Join Associate Director of Community Adam Fletcher, Game Director Joe Shely, and Associate Game Director Joseph Piepiora as they talk more about the Abbatoir of Zir, Midwinter Blight, and provide a brief preview of quality-of-life improvements arriving next year.
Campfire Chat Highlights
- This livestream will be the last this year.
- Game Director Joe Shely answered a popular question in the chat and clarified there are no plans to add pay for power to Diablo 4.
Midwinter Blight
- The first proper holiday event heading to Diablo 4 on December 12.
- It’s taking place in the Fractured Peaks.
- There’s a new bard called Gilian who will send players to kill the red-cloaked clad.
- Here are the cosmetics that players can earn during the event.
- There’s also a new potion and a new seasonal aspect. They both will persist after Midwinter Blight.
Abbatoir of Zir
- A new seasonal endgame activity coming on December 5.
- Abbatoir of Zir unlocks after completing the Season 2 Journey.
- Abbatoir of Zir will have 25 tiers.
- They are now showcasing an Abbatoir of Zir run on stream.
- Abbatoir of Zir Tier 1 is equivalent to a Tier 104 Nightmare Dungeons.
- Abbatoir of Zir is a time race, very similar to Greater Rifts in D3. You kill NPCs to fill the bar, summon a boss, and beat the timer.
- When you finish your run, you will receive Tears of Blood glyphs with powerful multiplicative effects. They have 200 ranks.
- Abbatoir of Zir will always have different layouts and monsters.
Patch Notes
- Patch notes for the upcoming Diablo 4 update will be available tomorrow.
Itemization / Quality of Life Changes
Next, the devs talked about itemization updates planned for 2024.
- They want to decrease the amount of mental bandwidth for item processing.
- When an item drops for you they want it to be the start of a journey for build making.
- Some content creators already have access to itemization changes planned for Season 4. Blizzard shared them to gather feedback.
- Helltides will be up permanently with 5-minute breaks.
- When you reach World Tier 4, enemies will have a chance to drop 925 Item Power gear. They don’t want 925 items to only drop from Uber Duriel and world bosses.
- Part of all of this is to find more ways to communicate the devs’ intentions, they don’t want to overpromise/underdeliver, so they want to provide as many details as possible.
Q&A
It’s time for questions!
- Midwinter Blight goes through January 2.
- Abbatoir of Zir will be up almost through Season 2.
- They are making it easier for console players to trade gold. Manual gold scrolling is being addressed in Season 3.
- No plans to permanently make Abbatoir of Zir an endgame feature. They are looking into similar endgame activities for upcoming seasons.
- Being able to filter loot efficiently should be a baseline feature. Changes to itemization in Season 4 will help with loot filtering.
- If they added a loot filter today, it wouldn’t work in the future given the breadth of planned itemization changes.
- More color palettes could be added in the future, they just have not received any feedback yet.
- They like the idea of being able to replay the campaign at a higher difficulty.
Game Director Joe Shely is wearing a stylish hat now on stream, talking about how they’re excited for 2024.
The next stream will be next year live from Albany. They will talk about Season 3.
Livestream Link
You can watch the livestream below.