Escape are now consumed if a Hardcore player disconnects while in compact, teleporting them to safety
Incenses now grant a bonus to experience and they persist through death
Xp bonuses are now multiplicative with the world tier bonus
Leveling will be about 40% faster in Season 2
10 unlocked waypoints added to Skip Campaign, 2 in each zone
Renown Rewards will now persist between seasons
You can still do all the sidequests and strongholds on a new character, but all rewards tied to renown will persist, you don’t have to log onto an old character first like before
Overworld monsters in WTIII and WTIV no longer trail the player's level after levels 55 and 75 and instead sit even with the player character
Two Additional Character Slots
Towns and Vendors
- Occultist has set up shop by the Tree of Whispers
- Stashes have been added to all small towns with waypoints
- Additional Stashes have been added to capital cities near important vendors
- Purveyors of Curiosities have set up shop closer to the waypoints in Kyovashad and other main hubs
Mount Changes
- Mounts are now less likely to get stuck or slow down unexpectedly
- Improved mounts automatically jumping over traversals
- Speed
  - Base movement speed increased by 14% top speed remains unchanged
  - Achieving full speed when using mouse and keyboard has been improved
  - The speed boost from Spur duration increased by 50%
  - Using Spur now breaks through barricades
- Cooldowns
  - Manual Dismount was 10 now 5
  - Forced Dismount was 30 now 15
  - Dismount Combat Skill was 10 now 3
Nightmare Dungeon Changes
- Teleporting to a NM Dungeon now takes the player inside the Dungeon instead of outside
- Events: Dungeon events monster density increased. NPCs no longer get one shot in later world tiers.
- Traps: Overall readability has been improved. CC overall has been greatly reduced
- CC across the board has been reduced from monsters and traps
- Paragon Glyph Experience has been increased (Similar mindset to the faster xp, paragon will level faster)
- Afflictions
  - Backstabbers: Close monster attacks from behind cause you to become vulnerable, vulnerable damage taken is increased by x%
  - Monster Critical Resist: Monster attacks reduce the damage of your critical strikes for 3 seconds by x%, stacking up to y%
  - Death Pulse: Prevent death pulses on monsters that have on death explosions. Prevent death pulses from spawning on top of each other.
  - Lightning Storm: Being shocked while in a bubble grants 35% bonus movement speed for 5 seconds. Lighting storm will only start when players are in combat. Lightning storm will only start when the player has a direct path to the bubble.
  - Drifting Shade: Persistent duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. Respawn time increased by 2 seconds.
- Objectives: Completely removed objectives from a handful of dungeons, just find the boss. (Also for normal dungeons) Placed objectives on the critical path through the dungeon.
- Layouts: redesigned many dungeon layouts
World Events
- Legion Events
  - Time reduced from 30 minutes to 25 minutes
  - Warning timer increased from 5 minutes to 10 minutes
  - Fixed an issue where the legion event ping would not display at the edge of player minimaps if a whisper was active for a legion event
- World Boss
  - Spawns have been reduced from 6 hours to 3.5 hours
  - Warning timer increased from 30 minutes to 60 minutes
  - Fixed an issue where the world boss pin would not display at the edge of the players minimap if a whisper was active
  - A message is broadcasted to all players when the world boss is 15 minutes from spawning
- Whispers
  - Gold Rewards from whisper caches have been GREATLY increased
  - XP from Whispers/Helltide has been increased substantially
  - Whisper Caches adhere to the item slot of the cache
  - Nightmare Sigils: Rewarded from whisper Cashes will now always be within 5 levels of the highest level NM D the player has completed in that tier
UI/UX
- Items can be marked as Favorite or Junk in your stash inventory. Favorited items cannot be sold or salvaged
- Extracted Aspects with the same legendary power will be grouped together when sorted in the inventory and stash
- Sorting of normal affixes on items has been improved to be more consistent
- Stash can now be searched and filtered to more quickly find items
- Streamer mode has been implemented: Players can hide character name and battletag
- Combat text has an added option for hiding text (vulnerable, dodge, fortified)
- Auto-run has been added: When pressing the bound key/button, the player character will continuously move in the direction currently faced or of the mouse cursor until another movement action has been initiated
- Minimap has been zoomed out further to capture a wider area
Items
- Gems no longer drop directly as rewards. Now players will earn Gem Shard materials they can use at the jeweler to craft gems.
- Enchantment costs have been reduced overall, initial enchant cost is higher than it was, the subsequent costs go up much more slowly over time.
- Crafting materials will drop in place of lower item power normal magic and rare equipment in WT3 and WT4
- In WT4 you will only see ancestral items, except for sacred legendaries and uniques
- Higher level monsters in WTIII and IV drop sacred and ancestral items of great item power potential
- Item Power cap is 920 for ancestral
- Normal Whisper cache rewards now provide +10 item power. Upgraded caches now provide +20 item power rewards
- Helltide cache rewards now provide of +20 item power value
Smoldering Ashes
- Character level requirement has been reduced, and they will automatically unlock now

News and Announcements

Diablo 4 launching on Steam October 17th

Q&A

Level cap on Paragon Glyphs: The game is held with capped power in mind, however, they are looking for more ways to have a power climb post-level 100
Paragon Reset button/reset scrolls: They hinted at something like this coming soon

Stay tuned! On October 10th there will be the class balance changes and Unique Update (every unique is getting some sort of change)

That's a wrap for our coverage of the Diablo IV Season 2 Developer Livestream. Check back on the 10th as we'll post a full recap on the Items and Class Changes Stream!