Diablo 4 Season 1 Update 1.1.0 is live: Patch notes, changes, and what’s new

Blizzard has released Diablo 4 Season 1’s official patch notes ahead of its launch.

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What you need to know

Diablo 4’s Season 1 patch, Update 1.1.0, has gone live and is available now to download on all platforms. The update includes all of the changes Blizzard is making to its popular action RPG for the launch of Season of the Malignant, though the season itself isn’t scheduled to go live until later this week on July 20 at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET.

While a significant portion of the patch consists of bug fixes for quests, gameplay scenarios, and other types of issues, the update also adds a variety of new Unique items and Legendary Aspects that players can hunt down now in the Eternal Realm ahead of the arrival ofSeason of the Malignantand the Seasonal Realm. You won’t be able to participate in Season 1’s new quests, fight its Malignant enemies, or earn the Malignant Hearts they drop until the season is out, though.

•The best Diablo 4 builds•Diablo 4: List of all Legendary Aspects•Diablo 4: List of all Unique items•Diablo 4 starter guide•Diablo 4 class tier list

Notably, the patch also introduces some significant balance changes to each of the Diablo 4 classes, with Blizzard primarily focusing on improving underwhelming Aspects and Skills while toning down sources of damage, healing, or the Unstoppable buff that the developers feel are overpowered. Many item affix stat bonuses have also been tweaked in an effort to “improve the number of meaningful choices on competitive slots” and “increase the overall flexibility of items.”

Additionally, Blizzard has also raised the difficulty of endgameDiablo 4progression by making Helltide monsters three levels higher than the player’s (instead of two) and raising the price of the Tortured Gift of Mysteries chest to 200 Aberrant Cinders (up from 175). In general, it’s also harder to “power level” now, as the extra experience you get from killing enemies above your level has been reduced significantly.

For a complete overview of every change made and every Unique item and Legendary Aspect added in the update, make sure you read through the full patch notes in the section below. They clearly show each tweak and addition that was made, along with official developer explanations for specific buffs and nerfs.

Diablo 4 Season 1: Update 1.1.0a Patch Notes

Here are the full patch notes for Diablo 4’s Season 1 update, taken directly fromBlizzard’s official website.

New Unique items and Legendary Aspects

New Unique items and Legendary Aspects have been discovered in Sanctuary. Use them to enhance your characters in the Eternal or Seasonal Realm. These Unique items can be obtained from World Tier IV and the Legendary Aspects can be obtained from any World Tier.

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6 Unique items

General

Developer’s Note:Ahavarion Spear of Lycander is an extremely rare drop. We wish you luck in recovering it from the armies of the Burning Hells.

Barbarian

Druid

Necromancer

Rogue

Sorcerer

Developer’s Note:The Azurewrath and Fleshrender Unique Items have flat damage effects, which scale with power. For example, at 820 Item Power, Azurewrath deals between 3359-6718 damage.

7 New Legendary Aspects

General

Barbarian

Druid

Necromancer

Rogue

Sorcerer

Bug Fixes

Accessibility

Challenges

Cooperative Play

Dungeons

Gameplay

Barbarian

Developer’s Note:We recognize this adjustment is a significant decrease to the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian build, but we do not want its strength to be reliant on an underlying bug.

Druid

Necromancer

Rogue

Sorcerer

General

Helltide and the Fields of Hatred

Items and Aspects

Monsters

Quests and Events

User Interface and User Experience

Miscellaneous

Loading Screen Updates

We’ve added more dynamic loading screens with the release of Season of the Malignant. This includes adding more assets to the loading screen, such as your player character.

Gameplay Updates

General

World Tier

Developer’s Note:We like where World Tier II has landed overall but are increasing its reward pace to better align with its difficulty.

Developer’s Note:We want to give players a better sense of their power progression and mastery over the world while still challenging themselves with structured End Game activities.

World Tier III Example:

World Tier IV Example:

Experience

Developer’s Note:We have observed that the experience bonus rewarded for killing higher level monsters escalates too fast when compared to the relative challenge involved. We still want to reward players for taking on this challenge by encouraging them to participate in powerleveling together instead of one player killing enemies while another member of their Party waits at the dungeon’s entrance.

Helltide

Developer’s Note:We’re looking to increase the danger in Helltide’s risk-reward gameplay by making the monsters a bit more challenging and the Tortured Gift of Mysteries harder to open.

Balance Updates

Developer’s Note:As our community continues to battle the Burning Hells, the builds emerging from new players have shocked and delighted us. We’ve chosen to focus Season of the Malignant’s balance updates on clear itemization disparities over redesigns of Class features. The Class changes are largely focused on numeric increases to Skill Upgrades and Legendary Aspects that players haven’t yet found compelling. Additionally, we’re changing Critical Strike Damage Paragon Glyphs to empower all damage—instead of only Core Skills—to enable more build strategies.There are also a few Class stat decreases on sources which grant extreme amounts of damage, healing, or Unstoppable. In general, we prefer build-specific changes to be bonuses instead of decreases, but we feel these changes are necessary for the overall health of the game. Diablo IV is a game that is continually evolving through its Seasons, thus the adjustments we make will evolve with them.

The following balance updates apply to both the Seasonal and Eternal Realm.

BARBARIAN

Skills

Passives

Paragon

Aspects

Items

DRUID

Skills

Passives

Spirit Boon

Paragon

Aspects

Items

NECROMANCER

Skills

Passives

Book of the Dead

Paragon

Aspects

Items

ROGUE

Skills

Passives

Paragon

Specialization

Aspects

Items

SORCERER

Skills

Passives

Paragon

Enchantments

Aspects

Items

GENERAL

Aspects

Items

Monsters

Miscellaneous

Item Affixes

Developer’s Note:Many Affixes are too efficient and are outshining alternatives. We’re looking to refine the outliers, improve the number of meaningful choices on competitive slots, and increase the overall flexibility of items. We know these changes will reduce the total amount of possible power a character can possess, so we’ll be monitoring how these changes affect players’ ability to conquer expected milestones throughout the Season.

We’re increasing the availability of the Affixes below to make them easier to include in different builds.

Developer’s Note:The Core Stat bonus on Weapons has been overperforming, so we’re pulling back on this bonus.

Developer’s Note:Cooldown Reduction affixes often felt mandatory due to their raw power. We imagine Cooldown Reduction will remain a highly desirable stat, but the penalty for not prioritizing it won’t be as harsh.

Developer’s Note:We’re seeing Critical Strike Damage and Vulnerable Damage often viewed as a hard requirement for a build’s success in Diablo IV. We believe this is a step towards allowing more builds to flourish and will continue to make changes in support of this goal.

Developer’s Note:Disparities in inherent affixes can rule some Weapons out before the rest of their stats are even rolled. These are receiving harsher reductions than their normal affix counterparts to increase Weapon flexibility.

Developer’s Note:Damage Bonus to Crowd Controlled Enemies was overperforming relative to the ease of activating it versus stricter, Crowd Control type-specific affixes.

Developer’s Note:We have seen that skillful players are frequently slaughtering monsters many levels above their own. We want to support this, but the current situation is beyond what we believe is correct for the long-term health of the game. To chase this goal, we’re shifting power to many offensive Affixes from defensive Affixes. We know this will make our end game content more deadly, particularly for those chasing our pinnacle boss, an encounter not meant for the faint of heart. Overcoming the pinnacle boss will take every ounce of grit you can muster and all tools at your disposal. We will continue to evaluate feedback from the community and make changes to our combat mechanics.

Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).