With the start of the second season, Diablo 4 has evidently turned a corner. Many of the game’s long-running woes have been addressed, but the solution to one in particular initially had players a little suspicious.
That, of course, being loot. More specifically, the frequency of Legendary drops.
Ahead of the start of Season of Blood, Blizzard confirmed a long list of systemic changes, which includes tweaking loot drops for players at level 50 and beyond – an area where the game had big issues in the past.
But players seemingly weren’t quite ready for just how rewarding the mid-to-late game now feels, to the point that some believed it was an unintentional change that would soon be reverted. But that’s not the case!
Blizzard president Mike Ybarra took to Twitter to highlight the frequency of Legendary loot drops in Season 2, particularly calling out the Blood Harvest seasonal event.
That’s a lot of loot Rob and crew are farming. The loot drops in Diablo IV Season 2 = pretty insane. Definitely check out the new Blood Harvest zones and spawn those bosses who drop tons of loot (these are the greenish areas on the map)! pic.twitter.com/TuIMxag6zR
— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) October 19, 2023
Blood Harvest is an in-game event that’s available to all players, essentially a more accessible version of Helltide Events. Blood Harvest moves from one area of the map to the next, and is never not on – another thing that sets it apart from Helltides.
The main reason Blood Harvest is so generous has to do with enemy density and spawn rate within it, but also because it allows players to spawn big bosses to fight frequently, and those automatically have higher drop rates of the better gear.
As Ybarra explained, Season of Blood changed how loot scales by monster level, meaning that you’ll always be getting better and better loot the higher your level gets. While this helps all players, it makes a massive difference for anyone over level 50, especially in the 60-100 range.
“Every level you make, higher [level] gear drops all the way to 100. So screens like this are much more meaningful,” he added.
For Blizzard to come out and confirm that this was not, in fact, a bug, is quite amusing. This is the same studio that – just a couple of months ago – was quick to crack down on unintended farming spots players discovered to increase their odds at nabbing certain drops.
Granted, exploits cannot be equated to intentional changes that take multiple aspects into account, but it’s good to see Blizzard moving away from the stingyness of Season 1.