Here is everything you need to know in order to be ready for Diablo 4 Season 1 as well as what you need to do in order to get ready.
Intro
Season one for Diablo 4 will be launching on July 20th. The following are the specific live times:
- 10 a.m. PDT
- 12 p.m. CT
- 1 p.m. ET
- 6 p.m. GMT
The theme of the season is to be the Season of the Malignant. However, if you are looking to dip your toes into some content a bit earlier than the release, then note that there will be a pre-release patch on July 18th.
Diablo 4 Season 1 Changes
Let’s go over some of the major changes for this season. There’s new content, mechanics, character resets, and the Battle Pass.
New Content – New Questlines
If you’ve taken a break from Diablo 4 due to the lack of content, this new season is set to be a great time to jump back in because it will bring the full following stuff.
A new post-campaign questline that has you partnering up with a new vendor called Corman. This new quest line will have you taking on a new form of corruption from Lilith and that is the new Malignant Monsters.
If you want to be preemptively ready to access this new questline, then you will have to have completed the campaign first on one of your characters. But if you are waiting to finish the campaign in the season itself, you can do that too.
New Mechanics – Malignant Heart & Malignant Tunnels
But the biggest new mechanic that is being added in is the Malignant Heart system that you will gain during the new questline with Corman.
He will teach us how to capture the Malignant Hearts from particular Malignant Monsters. After defeating the partly corrupted monsters, they will drop a heart with which we can then use the Cage of Binding on it that we acquire during this new questline in order to capture it.
Capturing a heart will mean the Malignant Monster is reborn as a fully corrupted monster. And if you’re able to defeat these fearsome monsters, then it will drop the proper version of the Malignant Heart. That can be slotted into your jewelry into infested sockets in place of the normal gems, like Rubies or Topaz.
There’ll be 32 Malignant Hearts across the four categories that provide both new and unique bonuses to our classes. So, this should add a bunch of build variety into the game and hopefully make builds viable that were not previously effective.
The four categories for these hearts are Vicious Hearts, which provide an offensive bonus while the Brutal Hearts provide a defensive bonus. The Devious Heart will give us a Utility Power. But the most powerful of the bunch is the last one, the Wrathful Heart, as this provides a more powerful and rare bonus that will probably be the ones we’re aiming for.
However, you may be wondering where we’re going to farm these new hearts. The new season will also bring something called Malignant Tunnels, which are what Blizzard is calling highly repeatable dungeons.
There’ll be a new boss introduced with the season that will appear in these Malignant Tunnels called Varshan The Consumed. If you encounter difficulties in fighting this boss, you may wish to take a look at IGGM.com Diablo 4 Season 1 Boosting Service. There will be professional players to help you solve any of your needs.
We also know there will be six new Diablo 4 unique items and seven new legendary aspects introduced. We’re going to take a guess that there will be one new legendary aspect per class and then some general ones. But what do you guys think of this new mechanic?
Character Resets
If you’re new to Diablo Seasons or just ARPGs in general, then you may be slightly confused about the seasonal structure when it comes to new characters.
The biggest thing to know is that your current character won’t reset. Even though a lot of people are referring to it in that way, your current character will still exist and you can still play on that one if you want to. But in order to access the new seasonal questline and seasonal features, like the Malignant Hearts, then you will need to create a new character on the seasonal server.
However, there are a few progression related things that will transfer over to the seasonal server. Here’s what they are:
You will still have the option to skip the campaign if you’ve previously finished it.
Your Mount will become available immediately to your old characters.
All previously discovered Altars of Lilith will be unlocked, and you will get the corresponding Renown for them.
On top of this, all previously discovered areas of the map, the Fog of War will be revealed and you will get the corresponding Renown for that as well.
After the season is over, the new character that you made in the seasonal server will then be transferred to the same server as your old character, the Eternal Realm, along with your stash on that character.
We know a lot of people don’t like the idea of a new server character and resetting and they think it’s just a facade to reset content. But what do you guys think about this? Do you mind creating a new character from Level 1 or not?
Battle Pass
Leveling up your character isn’t the only reason to make progress in the new season, though. Completing the main questline will have you progress through the Season Journey.
And this will reward you with various Diablo 4 Items, such as new legendary aspects, Mastery titles, and a Scroll of Amnesia. If you’re unfamiliar with this kind of scroll, it essentially allows you to reset your Skill Tree and Paragon Board for free.
If you are wondering about the Battle Pass and what monetization of the season will look like, then here it is:
The Battle Pass is split into three tiers: a Free Tier, a Premium Tier, and an Accelerated Tier. For all of these, you will need to earn the Battle Pass resource by completing various tasks, such as quests and other activities to level up the tiers. And each tier will give you a different reward.
Something that we want to highlight, though, is that through this Battle Pass, you’re able to get these Smoldering Ashes, which is essentially a new material. These can be spent to unlock and upgrade season and blessings that give you buffs to your XP, Diablo 4 Gold, Obols, materials and things like that.
For the Free Battle Pass, you gain access to 27 tiers that include rewards, such as the Smoldering Ashes, armor transmogs, titles and more.
For the Premium Tier, you get all the Free Stuff Plus 63 additional tiers that will unlock Awoken armor sets, mounts, mounts armor, Platinum, and more.
The Accelerated Tier is all the previous content plus a 20 tier skip and an additional emotion.
The Battle Pass will be available as soon as the season launches and there will be updates to the shop for more cosmetics if you’re looking to spend some cash.
So, to sum it up for you, the new season means creating a new character on a new server where some of your stuff carries over, but you won’t lose any of your characters. There will be random monsters that become corrupted that we can beat in order to gain new Malignant Hearts that we can slot into our jewelry to make ourselves more powerful. There’s also a new activity to farm the corrupted called malignant. And there’ll be a Battle Pass to earn some goodies.
So, now you’re all up to date on everything you need to know for Diablo 4 Season 1.
