Eight small but mighty changes coming to Diablo 4 with Season 11 and patch 2.5.0

Diablo 4 patch 2.5.0 and Season 11 launch on December 11 — at the unusual time of 8:30pm pacific (11:30pm eastern) — and feature some significant changes to defense systems, including healing and Fortify, as well as version 2.0 of Masterworking and Tempering. But unless you perused the roughly 45 pages of patch notes, you may have missed some noteworthy changes en route that didn’t make it to the (slightly shorter) patch blog post. Let’s talk about some of our favorite small-but-mighty improvements (and why we love them!) coming with Diablo 4 patch 2.5.0 and Season 11.

Tempering with less RNG (and better results). First up — we know Tempering is no longer a game of stat roulette and will instead grant players the ability to apply one specific affix to a piece of gear (although that affix still has a range of values, similar to how you can enchant to potentially get a higher stat value from the Occultist). But there’s another special fact to this stat range that wasn’t included in the main article about patch changes: there is now a chance a tempered affix gets applied as a Greater Affix. Yes, we finally have a chance (probably a very small one, but still a chance) to add a Greater Affix to gear. Additionally, Scrolls of Restoration will no longer restore all temper charges to an item (because of the changes to tempering); they’ll restore only one temper charge, but there is no limit to the number of times a Scroll of Restoration can be used on an item. So, as long as you have more scrolls, you can Temper that perfect Ancient Legendary to your heart’s content, until you get the absolutely best results. It just takes time (and materials).

Easily swap crafting materials at the Alchemist. We’re also seeing some improvements in the materials game. Blizzard has added new recipes for converting Salvage Materials to the Alchemist. The first is “Enrich Scrap” which converts Rawhide and Iron Chunks into Veiled Crystals, and the second “Refine Materials” converts Veiled Crystals into Forgotten Souls or Legendary Salvage materials. These changes support changes to costs for Imprinting and Enchanting at the Occultist as well as Tempering at the Blacksmith.

Easier access to The Pit. The Pit is seeing some shake-up as it will no longer unlock Torment difficulties for Seasonal players. To balance that out, there is no longer a cost to enter the Pit, and the Pit can now be entered before Level 60, unlocking after completion of the Level 50 (Rank 2) Capstone dungeon, Hellish Descent. Players will have earlier opportunity to level Paragon glyphs, and without a material cost at that!

Hoard more Obols with an increased cap. Speaking of Seasonal play changes, removing the Renown track from Seasonal players would also impact your cap for Murmuring Obols, right? Wrong! Because the maximum capacity of Murmuring Obols has been increased by 500, so Seasonal players won’t suffer with a reduced Obol cap. We definitely could have used this in Season 10 (where it felt like you had to go blow through all your Obols every hour after hitting your cap yet again).

Unlock skill points faster than ever. Interestingly for build development is a change to the skill system. Namely, progression down the Skill tree is now faster, with Core Skills get unlocked after spending one skill point and then the next skill group is unlocked after spending two skill points. Currently, it’s two points to unlock the Core Skills section, and four more points to unlock the following group (which varies based on your class). This change mitigates some of the concerns behind the removal of the Renown track, which locked the automatic 12 skill points it granted behind the Seasonal Journey replacement, Season Rank.

Unlock waypoints automatically. But we’ve saved the best for last — Characters that skip either campaign now unlock all non-stronghold waypoints for their respective region. Finally, FINALLY, we are free from the oppression of hunting down those waypoints every single season. It’s basically an early holiday miracle from the Diablo devs.

Is there anything you saw in the patch 2.5.0 notes that you’re particularly excited about? Share with us in the comments below. See you in Sanctuary!