Diablo 4 had a great start but faced challenges later. The game lost players and online interest dropped. Blizzard hopes the Season 2 update will fix this. They've made major gameplay changes, added new content, and have some surprises too. Many players are hopeful and plan to play once the update is live. So, let's see what's in Patch 1.20.
Release Date: Diablo 4’s Patch 1.2.0 and Season 2 will come out on October 17. The exact time isn't known yet. Players will need to download a big update before playing. On October 10, Blizzard will share more about the season change.
Patch 1.2.0 Changes
Endgame Bosses:
- Five endgame bosses have been added across Sanctuary to increase the variety of Endgame experiences offered, providing better opportunities to obtain specific, Unique and Uber Unique items.
- The new Boss fights are unlocked based on succeeding in different tasks across Sanctuary, with different resources required for facing each Boss, and each new fight becoming available as you progress through World Tiers III and IV.
- The reward pools for these Endgame bosses have been significantly improved:
- Each boss drops specific Uniques, exclusive to each individual boss fight.
- The Duriel boss fight has significantly increased the chance to drop Uber Uniques, making the process of accessing these coveted items more achievable.
- Each individual boss also has a chance to drop unique cosmetics specific to each boss, making the access of specific cosmetics in-game more targeted.
- Objectives have been removed from some Dungeons, only defeating the boss is needed to defeat the Nightmare Dungeon.
Endgame Activities:
- The time between Legion Events has been reduced from 30 to 25 minutes.
- Legion Event warning timers increased from 5 to 10 minutes.
- The World Boss fight is available more frequently to players on all World Tiers as the Spawn Times have been reduced from 6 hours to 3 hours and 30 minutes.
- World Boss warning timers have increased from 30 to 60 minutes.
- For increased visibility, a message is now broadcast to all players when the World Boss is 15 minutes away from spawning.
- Gold and Experience rewards have been increased from the following activities:
- Helltide Chests
- Cashing in Grim Favors
- Completing individual Whispers
- To ensure enemies constantly give experience relative to the current player level, the Nightmare Sigils rewarded from Whisper Caches will now always be within 5 Levels of the highest-level Nightmare Dungeon the player has completed.
- To improve readability, Helltide Chests now have specific icons to indicate their type.
Experience and Monster Levelling:
- Decreased the time spent to reach level 100, making the journey about 40% faster. The experience gained from killing monsters at level 50+ has been significantly increased and rises steadily as you level.
- Prevent Monsters from being less powerful as character level increases by making Monsters in World Tier III and IV match the current player level at a minimum after Levels 55 and 75 respectively. This increases the overall experience of levelling, making it much smoother.
- Incenses now grant a bonus to Experience and persist after death.
- Increased the potency of Experience bonuses (Elixir, Season Blessings) by making them multiplicative with the World Tier bonus.
Nightmare Dungeons:
- Expedited the demon slaying process as Nightmare Sigils now teleports you directly into the Nightmare Dungeon.
- Avoided some players not getting Nightmare Sigils from Dungeons that have no final boss, Nightmare Sigils are now rewarded upon completing a Nightmare Dungeon instead of final boss defeat.
- Multiple Nightmare Dungeon Affixes have been updated:
- Backstabbers: Close Monster attacks from behind cause you to become Vulnerable. Vulnerable damage taken is increased by X%.
- Monster Critical Resist: Monster attacks reduce the damage of your Critical strikes by 3 seconds by X%, stacking up to Y%.
- Death Pulse:
- Prevent death pulses on monsters that have explosions on death.
- Prevent death pulses from spawning repeatedly on top of each other, requires open area for the effect to occur.
- Lightning Storm:
- Being ‘shocked’ while in the protection dome grants 35% bonus movement speed for 5 seconds.
- Only starts when players are in combat.
- Only starts if the protection dome caster has a direct path to its targeted player.
- Drifting Shade:
- Duration reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
- Respawn time increased by 2 seconds.
- Massively reduced backtracking by placing all Dungeon objectives on the critical path of a dungeon, making much harder to miss by taking a wrong turn.
- Dungeon layouts are more procedurally generated and random.
- Improved the overall readability of Traps by enhancing their overall visual effects and reducing their crowd control.
- Endcaps have been added to ensure Dungeon layouts don’t feel too linear, and make the player feel as though they can make directional decisions while limiting backtracking.
- Paragon Glyph experience has been increased.
Events
- Made Events more worthwhile and enticing to players by increasing their monster density.
- The stranded NPC’s should no longer be killed with one-hit in World Tiers III and IV.
Item Adjustments
- Significantly freed up inventory space by making Gems a crafting material. Gem materials can now be taken to a Jeweler for crafting.
- Prevented players from losing their progress on a Hardcore character from connectivity issues, Scrolls of Escape are now consumed if a Hardcore player disconnects while in combat, teleporting them to a safe location.
- Reduced the chance of being locked into certain stats on a Legendary item by reducing their overall enchanting costs.
- Reduced overburdening inventories and causing unnecessary trips into town:
- In World Tier III: Normal, Magic, and non-sacred Rare items will drop as crafting resources.
- In World Tier IV: Normal, Magic, and non-ancestral Rare items will drop as crafting resources.
- Gold drop rates in World Tiers III and IV have been increased to compensate for this.
Misc. Improvements
- Reduced the time spent having to regain renown each season, all earned renown rewards persist between seasons and characters (this does not include experience or Gold).
- Earned Altars of Lillith, and map discovery progress now persist for all non-Hardcore characters to reduce the early-game grind.
- Items can now be marked as Favorite, preventing them from being accidentally salvaged, dropped, or sold.
- Improved account progression by giving two additional character slots.
- Reduced the time it takes to start a new character, players can now opt to skip the campaign on character creation if the Prologue has been completed on any character.
- Improved the intelligence of minions and companions by preventing them from attacking invulnerable enemies.
Mounts
- Mounts are now more responsive to player input to improve their overall usability.
- The Spur duration has been increased and now breaks barricades.
- The base speed of Mounts has been increased by 15%.
- Improved general speed of Mounts relative to the position of the cursor, making them more responsive to the direction in which the cursor is placed.
- To improve the usability of Mounts, the cooldown of all Mount abilities have been reduced by 50%, and the dismount cooldown has also been reduced.
Town Adjustments
- Improved town layouts to improve player flow and efficiency, added two additional Stashes in all Capital Cities.
- Added Stashes in small towns with Waypoints to improve the overall player experience in those areas.
- An Occultist has been added to the Tree of Whispers Waypoint to facilitate quicker access to their services.
- Purveryors of Curiosities are now closer to the Waypoint in several Capital Cities.
- Improved the experience of players who opt to skip the campaign by unlocking 10 Waypoints for them automatically (the Waypoints to be unlocked depend on various conditions).
UI & UX
- Improved Inventory navigation with Stash search and filter functionality.
- A Streamer Mode has been added to the game, which helps to keep certain information private during streaming.
- Item affix tooltips are now more intuitively displayed.
- Aspects with the same Legendary powers are now grouped in the inventory for a more efficient organization.
- Added an auto-run feature to improve overall gameplay fluidity.
- The mini-map zoom level has been adjusted to a better-suited level.
- There is now an option for hiding all Combat text.
- Increased the visibility of Unique items to make them stand out more.
- The screen reader option is now enabled by default, for improved accessibility.
- Improved cursor contrast colors and added more options.
