Diablo 4
Diablo 4 has revealed the contents of season 1, Season of the Malignant, via a stream last week. They are indeed sticking with the tried and true “re-grind a character” model, meaning that your current characters cannot play the new seasonal storyline or use the new seasonal mechanic or progress the seasonal battle pass.
However, that doesn’t mean they’re useless, or gain nothing from the season. In fact, there are at least a few ways you can use your current “eternal” characters to prepare for any seasonal characters you may run (which will be converted to eternal characters once the season is over).
In addition to your current characters being able to farm new Legendary Aspects and Uniques starting on July 18 (which they can use, but they won’t transfer to your seasonal characters), you may want to do the following to help your seasonal characters:
Finish the Campaign – Even your seasonal characters cannot participate in the new seasonal storyline unless you have finished the campaign at least once on one of your characters. If you do this, it will allow you to skip the campaign on other characters and progress to both endgame activities and the new storyline. So that’s something your eternal characters can do in the next week and a half here before Malignant launch on July 20.
Clear the Map – By “clear” I mean remove as much of the fog of war as you care to. Your character that has the most of the map revealed when the season launches will translate that to your seasonal character (and your eternal alts, with this upcoming change). So if you don’t want everything foggy, go exploring now.
Altars of Lilith
Find Lilith Statues – These are again, another thing that will transfer from the Eternal Realm to the seasonal content and your characters there, meaning big stat boosts initially, and you won’t have to re-find them. I would suggest using the Lilith Altar map found here to do this. It doesn’t actually take that long if you know where you’re going.
Increase Renown – Renown isn’t quite the same as these other two categories but it will translate in part to the seasonal realm. If you have gotten this much in the eternal realm, you will get two, almost three levels of renown out of five. The Lilith statues and map clearing is probably enough to get you that far, but if not, you can also do dungeons, strongholds and side missions (though the clearing of these will all be reset for seasonal content).
If you’re like me and have already been grinding Diablo 4 pretty hard, you may have all of this finished already. So really, there’s not a ton of reason to play until at least July 18 when the new loot can start dropping. But if you’re behind on any of these, it will really help you going into season 1.
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