- It is time for Shattered Soul Stone, featuring the latest news from Sanctuary and beyond. Each episode, a heroic party of Nephilim Band together to help keep you informed on everything in the Diablo universe. And now your Diablo Community podcast - Coming to you from somewhere in sanctuary. This is episode 4, 4 7 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called Book and Ladder. It is February 24th, 2024. And here we go.
I'm gonna start you off with an article from Game Developer, which was actually posted on February 21, which honestly isn't that far away. It is titled Phil Spencer Xbox Layoffs Will Ensure Company has quote enough of the right people end quote to Succeed written by Chris Carr or Care KERR Xbox has been busy since the turn of the year.
The company has announced 1,900 layoffs across its gaming divisions, including its recently merged Activision Blizzard Business and Detailed a multi-platform push that will eventually bring Xbox Game Studio Studios titles to players beyond its own ecosystem. When announcing those jobs cuts internally.
Xbox Boss Phil Spencer, said the company needed to marry a quote strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure and quote to enable future growth, while also eliminating quote overlap, end quote, following its purchase of Activision Blizzard. The suggestion was that Xbox needed to downsize in order to level up.
Spencer has now doubled down on that framing during a recent interview with Game File and explained that his overriding commitment to Microsoft is to ensure Xbox is a profitable business, even if that means laying off employees. Quote, I need to put us in the best position for long-term growth. Said Spencer quote, most of that is about building great products that exceed their expectations and find millions of customers.
But honestly, you know the cost of building the products, inclusive of the people who work on them. I need to make sure we have the enough of the right people and the right number of people in the right places for us to succeed. End quote, since Microsoft announced the cuts, there have been reports of layoffs at Key Activision Blizzard Studios like Toys for Bob Sledgehammer Games and Infinity Ward. It also appears that at least one major project in development at Blizzard has been canned.
That's probably that wilderness kind of thing that they were working on. And it's not gonna see the light of day now. So, uh, yeah, there's a little bit more in there. Everything I talk about on this in this episode will [email protected]. Blizzard watch has an interesting article titled, what Does Blizzard need to do to Regain Player Faith in Diablo four? This is written by Sarah Hansen on February 20.
There aren't a lot of game franchises with fan bases as dedicated as the Diablo player base was. Come Diablo four launch day in 2023 with 12 million units sold in the first month. It was blizzard's fastest selling game and players finished the extremely polished campaign and found nothing waiting for them at the other end. Diablo four nearly felt like it was two separate games from two development houses. One was a highly polished, largely single player story-based RPG.
The other was a clunky A RPG using outdated designs with the number of poorly thought out system architecture decisions that limited the ways devs could address issues raised through player feedback. These two games made an awkward match and many players seem to lose interest quickly around Level 50 when the game makes a hard transition from single player RPG to A RPG gear grind.
The seasonal model only accelerated this as gameplay feels superficial, particularly after the strong initial story campaign and less impactful than the previous Diablo three seasonal play. But there are other frustrations with Diablo. Four after years of calling out for a new version of Diablo that harked back to the grim world of Diablo two and away from the brightly colored world of Diablo.
Three players found the new world grim and unrelenting just as they had asked for, but found that they missed the sparks of neon joy they had found in Diablo three. And while Blizzard has kept its word about not being able to pay for power upgrades through the online store, it is hard to ignore that the game has a never ending stream of shiny new high resolution appearances in the store at hefty prices.
As the store cycles, we watch player complaints about game systems and balance go unaddressed and it continues a little bit more here, but this is a good point. I didn't go completely through the, uh, single player stuff on my own. I had to get some help with that before I could get into a season. So I completely missed season one. Season two, uh, was season of blood and that was hella fun. I had a great time in that.
I'm currently in the process of putting the videos that I made that I thought were the best of the best that I had used for that season or made for that season, um, are going up on YouTube and will be on, uh, my blog post later this season. I decided to play a sorcerer, which I think I've mentioned before, and I'm starting to get sort of good at it, but I'm also kind of feeling like, didn't I just do some of this stuff last season?
You know, only without the magic shooting from my character's hands. So I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm trying to play it. I'm sort of having fun. I'm having a bit of difficulty because I had no idea how to source her, but it's getting better. So I don't know. I mean, I think people just, you know, my opinion here, not anything on the article itself, which is a good article. I think people are starting to feel like it's getting kind of samey, you know?
Because when you have a new character for a new season, you go wherever you want to go in the world. Ideally you're going to try to find the actual seasonal content and, you know, level up your season journey and all that. But I don't know. I mean, some of these it's like, oh, I've did this quest before. Oh, I did that quest before I've done this one. And so I'm gonna try harder this time to actually get in there and focus on just the seasonal stuff if possible.
But I don't know how well that's gonna go. I'm just giving it a try. And uh, since this one was called Book and Ladder, here's the latter part, um, Diablo posted on, uh, Twitter or X, whichever you wanna call it, that the Diablo two resurrected ladder season six is now live. So if that's interesting to you and something you play, I did play a little bit of uh, Diablo two a while back and it was kind of fun. I kind of liked it. Um, I'll probably get there eventually, depending on whatever.
Right now I'm fighting the pollen count, which maybe some of you can relate to Diablo, IM Mortal has a bunch of stuff that they stuck on X slash Twitter and there's four little familiars here to look at. So one of them is the Quake strider. It is the behemoth of the desert. Its calling is to eat, sleep and bask in the sunlight. And it looks kind of like an armadillo ish sort of kind of thing. There's another one called Brood Talon, which looks like a bird with very large wings.
Uh, it's described as wing to damnation. It's calling is to feed and to muse itself. There's also the ash sweeper, which it looks like sort of a mechanized giant skull with something like a brain-like thing in the top of it. And it has little arms with some kind of spikes on it. It is described as conservator of knowledge. It's calling is to curate and protect knowledge. And then the last one is storm lost.
And it is a sort of a ghostly looking thing with a metal mask on it that it is looking through. It is described as embodiment of the storm and its calling is to consume and destroy. In addition, survivors Bain is back in Diablo Mortal and this one is a limited time event that can be played either horizontally or vertically on your mobile devices opening up a whole new world of Diablo. I mortal, can you stay alive? Survivor's Bane is available now, meaning today, now till March 1st.
So you gotta get in there and do that. I think I tried it once before, you know, I go in and outta these games as as I can. And the other thing here, we have a little tiny video, a 15 second video from Diablo Mortal that says, celebrate Lunar New Year with our new phantom market featuring the reigning harmony cosmetic set. Try your luck now before it's gone on February 28th, only in Diablo Mortal and there's a little video there. Yeah, I mean it sounds interesting to me.
I dunno how much time I have in the day to do stuff. 'cause you know, you gotta work sometimes too, but I'll check it out. And then we have the Diablo four patch notes, the, the new ones that just popped up or is that right? No, this is the ninth. So I don't know why exactly Diablo posted this that way, but, um, there's some updates here. I guess. Uh, let's see if this is even useful 'cause it says it's from the ninth.
Okay, well we've got some bug fixes here for season of the construct, which is the current one, uh, fixed an issue where visier wasp constructs are, were not affected by Im immobilizing effects fixed. An fixed an issue where the tool tip for igneous cores was missing information, fixed an issue where journal pages didn't drop during the cools heart quest fixed an issue where the only, where only the first person in the party would get credit for looting obis whispers.
That's a problem. I guess they really, I'm glad they fixed that one. Uh, fixed an issue where arcane tremors and Azar and Skoland could have vol voltaic a braziers that can't be interacted with fixed an issue where attacks from Malus could still damage players after he's defeated, fixed an issue where the season journey objective keeper of nothing still referenced pearls of wording to, to summon echo of malus instead of igneous cores, which is what you actually need.
The lunar awakening thing is done. Um, so I'm not gonna read you that. And then there's a little bit about game play fixes. They did fixed an issue where treasure goblins could fa fail to spawn while fighting. Arvis fixed an issue where enemies killed via an execute effort could not drop loot fixed.
An issue where the melted here, HEAR of sig was not always rolling the maximum value for its movement speed effects fixed an issue where the Echoing fury aspect didn't grant bonus fury if tactical rallying cry was learned, fixed an issue where advanced rapid fire that sounds like a rogue thing to me, would incorrectly override the bonus.
Critical strike damage from other sources fixed an issue where the damage increase and resource reduction cost from Ring of the Starless skies was not calculating correctly, fixed an issue where the final lieutenant failed to spawn in the Onyx watchtower preventing completion without a reset. And there's also some stuff fixed. An issue where adding a friend when playing with a controller would immediately reopen the menu for adding Friend.
That seems useful if you're trying to play with your friends. I play on an Xbox when I'm playing Diablo four and it's, you know, I've, I think I've had one person come in and help me because I specifically needed something in the season, uh, the like storyline thing. And, and uh, that was great, but it was a little bit difficult to get it together for a while because that, you know, this was before they, they hadn't fixed it yet.
So finally got it together and, and got through stuff and um, I was able to finish enough stuff to actually get a horse in the game, which is important because not only do you need one in this game if you want to travel far, but also it means the rest of your characters also have access to the horses later. So it's, that's kind of an important thing. And I'm, I'm babbling a little bit, but I'm sure other people went through that as well, like way back when this was officially launched.
Okay. Fixed an issue where setting a note on a friend would open the menu for adding a friend after adding the note and fixed an issue where icons for animus were missing from the mini map in the Betrayers Road dungeon. And that's pretty much it from this one. I don't know why they've reposted that, but it's here. And now I've got a lot of stuff from Mile Head.
So there's a thing, uh, they've titled this one Emanations of Sanctuary, new quote Beneath the Sands and quote, music from Blizzard written by Oxide. And here's a little description. Blizzard has yet again provided Sanctuary Dezens with a music video for their iconic soundtrack experience. The Sands of Stan and the Dry Steps, along with the Darkness emanating from Beneath the Sands with the latest music video from the Emanations of Sanctuary series.
This newly released video gives you a musical perspective of ke astan in the steps from Ked Bdu and Gaia Cole and back again. You'll feel the Desert Breeze and smell the Oasis as you listen to this latest soundtrack collection. It appears it is a video. Um, you could find it on the official Diablo YouTube channel. In addition, it says there are nearly three hours of music from locations in Stan in the dry steps such as Tarek s uh, Oza Bluffs, Ked bdu, Ola and Oasis.
Listeners will be transported into sanctuary from the comfort of their own homes and without those pesky demons breathing down their necks. So that's pretty cool. Um, I tend to sort of collect up these things 'cause I really like the music in the game and I think they did a great job with that kind of clipping it to certain areas and giving it some little like differences between the music and all that. I think that's a good idea.
So if you're into that stuff as much as I am, you can check it out on the Diablo uh, channel. There is also a video about Zol and cool and it's titled The History of Zol and Cool Diablo Lore video released, uh, from a siic, it is titled Zol and Cool, a Homily for Sanctuary. Blizzard has released a lore video about Zoltan Kools history in Diablo. Listen to the familiar voice of Steve Blum, who has lent his voice to the maid since Diablo three. And there's a little description here.
Founder of the Harri, creator of the Black Soul Stone Genius madman, Zoltan Kools history is long and mired in shadow. Few ancient figures have such an extraordinary legacy and fewer still are. As reviled throughout Sanctuary now hears Zol and Kools Dark Tail as told by the maid himself and the voices, Steve Blum the illustration and an art adaptation is from Sam Key and the animator is Duncan Rawlings.
So if you didn't know anything about So and Cool or maybe you thought you'd do everything, maybe you'll learn more in this video. And I kind of like that they do release it on video. I am hoping with both the videos that I was um, mentioning, well I guess just this one, the other one would have music so it probably wouldn't have voices in it, but this one might just be someone sort of reading it out. Probably the guy who voiced zin. Cool.
So I'm hoping that in that case there would be some way for people who are, who have disabilities, like have, you know, maybe they're legally blind or maybe they're completely blind and you can't really tell just from the word zol and cool may or may not be saying what's going on around it. I'm hoping they did, you know, consider accessibility in that case.
Another one from Wow Head is an older one from the end of January titled, who is Zoltan Kool, the History of the Fallen Her Roderick Maj written by Arc tne. So if you have no idea who Zol and Kool is, this will go in the show notes again and you can remember or you can learn it for the first time. And then we have the gauntlet. So this is written by Selic two days ago on Wow head, the gauntlet only available on seasonal realm. Diablo four, patch 1.3 0.3.
And here we have a, looks like a rogue character staring at a door that apparently they can't get into is kind of the, the look of that. Yeah, here's a link to the Diablo thing about it on the forums and it literally says, let's say we have a community manager named Ric Hana who wrote Gauntlet is season only and won't be playable through the Eternal Realm. There are two replies here. Someone says, I do not understand why you not support eternal realm.
And then someone else wrote a lot of paragraphs here and the second person says the game was sold as having an eternal realm. It supposedly caters to casual audiences which are more inclined to play on the eternal realm. Seasonal content and the Diablo format is not a casual format whatsoever. So what are you guys pulling here? You neglect casual players on the eternal realm and you neglect your core audience trying to cater to casuals on the seasonal realm.
Meaning purposefully designing the game in a way to capture casuals while under-delivering on what a Diablo game is supposed to be. Which is the only reason an itemization rework is being done in the first place. Your casual audience probably doesn't have a problem with the itemization at all. They're casual people saying you guys are out of touches and understatements, yada, yada yada. It goes on from there. There's three more paragraphs as I'm not gonna go through.
So people aren't real happy about that. But the one sentence just set it all off gauntlet is seasonal only and won't be playable through the eternal realm. So there's that. Good to know. We've also got sort of a little bit of information about the next Diablo four campfire chat on February 29. It's titled Tune into Our Next Campfire Chat was posted, uh, February, 2022. That's not right. February 22nd, 2024. Sorry, numbers screwed me up sometimes.
So this is this short little thing that's here about it. It says, our next campfire chat begins on February 29 at 11:00 AM PST and we'll give your first look at trials and the gauntlet. A weekly rotating fixed dungeon coming in season of the construct.
Join associate director of community Adam Fletcher, that's plays Pez radar Associate game director Joseph Ppoa and lead live class designer Adam Jackson as they delve into the gauntlet leaderboards balance updates and blood thirsty power set to make their return. We'll also have a special event to showcase members of the development team playing the gauntlet. They'll be joined by Diablo creators Macro Bio Boy and Anna Cake live to commentate on the action.
We'll also hold a q and a segment at the end of the stream for players to field their questions directly to the team. Visit our official Diablo, Twitch and YouTube channels to watch live following the Campfire Chats conclusion. We'll post another article with a video of the chat so you can still catch up on the details if you miss them.
So that's coming. And then we have Braava, for those of you that don't remember who Brava is, if you didn't do like you can't miss her, if you just started, if you started playing the game today, uh, you would run into Prova at some point because she was the one that started off in the cathedral and um, she's very devout to Anari. So there's a book about this now this is, uh, posted on wow head by Ssic Ssic SIC four days ago.
And um, it says there's uh, a new Diablo book called Diablo Book of Brava has been listed on Amazon and other websites. The book is set to release on October 15th of this year. Will this book be a precursor to the first Diablo four expansion vessel of hatred? The release date of the book makes it likely to coincide with the expansions release that is set to launch in late 2024.
There is currently no information on the book itself besides the title and there's some other ones that they've actually Blizzard has actually put out. There was Book of Cane that was published on December 13th, 2021. Book of material was October 1st, 2013 and Book of Loath was published on uh, June 6th, 2023. There's a little picture here of Brava.
It says Brava influential member of the Cathedral of Light saved by anus and has been faithfully devoted ever since, believes that anus could save humanity and lead them to the light. So there is a book about this, um, and it looks like from just what I've picked up here, there is a book over on Amazon called Diablo Book of Brava hardcover October 15th, 2024. So we will be waiting on that if we wanna get it.
Um, I don't know what it's said to cost, but it looks like the Wow head article said that at the time of the publication the price is $29 and 95 cents USD, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Uh, if you like to read this sort of stuff. I tend to try to collect these when I can, if I have the money and if I remember.
So that's kind of what's going on in here right now and I'm not sure what else I could really add to this other than Shadows Bain, I think our survivor's Bain called the Unworthy and Survivor's Bain. Did I get that in here? I think I did. Okay, so I'm gonna add this to it because I didn't actually, you know, put that into the show notes here.
But since we were talking about the Survivor's Bain thing from a link on X or Twitter from the Diablo Mortal account, I'm gonna give you a tiny little bit of exactly what this is and what it starts. Since our last content update, players celebrated the lunar New Year with Tong. She's renewal slew allies in howler hunt and devoured the season 23 battle pass. This content update introduces changes to the Survivor's Bain event.
42 new legendary items, class balance updates and a new PVP mode Tower War. As with previous content updates, there will be server maintenance starting on February 20, which we've already passed.
Here's some updates. Developers note, we've heard your feedback that the rewards provided for playing survivor's Bain didn't feel rewarding enough and that another option to e exit endless mode other than by dying was needed and that several skills lacked in strength when compared to their con contemporaries. The following changes were made to directly address these feedback points while injecting more fun and flexibility into the event.
We hope you enjoy this iteration of Survivor's Bane and we welcome any additional feedback you might have. Rewards will now be based upon kill count instead of combat duration. In endless mode, players will see a menu option at roughly 12, 17, 22 and 27 minutes. In that, in that provides the option to exit and claim their rewards or to continue playing enemies will be stronger if the player decides to continue. A variety of skills have been strengthened as well.
Ray of frost level two with increased from 30 to 50% damage increased by 30%. Level four with increased by 30% has become distance increased by 50% damage increased by 30%. Bone spear skill at level eight now consumes 2% of current life. Instead of maximum life damage increased by 100% multi-shot damage and number of arrows increased by 30%. Rain of vengeance when upgraded damage increase increases by 30%. Whirlwind, that's a Barb, uh, range increase update also increases damage by 30%.
Ground stomp range increases. Update also increases damage by 30%. Cool down, decrease from 24 to 16 seconds. That sounds like a good upgrade. Arcane torrent condemn deadly reach, falling Sword, swarm of bats, wave strike range Increase upgrade also increases damage by 30%. Wave of blood based damage increase by 20% range increase. Update upgrade also increases damage by 30%. Magic Missile, which makes me think of Dungeons and Dragons, uh, cool down, decreased from two to 1.5 seconds.
And hammer of the ancient base damage increased by 20%. So, um, this is an updated version of Survivor's Bain from February 23, 3:00 AM to March one server time. So we got a little bit of time there. There's also going on the Tower War, uh, which I'll read to you a little bit. The spirit of competition rings anew through West March. Assemble your team of eight Warriors and head to the Battleground captain for a new limited time.
PVP Mode Tower War. The Tower War experience might feel familiar to some two teams enter, but only one can capture and hold the maps five effigies long enough to awaken and slay the scarred guardian accruing the needed 1,500 points to secure victory along the way. You'll experience the same action packed gameplay founded in a cursed tower PVP match, but with the added ease of access. Seen and PVP activities such as, such as battleground like Battleground.
Tower War has rankings for you to climb, earning rewards like upgrade materials, legendary items and normal gems on a leaderboard. You can cement your name in and it's gonna start, it's already started on the 20 oh, it's going to start on the 26th through March 25th. So if that's like, so something you wanna do, there you go. We've got alley of blood that's come back again. Fire before darkness is looks like kind of what is this thing?
Let's see. There are few in sanctuary capable enough to stand against the darkness and wager their life for the defenseless. But you adventurer have consigned your days to thinning out the ranks of the burning hells ushering in safety where all hope was once lost your quest to serve the downtrod and grows in complexity. Harness the fire within to contain ever spreading darkness. Started on today and goes through March 2nd. There's an all clans on deck thing I think I already talked about.
There's some balance changes in here and that's pretty much all I've got for this episode. So I'm hoping you're enjoying this. There's a heck of a lot of Diablo stuff to look into and play and, and consider when the book comes out and that sort of thing. And with this, I'm going to end this episode. You have been listening to episode 4, 4 7 of the Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast.
Miss an episode. You could find the show blog and listen to the show archives at www.shatteredsoulstone.com. Come join us in game our in game community and clan, both named Shattered Soul Stone, are open to anyone who would like to join. You can also join us on Discord for the ultimate team and community based experience, find the Discord invitation link on our Twitter at shattered stone, as well as the Shattered Soul Stone website. Thank you for listening.