Diablo IV Patch Notes 1.4.4 – July 10th Highlights

The Diablo IV developers have consistently monitored the community feedback and have recently announced some nice and not-so-nice patches for the last several weeks of Season 4.

Update: Boss summoning materials will sell for more.

Directly from the Diablo IV Patch Notes 1.4.4:

Many players are still struggling to gather enough money to pay for their local Occultist to update their gear affixes to make them worthwhile. Let me explain.

As gear randomly drops while playing in the world, it comes with affixes that boost the usefulness of that piece of gear.

Legendary quality gear comes automatically with 3 affixes, and since those are the only ones that really matter this late in the season, we will focus on those.

Each type of gear has a fixed set of 15-30 affixes that can be randomly selected by the game to be placed on any given item. More often than not, the ones that come on the gear are not the ones you need for your character-selected build type. When this happens, you find a piece of equipment that is as close as possible, usually it has 2 of the 3 affixes you want, and head to the Occultist.

The Occultist gives you the ability to reroll one affix on your piece of equipment. You can do this as many times as you like, however, and there is a big HOWEVER, each time you do, it costs more money. The fee is capped differently for different types of gear, as of the writing of this article, but it gets expensive really fast. To make matters worse, some affixes are far less likely to show up than others, and no, the developers do not share with us the statistics on each affix.

Personal experience: Yesterday, I was looking to add the Pit Fighter affix to my amulet. I went through just over 80,000,000 gold before giving up. It took me several days to gain enough currency to change my character to a new build. I started the process with 1.8M and finished with 10M and I haven’t even started any Masterworking yet.

Diablo IV Patch Notes 1.4.4 Update: Elixir drop rates are being reduced.

My initial reaction to this was, “but why”. I use elixirs and incense frequently in The Pit. However, it did occur to me that I haven’t needed to make any elixirs for anything other than poison resistance all season. On one hand, it is nice to not have to worry about resources needed for making potions and just focus on incense; However, the storage space is… a lot. And for every 1 elixir I use, I seem to get several more. So a slight reduction will be welcome. If they suddenly become a hard-to-find commodity, that will be a different situation altogether. I’m having enough trouble finding decent gear. I don’t need to add elixir hunting to my grind.

If you have been following a build guide and tempering at all, you know that it can be a bit of a pain trying to determine where to find which tempering recipe you want for your piece of equipment. Now, the new icons will help you narrow your search for a faster tempering experience!

Diablo IV Patch Notes 1.4.4 Update: They fixed an issue with the screen reader not working correctly with collapsible menus.

Helltides:

• Tortured Gifts of Amulets will now give the appropriate amount of items.
• Helltide ambush from a threat level will no longer happen within the Iron Wolves encampment. (I never saw this one and kind of wish I had.)
• No longer will players get stuck behind Tortured gift chests.

Aspects:

The following aspects did not deal as much damage as intended. This will be fixed in the update:

• Dust Devil’s Aspect
• Aspect of Surprise
• Trickster’s Aspect
• Aspect of Artful Initiative
• Vengeful Aspect
• Aspect of the Arrow Storms

Bold Chieftain’s Aspect was not giving a cooldown reduction for Druid’s Debilitating Roar or Blood Howl.

Nightmare Dungeon:

As for the most amusing one on the list, probably because Stormbane’s Wrath is instatrash for me, apparently it could teleport to the player and instakill them. For anyone who has experienced this, I am sorry. I’m sure that was really annoying.

Check out the Blizzard IV patch notes for the full list.

Diablo IV is an RPG (role-playing game) set in the dark world of Sanctuary, where humans do their best to survive the never-ending battle between the angels of the High Heavens and demons of the Burning Hells. In every game, the lore continues to expand and a new hero emerges with special gifts, used in an inevitable battle to save Sanctuary once again. Diablo IV continues its story every 3 months or so in events called Seasons. Each season comes with a mini-adventure, the creation of a new character, and special mechanics that boost the hero’s power in unique ways. You never know what a season will bring for your favorite class of character, and it is a great way to try new builds and hero classes.

Session 4 is coming to a close shortly but Season 5 is looking to have some great quality of life updates! Season 5 will be a shorter season, as the release of Diablo IV’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, is on the horizon, with a continuation of the main game’s storyline, a new hero class, a map expansion, and so much more! (Did I mention you can ride a big cat instead of a horse with the expansion? I can’t wait!)

This online-only RPG is available on PC and console. On console, couch co-op is extremely well-designed and a pleasure to play!

To all the Diablo IV players out there, happy gaming!