While at this point, Blizzard has been advertising far and wide that Diablo 4 season 1, Season of the Malignant, starts on July 20, there’s a bit of a caveat to that which people may not know about.
In order to prepare for the season, the actual seasonal patch is going out two days early, on Tuesday, July 18 instead. While it’s true that the season itself is not starting, you cannot make a seasonal character or start the new seasonal storyline or mechanics, it is “early launching” at least a few significant things ahead of the season itself.
On July 18, a sprawling balance patch, the biggest since the game launched, will be live ahead of the season. Patch notes will go out and we will get to see the classes, Aspects and Uniques that are getting buffed or nerfed, and then see how those all feel in practice. Everyone expects some of the strongest builds in the game to be nerfed somewhat, which are possibly your builds, but there should be some significant buffs as well, and you can either try them out if you can switch your build without too much trouble, or it may change your view on which seasonal character you’re going to start.
There’s more. This will also mark the release of the game’s new Legendary Aspects and Uniques. Those will begin to start dropping live in the eternal realm ahead of the season, so you can farm them on your current characters and possibly alter or refine your current builds as a result of the new ones. Obviously, you will still have to contend with the larger pool of existing Aspects and Uniques, but the possibility to farm them will be there two days ahead of the season. Every new season will be adding new Aspects and Uniques that drop in both the eternal and seasonal realms.
Finally, after this patch is live, you even if you don’t feel like farming, you will at least want to log in on your character with the most progress for things like map fog clearing, Altars of Lilith and renown. A new system in place means the game will tag that progress from that character and transfer it to all your alts and also your upcoming seasonal character, so they don’t have to start completely from scratch. You can do this after season launch, but you might as well start with it, as it can be done when the patch is up.
Of course you can also work on other things, more fog and Altar clearing. Finishing the campaign so your seasonal characters can skip it and get to farming Malignant Hearts faster (completing the campaign is a requirement for the season). But yes, a number of components are going live before the season starts like balance updates and new loot. So feel free to hop in a bit early starting on Tuesday.
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