The seasonal model in Diablo 4 is meant to offer players a fresh start with a level playing field, letting everyone experience new stuff with brand new characters. Creating a seasonal character is one of the best ways to get to grips with everything coming at players in a season and so far, that’s worked really well. However, with the launch of Diablo 4 Season 5, an issue has caused some players to still have some of their goodies from the previous season, even on fresh characters.
The problem revolves around tempering recipes, first introduced in the last season for Diablo 4. When out and about you’ll occasionally find tempering manuals, which in turn grant you certain recipes you can use to add affixes to your gear in the action RPG. Part of the crafting overhaul that was the centerpiece of Season 4, it’s opened up plenty of options for players to get the gear they want instead of relying on quite as much RNG.
When you start a new character in a season they’re supposed to be just that – new. Unfortunately, with Season 5 starting, some players who played the previous season are starting with the tempering recipes they unlocked last time around – even legendary-tier recipes. This means a few players will be able to super charge some gear, zooming past challenges faster than they would otherwise.
Normally you might expect Blizzard to intervene and in the future, it will if this happens again. Right now, however, players will be able to keep their tempered recipes if they have them and enjoy the extra power they grant.
“We are aware of the reports that new seasonal characters are having their tempering recipes carried over from their last seasons seasonal character,” Diablo 4’s global community development director Adam Fletcher says on the official forums. “This isn’t the original design or intention so I wouldn’t expect this for future seasons but we are letting this one slide for Season 5.”
So if you have extra tempering recipes you shouldn’t, don’t worry – your character is not in danger and you can use those recipes as you see fit. In addition, one of this season’s challenges is to learn new recipes. It appears that clicking on the ones you already know should complete this, and there are still plenty of recipes to find that should fulfill this objective.
Diablo 4 Season 5 is out now and if you’d like to get the lowdown on the latest update, you can head over here for our summary.
You can also take a look at our guide to the best Diablo 4 builds you can work towards, as well as our Diablo 4 classes list to get everything you need to know about your next character.
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