Diablo 4 Season of the Malignant starts July 20, lets you use Malignant Hearts as Gems

As part of today’s big Diablo livestream, Blizzard revealed a lot about Diablo 4 Season 1. The new season is called Season of the wickedand will come to the game July 20th on all platforms.

Each new season of Diablo 4, starting with Season of the Malignant, will launch with new narrative content, including quests. This time, the story begins after the end of the main campaign. Although Lilith is defeated, her evil persists and she is responsible for a new threat: evil monsters.

An evil Monster is an enraged version of existing enemies, and they are rampant on Sanctuary. The key to his malignancy is his evil heart, which you can capture. The new season presents Cormonda former cathedral priest who helps you use these hearts to your advantage.

As part of the new questline, you’ll learn about this new plague and use evil hearts in powerful new ways.

This ties into the new Season of the Malignant mechanic. when you kill a partially corrupt enemy, drop an Evil Heart. You catch them using the restraint cage (an item you get as part of the quest line). After performing the necessary ritual, the Partially Corrupted enemy respawns as totally corrupt – a much more difficult variant. If you defeat that overpowered version, you get an Evil Heart that you place in your jewelry.

The jewelry now comes with infested sockets that accept these new non-Gems. There are 32 evil hearts to chase, divided into four categories (colors). most challenging evil enemies will drop more powerful Hearts.

In addition to meeting evil enemies in the open world, you can also target the farm in the new evil tunnels – a new themed style of dungeons with concentrated numbers of Evil Monsters. A new boss fight awaits you at the end, too, against Varshan the Consumed.

The Season 1 Battle Pass has already generated quite a bit of controversy after Blizzard confirmed that you’ll need to create a new character to experience the new content and progress through the Battle Pass.

The good news, at least, is that any class can use all of the battle pass cosmetics, because it would be unreasonable to expect players to create a character for every class every season.

All of the new gameplay boosts and mechanics in the Season 1 Battle Pass are available to all players, regardless of whether they own it or not. Upgrading to the premium pass unlocks additional cosmetics, but that’s about it. Even purchasing tier skips will not grant you certain benefits if you have not met the in-game requirement to take advantage of them.

We took a look at the battle pass design during the show, as well as some of the rewards on its free and premium tracks. The battle pass is, of course, included in the Deluxe and Ultimate editions of Diablo 4, so many players already have access to it as part of their purchase.

For more information on our up-to-date Diablo 4 coverage, click the link.