Originally published at: Diablo 4 – Season of the Construct – Episode 5 – Alphagamer
Earlier this week during the campfire chat Blizzard announced the new season for Diablo 4 called “Season of the Construct”. This post will look at some of the changes that will be introduced in this season and if it will turn the tide on some of the negativity the game has received over the last 6 months.
For context, I will provide a view on my Diablo 4 journey so far.
Diablo 4 release (June 2023)
At release I played a Druid very casual. I didn’t hit level 100 before the first season started, which was about 1 month after the release of the game. I focussed on the story, the questions, world exploration and just the typical things that make a game like this enjoyable.
It felt weird to continue to play on the eternal realm (which is where you play if you don’t participate in seasons) when Season 1 – Season of the Malignant came out. So I retired by level 85+ druid and made a seasonal character.
Season 1 – Season on the Malignant
For me this is where the game took a turn for the worse. I started a new character, a Rogue. In the first week of the season I was power leveling my character doing strongholds and around level 50 change to chain clearing dungeons. However this season wasn’t able to capture me in the story line and in the first week of August I lost interest altogether and stopped playing Diablo 4. I didn’t level my rogue to level 100… just retired the character.
Season 2 – Season of Blood
Like many players I was in doubt to even try season 2… but I did. Like every season I tried another character, this time chosing the Necromancer. One of the few classes I never played in any of the previous Diablo releases. To my surprise I actually did enjoy playing Season 2 and the Necromancer class. I was level 100 within 2 weeks and attempted end game. Cleared level 100 Nightmare dungeons, killed Uber Lilith and attempted the Abattoir of Zir. Although the latter was released at the point that I started to lose interest and the holiday season started… not allowing me to play that much.
All in all I can say Blizzard has found a steady way up improving the game. A bit later in this post I will highlight some of the things I still think are not great.. But let’s have a look at the seasonal changes first!
I will not go into the specific class changes, for most of the classes I would not be in a good position to judge if the changes are good or bad. Let’s have a look at the Gameplay updates!
The first and most important update in Season 3 is the enablement to bind the WASD keys to navigate your character in the world. Using these keyboard controls will allow greater precision and navigating a character and targeting mobs and bosses are not done in the same movement. This is a big improvement and something that the community wanted for a while.
Another key changes is made in Helltides. With the materials farmed in Helltides being important to summon certain bosses, it was a big frustration for Helltides to only be available at certain times. Blizzard is now making Helltides available for 55 minutes of each hour. It is not entirely clear why the 5 minute gap is introduced. It is clear that the Blood Harvest, a season event from Season 2, worked really well and was well received in the community. This event ran every hour, would have 3 specific seasonal quests, and would refresh each hour in a new location. One would expect Blizzard to learn from this and apply this to Helltides. Maybe there is a specific reason for this to be 55 minutes which is not clear yet.
Lastly, the power of items has been addressed as well. Blizzard provided a long breakdown of the level of monsters and what level of items these would drop but it basically summarizes to “Level 90+ Nightmare Dungeons will drop items with power level 925”. This also ties into one of the biggest issues of the game, at least for me. The time spent assessing newly found items and if they are an improvement… or not. This is what made me stop playing Season 2, spending a lot of time assessing crap drops, managing inventory and not being sure a drop is better or worse… It started to feel like cleaning up my closet full of stuff.. not fun.
Will I play Season 3 – Season of the Construct?
Yes, I will
How much will I play it? I am not sure. During my break of Diablo 4 I explored new and different games and found that I really enjoy Baldur’s Gate 3. I am also looking at trying an MMORPG again. Having spent an enormous amount of time in World of Warcraft on release, greatly enjoying group play, this is likely something I will look into again.
My goal for Season 3 will be to at least complete the seasonal journey. For season 2 this was a breeze… Let’s see if they changed it for this season.
Are you planning to play the new season? If so what class will you play?
Please let me know if you want to team up this season, I am curious to explore the multiplayer experience in Diablo 4.