Blizzard has revealed all the information about the next big patch, 2.0, for Diablo 4. The major update will be released in October alongside the Ship of Hatred expansion, but PC players will be able to try it out in the Public Test Realm (PTR) next week.
Patch 2.0 makes massive, fundamental changes to the fabric of Diablo IV, and the vast majority of these changes will be available to all players, regardless of whether they own the Ship of Hatred.
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The big news that came out of the campfire chat room last night was that the level cap will be reduced from level 100 to level 60, which players guessed correctly. Blizzard said that this is by no means intended to make the leveling process slower, but just to make the leveling process more meaningful. This is also related to the new Paragon and character level division.
First, Paragon Points earned will be tied to the server (seasonal/eternal) and no longer tied to the character level. In other words, they will be shared among all characters on the same server. With the new level cap of 60, players will earn 10 additional skill points as they level up.
Then, at level 60 and above, players will begin to earn Paragon Levels, which are used to unlock Paragon Nodes. You might notice that this is very similar to how it worked in Diablo III, and Blizzard has said it’s not opposed to bringing back ideas from older games if they make sense in Diablo IV.
As for what will happen to current characters, any character above level 50 will have all of their XP-based Paragon points converted to a new Paragon level. Blizzard made this change in part because the numbers were becoming too large to parse quickly. As part of this change, the developers will also be adjusting health, armor, and other core attribute values.
Another difference from Diablo III is the new (old) difficulty system. Diablo IV will now have two difficulty levels: Standard and Tortured. Standard consists of four levels: Normal, Hard, Expert, and Confessional. Tortured starts at level 1 and goes all the way to Tortured 4.
As a result, the World Tier system has been replaced. Standard difficulty is for players who want to push the new cap of 60 levels. Normal and Hard difficulties are unlocked for all players at the start, but you’ll need to complete the Prologue to unlock Expert difficulty. Confession difficulty is designed to help players prepare for Torment difficulty and is unlocked at level 50. The higher the difficulty level, the more gold and XP you’ll earn.
In Torment, things are different, and your progress is tied to the active Pit at the end of the game. The better you do, the higher the Pit levels you can access, and the more difficult Torment levels you can unlock. Along the way, your chances of getting Legendary and Ancestral drops increase.
It’s also worth noting that Torment difficulty comes with a curse that reduces your armor and resistance values, starting at -250 and 25% at Torment 1, up to -1,000 and 100% at Torment 4.
All classes will also receive a new active skill and five new passive skills as part of patch 2.0.
The only major new addition that’s only available to owners of Ships of Hatred is Runewords, a feature brought over from Diablo 2. Runewords are pluggable items that essentially let you create your own spells, and some even let you borrow skills from other classes.
Runewords will be available for testing in the PTR, but you’ll need to purchase the Vessel of Hatred when Patch 2.0 is released in the live game to use them. You can read more about it on the official blog. As for the PTR itself (which also includes the recently announced Party Finder feature), it will be available exclusively on Battle.net from September 4 to September 11.
