Diablo IV Season 1 Announced Bringing New Dungeons and Gems
| Author: | Brian Powell Jr |
| Date: | July 12, 2023 1:06:00 pm EDT |
| Last Updated: | June 1, 2024 9:01:59 pm EDT |
| Read Time: | 2 min read |
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Season of the Malignant
In a news article released by Blizzard on July 6th, they announced the upcoming Season 1 start date along with information regarding the theme and the new mechanics being introduced for the seasonal play. As we went over in our review, Diablo IV is the newest entry in the ARPG franchise that had a rough start and questionable gameplay design choices that felt more like a phone game. In the upcoming Season of the Malignant, they are adding some new mechanics to give players something to do but I am not overly enthused about the theme and mechanics.
The Season of the Malignant adds new enemies, Partly Corrupted elites, that drop Malignant Hearts. These Malignant Hearts will act as gems that can only be used in specific Infested Sockets on your jewelry. What this means is that if your build is currently using the jewelry sockets to increase your armor, you’ll have to make a sacrifice. Hopefully the benefits offered by these Malignant Hearts, there’s 32 in total to collect, will be worth the loss of a socket.
Season one also introduces a new dungeon(s) for farming the Malignant Hearts. It’s called, you guessed it, Malignant Tunnels. These dungeons also add a new boss fight, Varshan the Consumed. Blizzard hasn’t provided more detail on these dungeons or the boss fight, but from the artwork it looks like it’ll be a range boss.
The Battle Pass
With Season 1 we also get to experience the Battle Pass system. The Battle Pass system will be your typical Battle Pass formula: the free tier gets some rewards while all the best rewards are gated behind a pay wall (i.e., purchasing the Premium Battle Pass). The premium version will award you cosmetics and platinum. Platinum is the games premium currency used for buying Battle Passes and cosmetics from the in-game shop. If you purchased the Deluxe or Ultimate edition of Diablo IV, the season one premium Battle Pass is included.