The July 2023 Diablo Developer Livestream was a huge deep dive into Diablo 4 Season 1 as well as the Seasonal structure as a whole. This article covers everything mentioned in the Livestream.
Season 1 “Season of the Malignant” Details
The devs very extensively covered Season 1, as well as things to expect from Seasons and how they will work.
Season 1 will start July 20, 2023. Diablo 4 will patch prior to this date on July 18th, adding this content to become active on the Season stat date.
The theme of this season is “Corruption”. This season comes with a handful of new mechanics that can shape new build opportunities and new gameplay experiences.
Seasonal Storyline
The seasonal story is accessible during and after the campaign and follows the story of Kormand, an ex-priest from the Church of Light as he investigates the corruption spreading through Sanctuary.
They didn’t go too deep into the story itself beyond the trailer shown on stream, but we’ll have further details to come for the Season 1 launch on July 20.
Malignant Elites
After completion of the Campaign, all Elite Monsters will have a chance to spawn as Malignant Elites. These powerful Elites will drop a Malignant Heart on death.
If you’re carrying the new Cage of Binding Item, you can perform a ritual to capture these Malignant Hearts, allowing them to be socketed into gear.
Malignant Hearts and Sockets
After completion of the ritual, you’ll be award a Malignant Heart, which come in four varieties. These were not all shown in game, so we’ll refer to them by color for now; using the colors Red, Green, Blue, and White.
Each of these types and colors has their own sockets that can appear on gear. While Red, Green, and Blue variants must bed socketed into their color specific sockets, the White variant can be placed into any color socket.
These sockets are determined on drop, including for items that you need to spend resources to add the sockets to them. These are fixed and cannot be re-rolled or altered in any way.
Crafting with Malignant Hearts
Caged Hearts can be broken down into new material and crafted into an item called an Invoker. Invokers can be used in Malignant Tunnels, a unique dungeon that ends with a Malignant Outgrowth.
These Malignant Outgrowths give you a choice between two or more types of Malignant Hearts, allowing you to target farm a specific type of Caged Heart. Once Selected, the Invoke the Malignant Heart Event will begin and you’ll need to defeat a Malignant Elite to claim your reward.
Read our full guides for more details:
Battle Pass Details
They gave a ton of information regarding the Battle Pass, including some reward details
Season Journey
Season Journey is a reward system that helps you progress your Battle Pass, as well as earn many Season-specific rewards like Aspects, which may also get placed into your Codex of Power.
This asks you to complete tasks to earn Favors, which contribute greatly you your Battle Pass progression. Each of these tasks are gameplay-related, ranging from Completing a Dungeon or Cellar, to interacting with the new Seasonal Mechanic.
Season Blessings
As you progress the Battle Pass you’ll earn Smoldering Ashes which allow you to activate various bonuses for your Seasonal Characters.
These largely boost general progression and gameplay, but as shown above, also extend into the effects that are exclusive to that season. These are sure to speed up your journey through the new season.
Coldiron Cosmetics
The main set of cosmetics for this Battle Pass includes the Coldiron set. This is a full set of cosmetics, including armor, weapons, and Mount Armor, in addition to new Mount Skins as well.
There are two variations of these items, the basic Coldiron set you get from the earlier levels of the Battle Pass, as well as an Awoken Coldiron set from the later levels. The main difference between the two being the Awoken Coldiron set is adorned with these corrupted crystals which glow.
What is available on the Free Pass
The Free Pass includes all of the Smoldering Ashes, which keeps the gameplay experience during the season equal between Free and Premium Pass holders. These are used to activate the various Season Blessings detailed above.
Additionally, the Free Pass also has its own Cosmetics that are separate from the main cosmetic set, but available to all players. One of these for Season 1 is the Artisan’s Tunic, shown below.
What will carry over from the Eternal Realm to Seasonal Characters
They wanted to heavily emphasis the point that Altars of Lilith, Fog of War, and the Renown attached to these Renown Tasks will carry over. This cuts out much of the tedium of renown, as this is nearly 600 Renown in every region.
While Strongholds, Dungeons, and Sidequests do not carry over, these often go hand-in-hand with each other, so you can find optimal ways to speed through your Renown.
For further details on the Renown System, check out our Renown Guide.
End of Steam QnA
To end the stream, they did their usual QnA session with question from the live stream chat.
Q: Any Respec Changes?
They’re going to be making Repsecing character significantly easier and cheaper by introducing a new item, Scrolls of Amnesia.
This powerful item will fully reset your Skill Points and Paragon Points, all for no cost! While they didn’t state how rare these items will be, this is a significant improvement over the current respec system that can be costly on both time and gold.
Q: Will Malignant Hearts come to Eternal Realm?
Possibly! They’ve stated that there’s no guarantee that Malignant hearts will come to the Eternal Realm, but that is largely community-decided. If the community enjoys the mechanics surrounding them, they may make their way into the game as a permanent feature.
They do not want to implement all Seasonal Mechanics into the base game, to keep it from becoming too cluttered and messy.
Q: What Comsetics will carry over between Seasons?
All of them; whether they come from Salvage, Drops, or purchases. They do not want to take away any cosmetics that were purchased or otherwise earned.
Q: Why do we teleport outside of Nightmare Dungeons instead of into them?
This is largely a rough implementation of the feature, intended as a way to add the feature without breaking anything. They have plans to optimize this further with a better implementation eventually, they just wanted to include it ASAP.
Q: Any Plans for Mid-Season Balance?
They’ll always be keeping an eye on balance and will continually be adjusting balance as they see necessary. This can include quick hotfixes to address outliers in either direction that break the game or are just underwhelming.
Q: Are there plans to add new classes to Diablo 4?
They gave a “soft confirm” by saying that there’s nothing to announce at this time. This likely means there is something being worked on, but it’s not near enough to announce just yet.
Q: What about more Stash space?
They stated they are currently working on ways to improve this in various in addition to providing more space. This includes their upcoming rework to gems, which treats them more like a currency than an actual inventory item.
