Blizzard has officially revealed a lot of what we can expect in Diablo 4’s next season. The game’s Season 7 – which does not yet have a title – kicks off January 21, but the patch 2.1 Public Test Realm (PTR) starts much earlier.
The 2.1 PTR instead becomes available Tuesday, December 3 – though only for PC players on BattleNet, as usual. For the first time, however, the PTR will also include seasonal content, and won’t just be limited to the core gameplay tweaks coming with the new season.
Season 7’s theme is all about witchcraft and using those skills in battle. It works similarly to the Season 2 Vampiric powers, allowing characters to obtain unique powers that expire at the end of the season. Interestingly, some of those powers can only be found out in the world, by locating their altars in dungeons and activating them.
The main modified enemy in the season will be the Headrotten. Killing them will drop Restless Rot, which you’re going to use to unlock new powers for your characters. The witchcraft powers can also be upgraded, and Blizzard even made that process more streamlined compared to Season 2. You have five normal powers and one unique equipped.
Unique, time-limited gems are returning, too. Occult Gems can be slotted into your jewellery, and they have witchcraft abilities of their own.
Gaining reputation with the coven ties back into Whispers, so that’s your grind for the season sorted. Another way of finding and killing Headrotten would be in the Helltide-like Headhunt zones, which also double as Whispers.
Speaking of which, Blizzard has made a few quality of life updates to the Whispers grind. The town around the Tree of Whispers has been upgraded to include more services, and the layout is a little easier to navigate. The big news, however, is the new Raven of the Tree feature, which lets you turn in your Whispers without having to return to the Tree. You’ll find them in Headhunt zones.
In terms of general gameplay, one major tweak in 2.1 is a boost to Ultimate skills. Going forward, when an Ultimate reaches rank 5, it’s going to be more powerful, or have its damage scaling be boosted. You’ll even be able to make them more powerful by picking the right skills in the skill tree, and the right nodes in the Paragon board.
More broadly, many of the game’s classes are getting buffs. Some of that will be the result of changes to how certain passives work. The Spiritborn isn’t technically getting a nerf, but several issues caused it to be more powerful than intended in Season 6. When those are fixed, the class won’t be as strong as it currently is.
Another major new addition is the Armory, which lets you save and load multiple loadouts for each character, and change between them without spending Gold. The loadouts could each have different Paragon boards, too. The Armory can be found in multiple locations, including Sanctuary towns, as well as by the Tree of Whispers, in training areas, and even inside the Citadel.
As with every new season, the loot pool will be expanded with new Uniques, and some existing ones will be adjusted to be more consistent. New Legendary Aspects will arrive, too, including some that boost the power of Ultimates.
You can catch up on the livestream in the embedded link in this story. The patch notes, however, won’t arrive until Wednesday, November 27.