As Diablo 4 Season 4 begins play testing on PTR on April 2, we’re discovering that the developers have made changes in the new season that affect nearly everything about the game. Not only that, Season 4 also reshapes the meaning of character creation and attempts to make them a tool to destroy bosses. This is crazy!

Here, we’ll summarize the top five changes in Season 4 that surprised me the most, which may make you feel that the familiar Diablo 4 has completely disappeared. Without further ado, let’s get started.

More World Tier XP Bonuses

It’s no secret that level 50 marks the beginning of Diablo 4 endgame, as this is when your gear and builds should start to come together.

It is at this stage that you need to clear Capstone Dungeons and their bosses to advance to the next World Tier for more XP and better loot. Previously, it only took a few hours to get to this point, but next season, it will be faster.

The developer has previously introduced in a live broadcast how players in Diablo 4 will gain XP benefits through World Tier difficulties. Starting next season, World Tier 2 has a 50% bonus XP, World Tier 3 has a 150% bonus XP, and World Tier 4 has a 250% bonus XP.

You can expect to see the new endgame crafting system in Season 4 sooner as you progress to higher World Tiers faster. This is an exciting change for those who crave more powerful Diablo 4 items but don't have the time to spend weeks grinding to level 100.

Aspect System Simplified

The powerful buffs Legendary Items or Aspects bring to a build work well. But the original Aspect system forced you to keep Legendary Items or Aspects in your stash in order to put on new gear, which was very annoying.

But in Season 4, not only can you replace gear less frequently, but Legendary Aspects will now be permanently present in your Codex of Power menu.

Most Aspects can be randomly rolled to determine the strength of the bonus number. While Legendary items have increasingly higher bonuses as they roll, you can permanently increase the number in your Codex of Powe by salvaging them at Blacksmith. You can imprint this aspect on other gear as needed without retaining anything in your stash.

This means our risk of using a perfectly rolled aspect on ordinary items will disappear, and it will be easier to try different ones.

The developers seem to have simplified this system so that you can focus on Tempering and Masterworking items later in the game.

Uniques Drop Limit Remove & Item Power Change

The most exciting change is that the number of useless items dropped in Season 4 is about to drop significantly. Because the developers removed the restriction on Uniques, they now drop in World Tier 1 and 2, and monsters of level 55 or higher can even drop Uber Uniques.

For example, Necromancer can even find Black River Scythe before level 50, which causes devastating Corpse Explosions. This way, builds that rely on powerful Uniques will no longer have to wait until the endgame to reach their maximum strength.

The change to item power is also one of the surprising statistics in Diablo 4 and will also make loot more relevant. Previously, it was always bad to find gear with weak stats because of low item power. But in Season 4, item power has been standardized to where you don’t really need to think about it.

Maximum item power gear will always drop from level 95 or higher monsters. This means that by a round level 80, item power will become irrelevant when you run Nightmare Dungeons in World Tier 4. You only need to care about the actual stats of your gear and whether it’s worth upgrading them.

Build More Diversity

Also, Diablo 4 Season 4’s two new crafting systems, Tempering and Masterworking, allow you to add specific statistics to your items.

Whether you want movement speed or class-specific stats, your items will reflect which stats are important to you. On the surface, this may not seem like a big deal, but it will radically increase the number you can build.

In the new crafting system, you can choose which stats to invest in and to what extent. A Rogue with a lot of mobility cooldown reduction and grenade damage can invest heavily in Stun Grenades since they will drop whenever you evade.

Flexibility in stat selection adds variety to Diablo 4’s build options. Even if you decide to follow the build guide, it will take a while to create the theoretically best item, so you’ll have to decide which stats you personally care about during the process.

New Endgame Dungeon: Pit Of Artificers

Finally, the developers revealed the new endgame dungeons coming to Season 4, which are Greater Rifts in Diablo 3. This is a limited-time dungeon that becomes increasingly more difficult as the levels go up, and has a new name: Pit of Artificers.

You can think of them like Nightmare Dungeons, but the goal is to race through them and eventually earn rare loot and materials.

The game will have more than 100 tiers, and the monsters will become increasingly difficult. Of course, as you level up, the rare loot at the end gets better and better.

Pit of Artificers will drop items to summon Tormented Bosses, which will drop materials allowing you to select an Uber Unique on your first kill. With Andariel joining the regular boss roster, you will no longer have to fight Duriel repeatedly to find the rarest items in the game.

While the new endgame activities in Season 4 won’t solve the problem of challenge in the open world fading away over time, it will add variety where it’s desperately needed. Considering we still don’t know what the season-specific features will be, this is a promising foundation for an increasingly stale part of the game.

In any case, the arrival of Diablo 4 Season 4 is bound to bring us a series of new surprises. Let us wait and see!

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