- Coming to you from somewhere in Sanctuary. This is episode four 50 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called Kodak Talk because I think it sounds funny. It is March 24th, 2024. And this is Jen. So we're gonna start off with an article from End Gadget titled Activision Blizzards ex CEO. Bobby Kotick reportedly wants to buy TikTok. And there's a little blurb in here.
It says He's pitched the idea to potential partners including Open ai, CEO, Sam Altman, the Wall Street Journal reports. This was written by Cheyenne McDonald. So here's a little bit from this article. Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard, who stepped down at the end of last year, is apparently interested in buying TikTok as a new bill in the US threatens to ban the app or force it sale.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Kodak mentioned the idea of partnering on such a purchase to open AI, CEO, Sam Altman and others. Seated with him at a conference dinner last week and brought it up with Bite Dance executive chair Jang Ying. If TikTok is sold the Wall Street Journal notes, it would likely go for hundreds of billions of dollars. Codec led Activision for over 30 years but didn't exactly leave on a good note.
The company has faced multiple lawsuits in recent years, including one. It's settled with the California Civil Rights Department over alleged pay discrimination. In December in 2021, Activision Blizzard employee staged a walkout and demanded Kotak resign. But that didn't happen. Kotak ultimately sh stayed on as the head of Activision Blizzard until the completion of Microsoft's acquisition in 2023.
Kodak's alleged interest in TikTok comes at a tumultuous moment for the immensely popular platform after lawmakers introduced the policing Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. That's a mouthful last week, which President Biden said he would sign if it passes under the bill, which goes to the house floor on Wednesday for a vote. TikTok China based parent company Bite Dance would have to sell the app within six months, otherwise it'll be banned from US app stores.
TikTok has been trying to get its millions of users to rally behind it in wake of the Bill's, sudden momentum and sent out push notifications last week asking users to call their representatives after the house vote where it's expected to be approved. After clearing the Energy and Commerce Committee in a unanimous vote last week, the bill would move on to the Senate while lawmakers concerns about TikTok Center on fears of data privacy and its connection to China.
Wall Street Journal notes that involving Altman in its purchase could open up the app to the possibility of being used by open AI to train its AI models, which doesn't exactly sound ideal for users either. And it kind of goes on from there a little bit, but that's what's going on. I mean, I guess, you know, maybe Bobby Kotek is bored and wants to try, you know, messing around with something else that may or may not, um, make its way through Congress and the Senate and all that.
I don't know, it's just weird. And from here we have a lot of Diablo stuff going on. So we have, if you haven't done this already, which I haven't, the reason I haven't is because I've been sick for a while because I have horrible allergies and just couldn't function for a while. So that's why last episode didn't appear because I just couldn't do it. So I'm just gonna continue on from here. So Diablo four patch 1.3 0.4 is now available to download. It is two gigabytes apparently.
And this is from Wow Head written by J Tross. It's got a lovely image at the top of this here and it doesn't say a heck of a lot Other than that, I mean there's some notes about it, but that's from a long, that's from a while back. So I guess what they're trying to say is you should probably go ahead and download this patch on March 14. Bloodshed announced on Twitter slash x. This it's official. I am now a member of the hashtag Diablo community team. There's a little fire emoji there.
I'll be helping out with creator programs and management. Really excited to dig back in with the community. There's a little red heart. Also, you can still expect the educational videos from me on the YouTube channel. So that's what's going on with bloodshed. So you know, good job. Um, I think you'll do well. You seem to know what you're talking about, so that's great.
Over in Diablo Immortal territory, uh, we've got a few things that have been posted on uh, Twitter slash x. So it's the first one I've got here is titled The Arachni Embodies the Webs, it spins complete with deceptions and lethal traps. Eradicates the threat to win challenges and rewards in our season 24 Battle Pass, a regent of webs available now until April 11th. And it has a picture here of uh, the different types of characters you could possibly play in Diablo, immortal.
And I don't know if there's like webs coming from them or not or if they're stuck in one, but it's kind of a neat little drawing. Everything I talk about today is gonna be in the show notes. So you could find it there. And it looks like there's like a 34 second video stuck with this uh, thing that I just read you. So you can go ahead and do that. And some of the comments are really funny. Um, one of them has a picture of one of the Diablo I mortal characters.
It looks like a man with green hair and green clothing. And this person I'm not gonna name, um, writes finally a Kinky BP skin. I love it so much. I don't think there's anything weird about it, but this person seems happy. So maybe he'll go in and get that. Also from Diablo, I mortal on x slash Twitter, a new terror is descending into sanctuary. Prepare to defend with honor during our limited time event from now until April 1st.
And there's this huge thing with teeth and a glowing, uh, interior, like it's going to swallow up the players or something like that. And it says something is tearing into sanctuary and that's all it says. So we don't know what that's gonna be exactly, but I bet it'll be interesting. And then again from Diablo Immortal, this was written on March 23rd in 2024, the Age of Unmasking Takes Over Diablo Immortal, what are you most excited for this year? Let us know in the comments.
And there's a 2024 roadmap here called uh, the Age of Unmasking. Above it is the second anniversary and then later there's something called Terror Reign. So from January to March there's terror riffs, oblivion pillars, eternal Equipment, and Deckard Ka Elite Quest. That's also, uh, has tongue, she's renewal in front of that. The next is a blue banner that says New class. That's for April and June.
So it's gonna be a new Paragon system, new equipment system, new heli query bosses and new game modes. Then there's a yellow banner that says Cursed Solstice. This is for July through September, world Stone Quest, part one Dungeon Updates, new Co-op mode, a Cursed Towers update. And then there's another one that's an orange banner that says Hallows Wake. That's gonna happen for October and December or maybe between September and October. Not real clear about that.
So that one for October and December is World Stone Quest part two 'cause the September one was part one and then there's news, a New Zone and Hella Query bosses and so much more apparently. And then the last thing over there says Broom teen. And I don't know what that is, , but if you go into the game, you'll probably find out for yourself when it's, when it gets there.
If you missed it in the past, you may have uh, become aware that there are a lot of books that have to do with mostly lore of various characters in the entire Diablo series. So we're not just talking about Diablo Mortal or Diablo four, but the whole deal. So wow head posted, uh, nine days ago by Slic, a post that says Diablo Book of Cane and Book of Teel re-released on March 12th. So they're already out there if you want to get them.
I happen to have both of these 'cause I got them right away because I've been lower junkie apparently and I just really wanna know what's going on. I usually like really enjoy the artwork and stories and that kind of thing. So here's a little bit about that. Blizzard Re-released the first two books from the Diablo book of series, book of Kane and Book of Teel on March 12.
These decade old books have finally made their return just in time to potentially give us a refresher on kibitz of lore in the Diablo universe at the time of publication. The price is 29 95 USD for the book of CAE and 27 87 USD for the book of Terio. Diablo book of CAE was originally published on December 13th, 2011. While Diablo book of Teel was published on October 1st, 2013, these books had seemingly run out of print given their unusually high prices.
If you were to buy them new as of March 12, these books are now back in stock for anyone who is looking to add them to their collection or to catch up on more recent lore in the Diablo franchise and to prepare for more, even more lore to come when vessel of hatred releases. That is my understanding is gonna be uh, season four.
There was a whole thing I watched about it, you may have watched it too and it had like really interesting pictures, but not a lot of uh, details because of course they're not gonna give you all the details for the upcoming thing if you're still in the current thing, you know, so those who are looking to purchase these books can find them on Amazon using the link below where there is a link in this article or wherever books are sold at the time of publication.
The price is, I think we already just said that one. Um, yeah, 29 95 USD for book of Kain 27 87 for book material and there's supposed to be another one, a book of Brava, which I think I mentioned the last time I did a Shattered Soul Stone episode. And that one is 29 95 USD. It's not real clear when that's gonna come out, but it might be with Diablo four's expansion. VE vessel of hatred and is likely to coincide with the expansions release late in 2024.
So if you want some lore, this is where to go, but you're gonna have to wait on the Bravo one. Over on max roll we have a itemization, the itemization campfire chat wrap up written by Dready who always does good work in this. This is where I go when I'm like, okay, wait, what is this about? I go here and then I learn everything and it's wonderful. Okay, so the itemization, a campfire chat, live stream just took place.
The panel consisted of Joe Shelley, game director Joseph Priya, associate game director, Adam Jackson, lead class designer, Charles Dunn, associate game designer, and Adam Fletcher, director of community. The topics included the massive itemization updates, class changes, PTR news and so much more. See all the major points below. This is kind of long, so I'm gonna give you some of it and you can check it out in the show notes later on.
PTR details, yes, they're having a PTR if you missed that before, there will be a PTR for the next, uh, chapter of of uh, Diablo four basically. So here's some little bullet points. The upcoming PTR will run from April 2nd to April 9th. The PTR is PC battle.net only. Console PTRS may happen in the future. Season three ends Tuesday, May 14th now to allow the PTR to run and incorporate all the feedback. And season four starts on Tuesday, May 14th.
So that's kind of together, you know, season four will start on the 14th. Season three ends on the 14th I think. So I gotta get back in there and play. Me being sick for a while did not help me at all. Okay, PTR specifics, instant boost to 100 including the following campaign completion mount. All skill points, all paragon points, fog of war cleared, all alters of Lilith discovered random set of rare gear on your boosted character.
All class systems unlocked all glyphs maxed level when boosted you gain, oh boy, a lot of gold. Uh, 1 million, I think it's 1 million gold or something like that and 1000 ovals. This can be done multiple times. Legendary drop rates, doubled note anything related to renowned mimics what you currently have completed. If you haven't already, make sure you do this before the PTR starts. A specific PTR forum will be added to the Diablo foresight as well as the team will monitor social media channels.
Here's some itemization updates. The dev team started with three key principles, quality over quantity. The devs are refocusing on having fewer items with better quality. This gives items more meaning to more players For the long run, the best items have a journey currently. Once you found your gear, that was it for the most part. With new systems coming to the game, the goal is to make items more a journey to have items unique to you and give a sense of progression through crafting.
Surprise and delight reignite the joy when items drop. There should be exciting rewards. There is also trading. Trading is being updated in a big way. Legendaries and uniques will become tradable in season four. There are two exceptions. Doing any form of crafting on these items binds them to you. Also Uber uniques are not tradable. There's a bunch of stuff here from base item updates. There's like photos of this in here that I'll let you go check out on your own.
Yeah, and this just goes on and on and it looks really good. Um, so part of it, underneath those pictures with some words in them talks about items gain apexes from a smaller pool. This is meant to remove a lot of ddu, duplicate or conditional effects. The dev team is also improving the potency of many apexes, including plus ranks to skill Sacred items now only drop in world tier three with ancestral items in world tier four. Overall AFIX values have been increased.
Legendary items now only roll three apexes down from four rare items now only rolled two A fixes down from four max. The amount of apexes, at least four legendaries is meant to give you a great base to work on and to add two again, this is meant to change the itemization in game to a journey. Legendaries from level 95 plus monsters always drop at 925 item power.
Many uniques now drop in world tiers one and two starting at in world tier three, all uniques drop Uber uniques start dropping from monster level 55 plus enemies and always drop with 925 item power. There's some other stuff in here. I highly recommend you scroll through it and read the rest of it, but if you wanna know everything, this is exactly where you need to go over on max roll with what dread side has written. And I even didn't give you all of it. There's more for you to discover.
We have Diablo four patch notes, which sometimes I find hilariously funny as to what they had to fix and sometimes it's just kind of like, oh, that's okay. So this was posted on March 22nd, 2024. The Diablo four team has been monitoring your feedback as we introduce patches to keep your experience in sanctuary smooth, we will update the below list and denote whether the fixes are intended for pc, Xbox, PlayStation, or all platforms. So here we go. This is for all platforms.
Well, they posted this patch notes on March 22, but they decided to add to it, uh, and on March 26th for some reason. So game updates, patch 1.3 0.5 introduces Ray tracing to all supported platforms and updates to ambient occlusion and contact shadows. For more details, please visit this article. I guess I'm gonna have to find this article after I'm done writing this. There are bug fixes fixed an issue where the portal entrance to the gauntlet didn't apply.
Portal cosmetics fixed an issue where the ability to interact with certain things would not function if corpse tendrils were equipped to the same key binding as interact. Fixed an issue where some elites could not properly spawn in the second half of the path of the blind dungeon fixed an issue where some headstone cosmetics would not appear in the wardrobe. Various performance stability and visual improvements. So there's that, that's the newest stuff.
Let's find out what this article happens to be. , just, you know, to see what they meant. Okay, so the article is titled Hell's Beauty Burns AEW with Ray Tracing and this is from March, 2022. Nope, 22 of 2024, sorry. Numbers are the bane of my existence. Honestly. On March 26, wanderers can conquer the horrors of hell with a suite of new graphical enhancements available to them with patch 1.3 0.5. Arriving alongside our next content update.
Sanctuary will be further imbued with the luscious shadows and enhanced reflections of ray tracing plus other visual enhancements. So here's some stuff that they've got going on. If you go to this article, which again will be in the show notes, it will show you like where the shadows are coming from and the difference between using it and not using it. To me this one looks a little subtle, but there's some differences right away. You can see if you watch it long enough. Ray tracing shadows.
Ray tracing is the term that broadly refers to the ability for game engines to produce more lifelike images. For example, shadows cast by the sun are enhanced with ray tracing. And there's a picture here of one that's a little bit more blurry and one that's not as blurry. So it says on the left, ray tracing is toggled off, resulting in sharper and less accurate shadows. On the right ray tracing is enabled. The shadows from the tree are much more realistic and lifelike.
Notice the further you look from the base of the tree, the softer the shadows become because these are in some kind of fog. There's um, a person riding a horse through somewhere in sanctuary. And the difference between the shadow coming from the building behind this character is very different. It's very clear in the first shot and it's kind of fuzzy in the second shot. And there's more like this.
There's a group of little skeletons trying to be fought off by what probably is either a, I think a druid 'cause they do have like, you know, um, horns on their helmet and the first glimpse of it gives you like a fuzzy view of the shadows of these two skeletons and the the character that they're playing and, um, how clear it gets after that. I think that's mostly the point with this is to show like hard shadows so you can really see things going on.
And then there's one in like your, your character goes for the first time to talk material. That's all I'm gonna say about that if you haven't done it. And yeah, the shadows are totally different. So there's that. There's also reflections on the water. So ray tracing also produces more lifelike refle reflections on surfaces like a still pond or a broad mirror.
This enhanced feature can reveal more details around your environment by not only bringing depth to the reflections of the water, but adding to the broader environmental storytelling as well with this asset below. Okay, here's the asset below. We've got what looks like a sorcerer who is throwing lightning at a group of possibly Goulds and they're all standing in a river.
Okay, so with this asset below the ray tracing enabled, you can see the reflection of the ball lightning off the surface of the water. One of the benefits of ray tracing is that it can also enable you to see the reflection of something offscreen, like the offscreen rock face in the top right hand corner below the image. The reflections from ray tracing will help provide more lifelike instances where you can view pieces of environment that were previously unseen. And that's, uh, most of it.
There's also ambient occlusion, which sounds like someone did something dangerous and needed a hospital, but maybe not. Uh, Diablo four already includes ambient occlusion, which measures the extent of which a surface is obscured from surrounding light shadows. In other words, it determines how much surrounding objects prevent a surface or object from receiving light from a source such as a campfire or lantern.
Now available on all platforms, we have updated and enhanced the ambient occlusion feature PC users who use the preset graphics upon ultra quality. We'll notice this change the most, but it can be seen on all quality settings on all platforms and there's, you know, showing you the shadows coming and going on a couple of different images down here. There are contact shadows. We recently updated contact shadows to apply to more characters in sanctuary than before.
Previously contact shadows only displayed the shadows around player characters, but now at the highest graphic settings includes shadows for all player characters, NPCs and monsters alike. And then there's uh, stuff for PC and for console. So depending on what you're using or maybe you're doing both, here's what you need to know. Graphic settings requirements and how to enable for PC to enable ray tracing and other visual enhancements on PC select options from the in-game menu.
Under performance you can manually select the various visual improvements that have been included with this content update outlined in this blog. For additional details on which graphic cards are eligible for Ray Tracing, please see our Diablo force system requirements article here that might've been the one that I uh just told you about. Console on console. Select options from the endgame menu from their navigate to the graphics tab. Under performance select Enhanced Visuals.
This enables enhanced visuals on console Feast your eyes on your improved ray tracing visuals. It increases the quality of textures like fur, hair and fog. Shadows will have a more realistic response to light at various distances and many reflections will be enhanced in order not to compromise overall performance. This feature is locked at 30 FPS frames per second overall. And then something having to do with Nvidia GForce is in here as well. I don't, honestly I've never used one.
I don't know what this does, but if you have one, you might wanna read the end of this particular article from from Blizzard. PC Gamer has an article titled Blizzard just revived Diablo four with a list of changes so massive that it's practically a new game written by Tyler Culp. A little blurb here. Season four will add powerful LUT crafting new Dungeons new Bosses, and a list of quality of life changes. So here's a little bit from this article.
Blizzard should call Diablo Four's next season Diablo five because the changes coming on are so fundamental and widespread, it's going to feel like you're playing a full on sequel After months of teasing a massive overhaul to Diablo four's core design Blizzard. Use today's campfire chat stream to walk through Season four's rework, which will be permanently in the game from then on to loot and many of the game's, other core systems over the course of a nearly two hour stream.
The changes touch almost every aspect of the game, which is probably why the Stream opened with game director Joe Shelley. Defining the most important aspects of Diablo four as the decisions you make before combat and the ones you make in between to set up what's in store for next season. Season Four's, loot, rework, redefines how you build your character through loot and adds much needed complexity and creativity to Diablo Four's character progression.
Diablo four's items and your character as a result are going to become flexible in ways they have never been since its release. A pair of gloves, for example, can drop with only a few stats or apexes you want. And through two new crafting systems they can now be shaped around the kind of build you want to play. Blizzard has clearly taken inspiration from last Epoch and Path of Exile. I hope I pronounce those right, to add a staggering amount of customization to its loot.
The hope is that the age of sorting through mountains of gear for the perfect items is finally over and Blizzard beliefs, it can be done without a loot filter. And here's some, uh, there's a picture in here about, uh, different items and what they're turning into, that kind of thing. Manuals will drop consistently as you play and are permanently available in a menu. So if you need a manual for something, there it is. Uh, let's walk through a theoretical example of how upgrading loot will work.
In season four and onwards. You defeat a boss who drops gloves with three stats on them. Legendary and rare items have one fewer stat on them. Now two, they're almost perfect for you but will need to be tempered at the blacksmith. Three, you temper your gloves with a new manual item you found that adds one of four mobility based stats. Example, movement, speed evade, cool down reduction, et cetera.
Four, you're lucky. And get the movement speed stat added to your item before using up its maximum temporary re rolls. Five, you add one more stat that makes your bone splinters skills shoot more projectiles. Six. Then you use the master working system to increase all the stats, including the tempered ones on the gloves. Even further, up to 12 times seven you luck out and roll the four major upgrades to your movement speed increasing the stat dramatically.
One stat jumps way up every four upgrades eight, you're now the fastest necromancer that ever lived. And there's a little bit more in here, but that's kind of the idea. I think I like this idea because it does, as this article said, make it pretty clear that they know that things are kind of, you know, you have to go searching through your stash to find the thing you want and it may be underpowered for you by the time you find it and that kind of stuff.
So I think it's cool that they're giving us more options to do stuff with and we won't have to spend so much time just sorting through loot that maybe is not relevant for us anymore. So I like that The Verge has a teeny tiny little article posted on March 14 by Tom Warren. It says Diablo's fours rage tracing update arrives March 26th. Diablo four is getting a ray tracing update later this month. Armor, water, windows and other reflective surfaces.
We'll all have Ray traced reflections for more detail and lighting accuracy shadows throughout the game will also feature ray tracing. And then uh, there's a part about Nvidia that I skipped over but they have a tiny bit here. Nvidia is also bringing DLSS 3.5 to portal with RTX. This should improve the fidelity of full ray tracing in the game and you can enable frame generation on 40 dash series RTX cards to boost frame rates. So there's that going on and a lot of the rest of this is wow head.
We've got a cultist enchanting cost to cap and Diablo four, season four, uh, posted by Cons, uh, how do I say this constant, something like that. Um, so here's a little bit about that. A frequently requested change to Diablo four's enchanting system will be coming in season four. The cost to re-roll gear apexes at the occultist will now cap at a certain cost.
Blizzard revealed during the latest campfire chat that enchanting costs would be one of the systems receiving an overhaul no longer scaling to an absurd degree on repeated re-roll pieces of gear. And then there's some updates here. Um, it's in a little box so it looks like it's from the Campfire chat. Additional updates, legendary items dropped from Monsters level 95 plus are always 925. Um, item Power, I think this is the same thing I saw before.
Forgotten Souls from Whispers or Rare Drop globally from Elites. There's this kind of stuff in there currently players looking to re-roll an apex on their gear have to pay a continuously scaling gold cost on each re-roll. For some this is an annoyance at best, but for unlucky players or those looking to push the absolute limit of their gear with perfect stat rolls, this scaling cost can quickly balloon into the tens of millions per roll.
Assuming the gold cost cap implemented in the season four change is reasonable. This is sure to be a well received change for players who have had their fill of rolling away their gold in the current state of season three. And so there's just, there's more about that somewhere also from wow Head from Arcane. Huge changes coming to hell Tides in Diablo four, season four and it's got a picture here of somebody's character with a bow running towards something else for Hell Tides.
It's a little hell tides thing in the corner. So you know that's where you ran into. I suppose this one was written by Arcane, I think I just said that The recent developer Campfire Chat has announced some of the upcoming changes to Diablo four, which are simply massive in scope. They are barely any systems that are left untouched and one of these sweeping reworks targets the Hell Tide event which is getting considerable quality of life in mechanical changes.
A number of these much needed changes are brand new but some bear direct inspiration from the popular Blood harvest event from season two, hell Tide quality of life changes Hell Tides will now be available for players in world tiers one and two allowing players to have another way to level their characters More Interactables and events are being added to increase the diversity of things to do during the hell Tide.
There will be huge demonic worms that may suddenly burst forth from the ground to spew groups of demons near players. At varying times the density of monsters in the area will be much higher, including players being ambushed by sudden Monster Spa and will tie into the new hell Tide threat system about that. They wrote about the threat system.
As players kill demons, complete events and everything else they can do during the hell Tide, the forces of hell will begin to take notice of their actions. As the threat meter fills, demons will ambush players with increasing numbers and intensity and there's some screenshots here of that new hell born enemy and hell tide assault event. Upon filling the threat meter completely, a sound will play alongside a notification on the screen signaling the beginning of hell's directed assault.
Hell Tide Harbinger will begin to spawn alongside significantly more monsters and elite monsters. This demonic assault will continue as the threat meter drains over time. At the end of this event, a new enemy type called the hell born will appear to attack the player with dark shadowy versions of player skills.
Once slaying the hell born will drop legendary items as well as its exquisite blood and order to summon vampire Lord Zeer New hell Tide Group boss encounter as players progress through the hell tide they will start to acquire a rare summoning material that can be used to summon the blood maiden a new public event boss. While we don't know much about this boss yet, we'll update with the latest information once we hear more.
Stay tuned also from wow Head Blizzard confirms and Dariel and other bosses will drop Uber uniques in season four Diablo four. So here's a little bit about that. This one was also written by Arct following the recent campfire chat developer live stream on March 20. Blizzard has been providing extra details regarding some of the ch upcoming changes in features we can expect in Diablo four.
Season four Recently Blizzard has confirmed that the new Uber boss on Drio will be an alternative to fighting dural for the coveted Uber unique items such as the grandfather, which is some kind of a sword. The information comes from game director Joe Shelley who also noted that all of the other major bosses such as Beast in the Ice and the Lord Zeer will have a notable chance to drop Uber unique items as well.
Later Shelley added in a reply to a player's question that the drop rate for Uber uniques items from bosses such as the Beast in the ice in Lord's ear would be significantly higher than the normal odds of average gameplay. However, and Dariel and Durio will still have the best odds for players. So if you read through this wellhead article, you can see some little screenshots from x slash Twitter that Joe Shelley is talking to somebody about with the stuff that kind of is already in the article.
These changes are certainly a welcome edition as players have even more ways to get decent changes at coming at claiming powerful trophy items. This will also relieve some of the fatigue some players have noted about fighting dural endlessly. So there's that. We've also got from Adam Fletcher over on x slash Twitter, uh, seen some people question if the camera slash view distance change is just for season four. Just to be absolutely clear, it is in the game for good, there will be two options.
The standard option which is the distance currently in the game and far, which is the expanded distance. Some platforms will default to one or the other, but a new option in the menu will be available for players to select the one they prefer. So yes, consoles will get this as well. So that's pretty cool that that can happen.
You know, anything that helps with consoles to make it somewhat adequate or uh, reasonably similar to playing on PC is a good thing for me because I have a Mac and it won't play this game , it will not play Diablo four but I could do it on my Xbox. Another one from Wow Head written by constant, I hope I'm saying that right. Uh, hardcore changes to death avoidance coming in season four. So if you are a hardcore player this might interest you.
Blizzard announced upcoming changes to death avoidance on hardcore films in season four during their recent campfire Chat. Players will no longer have easily accessible cheat death mechanics, which will entirely change the meta in terms of how players approach everything from nightmare dungeons to pinnacle bosses. And here we have a picture of Elixir of Death evasion, a magic elixir for the next 30 minutes. Prevent death once and become immune for two seconds.
Once this takes place you cannot benefit from it again for five minutes and then the, the Quest text or whatever here says uh, the item text. This elixir is special and may be used alongside any other elixir. It requires level 10 so that's really not too much to uh, to ask for I suppose. Uh, we're also removing the elixir of death evasion from the game. We've also redesigned Flame shield's enchantment. So yeah, that elixir of death evasion I guess is leaving the game. I was not aware of that.
Um, so before with Flame Shield it was enhancement effect. Flame shield automatically activates when you take fatal damage can only happen once every 120 seconds and now it's changed to flame shield. Enhan Enchantment effect flame shield automatically activates after cumulatively losing a hundred percent maximum life can only happen once every 30 seconds, which is a lot better than waiting 120 seconds. So that's pretty cool. The first change applies to all players Elixir of death.
Evasion will be removed from the game to emphasize the finality of death when playing hardcore. The second change only pertains to sorcerers Flame shield Enchantment will no longer activate when taking damage that would otherwise be fatal. Instead activating after a player cumulatively loses a hundred percent of their maximum life every 30 seconds. So that's what that one's about. Got a few more here. Okay, so this one's written by popular.
Popular who has one of the best names over at Wow Head, in my opinion, better Visual Clarity coming to Uber Lilith Boss Mechanics in Diablo four PTR, I'm just excited that we're having a PTR. I don't usually join into those because I'm terrible at it and I'll leave everyone else to sort it out for themselves. But it's nice that they're giving us that option in in general you don't have to do it, but you can if you want to, depending on how many people they let in.
I assume if you've ever fought against Uber Echo of Lilith and Diablo four, you may have had some frustration with the hit boxes and the visibility of some of her attacks. Diablo four lead class designer Adam Jackson has confirmed that in Diablo four's first PTR some changes will be coming to the Uber Lilith encounter, including more accurate hit boxes and fewer one-shot mechanics. So here's a post of something from X slash Twitter that Adam Jackson wrote.
Speaking of Uber Lilith on the PTR, you'll be seeing updates to her including better visual clarity of her attacks. The hit box of her waves will better match the visual. Her waves slash ghosts are no longer one shot. Uh, mechanics instead they'll do heavy ramping damage as you get hit. The Uber Lilith fight has often been criticized for its lack of clarity when it comes to the visualization of mechanics.
So these will be welcome changes to players who have struggled with this boss encounter previously. Diablo four's first PTR will be available to all PC battle net owners of Diablo four starting on April 2nd. So if you're on console, you're not getting into the PTR is what I'm understanding from this and I won't be getting in either. Okay, we've got another one from wow head by Thera Deeming new crafting system coming with Diablo four, season four. It's got this manual here about something.
I don't know if this is the same as the other one or not. There's definitely a manual in here but it didn't talk about this one does not talk about the um, the potion thing. So maybe it's, maybe it's something new. During their season four campfire livestream blizzard showcase a new crafting system coming with Diablo four. Season four tempering will be a new crafting system open coming sorry to Diablo four with the release of season four.
Together with the new master working crafting system, tempering will replace current upgrade craft crafting system and offer new ways to further improve items in Diablo four. Here's some stuff though the tempering through the tempering crafting system players can add specific powerful apexes to rare and legendary items.
These tempered apexes appear on so-called temper manuals, which have four different apexes on them and drop from most content in Diablo four players won't be able to add tempered apexes to unique and Uber unique items. If you combine a certain temper manual with an item, it will add one of those four apexes randomly.
There will be general temper manuals but also class specific temper manuals with powerful exclusive tempered apexes as shown in the screenshot down below, which they do have pictures of those similar to aspects, temper manuals will have different categories. Weapons, offensive defensive utility mobility resource. These categories indicate which items can be combined with the temper manual.
For example, a mobility temper manual can be applied to boots and amulets Ancestor items can hold up to two tempered apexes items will also have tempering durability, also called temper re-roll, which will determine the number of times a player could re-roll a tempered apex. Much more like normal apexes tempered apexes could roll within a certain range, adding another probability layer to the crafting process.
The developers pointed out that the system includes a lot of new and unique apexes that will add more customization and new ways to play your character. So that's what that one is. And finally we have Diablo four Uber unique coming in Season four Tes Mite written by popular. Popular. If you played Diablo three, you've probably wore materials mites or pieces of it, uh, in the game and it's really neat.
So we've got this character here in a screenshot that is scaring away a bunch of, uh, it looks like skeletons that are on fire and a bunch of like, I think, I dunno if this one has their own skeletons or not, but it looks like a whole bunch of shields around that particular character and these lights coming off of 'em. So this one is a 925 item power.
It is 1,619 Armor eight plus 18 to all stats plus 50% maximum resistance to all elements plus 11.2% resistance to all elements, 10% damage reduction. While at full life your skills unleash a divine barrage dealing 909, also saying 7 82 to 924 damage at the bottom. It's not quite all the way there, but it says, thus teal, a perfect aspect of justice come, came to be none. Were more vehement against the forces of hell. And it goes on from there. It's a little cut off.
Oh, here's the rest of it. All demon Monica entities learn to shudder at tear at justices might Books of Jarral volume one, this Uber unique has some great defensive apexes such as maximum resistance to all elements, which dramatically reduces the amount of non-physical damage that a character takes. Additionally, the developers confirmed that the damage reduction afix would be much more rare starting in season four. So this is another huge bonus.
Finally, the conditional effect that unleashes a divine barrage acts as an artillery shrine launching projectiles out at enemies whenever the character casts a skill or ability. A second unique item, but not an uber unique fractured winter glass is also shown during this live stream. Fractured winter glass is in a unique amulet that allows sorcerers to randomly spawn a conation such as a hydra whenever they cast frozen orb.
In addition, these randomly spawned conation will also have a lucky hit chance to cast an additional frozen orb. There's a screenshot of that in there. And these are just two of the unique items that are coming, the new unique items that are coming to season four. So that's pretty cool. That's a lot of stuff to do in the game coming up in season four. I've had this, uh, I've been talking at you for more than 40 minutes now, so I think that's time to end it. Uh, thanks for listening.
Uh, you have been listening to episode four 50 of the Shattered Soul Stone. Your Diablo community podcast missed 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 could also join us on Discord for the ultimate team in community based experience.
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