All the biggest changes and fixes in Diablo 4’s first major patch

The moment Diablo 4 players have been waiting for has arrived. It’s not quite the Season of the Malignant release, mind you, but it’s just as big. We are talking about the pre-season patch, of course, which was released earlier on all platforms.

Diablo 4’s 1.1.0a patch comes in at around 8.84 GB, and it’s the biggest in the game so far in terms of the number of changes, but also how fundamental many of them are. The list of patch notes is long, especially when factoring in class and item specific balance adjustments.

So instead of listing the full changelog (which you can read yourself on the Blizzard blog), we’re going to highlight the changes that have the biggest impact on the most players.

First, in terms of new content1.1.0a adds six unique items and seven legendary skins.

All of them are in the game right now, available to all players. If you play after the patch is released, you can acquire them and they can drop for you if you are within their range. Are here:

Season 1 Unique Items

1. Ahavarion Spear of Lycander (Uber Unique Staff – World Tier 4): Gain a random Shrine effect for 10-20 seconds after killing an Elite enemy. It can only happen once every 30 seconds.
2. Azurewrath (Unique Sword, Barbarian): Lucky Strike – Your Basic Abilities have up to a 20% chance to Freeze enemies for 3 seconds, dealing 0.75-1.5 Cold damage.
3. Fleshrender (Unique One-Handed Mace, Druid): Debilitating Roar and Blood Howl deal 0.5-1.0 damage to nearby poisoned enemies.
4. Uncovered Wall (Unique Shield, Necromancer): Lucky Strike: While you have a Bone Storm active, hitting an enemy outside of a Bone Storm has up to a 5-25% chance to spawn an additional Bone Storm on their target. location. Each of your active Sacrifice buffs increases chance by 25% and the total number of additional Bone Storms you can have by +1.
5. Eagle Horn (Single Bow, Rogue) – Piercing Shot has a 30-80% chance to fire an arrow that ricochets off walls and the stage. Hitting enemies from behind with Piercing Shot will make them vulnerable for 3 seconds.
6. The Oculus (Unique Wand, Sorcerer): Get the effect of the Teleportation Charm for free. When you evade using the teleportation charm, you are taken to a random location.

Season 1 Legendary Skins

1. Audacity (Utility Aspect): When there are at least 5 enemies nearby, stun them for 2-4 seconds. This can only happen once every 20 seconds.
2. Coward (Mobility Aspect): Gain 20-40% increased movement speed when moving away from slowed or icy enemies.
3. Ancestral Charge (Offensive Aspect, Barbarian) – The charge summons 4 ancients who also charge, dealing 50-100% of normal damage.
4. Underground (Offensive Aspect, Druid): Poison Creeper’s active also casts Landslide in a circle around you. Ground abilities deal 10-20% increased damage to poisoned enemies.
5. Gore Quills (Offensive Aspect, Necromancer): Blood Lance will consume Blood Orbs to also conjure lances from them. Each additional Blood Lance deals 20-50% of normal damage and prioritizes uncast enemies.
6. Plague Points (Offensive Aspect, Rogue): Every third cast of Puncture is infused with poison at 100-150% of normal potency.
7. Searing Wards (Offensive Aspect, Sorcerer): After spending 200-100 mana, your next firewall is free to cast and will destroy incoming small missiles.

Patch 1.1.0a also has a number of big game changes, some of which Blizzard discussed above. Shrines of Lilith are now unlocked account-wide, which means you only need to find them once. The same goes for map discovery and fog of war clearing. This goes for all future characters, including seasonal characters, so doing as many of those things as possible before the start of the season sets you up for a good start.

Silent chests, which until now have served as a sad source of low-level drops, have significantly improved the quality of your loot. Whispers should no longer reward Sigil Dust, which is great news for people expecting more significant rewards from them.

Melee players will be happy to know that monsters won’t be moving as often in combat, so you shouldn’t be chasing them as much. What’s not entirely clear is why Blizzard increased the Leave Dungeon ability’s cast time from three seconds to five seconds, but that’s a change that’s been made. PC gamers looking for a reason to plug in an expensive controller get one, thanks to DualSense Edge controller support.

If you’ve just reached World Tier 2, there’s good news. Gold bonus increased from 15% to 20%, and monsters in that world tier now drop 15% more items. While there are no changes for World Tier 3 and 4, Blizzard adjusted the scaling of enemies at those two higher tiers.

Enemies will now begin to fall behind the player’s level at a certain point, up to a maximum of five levels behind. For WT3, that starts after level 56 and level 76 for WT4. “We want to give players a better idea of ​​their progression of power and dominance over the world while continuing to challenge themselves with structured End Game activities,” Blizzard explained.

Another change for World Tier 3 and 4 is that the XP players get from completing Whispers has been increased significantly. Now let’s move on to the changes that are sure to make some players angry.

Earlier today, we covered a detailed chart on the best ways to level up fast, which was based on the XP bonuses higher level enemies have, as well as which dungeons and strongholds house the most enemies and are completed quickly. .

While that information is still valuable, patch 1.1.0a changed how bonus xp is calculated in several important ways. Prior to the patch, players received 15% more XP when the enemy killed was one level up, 20% when the enemy was two levels up, and 25% when the enemy was three or more.

Now the game will add only a 1.5% bonus per level, which is capped at 10 levels above the player himself. For example, an enemy one level higher will now grant 1.5%, while one a full ten levels higher will only grant 15%.

There’s more, too. The XP rewards from monster level offsets in World Tier 3 and 4 are being reduced. World level 3 is now at +6 (up from +10), and world level 4 is now at +10 (up from +100). This is meant to make group farming much less effective.

A common tactic was for high level players to invite low level friends to areas where they cannot realistically progress. Low-level players would wait outside a dungeon, for example, while higher-level pros would plow through dungeon mobs, giving idlers massive XP payouts for doing nothing. Now it should be much less viable.

Helltide is also getting more challenging. Helltide monsters are now three levels above the player, up from two. Opening the Tortured Gift of Mysteries chest will now cost 250 Aberrant Ashes, up from 175. To compensate, any interactable object in a Helltide zone now has a small chance to drop Aberrant Ashes.

The full changelog is worth reading at the link at the top of the page, especially if you’re worried about a certain nerf to your class. Season of the Malignant begins on Friday, July 20.