All of the inventory improvements coming to Diablo 4 with the Season of Blood

A slew of player quality of life improvements are coming to Diablo 4 later this month with the Season 2 patch. While the flashy vampiric powers coming in the Season of Blood may seem more exciting, it’s the smaller changes that have our attention: perhaps the most underrated changes involve inventory management. Inventory space in the Diablo universe has always been a trial — so much so that space management in Diablo 2 was practically a Tetris-style mini-game.

Diablo 4 significantly adjusted the inventory UI so we can think more about playing the game and less about where to keep our loot, but you still spend a lot of time juggling items in your inventory. Fortunately, the Diablo 4 team is already on it, with a number of inventory improvements coming with the Season of Blood patch later this month. Here are all of the inventory changes coming to Diablo 4 with the next patch.

Gems no longer take up inventory space

In a bid to improve inventory management, gems will no longer take up inventory space: instead, gems will be a crafting material. Gem fragments will drop from activities that previously rewarded whole gems, and these fragments live in the Materials tab of your character pane. Making gems at the Jeweler will require increasing quantities of gem fragments as you start crafting more powerful gems for your gear.

The gem inventory management strategy in previous Diablo titles was to combine lower level gems into higher level gems through D2‘s Horadric Cube or D3‘s Jeweler, and Diablo 4 had a similar mechanic: take your small gems to the Jeweler and combine them into better gems (at increasingly high costs). However, those gems still piled up in your inventory, particularly as you picked up gems of different sizes to combine into higher quality gems.

We had hoped for a dedicated inventory tab for gems when Diablo 4 launched, but while we had tabs for quest items, consumables, and Legendary Aspects, gems were left in the cold of the main equipment tab. Converting them to a crafting material is fantastic — it spares additional UI clutter and opens up inventory slots.

Crafting mats will replace low-level loot drops in Word Tier 3 and 4

Gear drops on World Tier 3 and 4 added a level of item complexity for players. The original itemization system looked something like this:

• World Tier 1 and 2 (levels 1-50) — drops Normal, Magic, Rare, and Legendary items. Four possible qualities of loot.
• World Tier 3 (levels 50-70) — drops everything from Tier 1 and 2 plus Sacred versions of all four rarities. Eight possible qualities of loot.
• World Tier 4 (levels 70-100) — drops everything from Tier 3, plus Ancestral versions of all four rarities. Twelve possible qualities of loot.

Add in that each type has a different drop rate, and it’s a bit of a mess. In higher Tiers your inventory quickly fills up with low quality loot you’ll never use, and you have to sort through it all to find what to scrap, sell, and equip.

In the coming patch, the same gear will drop in Tiers 1 and 2, but drops in higher tiers have changed:

• Tier 3 — Normal, Magic, and non-Sacred Rare items now drop as crafting resources, while Sacred Rare, Legendary, and Sacred Legendary items continue to drop. Three possible qualities of loot.
• Tier 4 — Normal, Magic, and non-Ancestral Rare items items will drop as crafting resources, while Ancestral Rare, Legendary, Sacred Legendary, and Ancestral Legendary items continue to drop. Four possible qualities of loot.

Additionally, Tiers 3 and 4 will have increased gold drop rates to balance out having fewer items in your bags to sell. This is effectively the auto-salvage feature added as part of Diablo 3‘s Altar of Rites, but integrated into the regular gameplay loop with zero additional unlock required.

Stash search and filter functionality

Finally, search is returning to the Diablo Stash! In addition to the text string search available in D3, the Stash will have easy filter options above the search box:

• Weapons
• Armor
• Jewelry
• Gems
• Elixirs
• (Presumably) Legendary Aspects
• Magic items
• Rare items
• Legendary items
• Unique items
• Sacred items
• Ancestral items

As a bonus, you’ll get the chance to access your Stash more regularly! Stashes are being added to all small towns with Waypoints and extra Stashes are coming to important vendors in all capital cities within each region of Sanctuary: Kyovashad (Fractured Peaks), Cerrigar (Scosglen), Ked Bardu (Dry Steppes), Gea Kul (Kehjistan), and Zarbinzet (Hawezar). Basically, you have more opportunities to empty your bags, and more places available if you want to save drops.

Ultimately, these are very exciting improvements to streamline Diablo’s age-old inventory management mini-game. The changes may be small but they are mighty indeed, as they mean more opportunity to enjoy the game instead of hauling loot to your stash. Look forward these and more improvements in the patch for Diablo 4 Season 2, Season of Blood, coming October 17.