Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Diablo 4 Season 2 might have vampires, but the real star of the show are its many quality of life updates for loot, XP gain, mounts and more.
Diablo 4: Season of Blood launches this month, and it’s adding a veritable ton of improvements to address players’ main criticisms of the game - namely its slow XP gain, unsatisfying endgame, Renown grind and useless mounts. If you dropped out of the game because of how long it took to level up and get good loot, this might be the season to pick it back up again.
Blizzard held a developer update to announce a bevy of quality of life updates for the game:
Season of Blood isn’t just adding seasonal content to Diablo 4 - it’s also bringing a ton of changes to address most of the problems players have had with it since launch. First off, Renown grind is going to be a lot easier as players can now carry their Renown over from one season to the next. This means that your additional skill points, potions and more will be available at the start of every season and you won’t have to grind for them again. It will also be much easier for new players to try out seasonal content, as they now have the option to skip the main campaign entirely.
As for XP gains, Blizzard aims for players to reach Level 100 on their characters about 40% faster in Season 2 compared to Season 1. This will ensure that they have more time to spend with their maxed-out characters in the endgame, and the levelling process will generally feel less tedious. Season 2 goes about this by making sure enemies over Level 50 give much more XP when killed, and Incenses and other XP bonuses are now much more effective in generating extra XP for the player.
It’s also going to be a lot easier to move around Sanctuary now. Teleporting to Nightmare Dungeons will now take you directly inside the dungeon instead of leaving you outside, skipping out on an unnecessary loading screen. Mounts are less likely to get stuck on barriers or slow down without warning, and they now have an increased base speed of 15%. Spur duration is also increased, and the ability breaks through barricades as well. Mount ability cooldowns have been reduced by a hefty 50%, and getting back on a mount now takes five seconds instead of 10. In general, using a mount is going to feel a lot more enticing when you’re travelling around the open world and running into mobs.
Endgame activities are also getting several significant additions. Five new endgame bosses are available across Sanctuary, rewarding Unique and Uber Unique items when killed. You’ll just have to tick off different tasks across Sanctuary and collect resources to face off against them. Duriel is now far more likely to drop Uber Uniques, and all bosses have a chance to drop unique cosmetics specific to each boss. Legion events now happen every 25 minutes, and World Bosses spawn every 3 hours and 30 minutes (down from 6 hours). Helltide Chests, Grim Favours and Whispers grant more gold and XP.
This is a lot for one patch, but that’s exactly what players want from these seasonal updates - and it looks like they’re getting it. Blizzard’s full list of quality of life changes for Season 2 are available to read here, but that’s not even all. Another developer update is happening on October 10 to go over class balance changes and more combat updates. Diablo 4 has already had one controversial round of class changes, so let’s hope that Blizzard doesn’t repeat itself in Season 2.
Diablo 4 Season 2 launches on October 17, 2023 and one thing’s for sure: Elon Musk is going to play the hell out of it.