Diablo 4 loot grind is busted open after lucky player snags Uber Unique barely an hour after drop rates were buffed

Diablo 4's improved drop rates appear to have already come good, with one player finding one of the game's rarest items within hours of the new season start.

Diablo 4 Season 2 kicked off last night (after a brief timing wobble). One headline change introduced to the game with the start of the new season was an improved way to farm its Uber Uniques - the rarest items in the game that most players will never see. The five late-game bosses introduced in Season 2 all offer "slightly higher" drop rates for those uniques.

As noted by Icy Veins, those improved rates appear to already be delivering. Diablo YouTuber Rob2628 claimed a first kill on one of those new bosses, Uber Duriel. Reportedly the only boss that can drop those Uber Uniques, Duriel was taken down in just a few minutes by Rob and his party - one of whom claimed the ultra-rare helmet Andariel's Visage for their trouble. By my count, at the time of writing, Season 2 started 15 hours ago, so the timing on Rob2628's video implies that the Visage drop happened less than an hour after the patch dropped.

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That drop came mere hours after the start of Season 2. By contrast, the very first Andariel's Visage wasn't found for three weeks after the game's launch in June - obviously, some of that time was used up as the community grinded to the point at which they could hope to find the items, but the Diablo 4 player-base would've been far larger in June that it currently is. The fact that the Visage is now dropping in hours rather than weeks might be the result of unbelievable luck, but it does at least point to a change in those loot rates.

Elsewhere in Season 2, there are a number of balance changes, including some major buffs to Diablo 4's worst class, and a dramatic increase in leveling speed, which Blizzard says will result in a 40% faster climb to level 100. Between more people reaching level 100 and a boss that makes it easier to find Uber Uniques, it'll be interesting to see whether there's a dramatic influx of them over the course of the Season, and how the community might react to a flood of these rarest items.

Diablo 4 is on Steam now, where it's launched to strong sales but 'Mixed' reviews.

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.