Here is a breakdown of the Season of the Malignant Announcement from the Diablo 4 Twitch channel on 7/6/2023. Special thanks to CamGG for the help!
1.4 Patch this afternoon.
- Helltide chests will now have a chance to drop unique
SEASON OF THE MALIGNANT STREAM SUMMARY
- Will feature a “Super Chunky” patch
- New NPC Cormind(?) Ex Priest who investigating the malignance, not strong enough to do this alone, needs our help.
- Start the seasonal storyline in Kyovoshad at level 1
Seasonal Mechanic – “The Threat” Will be game-wide with seasonal Character
- Any elite could be malignant which grants it more power. When you kill it, it will drop the heart, you can interact with the heart to begin an event against additional malignant enemies.
- The charged malignant heart is able to be socketed into your jewelry, with power similar to legendary aspects.
- 32 new malignant powers, each heart has a different colour (4), and they can only be socketed into the same colored socket(3).
- The 4th heart color is a unique color that is universal
- Colored sockets cannot be rerolled
- Higher world tier + enemies = more powerful hearts
- Hearts can be salvaged for material to craft “Invokers”
- Invokers are used to go into Malignant Tunnels,
- Malignant Tunnels are dungeons filled with malignant enemies.
New Uniques, New Legendries.
- These will be live immediately on
- July 18th for the Eternal Realm
- Live for the Seasonal Realm July 20th
Seasonal Journey Feature
- Objectives in every chapter, reward Aspects, Caches, Titles, Tokens to advance battle pass.
- Available for free
- To progress through chapters, you must complete challenges. Not all challenges are required to move on to the next chapter.
- Battle Pass can be progressed by playing the game, as well as the challenges.
- The PAID Battle Pass grants access to ONLY additional cosmetics
- Armour cosmetics are able to be used on all classes, Weapon cosmetics are locked to the class that can equip them.
- Seasonal Blessings
- Account Wide passive buffs, upgrade your blessings with Smoldering Ashes
- Smoldering Ashes are earned by progressing your Battle Pass.
- All available on the free pass
RENOWN
- Lilith Statues will carry over
- Fog of War (Map Vision) will carry over
- Waypoints to Major Cities
- When Season 1 patch goes live, first login with your most complete character. This will staple all of its progress to your account, and all other characters existing and in future will see the map, waypoints, and Lilith statues.
- To ensure you have all progress shared, login to each character you have when Season 1 patch is live. (July 18th for Eternal Realm is the earliest day).
Q&A Section
Will the cost of respect change?
- Longer-term plans to improve the flow of respect screensNo changes at this time. New seasonal reward “scroll of amnesia” Respecs an entire character for just the cost of the scroll
Seasonal mechanics added to Eternal Realm?
- Malignant mechanics will not be added to the Eternal Realm, future mechanics could be added if they improve the gameplay loop. Malignant Hearts are too powerful to be added to the base game.
Will salvaged transmog and bought transmog carry over between seasons?
- Yes, any cosmetic will be available on any characters at any time
We teleport to the door, could we teleport inside the nightmare dungeon instead?
- The initial patch was a quick fix, we’re looking in to fine tuning the process to enter NMD
Will there be nerfs and buffs in the middle of seasons?
- They do not plan on making big nerfs and buffs in the middle of seasons, only minimal balance changes. To prevent ruining specific builds.
Stash space is very small, is improvement coming?
- We are working very hard to create a solution for stash space.
How long are seasons?
- 3 calendar months
Season of the Malignant Announcement Conclusion
Season of the Malignant will be available for patch July 18th and will be playable July 20th! Be sure to check out our Diablo 4 home page for more on Season 1 after launch.