When Diablo 4 launches early next month, it won’t include the first season. But, it will come shortly after. The dev team is circling mid to late July for the start of Diablo 4 Season 1. To play Seasons, you’ll need to beat the campaign first. So, this gives most folks a chance to breeze through the game’s story and tinker with the classes before giving Seasons a go.
In a recent dev blog post and livestream, the team delved more into what we can expect with Seasons in Diablo 4. They’re similar to Diablo 3 but with more of it.
Each Season lasts three months and will bring “additional gameplay features, questlines, Battle Passes, Legendary Items, class balance changes, quality-of-life improvements, and much more.”
Battle Passes instantly stand out as something different compared to Diablo 3’s Seasons. A new Battle Pass will launch alongside each new Season. There will be 90 tiers split between 27 Free Tiers and 63 Premium Tiers. Free Tiers offer cosmetics and a resource called Smouldering Ashes. I’ll let the dev team describe this new resource.
“Smouldering Ashes are a resource that can be spent on Season Blessings, which provide you with a bonus to earning XP, Gold, or Obols depending on which Blessings you spend Ashes on.”
Character Level requirements will be tied to this mechanic, so you can’t just buy Battle Pass Tier skips to gain Smouldering Ashes and then level up quicker than you might otherwise.
As for pricing? It’s what we’ve come to expect from games these days. Similar to Call of Duty, there are three Battle Pass tiers:
- Free
- Premium Battle Pass (costs 1,000 Platinum or $9.99)
- Accelerated Battle Pass (costs 2,800 Platinum or $24.99). Includes 20 Tier Skips and a special cosmetic
Introducing a Battle Pass and cosmetic shop raises the question of how loot acquired in-game might differ from loot you spend money on. The devs published a pair of images to help ease those concerns.
Diablo 4 is set for a June 6 release date. I’ll update this post when we hear a definite date for the start of Season 1.