Diablo 4 developer Blizzard is seemingly not done making big changes to loot and itemisation in the game. As an ARPG, the chase of ever more powerful loot is a core part of the experience, and the game’s next season will deliver something of a shake-up to a particular tier of attainable loot.
Season 14, which we expect to kick off on 30th June, will follow on from the currently-active Season, dubbed Season of Reckoning. As the most dedicated players have come to expect, Blizzard is once again soliciting feedback for many of the changes, and a few of the new additions coming with the upcoming update.
This, as is standard, will be done through Diablo 4’s PTR (Public Test Realm), a testing environment where keen players can take an early peek, and offer feedback. This next iteration of the PTR will return on 2nd June, lasting for one week.
The focus of the session, which is only available through Blizzard’s own BattleNet launcher, will be patch 3.1. This next patch is set to arrive alongside Season 14, meaning players can preview content the general public won’t have access to until the season starts. In the blog post announcing details of the 3.1 PTR, one major change caught my eye. Blizzard, which has already made several key changes to loot in the months since Diablo 4’s initial release, is turning its eye to a segment of loot the majority of players never even see.
Mythics are a higher tier of Uniques, which are already incredibly rare items. There’s no way to guarantee getting a Mythic in Diablo 4, so most players either luck into one, or never see one drop, even after hundreds of hours. The most dedicated players go as far as farming certain bosses for hours hoping to add one to their collection, but the process is obviously tedious – not to mention very time-consuming.
But, as a way of making the ultra-rare tier more accessible to a wider range of players, Blizzard is making it so any Unique can be upgraded into a Mythic Unique. The developer is admittedly cheating a bit here, as it’s changing ‘Mythic’ from being a Rarity tier
Starting with S14, any Unique also has a chance to drop with the Mythic Quality, meaning the pool of Mythics is no longer limited to the dozen or so named items players spend hours chasing. If you don’t get a Mythic drop, you can upgrade any Unique item to be Mythic instead, using the Horadric Cube.
Though more accessible, earning Mythics, or having enough materials for the upgrade will still take some doing. But in order to keep these items rare and not to ‘ruin the economy’, so to speak, the newly-introduced Seasonal Currency required for the upgrade has limited sources. Blizzard is also making it a focal point for the existence of a new Lair Boss, which is also debuting with the new season. Expect a lot of farming still – albeit more focused and less prone to RNG. The only limitation is that your character can equip a single crafted Mythic at a time: if you want more, the rest would need to be found normally through play, which seems sensible.
This impact of this change will mainly be felt by casual players, and those who return each season to build a new character and see it through the endgame. For many of those players, myself included, the sight of a Mythic is exceptionally rare, and the idea that we’re essentially going to be “guaranteed” at least one is very welcome.