Diablo 4 update makes reaching max level “an achievable goal”

Diablo 4 has an exciting new season in the works, but there are many changes outside of the vampire-themed content coming, too. A lot of the adjustments dropping in the near future are quality-of-life tweaks based on player feedback. Blizzard is looking toward its community and working hard to make the latest Diablo entry more accessible to all. Whether you’re a seasoned Sanctuary veteran or a more recent player, you’ll find the overall grind to max level and general gameplay smoother.

If you’ve played Diablo 4, then you know the climb to hit max level in the RPG game can be grueling at times. To help remedy this and make gameplay less repetitive overall, Blizzard is changing many systems currently in place. You can expect better experience earned, higher gold drops, more accessible navigation of the map, and other such quality-of-life adjustments. The developer says the team wants to make the grind to level 100 “an achievable goal” with 1.2.0.

These changes are coming alongside the highly anticipated Diablo 4 Season 2 release date. Hopping into the Season of Blood should be much easier, as Blizzard says, “It’s just nice to be able to start a new character and not feel like you have to go do every single side quest all over again.” The team doesn’t want players to feel like they’re “playing catch-up.” You should notice a much quicker leveling journey, with the dev stating it’s going to be “40% faster.”

Other areas of the game are much easier in 1.2.0, too, such as Nightmare Dungeons. If you’ve ever found yourself thoroughly confused by the twists and turns as you try to complete objectives, you’ll be happy to hear that the dev has “massively” reduced backtracking by putting objectives in one linear path, “making them much harder to miss” if you take a wrong turn somewhere. As someone who is incredibly directionally challenged, I love to hear it.

The Diablo 4 patch notes detailed in the developer update also reveal a variety of changes to the game’s endgame content, including activities and bosses. The spawn time for world bosses is no longer a whopping six hours long, instead coming in at just three and a half hours. A message will also pop up for all players fifteen minutes ahead of a Diablo 4 world boss‘ spawn, so you won’t miss it. Endgame bosses also offer up much better rewards in 1.2.0.

Each boss will drop specific unique rewards exclusive to their individual fight. This includes unique cosmetics, making the hunt for aesthetically appealing items a bit easier. With five new bosses and more variety on the way to spice up your high-level gameplay, you won’t get bored any time soon. You can check our full rundown of the Season of Blood update below to learn more about coming quality-of-life features.

Diablo 4 patch notes – 1.2.0 update – Tuesday, October 17, 2023

If you want a full look at Blizzard’s accompanying message and current patch notes for Diablo 4’s upcoming 1.2.0 update, you can view them directly on the developer’s website alongside more information about the Season of Blood and its other changes.

Endgame activities

• The time between Legion Events has been reduced from 30 to 25 minutes.
  • Legion Event warning timers increased from 5 to 10 minutes.
  • Fixed an issue where the Legion Event pin would not display at the edge of a player’s mini-map if a Whisper was active for the Legion Event.
• The World Boss fight is available more frequently to players on all World Tiers as the Spawn Times have been reduced from 6 hours to 3 hours and 30 minutes.
  • World Boss warning timers have increased from 30 to 60 minutes.
  • Fixed an issue where the World Boss pin would not display at the edge of a player’s mini-map if a Whisper was active for the World Boss.
  • For increased visibility, a message is now broadcast to all players when the World Boss is 15 minutes away from spawning.
• Gold and Experience rewards have been increased from the following activities:
  • Helltide Chests
  • Cashing in Grim Favors
  • Completing individual Whispers
• To ensure enemies constantly give experience relative to the current player level, the Nightmare Sigils rewarded from Whisper Caches will now always be within 5 Levels of the highest-level Nightmare Dungeon the player has completed.
• To improve readability, Helltide Chests now have specific icons on the map to indicate their type.
• Whisper Caches adhere to the item slot of the cache.

Endgame bosses

• Five Endgame bosses have been added across Sanctuary to increase the variety of Endgame experiences offered, providing better opportunities to obtain specific, Unique, and Uber Unique items.
  • The new Boss fights are unlocked based on succeeding in different tasks across Sanctuary, with different resources required for facing each Boss, and each new fight becoming available as you progress through World Tiers 3 and 4.
• The reward pools for these Endgame bosses have been significantly improved:
  • Each boss drops specific Uniques, exclusive to each individual boss fight.
    • The Duriel boss fight has significantly increased the chance to drop Uber Uniques, making the process of accessing these coveted items more achievable.
  • Each individual boss also has a chance to drop unique cosmetics specific to each boss, making the access to specific cosmetics in-game more targeted.

Experience and monster leveling

• Decreased the time spent to reach level 100, making the journey about 40% faster. The experience gained from killing monsters at level 50+ has been significantly increased and rises steadily as you level.
• Prevent Monsters from being less powerful as character level increases by making Monsters in World Tier 3 and 4 match the current player level at a minimum after Levels 55 and 75 respectively. This increases the overall experience of leveling, making it much smoother.
• Incenses now grant a bonus to Experience and persist after death.
• Increased the potency of Experience bonuses (Elixir, Season Blessings) by making them multiplicative with the World Tier bonus.

Nightmare dungeons

• Expedited the demon-slaying process as Nightmare Sigils now teleports you directly into the Nightmare Dungeon.
• Avoided some players not getting Nightmare Sigils from Dungeons that have no final boss, Nightmare Sigils are now rewarded upon completing a Nightmare Dungeon instead of final boss defeat.
• Objectives have been removed from some Dungeons, only defeating the boss is needed to defeat the Nightmare Dungeon.
• Multiple Nightmare Dungeon Afflictions have been updated.
  • 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 by 3 seconds by X%, stacking up to Y%.
  • Death Pulse
    • Prevent death pulses on monsters that have explosions on death.
    • Prevent death pulses from spawning repeatedly on top of each other.
  • Lightning Storm
    • Being ‘shocked’ while in the protection dome grants a 35% bonus Movement Speed for 5 seconds.
    • Only starts when players are in combat.
    • Only starts if the protection dome caster has a direct path to its targeted player.
  • Drifting Shade
    • Duration reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
    • Respawn time increased by 2 seconds.
• Massively reduced backtracking by placing all Dungeon objectives on the critical path of a dungeon, making them much harder to miss by taking a wrong turn.
• Many dungeon layouts have been redesigned.
• Improved the overall readability of Traps by enhancing their overall visual effects and reducing their crowd control.
• Endcaps have been added to ensure Dungeon layouts don’t feel too linear.
• Paragon Glyph experience has been increased.

Events

• Made Dungeon Events more worthwhile and enticing to players by increasing their monster density.
• NPCs should no longer be killed with one hit in World Tiers 3 and 4.

Item adjustments

• Significantly freed up inventory space by making Gems a crafting material. Gem materials can now be taken to a Jeweler for crafting.
• Prevented players from losing their progress on a Hardcore character from connectivity issues, Scrolls of Escape are now consumed if a Hardcore player disconnects while in combat, teleporting them to a safe location.
• Reduced the chance of being locked into certain stats on a Legendary item by reducing their overall enchanting costs.
• Reduced overburdening inventories and causing unnecessary trips into town:
  • In World Tier 3: Normal, Magic, and non-sacred Rare items will drop as crafting resources.
  • In World Tier 4: Normal, Magic, and non-ancestral Rare items will drop as crafting resources.
    • Gold drop rates in World Tiers 3 and 4 have been increased to compensate for this.
• Higher-level monsters in World Tiers 3 and 4 drop Sacred and Ancestral items of greater Item Power potential.
• Normal Whisper cache rewards now provide +10 Item Power. Upgraded caches now provide +20 Item Power rewards.
• Helltide cache rewards now provide rewards of +20 Item Power value.

Mounts

• Improved the horse-riding experience by improving the overall responsiveness of mounts. They are less likely to get stuck on barriers or slow down unexpectedly.
• Reduced the time it takes to travel across Sanctuary by increasing spur duration, which now breaks barricades.
• Base speed increased by 15% (this does not affect top speed.)
• Removed the need for players to place their cursor on the edge of their window for max speed, general speed has been improved relative to cursor placement.
• Improved combat and mount versatility by reducing ability cooldowns by 50%.
  • Manual dismount cooldown has been reduced from 10 to 5 seconds.
  • Forced dismount from damage cooldown has been reduced from 10 to 4 seconds.
  • The delay between a dismount combat skill becoming available after mounting (e.g. the Barbarian’s Bounding Slam) has been reduced from 10 to 3 seconds.

Town adjustments

• Additional Stashes have been added to all Capital Cities near important vendors.
• Reduced the need to travel to Capital Cities by adding Stashes to all small towns with Waypoints.
• Reduced the need to travel to Capital Cities by adding an Occultist to the Tree of Whispers Waypoint.
• Reduced the need for additional walking, Purveryors of Curiosities have set up shop closer to the Waypoint in several Capital Cities:
  • Kyovashad
  • Zabinzet
  • Ked Bardu
  • Gea-Kul
• Improved Navigation through Sanctuary following character creation by adding 10 Waypoints to the list of automatically unlocked Waypoints for those who skip the Campaign.
  • There are 2 Waypoints in each Region.
  • Note that for players who choose to skip the Campaign and haven’t unlocked these 10 Waypoints on any character, they will not be automatically available.

UI and UX

• Improved item sorting and overall organization by adding Stash search and Stash filter functionality.
• Improved Streaming functionality by adding Streamer Mode, which hides sensitive information such as Character names or Battle.net usernames.
• Improved organization by displaying Item affix tooltips in a more intuitive and consistent order.
• Improved organization by grouping Extracted Aspects with the same Legendary powers together when sorting in your Stash and Inventory.
• Improved navigation functionality by adding the ability to auto-run. When moving in a direction, the player will continuously move in the direction faced or where the cursor is placed until another movement is activated or a skill is initiated.
• Improved navigation by adjusting the zoom level of the Mini-map.
• Added an option for hiding all Combat text (ie. Vulnerable, Dodge, Fortified)
• Improved Unique item visibility.
• Improved access to the Screen Reader option by enabling it by default.
• Improved cursor contrast colors and options for versatility and customization.

Miscellaneous improvements

• Reduced the time spent having to regain renown each season, all earned renown rewards persist between seasons and characters (this does not include experience or Gold).
  • Earned Skill Points, Potion Capacity, Max Obols, and Paragon Points earned from Renown will persist between each character. Renown Experience and Gold must be earned on each character.
    • For example:
      • Character 1: earns Renown Tier 2 in a region
        • Gains 1 Skill Point, 1 Potion Capacity
      • Creates Character 2, earns Renown Tier I in a different region
      • Creates Character 3:
        • This Character automatically receives both renown rewards from Characters 1 and 2
          • 2 Skill Points, 1 Potion Capacity available
  • This does not apply to Hardcore characters (it’s called Hardcore for a reason).
    • For non-Hardcore characters, Altars of Lillith and Map Discovery progress still carry over.
• Coveted Items can now be marked as Favorite, and cannot not be sold or salvaged.
• 2 additional character slots have been added.
• Eased the ability for players that haven’t completed the campaign to access Seasonal content earlier, by adding the option to skip the Campaign on character creation if any character on your account has completed the Prologue.
• Prevented wasted Minion and Companion attacks by ensuring Minions and Companions no longer target invulnerable enemies.

While you wait to see how all of these quality-of-life changes play out in-game, you can look through some of these strong Diablo 4 builds to make your current grind to level 100 a bit easier. Alternatively, you can browse our in-depth guide about the best Diablo 4 endgame build if you’re already there and are looking for something specifically related to higher-level play.