With the Server Slam weekend looming ahead, Blizzard Entertainment hosted a developer live stream featuring general manager Rod Fergusson, associate game director Joseph Piepiora, and product management director Kegan Clark to discuss the Diablo IV Battle Pass, Seasons, and in-game Shop.
Each quarter of the year, a new Season will be introduced to the game alongside new questlines, features, items, class tweaks, and more. The first Season will start at some point between the middle and the end of July, and it will require players to have completed the game’s campaign.
The Season Journey interface allows users to easily track their progress with the Diablo IV Battle Pass. Each Season comes with 27 Free Tiers and 63 Premium Tiers that can be leveled up by completing Objectives in the Season Chapters. If you manage to complete all of the Objectives included in a Chapter, you’ll get Seasonal rewards such as Legendary Aspects for the Codex of Power and crafting materials.
The Free Tiers of the Diablo IV Battle Pass will reward players with cosmetic items and Smoldering Ashes. The latter resource can be subsequently spent on Season Blessings, which can provide bonuses to XP, Obols, or gold, increased chance of rare materials from salvaging, increased duration of elixirs, and more.
Players can upgrade their bonus and activate more than one Season Blessing at a time. Obviously, the Blessing will end along the Season. Moreover, Blizzard put a character level requirement on using Smoldering Ashes to prevent any pay-to-win claim.
There are three types of Diablo IV Battle Pass. The free one, the Premium Battle Pass (priced at 1K Platinum, or $9.99), and the Advanced Premium Battle Pass (priced at 2.8K Platinum, or $24.99). Blizzard stated the Premium Battle Pass won’t contain any power boost. Its tiers will instead focus on providing additional cosmetics to customize the character’s appearance.
The Accelerated Battle Pass includes the perks of the Premium Battle Pass and adds a special cosmetic and 20 Tier Skips.
Diablo IV also has an in-game cosmetic Shop separate from the Battle Pass. While the cosmetics included with the pass are designed to be class-agnostic, those featured in the Shop let players’ imaginations run wild with their favorite class fantasies. That inevitably means some cosmetics will be tied to certain classes.
Once you’ve purchased a cosmetic, it will be available to all characters (of that class) on your account. Given that the game features cross-play, cross-progression, and cross-purchase, your purchases will stay with you regardless of the platform used to play the game.
The Diablo IV Server Slam weekend runs from tomorrow to May 14th at 12 PM Pacific Time. The full game launches on June 6th.
