All right, Diablo IV fans, this is it: the loot overhaul you’ve been waiting for. Blizzard formally announced today that D4’s fourth season – literally dubbed Loot Reborn – kicks off on May 14th, featuring the major itemization overhaul that’s so important you kinda have to marvel that it didn’t launch that way a year ago.
“One of our several goals for the Itemization changes is to make it easier to understand which items are upgrades when they drop. We reduced the number of affixes on items (down to 3 on Legendary items, 2 on Rare items) and made these affixes more effective,” the studio says in its recap article today. “Instead of seeing an affix that relies on conditional values (+10% damage on non-injured Elites), you’ll see affixes such as base increases to your Movement Speed, Max life, or single ranks of a Core Skill. Dropped Items are now simpler to evaluate, and we’ve moved their complexity and customization to our new crafting systems, Tempering and Masterworking[.]”
“By making items more individually impactful, we’ve significantly decreased the number of items that drop when slaying Monsters. The goal here is to spend more time obliterating and less time sorting through the many items that drop. The result is that fewer items will drop overall, but those items will be more likely to be valuable. To compensate and stay on par with the norm, materials gained from Salvaging and Crafting have been adjusted to match this change. Also, Forgotten Souls can now be earned from Whisper bounties and are a rare drop from all Elites. The Gold cost to re-roll items when Enchanting now has a maximum, and we’ve cut down on the materials needed to perform all activities when at the Blacksmith.”
As testers have already reported, the update also includes updates to the Codex of Power, the tempering system, masterworking, gem streamlining, greater affixes, threat levels, the Pit of Artificers, Andariel herself, and the Iron Wolves mercs
