The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings is generally bad for you. Besides attracting Sauron's attention, the dark magic imbued inside doesn't yield many positive side effects. A particular piece of jewelry in Diablo 4 is garnering a similar reputation, since players are finding it causes them to die unexpectedly.

According to its stats, the Wendigo Brand is meant to make you more powerful the more kills you get. Specifically, getting 15 kills within 50 seconds makes you tougher and increases your life. What's not included is that wearing it could cause you to suddenly and inexplicably drop dead.

That's what fans across the community are reporting, anyway. Threads across Reddit, dating back months, have players saying their health is depleting rapidly after partaking in encounters wearing the ring.

One ring to rule them all. This ring will make you go crazy and eventually will kill you. from r/Diablo

This has led to people losing battles they really should be winning while grinding in the action-RPG. "One ring to rule them all," reads a Reddit thread. "This ring will make you go crazy and eventually will kill you."

The comments contain several more anecdotal reports of the equipment harming their progress. "Removed it from my build and random deaths just stopped," says the top commenter. What's happening, according to those who've experienced it, is that when you reach 50 stacks on the health effect, it starts draining your life instead.

Whatever's going on, it isn't good, and claims that it's a bug have been substantiated to an extent by Blizzard itself, as the developer is now investigating. "Thank you all for the reports, team is looking into this," Marcus 'Marcoose' Kretz, senior community manager on the Diablo games, said on the official forums.

I implore them to proceed with caution. We all saw what happened to Gollum. And Isildur. And Boromir. And Frodo himself. Patch it out quickly and effectively.

Diablo 4 hotfix makes it easier to farm Mythics as Blizzard confirms Season 15 will remove Mythic reroll crafting from the Horadric Cube, "adding a direct upgrade" instead

The latest Diablo 4 Season 14 patch is now available, and once again, it's tweaking drop rates for Mythics and making them easier to get in general. This has been a running theme since Season of Death Awakening kicked off at the end of June, though the current changes should help alleviate lingering frustrations.

In Undercity, you now have a much better chance of getting a Mythic from the Mythic Tribute of Armaments. If you're Torment X, the odds are "greatly increased," while for Torment XII, they're now totally guaranteed. Those are more forgiving numbers all around.

On top of this, Superior Lair Keys are now part of the last Glints of Hope cache, creating a way to farm them. This will make getting more Mythics easier in general, in terms of gathering Pandemonium Fragments and for finding the items after a big encounter.

These efforts are part of an ongoing clean up from Blizzard since Season 14 turned the hunt for Unique Mythics into a complete disaster. Drop rates are practically non-existent in some cases, as multiple players and streamers found that they couldn't find any Uniques despite playing for hours-long sessions.

Then, a limitation of only being able to carry one crafted Mythic made building characters a headache. The devs have been progressively dismantling and reworking these hurdles, but as always, changes need to be methodical and gradual, lest they over-correct and create issues going the other way.

More changes are already hallmarked for Season 15's Horadric Cube, too. "We're removing Mythic reroll crafting and adding a direct upgrade to Mythic that preserves the original unique item," Marcus 'Marcoose' Kretz, senior community manager on the Diablo series, says in a developer's note referenced by YouTuber Cliptis. "We'll evaluate bringing back this rule for that specific crafting path only."

As it stands, upgrading to Mythic gives you a random item of that class in return – it doesn't guarantee what you're upgrading is what you'll get. Cliptis adds that he believes if Blizzard does this, the rule of only allowing one crafted Mythic will come back, but that's just conjecture at the minute.

The team would be hard pushed to make matters worse than high-level players not finding particular treasure whatsoever, but I digress. This hotfix, and others that are no doubt in the pipeline, should make people's lives in the underworld a little better. For now, anyway.

Diablo 4 players are accidentally trashing their best items due to an "objectively misleading" recipe, and it's the best argument I've seen for yellow paint in games.

What constitutes worthwhile evolution in RPG design is a contentious subject. For every player who prefers the action-oriented route of modern Final Fantasy games, you've got those who want a return to the turn-based days of yore. The same is true for Diablo and action-RPG fans, as Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson explains how more modern, intuitive character progression is less fun to genre diehards.

Wilson went through the logic in a new YouTube video. He says the key problem for ARPG players stems from what are known as breakpoints – the benchmarks for when a particular action stat actually changes or improves. For instance, you don't automatically get quicker in spellcasting each time you move up a level. Instead, your ability goes up by increments after you reach a certain number of levels.

"There are arbitrary sweet spots of attack speed, cast speed, and hit recovery that players want to reach, because the jump in animation speed happens all at once," Wilson explains.

As a response, Diablo 2 "players created tables of speed breakpoints and optimize their characters around these thresholds," Wilson says. "Many of them had a lot of fun doing so, and it was an important part of the game for them."

The Diablo audience is such that I don't think there's any struggle in imagining players putting together spreadsheets of information on how each build can best level up. I've not done it for this series, but I've definitely been known to open up Excel or get out a pen and paper for a Dark Souls game over the years.

In my experience, Wilson is correct: it's fun. Strategizing your build brings a more tangible element to what you're doing and lets you test just how far the developers went with their balancing.

Where Wilson's perspective also holds water is in the fact that other action-RPGs fail to capture the Diablo 2 playerbase. They have less of these breakpoints, thus disappointing people who live for a good graph.

If you want old school players, you've got to play by old school rules. It's that simple.

25 years later, Diablo 2 director still hasn't gotten over how much the stamina bar sucks: "It's like a newbie tax almost."

Another day, another Diablo 4 stir-up. This time, however, I'm not sure how much blame can be reasonably placed on developer Blizzard, as a big part of the issue stems from some very important – and not even very fine – print that's just not being read.

I'm always cautious to throw up a shield around Blizzard when disgruntled Diablo 4 players come a-knockin', but in this case, the root of the controversy can be pretty evenly divvied up between legitimately confusing precedent set by another crafting recipe, and also gamers' unwillingness to read onscreen text.

See, Diablo 4's season 14, which hasn't been going down well at all, introduced a new crafting recipe for the Horadric Cube. It's called Upgrade to Mythic, which at face value would make you think it's a way to take a Unique and make it a Mythic item with all of the same properties and one additional Mythic power. After all, the pre-existing Upgrade to Legendary path does exactly that, but at the Legendary tier. But no, the Upgrade to Mythic recipe takes your Unique and gives you back a random Mythic item of the same type. So your Unique dagger is going to come out a Mythic dagger, but here's the rub: it won't necessarily be the same dagger that went into the Cube, and in all likelihood, it will be a completely different item with its own stats.

The tooltip for the recipe reads verbatim: "Transmutes a Unique equipment item with at least 850 Item Power into a random Mythic of the same item slot," which is pretty darn unambiguous. That said, I can understand that the Upgrade to Legendary recipe being what it is can cause some confusion. It's just that, still, at the end of the day, simply reading that recipe description even just once would completely eliminate any doubt about what the crafting tool is going to do.

Still, "Diablo 4 Players Keep Destroying Valuable Items Because of One Misleading Recipe," reads a recent headline from Icy Veins. "Guilty," reads the top comment on a Reddit thread discussing the article. "I lost a really good dagger because I thought I was 'upgrading.'"

"Me too. I logged off for a few days afterwards," says another commenter.

"Same lol," says another.

"Yup me too," says another. And so on.

Again, I'm not saying Blizzard is completely blameless here. It is undeniably weird that the Upgrade to Mythic recipe destroys the input item and gives you something completely random when the Upgrade to Legendary recipe gives you the same item but Legendary, but I also can't help but think this whole mess is a pretty compelling argument for the infamous yellow paint that's often used as a visual cue to guide players toward their goal. In this case, it's not about reading between the lines – it's literally about reading the lines.

On the bright side: New Diablo 4 hotfix finally increases Mythic drop rates and removes limits on equipping them as Blizzard admits "not every idea lands exactly as intended."

After almost three weeks of community outcry, Blizzard is modifying the drop rates for Mythics in Diablo 4 Season 14. Players had been finding it tough to get Unique Mythics, to the point where many couldn't find any despite farming specifically for them, and now hotfixes are being rolled out to take the edge off.

"We've heard your feedback on Season of Death Awakening, including Mythic unique drop rates, equip limits, and more," Dan Tanguay, the design director of live service for Diablo 4, says on the official Blizzard forums, as relayed by Marcus 'Marcoose' Kretz, senior community manager for the Diablo series.

"In a patch releasing today, we're increasing the drop rate for Mythics from the Corrupted Reaper boss fight and removing equip limits for Mythic Uniques," he writes. "Additionally, in a patch coming next week, we're adding Superior Lair Keys to the Glints of Hope repeatable cache and increasing the Mythic Tribute drop rates in the Undercity."

How much the drop rate for the Corrupted Reaper battle increases will need to be tested, but seeing as numerous players have gotten exactly zero uniques from that encounter, things can really only go up. Letting people equip more than one is helpful as well – you can only have one crafted Mythic at a time currently, significantly reducing the options for any given build.

His post was made on July 16, yesterday at time of writing, meaning it should be live and available to you whenever you boot up Diablo 4 next. A fan on Reddit amusingly told others they can now "re-install Diablo 4," since a few had commented they were ostensibly avoiding this season due to what was happening with Mythics.

The second patch Tanguay mentioned should massage out further problems, too. "Seasons are where we experiment with new ideas and push Diablo 4 in new directions," he finishes. "Not every idea lands exactly as intended, but we’ll continue listening to your feedback, addressing what’s not working, and applying those lessons to future seasonal updates."

Diablo 4's Overwatch crossover skins have been revealed and they are completely cursed: "Mercy looks like a 90-year-old grandma."

The Iconic Mythics saga in Diablo 4 just won't end, and as Blizzard continues to step on rakes to the wide ridicule of the game's most hardcore fans, the devs have announced that they're looking into how to escape the rake field they now seem to permanently reside in. In less hyperbolic terms – yes, they know Iconic Mythics aren't dropping, and yes, they're trying to figure out a solution.

A recent update was meant to actually get Iconic Mythics dropping again, as the patch notes promised that Blizzard had "increased the chance of naturally dropped Mythics being an Iconic Mythic." By all accounts, however, they're still effectively impossible to farm.

"Clearly the patch failed," as one irate post on the official message board put it. "Iconic mythics were supposed to start dropping. Now the community has collectively wasted millions of lair keys for no chance at iconic mythics still. Remove the crafted tag from AT LEAST the iconic mythics at blacksmith. They got nerfed with patch anyway. I just wasted 70 Lair keys on Grigoire for ZERO mythics of ANY kind."

In response to that message, a Blizzard community manager promises that "this is being looked into, as well as other issues surrounding mythics." The CM has, in fact, repeated that sentiment several times in response to other, similar messages over the past few days. But if you're looking for concrete details about what's changing and when, the devs have not provided them just yet.

Outrage over the state of mythic items across the game has been ongoing since before Season 14 hit the PTR at the start of June, and while Blizzard has offered various olive branches to the community and implemented changes to the system, it seems that there's still work to be done.

Diablo 4 streamer spends "20 hours non-stop" farming bosses for the ARPG's rarest items, doesn't get a single one: "Don't try this at home."

There's a new Diablo 4 patch out, and while it addresses a couple of the latent problems in Season 14, the bigger issues surrounding Mythic Uniques remain. Specifically, their drop rate is far too minimal, and crafting them is still not worth the effort.

As usual, players have been quick to see what's been altered in the latest update, and what they've found is disconcerting. Prominent Diablo 4 streamer and YouTuber Rob2628 noted on Twitter that after a quick session beating the newer Reaper Bosss over and over for loot, he got plenty of Mythics, but none of what he's been looking for.

"Got 14 Mythics in 30 minutes but still no Iconics," he posted on Twitter. Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 YouTuber wudijo did the same, and he had slightly different results. "Managed to get two Mythics from boss trophies," he says in a tweet. "They come with the 'CRAFTED' tag, though."

The problem here is that you can only equip one crafted Mythic at a time, another aspect that isn't sitting well within the community, because you can't stack them in your builds and it reduces the impetus to collect them. Another player delivered some dispiriting stats on Reddit.

"Out of a total of 830 boss chests, I got 38 Mythics in total but zero Iconic Mythics. I ran Grigoire, Butcher, and Reaper," they write. The drop rates vary between 2% and 14% depending on which one of these you're facing, and you'd think that'd ensure at least one Iconic across the bones of one thousand chests, but apparently not.

"Never regretted buying the add-ons more than right now," says another Redditor in the comments. "This season is a joke, a bad one," writes a second fan.

"I'm done with this shit. See you in S15 (or not, we will see)," adds another. "The fact that they are essentially doubling down on their decisions, by making the patch the way they did pisses me off. They just never learn, except if we quit and don’t buy the shit from the shop."

Blizzard did state this patch would remedy some critiques, but clearly more work needs to be done. At the very least, I'd expect those drops to get easier, because getting nothing doesn't do much for anyone.

Diablo 4 streamer spends "20 hours non-stop" farming bosses for the ARPG's rarest items, doesn't get a single one: "Don't try this at home"

Hopes were high that the latest Diablo 4 patch would address the problems around Mythics introduced in Season 14. Alas, this isn't the case, as the update, coming tomorrow, July 14, only addresses a sliver of the issues, leaving players hoping for more systemic change in the weeks to come.

Essentially, the new season, Death Awakening, made Mythic Uniques a general pain in the backside. Crafting them is trickier; the drop rate for the items as loot is staggeringly low, and even using them isn't as effective as it once was.

Blizzard made a small mess here, and despite allusions to fixing things in this patch, the most glaring problems remain unaddressed, per the patch notes. That said, the process of acquiring and using Fragments for crafting Mythics is becoming easier, which is a welcome alteration.

Prior to now, it took five Fragments to make a Mythic Unique in the Horadic Cube. That turned out to be a pretty high number for how rarely they actually appeared after an encounter. Now, Corrupted Reaper will drop two of them per Hoard Chest, and you can get four if you utilize the Lair of Plenty War Plan.

On top of this, you'll only need four Fragments to craft a Mythic Unique. These aren't the total systemic changes many players were hoping for, but they should relieve some of the tension while the devs look into fixing other aspects. Drop rates are rarely simple to fix, since an overcorrection in the other direction won't help the game.

The patch notes state a bug where some Lair Bosses weren't dropping Uniques like they should has been fixed too, which may help you find some if you've been trying and failing to build up your collection. The usual smattering of fixes and tweaks across various aspects is included otherwise.

Diablo 4 streamer spends "20 hours non-stop" farming bosses for the ARPG's rarest items, doesn't get a single one: "Don't try this at home"

It's supposed to be difficult to get a mythic drop in Diablo 4, but the latest season, Death Awakening, accidentally made it practically impossible. The Iconic Mythics are a unique treasure for experienced players, but after anecdotal research showed the drop rates are ludicrously low, Blizzard's doing some fine-tuning.

A patch is on the way that's going to respond to criticisms over season 14, according to information from the Diablo Partner Program. Specific details aren't given, but we can guess the update will fix a few known problems, such as all Mythic Uniques coming with the Crafted tag when gotten through the Horadic Cube, and the aforementioned chance of getting certain items in battle.

The latter's been tested specifically by Diablo YouTuber Wudijo, who spent hours grinding for an Iconic Mythic only to come away empty-handed after 20 hours. Seriously, he played for that long and didn't get a single one, suggesting the RNG here is off-kilter.

Annoying as is, because you want proper prizes for taking on the wretched hellspawn of Diablo 4's depths, this creates limitations for particular builds because certain staple pieces of equipment are now nigh unobtainable. It seems like a classic case of tuning the drop rate just a little too strongly for its own good, but we'll see what emerges in the patch notes.

This update is expected to roll out within the next week or so, making it around the middle of July. However, it's worth noting that Blizzard's parent company, Microsoft, has been making substantial changes across all its studios of late, including laying off hundreds of staff.

Expect release schedules to be at least a little up in the air for the time being. An internal memo suggested how this all impacts Blizzard would be revealed later, but don't be surprised if things take longer than usual at present.

Blizzard says fine, it'll "split the difference" with Diablo 4 players outraged over Mythics, keeps core changes intact to ensure the ARPG's "long-term health"

Diablo 4's new season, Death Awakening, kicked off on June 30 with some highly anticipated adjustments to the game's rarest loot, now called "Iconic" Mythics. The TLDR is that Mythic Uniques now come with two guaranteed powers that synergize with the item's unique abilities, replacing the completely random rolls that garnered so much controversy in the PTR, but even if Blizzard's compromise with players completely restored the community's goodwill (it didn't), it seems there's a whole new pain point emerging: drop rates.

According to one extremely thorough study from Diablo 4 content creator wudijo, Death Awakening's drop rates for Iconic Mythics are pretty darn stingy. In a new 20-minute video, wudijo says he spent "20 hours non-stop farming bosses" to bag himself some Iconic Mythics – in particular the El'Druin Sword of Justice – to no avail.

Wudijo spent most of two full real-world days farming Helltides, "not doing anything else in-between," and ended up with 850 lair keys, 900 greater lair keys, and 127 superior lair keys. Using those farming those bosses netted him a little over 100 Mythics, five Mythic Seals, and more than five billion gold, but unfortunately, not a single Iconic Mythic.

Even after salvaging "almost all" of the Mythics he looted at the blacksmith and trading them for Resplendent Sparks to make new items, "I just don't have that item, with all of my effort with all of the crafting, with all of the Sparks, and all of these lair bosses... so this is what happened here, and I am very sad," says wudijo.

Acknowledging that farming Helltides is an "extremely good" way to rack up regular Mythics and Mythic Seals, wudijo concludes that if you're looking for a specific Iconic Mythic, or really any Iconic, "this is definitely kind of disappointing."

It doesn't help that, in his experience, farming for a Mythic version of a Unique that otherwise fits your build often ends in disappointment.

"Most of the time you will have found so many good Uniques that, by the time that you have any realistic hope of getting the Mythic version, that the Mythic most often just ends up being worse, or at least not much of an upgrade in the first place," wudijo says.

As an example, wudijo says he found a particularly viable Unique Eaglehorn bow and wanted to see if he could find a better Mythic version for his Rogue build, but by the time a Mythic Eaglehorn actually dropped, it wasn't as good as the normal Unique one because "it rolled two bad stats," and since Diablo 4's reworked loot system only lets you re-roll one of a Mythic item's powers, his Mythic Eaglehorn went to the blacksmith for salvaging.

Wudijo is far from the only Diablo 4 player feeling unhappy with Iconic Mythic drop rates in season 14, with one heavily upvoted Reddit thread calling them "broken." Having fond memories spending entire summers as a kid chasing the rarest items in the games, I think there's value in having items so rare that they genuinely feel mythical when encountered, but at the same time, one of the new Diablo 4 season's biggest focuses is the Mythic rework, so it does seem peculiar that there's an item class eluding players as dedicated as wudijo, especially when Diablo seasons only last about three months. We'll see if and how Blizzard responds to the latest kerfuffle from the Diablo community.

Blizzard devs in the dark for now as president of the World of Warcraft and Diablo studio says they "can expect to hear more" soon about Microsoft's plan for the studio as Xbox faces 3,200 job cuts

Blizzard has partially caved to Diablo 4 players outraged over changes to Mythics introduced in a recent playtest and planned for a permanent release in next week's Season of Death Awakened. Instead of completely reversing course, the studio is meeting players in the middle, insisting that the fundamentals of the updates are necessary for build diversity in the long-term.

ICYMI, Blizzard revealed the full details of Diablo 4's 14th season in a recent blog post, showing off a slick (but slightly jarring) Overwatch collab, a new endgame activity, and a Warlock free trial. But despite all of that cool and fun stuff, everyone's talking about Mythics, which are now just Mythic Uniques instead of their own distinct item rarity. The big hullabaloo is that Blizzard planned to completely remove the guaranteed stats that synergized with a Unique item's, ahem, unique powers. Suddenly, Uniques didn't sound so unique anymore, and the most powerful, rarest loot in the game, Mythic Uniques, were shaping up to be barely indistinguishable from Legendaries.

As you might expect, that didn't go down well with Diablo 4 players, and after testing the changes in the PTR, Blizzard has a pretty significant update tucked into the new season's announcement. Mythics are still just charged-up Uniques and any Unique can still be turned into a Mythic at the Horadric Cube, but crucially, Mythics will have two guaranteed bonuses instead of being completely random. The other two stat bonuses will still be random, but one of them will be able to be re-rolled through the Enchantress in town. Also, you'll still be able to convert a Unique to a Mythic Unique at the Cube, but now it'll give you something for the same slot, whereas in the PTR you could chuck in a Unique helmet and get a Mythic shield.

All in all, this updated system seems like it'll restore a lot of what made Mythics so fun and rewarding to chase in the first place without letting any single item completely dominate the meta, which of course means everyone's happy and no one's upset and life can just go on now, right? Right?!

Nope.

"So they ignored all the PTR tester feedback on the Mythic changes and they still went ahead with them?," reads one of the top comments in a Reddit thread discussing the new season. So much for that.

While that comment has more than 400 upvotes at the time of writing, suggesting, at the very least, people on Reddit who play a lot of Diablo aren't happy with Blizzard's compromise, there's no denying there is a compromise happening here. The original plan as tested in the PTR was for Uniques to drop with completely random stats just like any old item, which I was admittedly baffled by, but with the new setup of two fixed stats and two random ones, Blizzard is essentially going halfsies with players. It gets the randomness it wants for long-term build variety, and players get the thrill of chasing down one of a kind, incredibly powerful items as a reward for all their clicking. That's the way Blizzard sees it anyway.

"There's a handful of them that just become best-in-slot," Diablo 4 live-service lead Dan Tanguay says of the current selection of Mythics in an interview with GameSpot. "Once you can earn that, you get lucky enough to roll it, drop it, or craft it, that's it–you're never going to worry about that slot again.

And it kind of narrows the types of builds that players will pursue, especially if they're reading Maxroll or Icy Veins or something like that. We really want to increase the possibilities at the end of the game for what your build can be, and we need to look at mechanics that allow us to do that."

Blizzard softening its initial plan from the PTR and making Uniques considerably less random is part of its plan to "split the difference" with players wanting a full reversal of the new structure. That's not going to happen, but Tanguay says Blizzard will "keep iterating" on Uniques "until we arrive at something that we think is good for the long-term health of the game and that players really like."

You have to feel for the people at the frontline fielding these sorts of problems at Blizzard, constantly in a push-and-pull with the community over issues that, realistically, 90% of the player base will never even encounter. Again, Mythics are the rarest items in the game, and unless you're at the point where you're farming endgame bosses to get an item you need for a build you read about on Icy Veins, you'd never even know or care that those drops went from fixed stats to random ones. But because Blizzard is wisely taking on feedback from its most devoted players, I can only imagine the people calling the shots on this sort of stuff are in a near-constant state of stress.

Evidence of Diablo 4 coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 ramps up, as Blizzard Entertainment's RPG gets another rating.

A crossover between Diablo 4 and Overwatch should be an easy win. They're both owned by Blizzard, and they each have huge fanbases who generally love aesthetics and a bit of novelty. The in-game rewards are all well and good, but the action-RPG's new skins from the FPS aren't getting the strongest reaction from players.

Just like World of Warcraft and Starcraft before it, Overwatch is stepping into the hellfire of Diablo 4. Starting June 30, you can earn Eye of the Overwatch currency through defeating Elite and Champion foes to spend on special loot, for a limited time. In the game's regular shop, you'll find skins themed around the hero shooter, though players don't seem too fussed about those from first impressions.

"None of these look appealing or fit the universe to me," a fan bluntly says on Reddit. I can sympathize with the latter, because a couple of them are close to their original designs. Mercy's the biggest perpetrator, in my eyes, and the skin sticks out from Diablo's gloominess.

Commenters aren't holding back. "Mercy looks like a 90-year-old grandma here," writes another fan on Reddit. "This some bad comic con cosplay type shit," says a Redditor. "And even that's being disrespectful to cosplayers because most of them are miles better than this."

The frequency and pricing of these collaborations are big factors for the disdain. The StarCraft skins, for instance, ran you $185 for a complete set. World of Warcraft's came to over $540. Those are comfortably more than what it would cost you to buy the individual games and their expansions.

One player on Reddit notes the pricing on Fortnite, where such crossovers are rife, is much more reasonable collaboratively. "For context, an expensive bundle in Fortnite is generally less than half what the 'discounted' WoW bundle cost," they write. "Diablo 4's item store is completely insane and totally unacceptable for a game someone has already potentially spent £100 buying."

The Overwatch collaboration kicks off as part of Diablo 4 season 14, on June 30.

Overwatch charges nearly $100 for cosmetic bundle introducing a new skin rarity, and even cat maid outfits aren't enough to quiet the backlash.

Diablo 4's Age of Hatred story arc, which began with the base game's launch back in 2023 and included several seasons and two distinct expansions, has come to a close with the recent Lord of Hatred DLC, and the first new season of the next era of the action RPG kicks off next week.

Blizzard announced the aptly grim Season of Death Awakening on its official website, teasing a characteristically macabre story involving ruptures spawned from dark rituals across Sanctuary. Three different types of ruptures comprise the new season's endgame activity, sending out waves of new Gravehound monsters with a chance to summon the enormous Realmwalker boss. Kill that and you'll gain entry to the Deathtoll Chamber mini-dungeon where, you guessed it, more baddies await your sword, but here's where you'll find the lair keys you need to access this season's Lair Boss Hoard.

Anyway, it's a new Diablo season. If you've been around the block at all, you know generally what to expect. New enemies to kill, new loot to get, a new seasonal battle pass, a freaky new pet to collect for free. All good stuff, but fairly standard fare. That said, there are a few things coming with Season of Death Awakening that break from the usual Diablo 4 seasonal mold.

For one, Blizzard says it heard your feedback from the PTR about that change to Mythics. Instead of getting rid of the guaranteed stats that synergized with a Mythic Unique's powers, which was the controversial plan that led to widespread blowback from the PTR, Blizzard now says Mythics will have two guaranteed bonuses, "preserving what makes it distinctive while opening new possibilities for build diversity." Everything else will still roll randomly, but this new change will let you swap exactly one of them out to your liking.

Following the Paladin free trial from back in March, Diablo 4 will soon let you try out the new Warlock class from Lord of Hatred free of charge, for a limited time. From June 30 to July 7, all Diablo 4 players on all platforms will be able to sample the demon-summoning ways of the Warlock class up until level 25, and naturally, your progress will carry into the full game if you buy the Lord of Hatred DLC. I'm more of a Paladin guy myself, but I hear Warlocks offer a little more to chew on for buildcrafters.

Finally, Blizzard is doing the inverse of Overwatch's recent Diablo crossover with Overwatch-themed items in Diablo 4. Right at the start of the season, you'll be able to earn Eye of the Overwatch currency from elite and champion monsters and use it to unlock themed cosmetics, which will also be available in Diablo 4's cash shop. This is also the first time we actually see Overwatch characters in Diablo, and I have to say, the bright, colorful look of the hero shooter clashes pretty starkly with Diablo 4's grimdark world. It's neat seeing characters like Reinhardt, Genji, Reaper, Mercy, Brigitte, Moira, Roadhog, and Kirkio in a Diablo setting, but the promotional image below makes this look more like Diablo 3 than 4:

Diablo 4: Season of Death Awakening kicks off June 30.

Evidence of Diablo 4 coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 ramps up, as Blizzard Entertainment's RPG gets another rating

More signs point to Diablo 4's potential arrival on Nintendo Switch 2 after the Blizzard Entertainment ARPG got yet another rating on the platform.

The Taiwan Entertainment Software Rating board recently listed the Nintendo Switch 2 as one of Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred's supported platforms, despite the game and its expansion not having been officially confirmed for the handheld-hybrid console. The rating was posted to the website in April and either went unnoticed this whole time or was only recently made public. (Good spot, NintendoEverything). Although, the rating seems to have now been scrubbed for good after the internet got a whiff of it.

This isn't the first time a country's accidentally (and only maybe) spilled the beans on Diablo 4's upcoming plans. A security flaw in the Indonesian Game Rating System (IGRS) exposed major spoilers for several games, including 007: First Light, but also showed a Switch 2 rating for Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred. Where there's smoke...

When asked about a potential Switch 2 port a year ago, former franchise manager Rod Fergusson said, "I think there's opportunity there for sure. I mean, we have Diablo 3 and Diablo 2 Resurrected already on the Switch, and with backwards compatibility it'll be playable on Switch 2."

Fergusson then explained any potential challenges around the port would be less about the hardware - this is a console that can run Cyberpunk 2077 pretty competently, after all - and more about how "live services on Switch have been a little bit challenging in the past." It's unclear what those challenges were or if the Switch 2 has alleviated them since, but playing grindy ARPGs on a handheld device until your neck jams at a 90 degree angle is what Lilith intended. Don't let her down, Blizzard.

After 392 billion monsters slain in Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred, Blizzard stats reveal ARPG players prefer Warlocks to Paladins by almost 2 to 1

Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 4 season 14 is called the Season of Death Awakening, and promises to unveil more info about it next week following a PTR that's left fans a bit mixed.

Diablo 4 is now somehow over three years old, and we're deep in the midst of its Lord of Hatred era (that being the name of the latest expansion, not a manifestation of players' reactions to Diablo Immortal). The latest expansion launched alongside season 13 of the game – titled the Season of Reckoning – but now Blizzard is gearing up to release its first new season since the expansion launched with the Season of Death Awakening.

On the Blizzard website, the studio announced the new season in a blog post and confirmed a livestream on June 23, 2026, at 11am PT, 2pm ET, and 7pm BST. Obviously, the important info is going to be saved for the stream, but Blizzard did note what to expect in the new season, aside from the typical seasonal quest and Seasonal Lair info.

The post reads, "Major updates include the new Mythic Uniques item rework, class balancing, and the official launch of the Tower and Leaderboards. We’ll also reveal details on quality-of-life changes such as Party War Plans, Solo Self Found, crafting upgrades, and higher currency caps. There will be a Q&A section at the end of the stream for you to ask questions directly to the team."

On top of that, there's going to be a special Twitch drop for watching Diablo 4 streams while the update livestream is ongoing, with the Falx Infectus sword cosmetic up for grabs for anyone who watches for 30 minutes. Plus, Blizzard is teasing the return of "a familiar adversary," which I'm sure the community will be able to figure out from the name of the season.

Some players have already gotten their hands on the changes too through the PTR, and it's uhh... Either incredible or really bad? Looking at the Diablo Forums, there are posts like one titled "Season 14 Is Exactly What Diablo 4 Needs," and another called "Season 14 Is Awful," which has several removed posts to boot. This isn't just mindless opinion flinging, either, as both threads feature long arguments about why the season is great or awful.

Even searching for Season 14 on the Diablo 4 subreddit yields similar results, with players either decrying or loving the changes Blizzard is making. So it's safe to say that early reactions are a bit mixed, which hopefully Blizzard takes into account ahead of next week's stream.

After 392 billion monsters slain in Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred, Blizzard stats reveal ARPG players prefer Warlocks to Paladins by almost 2 to 1

Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred expansion has been out for a few weeks now, enough time for Blizzard to assemble some startling statistics about how players are spending their time in the game. The DLC adds two new classes, Warlock and Paladin, but these stats reveal a clear favorite.

Over on Twitter, Blizzard shared an image revealing some of the key player stats from Lord of Hatred so far. Mephisto, the titular antagonist of the expansion, has managed to fell 704,000 players so far, while players have managed to click-kill a shocking 392 billion monsters. Those are some big numbers, for sure, but not entirely surprising if you take into account how massive Diablo 4 has become, not to mention how quickly some of the game's most overpowered builds can demolish scores of demons.

What interests me is the data on how many people are choosing Warlocks compared to Paladins, because there's a pretty huge preference for the latter. Specifically, Blizzard says 1.4 million Paladins have been created since Lord of Hatred launched, and 2.1 million Warlocks.

I suppose it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that Warlocks are more popular than Paladins. Warlocks are flashy spellcasters with sick tattoos and horns on their heads, and Paladins are just heavily armored holy warriors with a melee focus. Both classes have been well-received generally, but it's easy to see which one would command the most attention in a startup screen.

For me, the Paladin's more passive playstyle is ideal for the way I play Diablo 4, which is to say I much prefer to mindlessly click baddies to death at the end of a long day rather than dealing with summons and shards and skill synergies. More power to anyone who likes digging deep into buildcrafting, and clearly I'm in the minority here, but I'm team Paladin for now.

For Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred DLC, Blizzard designed the new warlock class to feel like it could beat the necromancers and sorceresses in a "fist fight"

Ahead of Diablo 4 Season 14, a new Public Test Realm (PTR) is on the way, with major balance changes, new features, and more arriving next week.

As announced by Blizzard in a new blog post, the 3.1.0 PTR will go live on June 2 at 10am PDT and run until June 9 at the same time, giving you a week to sample the changes arriving in the base game's upcoming 14th season.

First up, Pandemonium Ruptures are being added – these can be opened by killing "the guardians around Death's Head Idols," and the longer you manage to keep them open (by killing monsters and closing Tears), the more tasty loot you'll earn. Completing a Surging Rupture (a medium-sized one) with Mastery will also give a chance of summoning a Realmwalker (returning after first being added in Season 6) – you can also guarantee a spawn of one of these by completing a Colossal Rupture in the Fields of Desecration.

The reason you'll wanna do this is because defeating a Realmwalker opens a portal to the Deathtoll Chamber – a mini dungeon that Blizzard says "will be the best source for Betrayer's Husks, which are required to open the Seasonal Lair Boss's Hoard in Torment I+." You can also enter the Deathtoll Chamber "inside a Nightmare Dungeon with the Rupture affix after closing enough Tears within Rupture." It'll also boast even more rewards for folks who "complete a special Rupture activity" inside.

As for that new seasonal lair boss, it's the Corrupted Reaper, found in "Pandemonium Threshold's entrance in Zarbinzet." Blizzard reveals "it will also give the best direct drop chances for both Mythic Uniques and Mythic Unique Upgrade currency than any other activity." And that brings us to a change that's already proving unpopular – from season 14 onwards, "every Unique can be Mythic," with the Mythic status changing from an item Rarity to a modifiable Item Quality, letting you "make any Unique item into a game-altering Mythic through Item Quality modifiers."

Blizzard explains: "This season, any Unique can now drop as a Mythic Unique or be upgraded into a Mythic Unique using the Horadric Cube."

On the whole, these Mythic changes haven't been going down very well – one player on Reddit says they "drastically reduce the value and desirability of what is supposed to be the 'apex item' tier," and "the idea of randomizing stats on Mythic Uniques annihilates any remaining value they once had."

"I'm NOT looking for constant RNG within my RNG," another says. "Uniques and especially Mythics need some consistency to their stats or they're just not worth mixing into your build. I'm already gambling if they'll drop and now I'm gambling if they will drop in a usable state."

Elsewhere, there's also a whole slew of balance changes, notably including a big nerf for the Whirlwind Barbarian build. As outlined by content creator Rob2628, a number of incoming changes are going to have a significant impact on the build, including the Limitless Rage aspect being changed from giving you a potential damage buff of 1.5% for every point of Fury to just 0.2%. Heir of Perdition's damage is substantially reduced from 80% to just 15%, and the Dominate Glyph is "reduced from 23.6% per stack to 1.8% per stack at Glyph Level 150." The Banished Lord's talisman's damage per stack has also gone down from 15-18% to just 8-10%.

As one commenter writes, "RIP barb again for 9 more seasons lmao." Another says: "Limitless rage from 1.5 to .2 smh thats not nerfing thats destroying."

All in all, it's looking like a slightly mixed bag of a PTR, and season to follow – the Mythic changes are already leaving a bad taste in the mouth for many, but it's not all bad news. Solo Self Found Mode is finally coming to let people craft characters without any help from others, which means no trades to give them a boost. With their own leaderboard filters being added, it'll allow you to show off something that you've done all the work for yourself, with no shortcuts.

What's more, in perhaps the greatest change of all, "pets can now be renamed." Be sure to take a look at the complete patch notes if you want to see the full scope of what's to come.

Diablo 4 lead says small teams crunch "because the company is on the verge of collapsing," but even though it's not "necessary" for AAA studios, "you might still have a culture of crunch."

I finally understand why I clicked with Diablo so profoundly as a child struggling with ADHD: the action-RPG was literally designed to remove as many barriers as possible between the player and "clubbing a skeleton."

In an interview originally conducted by Edge magazine, now republished in Playmakers: The Inside Stories of 30 Iconic Video Games, Condor (later renamed Blizzard North) co-founder Max Schaefer shared some of the earliest design philosophies that informed the conception of Diablo. According to Schaefer, the creators felt RPGs at the time were too complicated, took to long to get to the good stuff, and focused on penalizing players more than rewarding them, resulting in dwindling audiences.

"Back then, RPGs were so overwrought with statistics that the genre had shrunk to a tiny audience," said Schaefer. "We wanted to do an RPG how we'd played Dungeons & Dragons as kids: hit monsters and gain loot. Our mission was that we wanted the minimum amount of time between when you started a game up to when you were clubbing a skeleton."

This genuinely explains so much about my childhood gaming habits. Diablo and Ultima Online were the games that introduced me to the RPG genre, and now I'm realizing that a big reason for that was probably their simplicity. I simply didn't have the patience to tinker with complex RPG systems that defined games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate, but I loved exploring dark fantasy worlds at a quicker pace. It turns out I was precisely Condor's target audience.

"Making a game simple for the player is actually harder for the developer," explains Schaefer. "One of our philosophies was to make it a reward-based rather than penalty-based game. A lot of RPGs fell into the trap of penalties: you don't eat and you die; everything you find is a penalty. With us, it even feels good to pick up a potion in the inventory and put it back down."

I don't know how often I pick up and put down potions just for the fun of it in Diablo, but Schaefer is right to point out how immediately and consistently gratifying it is to engage in the series' core gameplay loop. There isn't much more to the original game than clicking skellies to death and scooping up gold and loot – and you could argue not a whole lot's changed these days – but damn does it feel good to do that over and over and as your stats go up and up. I can't put a finger on exactly why, but I can only imagine there was some dark wizardry involved.

Of course, these days, now that my frontal lobe is fully developed, I can sit still long enough to appreciate the more spaced-out feedback loop of RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3, but there's a reason I still go back to Diablo 2 some 25 years later.

Diablo 4 lead says small teams crunch "because the company is on the verge of collapsing," but even though it's not "necessary" for AAA studios, "you might still have a culture of crunch"

Crunch has been an unfortunate aspect of the games industry for about as long as it's existed, as companies continually push developers to make release dates and deadlines without a care for anyone's wellbeing. A current member of the team behind Diablo 4 sees it as a harsh truth for smaller studios, whereas bigger ones are more likely to willfully lean into it.

Marcin Undak, lead engine engineer on Diablo 4, gave his insight during a conversation attended by GamesRadar+ at Digital Dragons. "I've been lucky to not crunch for a really long time now, since I joined bigger companies," he starts.

"I would say the difference is probably, in smaller teams, you are crunching because the company is on the verge of collapsing," he continues. "It's the matter of whether we release this game on time, or we all go home because we run out of money. That's not the case with bigger companies."

A combination of slim margins and wearing multiple does tend to increase the pressure for teams in the single figures. Shipping and maintaining releases of any shape or size is tough under those conditions, often generating an environment where crunch is possible.

It becomes less understandable when you're talking about huge corporations, like Rockstar and Ubisoft, with masses of resources, and it's still happening. That suggests another issue, as Undak says.

"Of course, you might still have a culture of crunch," he adds. "But I wouldn't say it's necessary, so those bigger companies can choose whether they want their people to crunch or not, because they have money to sustain themselves."

We are, thankfully, at a point where the practice is becoming less common culturally. More indie teams actively avoid overworking, and there's more understanding and unity among workers within the industry when it comes to challenging these norms. Alas, for now it's still occurring, but perhaps with enough people highlighting the problems, that won't be the case forever.

Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred player finds "theoretically infinite" treasure goblin hack to spawn so much loot that the game can't keep up

Diablo 4's new Lord of Hatred expansion has effectively revitalized the ARPG's endgame and loot, but with any update that fundamentally shakes up core systems to such a degree, there are bound to be some unintended interactions, and one of those appears to allow for thousands of treasure goblins in a single dungeon and so much loot the game can't keep up.

Diablo content creator FP recently released a video demonstrating a trick hiding in the Lord of Hatred DLC's new War Plans feature, which lets you pick and pull from your favorite endgame activities and pair them with special nodes to customize loot and enemy spawns. The Gauntlet node, which traps the "souls" of enemies you slay in a Nightmare dungeon's shrine buff window and then respawns them when it expires, is key to this particular exploit, but there's also a lot of luck and waiting involved to get FP's setup all lined up.

As explained by fellow Diablo creator Rob2628, first you'll need to find a dungeon with shrines, and then you'll need to reset that dungeon until you find the highly sought after blue treasure goblins, called Gelatinous Syruses in the game, and then you're good to go with Gauntlet ticked on. With this setup enabled, the blue goblins you kill will separate into smaller spawns as they usually do, but these smol goblins will be stored and respawn as full goblins alongside their parents when the shrine buff ends, apparently because the spawns and parents share the same name. And if you manage to time your run perfectly so that the first shrine's buff ends just before you activate the next one and kill your newly respawned goblins, you'll create a "theoretically infinite" chain, as Rob2628 puts it, of replicating and respawning treasure goblins and loot.

FP was able to reach a total of 2,400 treasure goblins in a single Nightmare dungeon, which is a spectacle every Diablo 4 player needs to witness, but it's actually not an ideal number for loot efficiency. As demonstrated in the above video, that amount of loot spawning all at once seems to overload the system, and large swaths of it will disappear as the engine struggles to keep up. It does appear that lower-tiered loot is deleted first, which is handy, but FP still says they lost "all the loot except for 400 charms," which were "salvaged for 10k dust." Next time, FP says, they'll work on finding a formula that spawns a much more manageable 399 goblins, which they theorize will maximize loot without risking the sort of catastrophic loss of loot they experienced in this last run.

If this really catches on like some previous Diablo 4 exploits have, I'll be curious to see how Blizzard tackles it. It's clearly an exploit, as evidenced by FP's predicament, but Blizzard has taken a varied approach to nerfing similarly overpowered loopholes like this in the past. Regardless, this setup makes War Plans the most lucrative endgame activity in Diablo 4 by quite a large moment for now, even if it takes a good amount of patience to pull off.

Blizzard was working on Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred before the base RPG even launched, and that's why some of its biggest features were "deployed early"

Uh oh – it appears, in making some changes to Warlocks in Diablo 4, Blizzard's managed to break the class to a pretty drastic extent. A particular combination of equipment will make you practically unstoppable, by way of enabling you to one-shot much of what comes your way, even in a high-ranking dungeon.

There are four aspects to this intersection of pain. You have Command Fallen and Command Ae'grom, then the Paingorger's Gauntlets, Oikos-Hewer of Mutilation, and the Evisceration Fragment. As of the last patch, having these together lets you just run through many of the RPGs enemies with ease – particularly Elites, due to the Rampage skill.

See, the patch sorted a problem with the Mutilation on the Evisceration Fragment, but it's over-corrected and made the associated effects go haywire. Diablo-focused YouTuber wudijo demonstrates as much in a short video explaining the build and just showing off its power. At the core is his own custom Lunatic outline, which uses Fallen and Ae'grom, a popular way of playing as Warlock in Diablo 4.

Put this all together, and you'll get damage scaling to the point of just mutilating anything that steps in your way. This makes Level 150 of the Pit of Artificers, the peak of the whole gauntlet, a bit of a breeze by normal standards.

What's slightly troubling is that it's not hard to figure out this setup, as wudijo points out it was his normal build, plus the Mutilation and Evisceration fragments. Minor tweaks on their face that change the whole complexion of the game.

He reckons there'll be a hotfix for this soon, and I'd agree. It skews all the demon-slaying to a pretty drastic degree. If you want to get some kicks from it, boot up Diablo 4 as soon as possible.

Blizzard was working on Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred before the base RPG even launched, and that's why some of its biggest features were "deployed early."

Diablo 4's new Lord of Hatred expansion is such a foundational shakeup to the ARPG's core systems - not to mention a massive content drop - that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a whole new game. And as it turns out, it was in development even before the base game launched back in May 2023, a testament to the amount of development resources Blizzard threw at this thing.

It's wild to think that Diablo 4 itself, more than a dozen seasons worth of new content, the Vessel of Hatred DLC, and countless balance updates have dropped in the span of time that Lord of Hatred has been in development, but according to associate game director Zaven Haroutunian, that's exactly the case, and it really goes to show how huge Blizzard has become.

"Throughout the entire development of Lord of Hatred, the number of activities varied, is the right way to put it," Haroutunian tells IGN. "Part of this was because we had such a long start on this project; we've been developing it in some way since before the base game launched, so it's been cooking for a while."

Similar to a lot of AAA live-service games, Diablo 4's nearly three-year path from launch has been nothing short of a rollercoaster as the game's proudly vocal community reacts to various additions and changes and Blizzard reacts by sending out more patches and larger updates. Since the team has been plugging away at Lord of Hatred in some form since launch, it makes sense that some of its planned features were siphoned over to the main game to help make those dips a little more tolerable.

Haroutunian says "some things that were in prototype or development ended up being deployed early," specifically the Infernal Hordes endgame mode. "It was like, a horde mode would be cool, but what would be even cooler is if we ship that earlier," he says. It was cool.

Lord of Hatred has largely seen glowing reviews from critics and players alike despite a characteristically rough launch from the technical side of things. The first big post-launch patch, which hit all platforms this week, nerfed down a previously unstoppable Butcher, made charms easier to track down, and closed a loophole in which a nameless "useless unique item could be transmuted."

Lord of Hatred is Diablo 4 at its best because it remembers Diablo 3 was good, actually

Game development is tricky as is, but on games like Diablo 4, it can be especially tough because of the ambiguity around what approach to take. Many decisions boil down to just making a move, seeing how it lands, then adjusting based on feedback, according to one of the leads on Blizzard's hellbound action-RPG.

"We're often faced with solving real problems, and we don't always have the ideal solution in front of us," Zaven Haroutunian, associate game director on Diablo 4, told IGN. "In fact, there's often no ideal solution. Often, we just have to pick a thing."

As you may well know, the collective Diablo community is not shy about what works and what doesn't, and frequently the devs will move with how players are feeling. "It's only after you step back from the stuff you've made that your perspective changes and you understand the impact of your decisions, both positive and negative," Haroutunian explained. "Really, that’s only when you can get a clear picture of what you've actually made."

Looking through the patch notes for many of the team's updates will reveal as much. Amid the bug fixes and such are lots and lots of minor nerfs, buffs and tweaks, frequently across practically every facet of the game. The fine-tuning is constant, as fans continually test the mechanics to their limits.

This goes further with additions like in Lord of Hatred, where the Warlord and Paladin classes were added, disrupting the status quo of the skill tree and the respective power balance. "A lot of it is just repositioning. Making sure everything is in the right place to have the right impact," he says. "Customisation in the Skill Tree. Power with the items. Crafting in the Horadric Cube. The Talisman bringing depth. Every skill has options, and every class will reap the benefit of the work we've done."

In fact, it gave an excuse to do a top-down revamp that proved useful for all involved. "It solves a problem while refreshing every class in the game," he adds.

World of Warcraft streamers attend top-secret Blizzard event, leaving fans hoping for the version of the MMO they've tried to manifest for years

Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation are worn statues that can be spotted around each of the region of Skovos, which means they are exclusive to those who own the Lord of Hatred expansion. By claiming them you'll receive a decent amount of gold and XP for your trouble, while also discovering visions of the past regarding Linarian's early years that you can relay to the local scholar. However, to collect them you need to do more than just find them, as you must first locate and rotate two other statues in the vicinity to active them.

On the maps below we've shown all of the Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations, along with two lines to indicate where the corresponding Lilith and Inarius statues are so you can rotate them to face the correct direction. Note that each area of Skovos unlocks in turn during the course of the Lord of Hatred campaign, and you'll need to reach the final quest of Chapter 4: When Sun and Moon Converge before you can fully explore the whole map to reach every Chronicle of Creation.

Have you mastered Diablo 4 fishing? We've got guides on where to catch every fish you need to complete the Diablo 4 Favor for a Favor and Diablo 4 The One That Got Away quests.

How to claim Chronicles of Creation in Diablo 4

To claim Chronicles of Creation in Diablo 4, you first need to find two other Weathered Shrines in the nearby area representing Lilith and Inarius. Those statues can be rotated by interacting with them, and when they turn to face the Chronicle of Creation a beam of light will form to connect them. Once you've turned and connected both statues, you then need to interact with the Chronicle of Creation to claim it – don't forget to do this otherwise it won't register in your collection and you'll have to repeat the process.

Once you've claimed all Chronicles of Creation in an area, a vision will appear detailing an element of Linarian's upbringing at the hands of Lilith and Inarius. After witnessing each of these visions, a side quest will be added for you to find an archivist named Kallinos to report what you know of the past, which you can either complete as you receive them or save them up to run through once all Chronicles of Creation have been claimed.

Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations in Philios

There are five Chronicles of Creation locations in Philios:

Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations in Lycander

You'll find five Chronicles of Creation in Lycander:

Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations in Athulua

There are just three Chronicles of Creation to track down in Athulua:

Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations in Atanos

Another six Chronicles of Creation are waiting to be claimed in Atanos:

Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations in Celestia

There are five more Chronicles of Creation hidden across Celestia:

Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations in Skartara

Finally, there are six Chronicles of Creation to locate across Skartara:

Once you've found all 30 Chronicles of Creation in Diablo 4, you can go and visit Kallinos for the final time and collect a large chunk of XP plus some equipment for completing this questline – congratulations!

If you want to see how this latest offering stacks up against the rest of the series, then check out our ranked list for the best Diablo games of all time.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The first substantial patch post-Lord of Hated rolls out on Diablo 4 in a couple of days, and Blizzard's revealed the long, long list of changes. Besides a cavalcade of minor bug fixes, we've got a number of quality-of-life improvements and tweaks across many aspects of the game, including to Talismans, War Plans, and plenty more.

An immediate stand-out in the patch notes is actually buried towards the bottom, in the endgame section. If you've been having real problems with the Burning Butcher, it turns out the odds were stacked against you. He's been debuffed substantially; he now has considerably less health, and one of his abilities has been toned down.

He won't suddenly exit if you're in stealth anymore, either. On the Talisman side of things, charms now have a distinct sound and minimap icon to make finding them considerably more straightforward. For something slightly more obtuse, a "useless unique item" can't be transmuted anymore.

A problem where players were respawning in out-of-bounds areas has been remedied, something that no doubt inspired some extremely passionate feedback, and an issue involving repeating and overlapping NPC dialogue after you re-enter a room a number of times. My personal highlight is the change to a puzzle in the Path of Riddles that pointed to "Destruction" instead of "Corruption," tripping players up.

For War Plans, an infinite farming exploit in Nemesis Boss Lairs has been sewn up, and some unintended rewards are once again gated off as required. Many of the classes get their own sets of specific alterations and fixes, and there's a slew of other changes.

It's a solid slate that should make playing that much smoother for all involved. It goes live on May 13 - Butchers beware.

For Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred DLC, Blizzard designed the new warlock class to feel like it could beat the necromancers and sorceresses in a "fist fight."

Diablo 4 just got another magical class with the warlocks, who share a few key similarities with necromancers and sorceresses. But for Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred DLC, developers at Blizzard Entertainment made the new class stand out against its spellcaster siblings by asking themselves one super duper important question: Who would win in a punch up?

Warlocks in Diablo 4 operate on the other side of the coin to necromancers. Rather than reviving bones from the dead to fight by your side, warlocks rip portals wide open to pull out still living demons that do your bidding, no matter how painful the task. One skill makes it rain demons onto your foes, while another forces them to link together and create a breathing wall to protect against damage. Poor, ugly demons.

Lead class designer Stephen Trinh suggests, in an interview with the PC Gamer magazine, that the more brutal, hardened warlock skills came about as a way to differentiate the class from other spell slingers in the series.

"When we were talking about warlocks, [we asked ourselves] how are they different from necromancers and sorceresses, as spellcasters?" Trinh says, "And the thing that we came to is if they got into a fist fight between the three, the warlock would beat both of them."

Blizzard actually tried something pretty exciting for the launch of warlocks, announcing the class for Diablo 4, Diablo 2, and Diablo Immortal at the same time - though, there are, of course, big differences in the warlocks' playstyles between each game.

As for Lord of Hatred, the expansion got off to a rough start with login issues and bugs hanging over its release, but Blizzard's since squashed many of its technical problems.

Diablo 4 alone makes this $15 game bundle worth it, so with one of the best JRPGS of the last decade and 6 other games it's unbeatable

As someone with way too many games in my backlog, I'm always hesitant to recommend game bundles that'll inevitably collect virtual dust on your hard drive, but I regret to say I've stumbled across one that would feel downright irresponsible not to flag.

Over on Humble Bundle, where these kinds of predicaments often arise, there's an offer that gets you Diablo 4 and Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance, not to mention six other acclaimed games, for $15. That's a dangerously tempting deal made all the more ominous by the fact that you could easily spend 200 hours on Diablo 4 and Shin Megami Tensei 5 alone, which is a fabulous value proposition as much as it is a threat to your existing backlog of unfinished games.

Thankfully, I already own Diablo 4 on PS5 and PC, and Shin Megami Tensei 5 on Steam, but I am tempted by Crysis 3 Remastered. I haven't played Crysis 3 since the original release, and a re-run of the whole trilogy sounds like a delightful trip down memory lane. That said, it is also something I hadn't once considered before seeing this bungle and thus highly irresponsible of me to consider when I still have Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 DLC to finish and new Diablo 4 DLC to start. (It's worth noting that the version if Diablo 4 included in the bundle does not include the Vessel of Hatred or Lord of Hatred expansions.)

The other games included in Humble's May deal are the roguelite action RPG sequel Heroes of Hammerwatch 2, the Nordic-themed tower defense game Nordhold, the piratey turn-based roguelite Rogue Waters, the No Man's Sky/Minecraft mash-up Cubic Odyssey, and the "minimalistic" city builder, Mini Settlers.

All of these games have "mostly positive" Steam reviews or better, and if you bought them all individually you'd pay a whole lot more than $15, so even if there's only one or two you're interested in, there's a good chance the Humble bundle is the more affordable option. Just make sure you give your backlog a sincere apology from yours truly.

After 3 years, Diablo 4's secret cow level is finally uncovered following Lord of Hatred, immediately labelled "boring" compared to Diablo 2 and 3's versions: "Needs more cows"

The Path of Riddles in Diablo 4 is a quest that stays true to its name, serving up a series of puzzles to solve so you can continue progressing through the Labyrinthine Grove. Depending on your level of lore knowledge and general analytic abilities, the responses you need to give might not be obvious, so we're here to provide you with them to help you move on. Follow our guide to the Diablo 4 Path of Riddles answers and you won't get stuck.

Have you been fishing in Diablo 4 yet? We've got the locations of all of the fish you need to complete the Diablo 4 Favor for a Favor and Diablo 4 The One That Got Away quests.

The Path of Riddles first answer

The first puzzle you'll discover while exploring Labyrinthine Grove is inscribed on a Time-Worn Statue, and when you inspect it you'll find the riddle "I see all, yet know nothing. All of Sanctuary is beneath me. What am I?" To solve this (and the subsequent riddles) you need to give your answer by lighting one of the nearby braziers, so to get things started interact with the Flame of the Mother to proceed and reveal a portal to the next area.

The Path of Riddles second answer

As you progress further through this location, you'll encounter a second Time-Worn Statue. Interact with it to reveal the next riddle you need to solve, which is "Sometimes I am the light that casts a shadow. Sometimes I am the shadow. Which one am I really?" The answer to this one feels like a bit of a cop out, but find the brazier to the right for the Flame of Both and light it to move on to the next rift.

Note that in the next area there is another Time-Worn Statue, but there is only one brasier for the answer to the 'riddle' it presents, so light the Flame of Fate and pass through to the third puzzle.

The Path of Riddles third answer

The third and final riddle is actually discovered and read out by Lorath within the Forgotten Hideaway, stating "Power born of Hell begets Corruption." If you think this sounds familiar then you're right, as it's identical to the one you answered previously to solve Rathma's puzzle in Diablo 4 during the A Blade's Weight quest! Check the braziers for translations of the three capitalized words in the inscription – Dunaxys (Power), Abythos (Hell), and Coruphar (Corruption) – then stand on the floor panels next to them to light them in the following order:

1. Dunaxys (Power)
2. Abythos (Hell)
3. Coruphar (Corruption)

With this final hurdle cleared, you can secure the Hilt of Lilith's Blade and complete The Path of Riddles in Diablo 4 – after a final battle outside with the Hateborn Brute.

If you want to see how this latest offering stacks up against the rest of the series, then check out our ranked list for the best Diablo games of all time.

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You need to solve Rathma's puzzle in Diablo 4 during the A Blade's Weight quest, as you journey with Lorath through the Archive of the Makers. This is a fairly early challenge you'll encounter as you begin exploring Skovos during the Lord of Hatred campaign, so naturally you don't want to get stuck and halt your progress before it's properly begun. We've got the answer to help you move on, so here's the solution to the Diablo 4 Rathma's puzzle.

Have you found all of the Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations? We've got them covered, along with where to catch fish you need to complete the Diablo 4 Favor for a Favor and Diablo 4 The One That Got Away quests.

Diablo 4 Rathma's puzzle solution

As you make your way through the Archive of the Makers during A Blade's Weight, you'll encounter a Rathmic Statue with various altars surrounding it – including three in front with skulls atop them. These are key if you want to solve Rathma's puzzle in Diablo 4, but you first need to know what to do with them. Check the area to the right of the statue to find a Time-Worn Inscription, which states "Power born of Hell begets Corruption."

Now inspect the three skull altars in front of the statue, to discover they feature translations of the three capitalized words in the inscription – which are Coruphar (Corruption), Abythos (Hell), and Dunaxys (Power). Using this information, you now need to interact with the Rathmic Statue and activate the altars in the same order as the inscription:

1. Dunaxys (Power)
2. Abythos (Hell)
3. Coruphar (Corruption)

Get the sequence correct and an opening will appear in the wall, which you can use to continue your journey through the Temple of Light as part of the A Blade's Weight quest.

There are more puzzles coming up so keep our Diablo 4 The Path of Riddles answers handy for that, and if you want to see how this latest offering stacks up against the rest of the series, then check out our ranked list for the best Diablo games of all time.

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After years of searching, Diablo 4's secret cow level has been uncovered. The mythological area was discovered through layers of bovine-themed jumping through hoops, right on the heels of the Lord of Hatred expansion's release.

If you're at all familiar with the Diablo games, you probably know about the secret cow level in Diablo 2, a hidden dungeon that requires players to follow some specific instructions in order to access it. Inside are a bunch of demonic bovidae who provide quite nice loot, as an extra reward beyond simply getting there.

The whole thing is a longstanding meme that carried into Diablo 3, and now the fourth installment. Since release, people have been piecing together in-game esoterica involving cows, including, but not limited to, going to a cow island and fishing cows out of the ocean. I wish I was kidding.

Finally, the portal's been unlocked, and it corresponds with Lord of Hatred's release. To keep things brief, on the day the expansion became available, a clue became visible that drops a hint about seeing something with your own eyes. Then, after going back to the cow island (where else?), you'll find a number of cattle in a circle.

Killing them all opens the hallowed gates to the realm of pure moo-jesty. Through there, you'll find similarly buff, bovine enemies to the previous two iterations, and if you bash your way around enough, you'll eventually find the Cow King, who drops his crown when you defeat him. A video from LoathBurger above goes through everything in finer detail.

This thing has different effects depending on the day you're wearing it, for added absurdism. Sadly, after all this digital archaeology, some players are a tad disappointed. "Both D2 and D3 cow levels were great for loot, and also had some whimsy in their sound effects/lvl ost. Compared to that, this cow level seems a bit... boring," one player states on Reddit.

"Cows don't even say moo, I'm uninstalling," another fan jests. "Eeeh looks like it needs more cows?" someone muses. "Given the amount of effort this took to reach (seriously, kudos) I did expect something a little more... idk, wacky?" a fourth Redditor adds.

Maybe the real treasure is the cows we passed along the way, hm? Perhaps Diablo 5's secret cow level will be more roundly satisfying.

Blizzard swiftly removes new Diablo 4 quality-of-life feature after players complain it was costing them valuable loot: "It missed the mark."

Though the series has been riding high for decades now, Diablo almost didn't make it to shelves. The original genre-defining action-RPG narrowly avoided death by bankruptcy, thanks to Blizzard, who made a lifesaving offer at the eleventh hour for the devs behind the fledgling project.

See, Diablo was the brainchild of a studio called Condor in the early '90s. Although progress was happening, it was looking increasingly like finances would run dry first, until a sudden call from the company behind Warcraft. "The offer was unexpected, but very welcome. The taxman was literally at the door, threatening to shut us down," Erich Schaeffer, co-founder of Condor, originally told Edge Magazine, now reprinted in Playmakers.

Blizzard offered not just to fund the game, but to acquire Condor, turning it into Blizzard North. Suddenly, resources were plentiful, opening up the possibilities for what Diablo could be. This completely changed the scope of the hellbound role-playing game, and proved to be a pivotal moment for the medium as a whole.

"At this point the budget was very low, under half a million dollars," Max Schaefer adds. "Once we were acquired, we sat down to work out what we could do now we were free from budgetary constraints and had a little extra time. How could we make this as big as possible?"

Thus, the world was introduced to the Kingdom of Khonduras in 1997, and Diablo was an instant best-seller. A sequel was announced in short order, and three years later, Diablo 2 arrived, to even greater success. The second installment remains a standard-bearer for loot-driven dungeon-crawling, with a remaster coming out in 2021.

But it all started with Diablo, a little experiment in combining Dungeons and Dragons with some roguelike structuring. Who knew a blizzard would be all such a venture through hell needed to survive?

Diablo 4 streamer pulverizes new Lord of Hatred expansion's difficulty tier in 17 hours, complains about lack of "aspirational content"

The Diablo 4 The One That Got Away quest will significantly test your angling knowledge, as you have to find and catch six rare fish – the Augur of Civo, Morayaga, Crookfish, Zakarati, Neme-Senga, and Drakonbeard. While previous fishing assignments could be completed at Shi Yugong's Haven in Skovos, you'll have to travel across Sanctuary for this one as your targets are scattered far and wide. To track down all of the catches you need, here are the Diablo 4 The One That Got Away fish locations.

Looking for more collectibles? We've got all of the Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations laid out so you can complete the set.

Diablo 4 The One That Got Away fish locations

You should now be familiar with the process of Diablo 4 fishing, however what you might not know is that certain fish appear exclusively in one region only, and the six fish you're after here are each unique to one of the six regions of Sanctuary. It therefore pays to know which one can be found in each area, and also where you can actually go fishing there as some of the regions are either parched deserts or frozen expanses.

Below I've listed which fish can be caught in each region, as well as a potential fishing location close to a Diablo 4 fast travel waypoint for ease of accessing them quickly:

• Augur of Civo – found in Dry Steppes
  Beach west of Ked Bardu
• Morayaga – found in Fractured Peaks
  Bridge on east side of Yelesna
• Crookfish – found in Hawezar
  Walkway on east side of Backwater
• Zakarati – found in Kehjistan
  Docks on southwest side of Gea Kul
• Neme-Senga – found in Nahantu
  Pier on west side of Kurast Docks
• Drakonbeard – found in Scosglen
  Pier on west side of Marowen

Keep fishing in each spot until you land the unique fish for that region, and remember that as with the previous Diablo 4 Favor for a Favor quest you must catch the Rare variant of each fish marked with yellow text, as other varieties including Unique and Legendary won't count towards your progress. When you have them all, use the Consumables menu to add the Rare Augur of Civo, Morayaga, Crookfish, Zakarati, Neme-Senga, and Drakonbeard to your collection, then return to Shi Yugong in Skovos to claim your reward.

How does this latest offering compare to other entries in the series? Take a look at our ranked list for the best Diablo games of all time and find out.

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The Diablo 4 Favor for a Favor quest is your first proper angling test, once you've learned the basics of how to cast a line and start land catches. Your fishing mentor wants you to catch three specific fish – the Kokalodon, Silverbelly, and Darkling – but sends you on your way with that list and no further instructions. If you want to know where you can make your required catches, then here is the Diablo 4 Favor for a Favor fish location.

Have you found all of the Diablo 4 Chronicles of Creation locations? We've got details of how to activate and claim all of them.

Diablo 4 Favor for a Favor fish location

Once he's introduced the basics of Diablo 4 fishing to you, your next interaction with Shi Yugong will initiate the Favor for a Favor quest, in which he tasks you with catching some strange fish to help jog his memory. Specifically, you need to land these three fish:

• Kokalodon
• Silverbelly
• Darkling

Helpfully, those fish are all native to the Skovos region you're currently in, so you don't even need to leave the wooden pier you're currently on – simply keep casting your fishing line off the side and following the prompt until you've caught them all. You do need to be patient, as you're likely to land other fish and a selection of junk along the way, but you'll get there in the end if you persevere.

Also bear in mind that you need to catch the Rare variant of each fish (denoted by yellow text) to count towards this quest, as other versions including Legendary or Unique won't tick them off your list. Once landed, open the Consumables menu and add the Rare Kokalodon, Silverbelly, and Darkling to your collection, then speak to Shi Yugong to wrap things up.

If you're moving on to the Diablo 4 The One That Got Away quest next, we've got all of the fish locations for that too.

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Oh dear, what once seemed like a good way to help players in Diablo 4 actually proved to be more of a hindrance, leading Blizzard to roll it back. Special portals, added for quicker escapes from pits and towers, were causing people to miss out on valuable loot, and have now been removed.

It's the topline change in the latest Diablo 4 hotfix. "Finishing a pit or tower run no longer spawns a portal to exit from," the patch notes state, followed by some further context: "Our intention with adding this portal was for [quality-of-life], but it missed the mark."

These gateways sound incredibly handy at first, as they arrive right when you're done and allow you to zip out of the dungeon. The issue is they would often spawn right near some nice treasure, unprompted, and a single miss-click would have you zipping away from the rewards you just killed a bunch of hellspawn to get.

This annoyance is compounded by the fact that players can already create portals if they so choose. In trying to streamline that mechanic, Blizzard made something way more inconvenient.

"Why in the name of Rathma did you put a no-confirmation portal out of a dungeon that you cannot return to?" wrote one frustrated player on Reddit. "That spawns on top of me. That causes you to forfeit your unspent glyph points. That has loot scattered ALL AROUND IT."

Their views are shared by many experienced Diablo 4 fans. "There's no reason to have a portal open when we finish the pit other than to screw us out of our rewards by accidentally clicking it when we are trying to finish off the mobs," writes another Reddit user. "When you finish a pit a portal appears, it needs to go away! I finished a pit and accidently clicked on the portal. I couldn't upgrade my glyphs or pick up gear," another fan on the Diablo 4 forums states.

Blizzard's heart may have been in the right place here, but the execution needs work. Making it a mechanic that people can turn on or off would probably help, as well as proximity detection to valuable items. Regardless, they've been thrown into the portal of bad mechanics - for now, at least.

Diablo 4 streamer pulverizes new Lord of Hatred expansion's difficulty tier in 17 hours, complains about lack of "aspirational content."

Diablo 4 fishing is a new pastime introduced with the Lord of Hatred expansion, providing a relaxing hobby that's a far cry from hacking and slashing your way through hordes of unspeakable creatures. Blizzard have described this as an endgame activity, so you'd think it would become available after clearing the campaign, but you can actually get started with it early in the latest adventure. To find out more, here's how to unlock fishing in Diablo 4 and land your catches.

How to unlock fishing in Diablo 4

After traveling to Skovos and completing your initial quest in the city of Temis, a Priority Quest marker for Fishing will appear to the east in the Philios region. Head to that location and you'll meet fishing expert Shi Yugong, then speak to them to unlock the Diablo 4 Fishing emote – this should be automatically added to your Action Wheel, but if not you can use the Customize option to add it from the Miscellaneous tab, and you can also assign a key bind to it afterwards from the Controls tab in the Options menu.

How to catch fish in Diablo 4

To catch fish in Diablo 4, you just need to stand close to a body of water and then activate the Cast Fishing Line emote from your Action Wheel – if you get a warning that your location isn't suitable then adjust your position to get closer to the water. Once you've cast, wait until you see a splash in the water at the end of the line and the fish icon appears above you, then quickly hit any action button to land your catch. This is usually one or two fish, though you can also reel in junk items and occasionally a monster or other surprises!

All of your catches while fishing in Diablo 4 will be stored in your Consumables menu, and they have no weight so you can hold/carry as many as you like. There are many different types of fish, and each species can have variations in different rarities – the first time you catch each unique fish, you'll have the option to consume it from the Consumables menu and add it to your collection.

You can only do this once, so if you try to add the same fish to your collection again nothing will happen. You can track how your progress towards this challenge is going by opening the map screen, selecting the Collections tab and Challenges, then scrolling down to Fishing and expanding it to find the Tenacious Angler checklist. You can also expand each region to see which fish are exclusive to that area. Your catches are quite valuable, so you can either trade them with other players to fill in more of your collection or sell them to a merchant for a tidy profit.

Now you know how to go angling, we've got all of the fish locations for the Diablo 4 Favor for a Favor and Diablo 4 The One That Got Away quests.

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Diablo 4 streamer Mekuna just beat the new Lord of Hatred campaign's nasty new Torment 12 difficulty tier in 17 hours – and the fact that he was able to complete such a hardcore feat seems to worry him. Not because playing 17 hours straight of Diablo 4 likely does something funny to your organs, but because he thinks T12 is too achievable.

Mekuna writes in the description for his summary video on YouTube discussing what he calls the "Diablo 4 LoH Endgame Issue," "it just didn't take that long. With the right approach, anyone can do it."

To me, a person who cannot play a game for longer than eight hours without worrying she's forgotten what sunshine feels like, Mekuna's concerns here seem unrealistic – but they are also indicative of the rift beginning to form in the Diablo 4 community between no-nonsense players desperate for bigger and dirtier challenges, and those who just aren't.

Shortly after Mekuna concludes his 17 hour T12 run on stream – the Diablo 4 expert did the whole thing in one sitting – he laments the fact that "there is no, like, aspirational content" that motivates him to grind more and "makes me want to log in."

To developer Blizzard's credit, Diablo 4 associate game director Zaven Haroutunian recently addressed these demands from some players for more "aspirational content," explaining that, "What we've tried to do is as much as possible in Lord of Hatred is create opportunities for players to make their own goals, their own aspirational goals."

But Mekuna, and similarly competitive Diablo 4 players like him, don't seem satisfied with this populist approach. In his analysis video, which you can watch in full above, the streamer concedes that "T1 to T12 is, like, way better for the general playerbase, because it separates the progression way better for them."

That said, "I feel like the marketing that Blizzard put into that was, T12 was supposed to be aspirational content, and it was something we were going to strive for," Mekuna explains. "The way it was communicated to us was a bit misleading. We were thinking about reaching T12 in like two weeks of grinding, and unfortunately, that didn't happen."

"We are still missing something about the end game," the streamer says. Mekuna also makes a point to mention, "I also see people that's going to come and say it's because I'm a streamer, it's because I no-life the game. Well, that [T12 challenge] just took me 17 hours, and this has nothing to do with being a no life."

But a top YouTube comment keeps him in touch with the reality for people whose jobs don't require them to play Diablo 4: "What you did in 17h, I will take a month to do."

As Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred gets off to a poor start with login issues, queues, and bugs, Blizzard promises to get the fixes out as fans lose patience.

Diablo 4's new Lord of Hatred DLC might have had a shaky start thanks to long initial login queues and bugs, but Blizzard has been on the case with hotfix aimed at ironing out a progression blocker and fixing the missing Talisman tab.

The first hotfix – which arrived yesterday – takes aim at two slightly broken quests. The first is related to the aforementioned missing Talisman tab – a problem some players reported encountering at launch.

Community manager Rich 'filthierich' Bantegui explains in a post: "Fixed an issue where if the Last of the Horadrim quest was completed in a party, only one party member would be credited with completion and the Talisman tab would not unlock for other party members." Teamwork clearly seems to have been the issue here, as Blizzard previously advised anyone affected to complete the quest "solo on an alternate character" to get around the bug.

The other quest issue addressed in hotfix 1 relates to "The Soil, The Seed, the Fruit," which previously had a bug that could stop you progressing through it. Notably, the "She Sleeps Within You" quest – which was quickly highlighted as having a similar problem when the expansion first released – hasn't been fixed yet, but Blizzard is aware of the bug and is planning to address it.

Blizzard has definitely been busy, though, as a second hotfix has landed to fix more problems in Diablo 4 version 3.01. Specifically, it makes tweaks to two Necromancer skills, as well as the health of certain monsters. As Bantegui writes, "the Schadenfreude variant for Iron Maiden and the Bramble Variant for Bone Prison did far more damage than intended," so those have been adjusted, and "various monsters, such as Pangs of Duriel and Infernal Prison, had much higher health values than intended," so those will be lower now, too.

The change to Bone Prison seems fairly significant, too. One player on the D4Necromancer subreddit notes that they were previously "doing 705m at paragon 95" with the skill, but after the hotfix, they "do like 205k and can't kill shizzle." Certainly unfortunate for them, but it was clearly capable of doing far more than Blizzard had in mind.

Of course, the devs aren't done just yet, but this is a solid start as far as bug fixes go, particularly with the missing Talisman tab. After all, that's a new system introduced for Lord of Hatred, so it'd be rather unfortunate if folks couldn't actually unlock it properly. My condolences to the Necromancer players who were enjoying their broken skills, though.

Diablo 4 needs "aspirational content" to challenge players, director agrees, but don't discredit more casual gameplay like fishing.

Diablo 4 associate game director Zaven Haroutunian knows the action role-playing game should feature a compelling amount of "aspirational content" to keep players interested, but the challenge should never outweigh the intrigue.

He tells Diablo 4 YouTuber Rhykker during an interview breaking down the game's new Lord of Hatred expansion, "I think the game needs aspirational content" – which Rhykker worries "has been made accessible to the everyman." Haroutunian counters that, "I don't think that content, whatever it is, should present itself as the sole, or true, completion point."

Haroutunian astutely observes that, "If you present the whole game in this way, where you say, 'And the ultimate challenge is right there,' and everyone looks at that, and they rightfully expect to be able to reach it, right? Like if you present the entire game as this perfectly, linear straight path, then I'm going to expect, as a player, well, the things I'm doing in the path from where I am to where I'm going is going to prepare me for something I'm going to have to do there, right? Video game 101. It's just, like, a thing."

But, from developer Blizzard's perspective, this natural urge to march in a line becomes a problem when something in Diablo 4 is either harder or much easier than its developers intended. When this happens, it's time to rebalance – which does make some aspects of Diablo 4 more welcoming to an average skill-level player, as Rhykker says. But if Blizzard chases punishing gameplay over everything, "everything else we make afterwards has to bend in service to it as an outlier," says Haroutunian.

"What we've tried to do is as much as possible in Lord of Hatred is create opportunities for players to make their own goals, their own aspirational goals," Haroutunian continues to say about the expansion, which Blizzard is currently running through the dishwasher to fix its minor launch messes, like crazy login queues and bugs.

"I guarantee you there's a bunch of people who are motivated to find every fish," Haroutunian says in reference to Diablo 4's new fishing mini-game. And it seems like he's right. While some hardcore horde killers on Reddit can't imagine why Diablo 4 now features fishing (though I imagine even demons could benefit from a salmon's omega-3), one reply explains elegantly: "Big game that's fun for different reasons to different people."

Haroutunian would be proud of this response. It defines his egalitarian approach to game design, as he continues to tell Rhykker, "There's stuff in the game for all sorts of player types, which means not everything has to be for everyone. And that's great. Like, to me, that's very healthy."

Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred is so big that Blizzard decided the new season doesn't need its own theme, but it will include "major system upgrades."

Diablo 4's new Lord of Hatred DLC is here, but – perhaps to the surprise of no one – its initial launch hasn't exactly been the smoothest.

It didn't take long after the DLC's release for a telling statement to come from Blizzard on the official Diablo Twitter account. "We're aware that some players are currently experiencing issues accessing Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred," it said. "The team is actively investigating and working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We'll share updates here as we have them." And it only takes a quick glimpse at the likes of Reddit and Twitter to see why – many folks were stuck in lengthy login queues, unable to access Lord of Hatred at all.

"Has Blizzard ever had a successful launch of anything?" one unlucky player asks on the Diablo subreddit, sharing a screenshot of their painful 52-minute wait. "Billion dollar company and this happens every time they launch anything. Worse, I was actually playing when it kicked me out." Another responds: "Was just in the opening cutscene just to get kicked and put into a 105-minute queue." Yikes.

Has Blizzard ever had a successful launch of anything? from r/Diablo

Unfortunately, lengthy queues haven't been the only issue. Others have been facing the annoying error code 300008, timing out their login attempts, and per Icy Veins, some have found the Talisman tab mysteriously missing, a problem Blizzard says will be "resolved in an upcoming update" (though for now, "players can resolve this by completing the quest solo on an alternate character").

Blizzard is also aware that Xbox users may not see their "Deluxe Edition and select Platinum products" available in-game, and advises them to go to the Xbox storefront to claim them, and knows that there's a progression blocker in the "She Sleeps Within You" quest, which it advises dealing with by quitting, reloading your character, and restarting the quest until it has an actual fix available. "We appreciate your patience with this," it adds.

At the very least, it should be noted that not everyone has been afflicted with login queue issues – one player on Reddit notes that they've been "blessed with hardly any issues on PS5 or PC," even wondering if this could be "the best Diablo launch ever" for Blizzard.

Around a couple of hours after Blizzard's statement about the game's queues, the devs shared an update saying that "we've made progress on the access issues impacting some Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred players," noting that "affected players should begin seeing improvement as fixes roll out," and it seems that was a success for some. "Literally by 5PM (1 hour after launch) they had fixed the server issues and they've been butter since. So yeah, this is a great launch," one fan says on Reddit.

With that said, it doesn't appear that Lord of Hatred's launch struggles are over. Even aside from the aforementioned quest progression bug and Xbox Deluxe Edition issue, more recent posts from the last couple of hours still show some players are struggling to log in, with one suggesting that the "servers are getting overloaded again."

At this point, it's safe to say that Diablo fans are used to this – some have even jokingly been discussing their favorite login error screens – but, once again, it's definitely dampening the launch, and frustrating those who were eager to dive in as soon as the DLC became available.

Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred is so big that Blizzard decided the new season doesn't need its own theme, but it will include "major system upgrades."

The Diablo 4 Seasonal and Eternal Realms have been part of the game since the first season launched back in the summer of 2023, however their role is about to change significantly. Previously you needed to create a fresh character for the start of every season, who would then be sent to the Eternal Realm once the event concluded, but from the Lord of Hatred expansion onward there will be more flexibility to this process. To get the lowdown, here's everything you need to know about the Seasonal and Eternal Realms in Diablo 4 and how they're changing.

Differences between the Seasonal and Eternal Realms in Diablo 4

When you start the Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred campaign you will be given a choice for your character, rather than being forced to create a new one on the Seasonal Realm. While you can still do that if you prefer, for the first time you may also select one of your existing characters from the Eternal Realm, and either pick up where you left off with them or jump straight to the beginning of the latest campaign.

If you create a new Seasonal Character then you'll be starting completely fresh, meaning you can experiment with different builds and playstyle approaches, while continuing with your existing character on the Eternal Realm will let you iterate and refine your build over time. Playing on the Seasonal Realm will help to guide you towards new content through structured progression as you rebuild your inventory from scratch, while the Eternal Realm maintains a persistent environment where you make your own discoveries.

It's worth noting that the Seasonal Realm is the only place where you can earn rewards through Seasonal Ranks, which includes exclusive cosmetics that won't appear elsewhere. However, both Seasonal and Eternal Realms can access the Reliquary to unlock more cosmetic options.

Should you begin Lord of Hatred with a Seasonal or Eternal Realm character?

Whether you should begin Lord of Hatred with a Seasonal or Eternal Realm character depends on your previous experience in Diablo 4, and what your current aims are. If you're looking for a fresh start, or you're a completionist who wants to add all of the Seasonal rewards to their collection, then creating a new character on the Seasonal Realm is the way to go. However, if you've got a well-established character on the Eternal Realm and you want to invest in developing them further, then choose them for your next adventure.

Another important consideration is if you want to experience the game with friends, as you can't play cooperatively across realms. If you're planning to team up with others, then make sure that you all choose either the Seasonal or Eternal Realm, as otherwise you won't be able to connect to each other.

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Blizzard has announced the details of Diablo 4's new season, the Season of Reckoning, and it's a little light compared to previous seasons. Most notably, it won't feature its own seasonal questline, theme, or story like previous seasons, presumably to let the new Lord of Hatred expansion really breathe.

While you won't be able to hop over to the seasonal realm for a new "season-specific story, theme, or gameplay elements" this time around, Blizzard says in a new blog that the Season of Reckoning will introduce "major system upgrades such as sweeping Skill Tree updates and class changes, increased level cap, difficulty and progression updates, quality of life improvements and so much more," with the idea being "a seamless and epic experience between the Season of Reckoning and the Lord of Hatred expansion."

Season of Reckoning, which launches alongside Lord of Hatred on April 28, will also feature Diablo 4's biggest season rank journey, with "more goals and rewards" than ever before. There are nine ranks and 100 objectives to check off in total, with up to 12 skill points, 42 paragon points, 14 Resplendent Sparks, a new Loathroot pet, a Hateful Heraldry mount trophy, new emblems, new titles, crafting materials, gear and material caches, and more available to earn as part of your seasonal progression. That's not so bad considering Lord of Hatred seems like the size of a full game in itself.

Personally, I think this is a wise call. Diablo 4 is already competing for everyone's time in an increasingly competitive landscape, and with Lord of Hatred coming with two new classes, the new Skovos region to explore (and go fishing in), and a new questline wrapping up the Mephisto arc, I think a whole new seasonal deal on top of all that would be too much for most people to juggle. If I were Blizzard, I would also worry about a distinct seasonal theme and storyline being confused for the new expansion, which could draw people away from Lord of Hatred.

It's also worth noting that Blizzard has confirmed that "future seasons will return to our regular cadence and form," so this isn't a permanent change. It seems directly related to the launch of Lord of Hatred, whose impact on Diablo 4 as a whole, when combined with all of the new system tweaks, is really hard to overstate. Here's how to get started in Lord of Hatred in case it's been a while.

With Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred DLC, Blizzard "intentionally" added at least one "basically useless" item just for the new Horadric Cube

Knowing how to start the Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred campaign is important information if you've purchased this expansion, whether you're a new player or have been fighting back the demonic hordes for years. There has been a hefty amount of story lore already imparted through the base game, along with the previous Vessel of Hatred expansion – which is included as an instant unlock with all versions of the Lord of Hatred expansion – but do you need to work through all of that before you can get to the new stuff?

The good news is that, while we'd strongly encourage you to play through all of the previous content so you're up to speed on events, you don't have to do this before you can access the Lord of Hatred content – great news for players who have switched platforms, or perhaps are just impatient! To find out more, here's how to start the Lord of Hatred campaign in Diablo 4

How to start the Lord of Hatred campaign in Diablo 4

If you've purchased the latest expansion then once the Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred release time arrives you'll be offered a choice of campaigns when you start up the game, using either a new character on the Diablo 4 Seasonal or Eternal Realm, or an existing one from the Eternal Realm if you're a returning player. While we highly recommend that you've played through the base game campaign and the Vessel of Hatred expansion at least once to get the full story so far, you can use the Change Campaign State option to select the Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred campaign and start it immediately.

If you opt to go straight into the Lord of Hatred campaign, you can immediately set sail and head to the Skovos Isles – the fresh location for this expansion. This is an ancient land to explore, encountering dangers that you've never seen before in Sanctuary, as your journey builds up to the prophesized battle against the Lord of Hatred himself.

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Knowing the Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred release time can help you plan for the launch of this significant expansion, so you can jump in to start exploring the new region of Skovos and checking out all of the other fresh features as soon as possible. The update is going live simultaneously across the globe, and while this is convenient for some regions it does mean others will gain access in the depths of the night. To find out when you can play, we've got the global release times for Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred below, along with details of how to preload it now so you're prepared for launch.

We've got details of how to start the Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred campaign, and the difference between the Diablo 4 Seasonal and Eternal Realms.

Global Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred release times

The global release times for Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred are highlighted on the map above, and whether you can access it on the evening of April 27 or the morning of April 28 will depend on your location as the launch is simultaneous worldwide. Here's a full list of when you can get started in your home region:

• US West Coast: Monday, April 27 @ 4pm PDT
• US Central: Monday, April 27 @ 6pm CDT
• US East Coast: Monday, April 27 @ 7pm EDT
• Brazil: Monday, April 27 @ 8pm BRT
• UK: Tuesday, April 28 @ 12am (midnight) BST
• Central Europe: Tuesday, April 28 @ 1am CEST
• Turkey: Tuesday, April 28 @ 2am TRT
• China: Tuesday, April 28 @ 7am CST
• Korea: Tuesday, April 28 @ 8am KST
• Australia East Coast: Tuesday, April 28 @ 9am AEST
• New Zealand: Tuesday, April 28 @ 11am NZST

How to preload Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred

To ensure players are ready to get started when that global release time hits, you can preload Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred right now. The pre-download went live on April 23, so all you need to do is launch the base game on Battle.net, PlayStation, or Xbox and the 3.0.0 patch should automatically download in the background. Note that preloading the 3.0.0 patch is available to everyone, including those who haven't purchased the Lord of Hatred expansion, as it contains other key updates for the game.

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Diablo 4's second expansion, Lord of Hatred, is on the horizon, but not everything included will be immediately useful.

Aside from the new classes and questline, the Diablo 4 version of the Horadric Cube, first introduced in Diablo 2, is one of the big selling points of the Lord of Hatred DLC. If all goes well, it could shake up endgame itemization in a way that people have been asking for for years. For the uninitiated and in the simplest of terms (I go over it in more detail here), the Cube lets you use items you'd otherwise salvage to upgrade gear or create entirely new items, opening up an unprecedented level of gear customization and dramatically expanding the loot economy.

For the new issue of PC Gamer magazine, associate game director Zaven Haroutunian really hammered home how central the new Cube is to Lord of Hatred. The Diablo 4 iteration is such a big deal that Blizzard packed junk items into Lord of Hatred just to help players make better use of the Cube.

"I think players are going to shock us with what they’re going to do with it," Haroutunian said, adding that those pesky item drops clogging up your inventory, wasting your precious clicking strength, and waiting to be salvaged will soon have a "second life" thanks to the Horadric Cube. "I will say that with Lord of Hatred, there’s at least one item we’re intentionally putting in there that’s basically useless because we know it’s going to be a target for the cube," said Haroutunian.

The return of the Cube in Diablo 4 is accompanied by a separate and nearly as transformative loot change that'll bring low-level loot back to the endgame with one huge caveat: it'll drop with the chance to have a greater affix attached, yet another design tweak purposefully designed to feed into the Horadric Cube, as it means the chump change you pick up in dungeons will have the chance to become your new main weapon, chest piece, or shield. That should, in theory, make endgame runs a whole lot more interesting, which is presumably high up on Blizzard's priority list as a lack of depth is one of the main pain points for high-level players. We'll find out when Lord of Hatred launches on April 28.

Diablo 4 will get updates until the day it dies because players keep finding new problems "over the course of 10,000 hours," says Blizzard

Blizzard has been taking in Diablo 4 player feedback and using it to shape game updates since shortly after launch in May 2023, and the developer doesn't expect it'll ever stop.

In the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, associate game director Zaven Haroutunian and game designer Aislyn Hall opened up about the challenges of keeping everyone happy in a game meant to be played over many years and hundreds of hours. It's the endgame, typically, that draws out the most fervent commenters, and Diablo 4's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion is geared specifically for players who feel like they run out of stuff to do at the end of every season.

"I play a lot each season and the way I typically end a season is I find myself kind of in a rut where I'm just doing the same thing over and over," says Hall. "I think that pretty much all of these changes we're doing are trying to get you out of those ruts, make you think about the game differently for a longer period of time."

I've been playing Diablo 4 casually pretty consistently since it launched almost three years ago, and as someone who typically only has time for a couple of hours most nights, I've never been left wanting – but a lack of endgame challenge has been one of the most common pain points I've seen other players report from the beginning, and the issue has persisted through countless updates, many different seasons, and one big expansion, Vessel of Hatred, released in October 2024.

Haroutunian doesn't see that ever changing, because people play the game for so long that they start to change and want different things.

"The people who play an action RPG from the start change as they play that action RPG more and they start requiring different things," he says. "Friction points that we could never imagine – that players can never imagine – suddenly rear their head over the course of 10,000 hours."

Lord of Hatred is the follow up to Diablo 4's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, and brings the three-year Mephisto narrative arc to a close. I've been having a great time with my Paladin build, which has been available for anyone with a Lord of Hatred pre-order for months now and will unlock for everyone else when the DLC launches, but I'm particularly excited to see the Diablo 4 iteration of the Warlock class, which hit Diablo 2 Resurrected in February.

Naturally, there will also be a new questline and some endgame shenanigans to, hopefully, give those ARPG diehards something more to chew on in the long-term.

Xbox wants Fable to have Diablo-level cutscenes as Matt Booty casually reveals Blizzard is helping out with the RPG reboot's cinematics

Diablo 4's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion has been rated for Nintendo Switch by an Indonesian ratings board, hinting at a potential handheld port.

This is from the same Indonesia Game Rating System purportedly behind the recent 007: First Light and Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake leaks. However, in this case it's not so much a leak as publicly available information. You can see the rating for yourself right here, complete with a general description for Diablo 4 and 'Nintendo Switch' listed clearly as a platform alongside PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

While this is far from official confirmation, Diablo and Nintendo have a long history. Diablo 3 was a massive hit on Nintendo Switch when that version released back in 2018, and Diablo 2 Resurrected, the beautiful HD remaster of the iconic 2000 ARPG, launched on Switch at the same time as every other platform in 2021. It would absolutely make sense for Diablo 4 to make a similar move, although I'd be somewhat surprised if it released on the original Switch and is more likely to be new-gen exclusive.

That said, it is curious that the IGRS only rates it for the original Nintendo Switch instead of Switch 2, as searching the body's official website yields results specific to each console and often lists the two consoles as separate entities.

Lord of Hatred is Diablo 4's second big expansion after 2024's excellent Vessel of Hatred (sensing a theme?). Releasing on April 28, Lord of Hatred will officially add the new Paladin class, although that's been available in the base game to anyone who pre-orders the expansion. A second new class, the Warlock, which surprise-dropped into Diablo 2 Resurrected back in February, will finally arrive in Diablo 4 with Lord of Hatred, alongside a new questline, endgame activities, and gameplay updates.

Diablo 4 game director admits it's "really hard for players to keep up" with the ever-changing ARPG, especially if you aren't "at the cutting edge of everything all the time"

It seems like Diablo 4 morphs into a completely different game every year, with Blizzard consistently dropping updates containing foundational changes to its core systems. If you find it hard it keep up with everything happening, Blizzard hears you.

Right from launch in 2023, Blizzard has been tweaking Diablo 4 with big changes to everything from loot to combat to endgame and, most controversially, its approach to balance. The ARPG implemented sweeping balance updates in 2023, a huge "loot reborn" update in 2024, another big loot and combat overhaul in 2025, and coming up on the horizon, an endgame revamp that takes cues from Diablo 2.

Talking to PC Gamer, Diablo 4 game director Zaven Haroutunian chalks it all up to ARPG problems, saying it's "normal" for these kinds of games to go through "transitions."

"I call them transitions because the people who play an action RPG from the start, they change as they play that action RPG more and they start requiring different things," he says. "Friction points that we could never imagine—that players might never even imagine—suddenly rear their head over the course of 10,000 hours."

That definitely makes sense in a live-service game with so many interwoven systems, but the near-constant evolutions can be tricky to keep up with unless you're playing all the time.

"We know that it's also really hard for players to keep up with [Diablo 4], particularly those who aren't playing at the cutting edge of everything all the time," Haroutunian admits. It doesn't sound like that acknowledgment will have any bearing on how Blizzard approaches Diablo 4 updates, but it's validating to hear as someone whose job requires me to stay up-to-date on this dang game.

"I said this before, I believe in it: If a part of the game isn't working, we have to give it some attention," Haroutunian says. "I don't think anyone's too thrilled about having an obsolete part of the game just sort of linger and not do its job and not contribute."

Ex-Diablo 2 lead character artist says "there's no way you could ever" give the iconic ARPG a new act: "Would it be in a location that Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 has already fleshed out?"

Diablo 4's endgame and loot system is about to look a lot more Diablo 2-like, with the upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion set to bring back low-level loot to higher levels with one massive change: those items will soon have the chance to drop with greater affixes, something currently only possible in legendary loot.

Currently, at some point toward Diablo 4's endgame, basic loot like common, magic, and rare items all but stop dropping to make way for higher level, more powerful gear, which is identified by its orange color as opposed to blue, white, and yellow-colored bad loot. Visually, that makes for a very uniform aesthetic when you're high-level dungeon mobbing, but come Lord of Hatred's launch on April 28, item drops will look a lot more like Diablo 2, in which low-level gear still drops in the endgame but can be used to make something much more powerful. Diablo 4 loot will now operate on a similar ethos, although the finer details are quite different.

"We feel like the game just feels a lot more hollow now where you just don't really see anything except orange beams, and then you become accustomed to it, and it just doesn't feel like there's texture to it," design director of systems Colin Finer tells PC Gamer, which got the scoop on Lord of Hatred's loot overhaul.

Blizzard also revealed that any item, including those boring old blue and white ones, will have the chance to drop with a greater affix attached. Greater affixes are Diablo 4's most powerful item modifiers, and they'll instantly make the game's loot system more varied and interesting by giving you a reason to pick up those lower-tier items. From there, you'll be able to use the Horadric Cube, a new crafting tool ripped straight from Diablo 2 and coming to Diablo 4 with Lord of Hatred, to turn common items with greater affixes into legendary gear. Pretty cool!

And if you're understandably worried about screen clutter with all of the new loot types coming back, don't forget, Lord of Hatred is adding a loot filter that'll let you choose what type of loot is visible on the ground. Blizzard has yet to fully detail the breadth of customization options included in the new feature, but we know already that it'll let you hide, highlight, and recolor items both on the ground and in your inventory, making it a lot easier to chase that perfect greater affix.

As I've mentioned again and again, I'm a Diablo 2 diehard who's been playing since launch 25 years ago, and I genuinely think it's the perfect ARPG. Diablo 4's much more refined, modernized loot system will likely never adopt everything from the Wild West that is Diablo 2 loot, but it's a step closer with these changes that I think will make looting demons feel all the more rewarding when you get that god-tier greater affix from a blue item.

Ex-Diablo 2 lead character artist says "there's no way you could ever" give the iconic ARPG a new act: "Would it be in a location that Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 has already fleshed out?"

Diablo 4's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion will address the long-running issue of overpowered builds from a new angle. Instead of countering those builds with nerfs, which everyone hates, Blizzard is adding a whopping eight new Torment, or difficulty tiers, in an attempt to give players a better excuse for their stupidly overpowered characters.

The news was quietly revealed in a recent interview with YouTuber Wudijo, in which associate game director Zaven Haroutunian explains the reasoning for adding so many new Torment tiers beyond the current four. "Big numbers feel cool, they feel good for players to get. Just, you know, 'oh I got an upgrade, it's a very clear step up in my power progression' ... is the game actually asking you to have numbers that need to be that high to begin with?"

The problem comes down to, in Haroutunian's words, when players feel like they're just "getting numbers higher" without "actually meaningfully changing" how they play the game. Basically, bringing the Torment tier up to 12 is Blizzard's answer to the Diablo 4 player asking these questions: "'What do I do with these numbers, what do I do with the power I get?'"

Haroutunian did clarify that that the difficulty level in the highest Torment tier still won't be higher than the most challenging level of The Pit of the Artificers, so this is more about letting maxed-out endgame players feel some sort of challenge outside of the Pit.

"So we're not actually inflating the numbers past the current ceiling, what we're actually doing is saying, 'hey, all these activities, all of this content, can be competitive so you're not just stuck in this one place at the very end of the game," he says, adding that the top-level Torment tier "goes right up to the edge" of the toughest Pit difficulty.

Talking to PC Gamer, director of systems Colin Finer and game designer Aislyn Hall lay out Blizzard's thinking on progressing through these new Torment tiers.

"Philosophically where we want to go is difficulty is something you opt into risk/reward-wise, and that's where the meta progression steps in," Finer says. "You can think of torment as your floor—you're going to constantly increase that, and that's much more granular now in this 12 torment world, the jumps aren't quite as big."

Meanwhile, Hall says Blizzard wants players to have "a very clear progression through each of them as you're finding all these different additions to your build," warning that the final tier is not for the faint of heart. "It's going to be really fucking hard," says Hall.

I'm more of a Diablo 2 guy these days, but when I do play Diablo 4 it's to wind down at the end of a long day when clicking demons to death sounds more relaxing than pottering around Animal Crossing. That's to say, I am not the target demographic for these updates, but I've also been covering the Diablo beat for long enough to know there are plenty of people who get their kicks by creating utterly broken builds.

For those players, I hope you have a little more to chew on with Lord of Hatred, but something tells me you'll quickly find a way to take the torment out of even the highest Torment tier.

Lord of Hatred, Diablo 4's second expansion, is out April 28.

For the first time in Diablo history, the Butcher will be a playable character in Diablo 4's new Season of Slaughter

The Butcher has been terrifying Diablo players for three decades now, famous for randomly sprinting up to players and slaughtering them in the middle of dungeons, but soon he'll be a lot less scary... because you'll be able to control him.

Announced today during Blizzard's developer update livestream, Diablo 4's new season is titled the Season of Slaughter. As it turns out, that's an apt name for a season in which one of the big highlights is that you can "become The Butcher."

"As The Butcher, you wield brutal powers that for decades have inspired terror," Blizzard says in an accompanying news post. "Cleave through monsters, charge fearlessly into the fray and unleash a hail of hooks to drag your prey to a bloody end."

There will be a few different ways to embody the Butcher in Diablo 4's new season, starting with the seasonal questline, A Taste of Power. That'll kick off in Gea Kul in the seasonal realm and give you "a sampling of the carnage you'll experience while playing as The Butcher."

There's also a new Helltide event on the way with a consumable called Meaty Offerings, which can be used on the new Shrines of Slaughter to activate your Butcher powers and draw in hordes of enemies for you to kill and earn seasonal rewards from.

The Butcher is also coming to the Fields of Hatred PvP zones, and this is by far my favorite implementation of the otherwise fairly gimmicky feature. Every kill will increase your Savagery meter, and at the end of the ceremony, whoever has the most Savagery gets to take on the Butcher's Idol. If they win, they become the Butcher and get to run around slaughtering everyone.

Finally, there's the new Slaughterhouse activity. Blizzard is staying fairly tight-lipped on this because, in its words, "some things are best left to be experienced firsthand," but it does say you'll play "as the Butcher for the entire run. From the first step to the final blow, you're unleashed upon your enemies to do one thing: slaughter everything in sight."

As killing things in rapid succession seems to be the prevailing theme of this new season, it seems fitting that Blizzard is also implementing a new killstreak feature in Diablo 4 for the first time. Killstreaks will be broken down into five tiers: Killstreak, Carnage, Devastation, Bloodbath, and Massacre, with the chance to earn experience and seasonal reputation based on how many enemies are slain in a killstreak.

All of that kicks off on March 11.

Ex-Diablo 2 lead character artist says "there's no way you could ever" give the iconic ARPG a new act: "Would it be in a location that Diablo 3 or Diablo 4 has already fleshed out?"