Diablo 4 received a new update overnight that delivered a small, but effective change to the cost of Masterworking in the game. More specifically, Masterworking items in Ranks 1 through 4 will now be less expensive.
This change does not affect the Gold and Obducite cost, however, it only lowers the number of basic materials required for each operation.
The new patch, version 2.2.2, rolled out on all platforms on Tuesday. Blizzard explained that it doesn’t want players to avoid engaging with Masterworking as a result of its material costs, which is why the change was made.
Obducite and Gold costs aren’t typically a problem in those early ranks, but attempting several Masterwork Resets in a short while will quickly cause you to run out of materials, despite having enough Obducite and Gold to afford the rolls.
The patch also disabled DirectStorage on PC, a feature that allows for faster load times when the game is installed on a supported NVMe drive. DirectStorage may be responsible for some performance issues, so Blizzard has disabled it while it investigates. You can still enable it, if you must, you’ll just need to add ‘-enableds’ as a launch command to Diablo 4 through Battlenet.
Elsewhere in the patch, there’s a host of bug fixes that affect a wide range of different parts of the game. In particular, it addresses a lot of issues with the Screen Reader, which, since the Season 8 launch, stopped reading certain areas of the UI – including the menu for the new Reliquary battle pass system.
You can read the full set of changes on Blizzard’s blog, which also covers UI, gameplay, and Season 8-specific fixes in patch 2.2.2.
Separately, Tuesday also marked the start of the Season 9 PTR, which, among other things, introduces a new endgame activity, makes several changes to dungeons and more. The PTR ends June 3.