after Last week’s blog post Announcing a Laundry List of Updates and Mods for Diablo 4 After consecutive weekends of open beta releases, Blizzard today announced a third and final beta weekend where every one of these changes will actually be implemented.
Talking about livesteam todayDiablo 4 developers said that a “server slam,” which aims to put the team’s servers to the test before what they hope will be a solid launch day for the RPG, will take place the weekend of May 12, at 12 p.m. PST on Friday. and ends at 12 p.m. PT on Sunday. Unfortunately, players who participated in the first two test weekends will find their characters deleted, as promised, and progress made in that final test also won’t carry over into the final game.
During the final test weekend, players will reach level 20 instead of 25, designed as an additional challenge when they encounter the world boss, Ashava, who will reward whoever defeats her during a server slam with an exclusive cosmetic set in a full game.
But the level cap and new rewards aren’t the only change in store, as a whole host of updates, including balancing adjustments to character classes and streamlined dungeon layouts will already be in this early look.
The most notable changes to the character class are necromancers, who received buffs to their immortal minions (who now die more easily) and corpse blasts (which now deal less damage). Other classes, such as the Barbarian, received buffs to bring them more in line with their demon-slaying peers. In the case of the Barbarian, this comes in the form of a 10% reduction to the damage he takes from all sources, among other favorable mods.
Dungeons rework will include objectives that can be completed more easily without the time-consuming monotonous backtracking, and a greater presence of special events that sometimes randomly spawn as you explore the dungeon.
The slam server will be open to all players on all platforms, and will include couch co-op for players on consoles. If you haven’t started your anti-girl-hate crusade yet, you’ll have another chance in a few weeks.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @employee and read it Gaming coverage here.
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