With Diablo IV still eyeing its June 6th open beta early access release date (in spite of reports of crunch casting doubt on that date), the devs of the OARPG came together in a livestream to talk a little bit about the game’s launch features, including seasons, its battle pass system, and the Codex of Power.
The stream first states that the game’s early access release won’t be the start of its first season; that will launch a few weeks after the game’s full launch in order to grant everyone equal footing for seasonal content like leaderboards. The devs also talked about the difference between D4’s seasons and the season journey, repeating details shared in August that the latter is similar to the seasonal chapters that D3 has now while the former brings new quests and content. The actual content of seasons will not be paywalled.
As players move through the seasonal journey, they’ll earn Favor that unlocks battle pass content. Those battle pass offerings weren’t deeply elaborated on, but the devs did note that rewards for either the free or $10 paid track will include cosmetics and gameplay boosts. Those boosts will be level-specific, meaning characters will need to be at a certain level before they can even use these boosts. As for the game’s seasons, those will run for three months at a time and will take about 75 hours to complete.
Lastly, the devs discuss the new Codex of Power system, pairing it with an in-game showcase of how it works. This is basically a crafting system that’s powered by aspects – aka legendary powers – that can either be found at the end of discovered dungeons or be extracted from item drops into aspect crystals. Each of the game’s dungeons has a unique aspect hiding inside.
Once an aspect has been gained, players head to an occultist at a major town and imbue it into their equipment.
Aspects are earned for an entire account, so different characters have access to any earned aspects even at lower levels. However, aspects aren’t the only way to get legendary powers: Item drops will still have the potential to have inherent powers as they do now, and many of those powers are earned only in this way. As a general rule of thumb, legendary items will still be more powerful overall.
