Blizzard released Diablo 4 Season 1 on July 6. Season of the Malignant, which takes place after the main campaign, will present a side tale concerning the rise of a new type of corruption over the continent of Sanctuary. And, of course, this newfound wickedness will provide you and your buddies with amazing tools to help you kill demons and rescue the world.
In this Diablo 4 Season 1 guide, we’ll go over when Season of the Malignant will be available and everything we know about it.
WHEN DOES DIABLO 4 SEASON 1 Release date?
Season 1 of Diablo 4, Season of the Malignant, will go online on July 20. While Blizzard did not provide specific timeframe during the broadcast, the season’s website does include a countdown metre building up to the season’s premiere.
According to the timer, you should be able to login, create a new character, and begin playing Season of the Malignant at the same time in all locations across the world on the same day.
Release date Thursday, July 20.
- 10 a.m. PDT for the west coast of North America
- 1 p.m. EDT for the east coast of North America
- 6 p.m. BST for the U.K.
- 7 p.m. CEST for western Europe / Paris
- 2 a.m. JST on July 21 for Tokyo
Season of the Malignant will last about 12 weeks, which Blizzard claims is the bare minimum for a Diablo 4 season. That places the Diablo 4 season 2 release date in October, only a few weeks before BlizzCon 2023.
WHAT’S NEW IN DIABLO 4 SEASON 1?
Season of the Malignant introduces the new Malignant Heart feature to Diablo 4, allowing for some “stupid” strong setups, according to Blizzard.
The notion is that Elite opponents will be able to spawn as “Malignant” creatures. You’ll be able to interact with their corpse when you murder them. This will trigger a new event in which the opponent will reappear in a considerably more powerful version, accompanied by a swarm of cronies. When you kill the beast a second time, it will drop a Malignant Heart for you to keep.
These Malignant Hearts serve as unique gems that you may use in your three jewellery items for the duration of the season. However, unlike gems, they each have their unique Legendary-like strength and are exceedingly strong. For the duration of the season, your characters will be able to trade three gem slots for three additional Legendaries.
Blizzard promised approximately 30 new Malignant Heart abilities, a new boss battle, and numerous new Unique items and Legendary Aspects for Season 1.
HOW MUCH IS DIABLO 4 SEASON 1 AND HOW DO YOU PLAY IT?
All Diablo 4 seasons are free game content updates. To begin cultivating Malignant Hearts and experiencing the new narrative mode, simply login, create a seasonal character, and travel to Kyovashad in-game to begin the quest. (It goes without saying that the seasonal stuff is only available on new, seasonal characters.)
The “free” price tag comes with the condition that Blizzard also sells a Diablo 4 battle pass with each season. This is a very standard practice in games like this, including Blizzard’s own Over watch 2, and the studio appears to be following suit.
There are three pricing options for the battle pass:
- Free
- Premium — 1,000 Platinum ($9.99)
- Accelerated — 2,800 Platinum ($24.99)
The free track is included with the seasonal update and will grant you in-game incentives such as the new Seasonal Blessing feature and other little bonuses. (The “free” track has a total of 27 pieces). As you level up, the Premium battle pass unlocks the premium track, which includes 63 paid-only goods such as emotes, weapon skins, armour transmog, and more. The Accelerated battle pass is identical to the Premium battle pass, except that it rapidly raises you to battle pass rank 20 and comes with a special emote.
Blizzard has reiterated many times that all purchases related to the season are cosmetic only, and that paid players will never have an advantage over free players.
Diablo 4 Settings Change Can Actually Make Reading Item Stats and Descriptions Easier
A Diablo 4 player discovered a simple parameter change that improves the reading of treasure metrics and descriptions. Season of the Malignant for Diablo 4 is nearly here, and the game’s first season will offer new goods as well as a battle pass to the land of Sanctuary.
Reading all of the stats and affects of newly acquired treasure is an important element of Diablo 4, and players may frequently spend a significant amount of time assessing the benefits and disadvantages of a collection of new gear. Comparing equipped items to new loot and determining which item would best suit one’s build is vital, however particular stats can occasionally take up numerous lines of text, muddying the waters. This can slow down the process of reading numbers just enough to make assessing gear feel a little laborious, especially given how quickly players can amass new treasure.
A solution was discovered by a Reddit member called Hamiltoned, who put two photos of the identical piece of Ancestral gear, Ghostwalker Doom Threads, side by side on the Diablo 4 forum. The item on the right had the normal medium text size, whereas the one on the left had tiny font size. The distinction may not be obvious at first, but upon closer scrutiny, the Sorcerer-exclusive Frost Nova and Ice Armour stats take up an extra line and break the text with the usual medium style. With the exception of the imprinted stat, the reduced font size preserves each stat on a single line, which enhances the neatness and readability of the data.
Making text smaller to increase readability may appear contradictory at first, as bigger characters on a screen are much simpler to read. However, while this little adjustment reduces the total size of the gear panel, it is offset by the ability for each stat to have its own line. It’s also worth noting that Diablo 4 does not pause. While many players choose to sift over their new treasure in the safety of one of Diablo 4’s towns, there are numerous instances where players inspect loot out in the world or in a dungeon where they can be assaulted at any time. Having neater stat language can assist speed up the process, reducing the amount of time players are susceptible in certain instances.
Many of the numbers and imprinted effects are so enormous that they appear like entire paragraphs and can take a long time to get through when in a rush, according to commenters under the post, particularly Diablo 4 Necromancer gamers. Perhaps Blizzard will work on increasing the readability of some item stats in the future. For the time being, Hamiltoned’s suggestion of switching to smaller text appears to be adequate.
Diablo 4 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
