All the biggest changes and fixes in Diablo 4’s first major patch

The moment Diablo 4 players have been waiting for has arrived. Mind you, this isn’t the launch of Season of Viciousness, but it’s pretty close. Of course, we’re talking about the preseason patch, which was released earlier on all platforms.

Diablo 4’s 1.1.0a patch is roughly 8.84GB in size, making it the game’s largest to date in terms of the number of changes, and also in terms of how fundamental the changes are. The list of patch notes is long, especially when you consider class-specific and item-specific balance tweaks.

Therefore, instead of listing the full changelog (you can read it yourself on Blizzard’s blog), we’ll focus on the changes that most impact most players.

first of all, just new content1.1.0a adds six unique items and seven legendary aspects.

All of these are now in-game and available to all players. You’ll be able to get them if you play after the patch comes out, and they’ll drop for you if you’re within range of them. Here they come:

Season 1 Unique Items

1. Spear of Ahvarian Lykander (Super Unique Staff – World Tier 4): Gain a random Temple effect after killing an Elite enemy for 10-20 seconds. Can only happen once every 30 seconds.
2. Azure Fury (Unique Sword, Barbarian): Lucky Strike – Your Core Abilities have up to a 20% chance to Freeze enemies for 3 seconds and deal them 0.75-1.5 Cold damage.
3. Flesrender (unique one-handed mace, Druid): Debilitating Roar and Bloodhowl deal 0.5-1.0 damage to nearby poisoned enemies.
4. Uncovered Wall (Unique Shield, Necromancer): Lucky Hits – While you have an active Bonestorm, hitting an enemy outside of Bonestorm has up to a 5-25% chance to spawn an additional Bonestorm at its location. Each of your Active Sacrifice bonuses increases the chance by 25%, and increases the total number of additional Bonestorms you can have.
5. Eagle Horn (Unique Bow, Rogue): Piercing Shot has a 30-80% chance to fire arrows that bounce off walls and landscape. Hitting an enemy from behind with a piercing shot will make them vulnerable for 3 seconds.
6. Magic Eye (Unique Wand, Sorcerer): Gain the effect of the Teleport enchantment for free. When you dodge with the teleport enchantment, you will be taken to a random location.

Season 1 Legendary Aspects

1. Daring (Practical): When at least 5 enemies are in close proximity, stun them for 2-4 seconds. This can only happen once every 20 seconds.
2. Kraven (Movement): Your movement speed is increased by 20-40% when moving away from slowing or chilled enemies.
3. Ancestral Charge (Offensive, Barbarian): Charge summons 4 Ancients who also charge, dealing 50-100% normal damage.
4. Underground (Offensive, Druid): Poison Creeper’s active will also cast Avalanche around you. Earth skills deal 10-20% more damage to poisoned enemies.
5. Gore Quill (Offensive, Necromancer): Blood Lance consumes blood orbs to summon the Lance. Each additional blood spear deals 20-50% of normal damage, and prioritizes targeting enemies not holding a spear.
6. Plague Point (offensive side, rogue): Every third cast of Impale is fully virulent at 100-150% of normal potency.
7. Searing Ward (Offensive, Wizard): After spending 200-100 mana, your next Firewall is free to cast and will destroy incoming Small Missiles.

Patch 1.1.0a also contains some Major Gameplay Changes, some of which Blizzard has discussed before. Lilith Altars are now account-wide unlocked, which means you only have to find them once. The same goes for map discovery and fog of war clearing. This applies to all future characters, including seasonal ones, which is why doing as many of these as possible before the season starts can set the stage for a strong start.

Silent Chests have been a pathetic source of low-level drops thus far, but the quality of their loot has been significantly improved. Whispers should no longer reward Sigil Dust, which is good news for those looking for more meaningful rewards from Whispers.

Melee players will be happy to know that monsters don’t move very often during combat, so you shouldn’t be doing too much chasing. Less clear is why Blizzard increased the cast time of the leave dungeon ability from three seconds to five seconds – but that’s a change that has been made. PC gamers who want to plug in an expensive controller can get one thanks to DualSense Edge controller support.

If you’re just getting into World Tier 2, here’s the good news. Bonus gold increased from 15% to 20%, and monsters of this world tier now drop 15% more items. While there are no changes to world tiers 3 and 4, Blizzard has adjusted the ratio of enemies in these two higher tiers.

Enemies will now start falling behind the player level at some point, up to a maximum of five levels behind. For WT3, start at level 56, and for WT4, start at level 76. “We want to give players a better sense of their power progression and mastery of the world, while still challenging themselves through structured end-game activities,” Blizzard explained.

Another change to world tiers 3 and 4 is a significant increase in the XP players earn by completing Whispers. Now we come to some changes that are sure to make some players angry.

Earlier today, we covered a detailed chart of the best ways to level up quickly, relying on the XP bonuses high-level enemies possess, and dungeons and strongholds that hold the most enemies while completing quickly.

While this information is still valuable, that changed in patch 1.1.0a How XP Rewards Are Calculated in several major ways. Before the patch, when the enemy killed was one level higher, the player gained 15% more experience points, when the enemy was two levels higher, the player gained 20% more experience points, and when the enemy killed was three levels or above, the player gained 15% more experience points Experience gained is increased by 25%.

Now, the game only increases the bonus by 1.5% per level, capped at 10 levels above the player’s own level. For example, enemies one level higher will now grant 1.5%, while enemies ten levels higher will only grant 15%.

there are more. The XP bonus from monster level compensation on world tiers 3 and 4 is being reduced. World Tier 3 is now +6 (instead of +10) and World Tier 4 is now +10 (instead of +100). This is to reduce the efficiency of collective farming.

A common tactic is for high-level players to invite low-level friends to areas where they can’t actually make any progress. For example, low-level players will wait outside the dungeon, while high-level professional players will tear up the mobs in the dungeon, leaving those idle players doing nothing to get huge XP rewards. This should be much less feasible now.

Helltide has also become more challenging. Helltide monsters are now three levels above the player instead of two. The Mystical Gift Chest of Pain now costs 250 Anomaly Cinders to open instead of 175. To compensate, any interactable object in the Nether Tidal zone now has a small chance to drop anomalous cinders.

The full changelog in the link at the top of the page is well worth a read, especially if you’re concerned about the class being nerfed in some way. Vicious Season kicks off on Friday, July 20th.