Earlier this week Blizzard announced the start date of Diablo 4 Season 7: Season of Witchcraft, and today held a livestream with the developers to go through more about what to expect from the new season that starts on January 21.
While the majority of the stream went over the information we got from the blogpost, we did get some further interesting tidbits which I’ll summarize here.
Rootholds will be used to hunt Headrotten
Rootholds are micro dungeons that contain a concentrated population of Headrotten and their rewards. They require a Whispering Wood Sigil (kept in same tab as Nightmare Dungeon Sigils) to access. These drop from Whisper Caches & Silent Chests.
Inside the Roothold you’ll find Rites and Ceremonies which are interactions to increase the difficulty of the Roothold, and in turn receive more rewards. They work in a similar way to Hell Breeches from Season 5’s Hordes theme, but with these you can select multiple effects.
At the end of the Roothold, there will be a boss who will drop the best rewards (and hopefully a head).
Tree of Whispers quality of life improvements
As the Season of Witchcraft centres around the Tree of Whispers, the developers have used this to improve the Tree of Whispers gameplay loop as a whole across both Seasonal and Eternal realms. We can look forward to an updated town, it will have more NPCs and vendors as well as the new armory feature. While you are out on Headhunts, there will be a ‘Raven of the Tree’ in each Headhunt zone so you can conveniently hand in your Whispers rather than having to fast travel back to the tree.
Ancestral Cache has also been added as a potential drop to the Tree of Whispers, which guarantees at least one Ancestral item.
Improvements to the Season Journey for casual players
- Early Chapters have been reworked to help more casual players get to the endgame.
- Later Chapters, especially Chapter 7, have been reworked to provide more aspirational challenges.
- Earn Dorian the Raven from completing Chapter 7. Dorian is the first avian pet (and I’m still calling him the Diablo Pigeon).
Changes made following PTR 2.1
There has been a bunch of feedback from the PTR which has been implemented on both the Headhunt/Seasonal theme, and across all classes and Uniques. These are detailed in the Patch 2.1.1 notes.
More info on the Armory
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Ever completely respecced in Diablo 4 and felt the pang of regret when you hate it, and have to change back? Me too, well now we have an Armory and the developers showed us this in more detail.
With the Armory you can save, load and name your favorite builds. These loadout slots are character bound so if you make a Spiritborn and later a Necromancer, each has their own Armory and slots.
Changing loadouts will not cost gold, and you can access the Armory at every major city in Sanctuary, the Citadel, and the Tree of Whispers.
Paragon earned within the Season will now roll over to your Eternal character
This means every season you will get to keep your paragon progress on your Eternal character, so even if you don’t play on that realm you can hit Paragon 300 a little easier (and get the cosmetic reward for doing so.)
Completing your Codex will be easier in Season 7
In Season 6, the loot was changed to be either standard, or Ancestral (which guarantees a Greater Affix). When you salvage an item, the level of it’s legendary aspect is saved in your codex, for example. The changes to the loot meant that you could only get the highest roll of a particular affix on Ancestrals, which in itself isn’t an issue but they are so rare and these Ancestrals could also roll a lower value.
This meant it would take a lot longer than previous seasons to get the maximum roll in the Codex, so this is changing for Season 7. The rolls will gravitate to the higher ranks. In short, Ancestral items are more likely to drop and will be more likely to roll at the top end of their ranges.
Class quests will no longer need to be repeated
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All classes need to complete a class quest to ‘unlock their potential’, at some point during the levelling process.
For example, Sorcerers unlock Enchantment slot 1 at level 15. From Season 7 onwards, if you have done this quest already, you won’t need to redo it to unlock the ability on another character. This is a retroactive change so if you’ve done it during any previous Season, you’re good to go!
If you do decide to do the Class Quest, you’ll now get an archetype cache for your character, a themed goody bag. These can be earned from the Season Journey too.
The Archetype cache will scale to player level too, so if you do the Class Quest later it will drop at your current level.
Q&A
During the Q&A portion, we learned:
- The will be a mid-season patch as with other seasons.
- Summons will be able to benefit from Thorns, Burning, and Poison damage.
- The Armory is a new work in progress, so feedback on this is welcomed.
The full and lengthy patch notes for patch 2.1.0 went online straight after the stream and you can read them directly on Blizzard’s site. The Developer Livestream is also available to watch in full here.
When does Diablo 4 Season 7 start?
Diablo 4 Season 7: Season of Witchcraft will officially start on January 21 at 10 a.m PST / 1:00 p.m EST.
