Coming to you from somewhere in sanctuary. This is episode 460 of Shattered Soulstone, your Diablo community podcast. This episode is called smaller teams, which I'll get into in just a minute. It is August 24, 2024, and this is Jen. I'm gonna start off with an article from Blizzard about Diablo Immortal. So it says this, Diablo Immortal bug fixes and patch notes for all platforms. This was posted on August 20, 2024. So not that it's not that old, really. It's just a couple of things in here. So
this is what they wrote. The Diablo Immortal team has been diligently monitoring your feedback and working to introduce bug fixes and patches to further improve your playing experience. As we implement these types of changes for the iOS, Android, and PC versions of immortal, we will update this list. Bug fixes are typically applied at a higher frequency, addressing smaller related issues. They don't require a large download to be applied to the game.
Patches are larger client side updates that require a download for players to obtain. New patches will require players to update before they can continue playing. So there's a few bug fixes here. 1 from January or sorry. Not January. August 20. Yeah. Bug fixes. It's just one bug fix about gameplay, and it says fixed an issue where sometimes which sometimes caused Albrecht to become stuck in the second phase of his boss fight. So there's that. There's older ones from there
on. They do have a whole running thing here. So if you've had trouble with Diablo Immortal and the patch didn't, you know, you didn't update or whatever, if it's on your tablet, it's probably already updating or it's going to make you wait while things update with Diablo Immortal. That's kinda how that one goes. Over on Wowhead, we have an article titled campaign needs to be completed once to unlock skip campaign feature for Diablo 4 vessel of hatred,
which is the upcoming expansion. There's a picture here of a character writing a I think it's a some kind of it's not a tiger. I think it's like a puma or something. So here's what was written on Wowhead by Silic, if I'm pronouncing that right. Blizzard has stated that players must complete the vessel of hatred campaign once to unlock the skip campaign feature for subsequent characters. We have previously reported that season 6 will launch simultaneously with the vessel of hatred expansion.
Diablo global community developer director, that's a lot of titles, Adam Fletcher clarified that there won't be a break between season 5 season 6. So somebody asked Adam Fletcher, with voh approaching soon, will we have a season break to experience the story on eternal servers before kicking off the season, or will they launch together, forcing us to choose campaign versus free roam? Adam Fletcher responded, we will chat about it closer to launch. There won't
be a seasonal break. Players must complete the campaign once to skip the VOH campaign. So that's, what to expect. Now I think a lot of us had started playing maybe even the alpha and the beta, which I did, and, kept going from there, made a bunch of characters, all this kind of stuff. But you have to go through the campaign when vessel of hatred launches. And, of course, you have to purchase that. They're not giving it out for free because why would you? You know?
So that's kind of just where things are at. And, you know, that's that's kinda how it's gonna go. Over at Microsoft and Activision, we have, an article from Jez Corden from August 2. It's a little bit old, but it's kinda interesting. And it's titled Microsoft and Activision have formed a new team within Blizzard to work on smaller games based on existing IPs.
And here's a little bit from that. So there's some little, like, you know, bullet points at the top of this, but I'm just gonna go into most of the main articles. It's kinda long. Everything will be in the show notes at chadrisolstone.com when I'm done with this. Over the past few weeks, various employees from Microsoft's King subsidiary have updated their LinkedIn profiles
to reflect an interesting new career direction. Last year, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a whopping seventy $2,000,000,000 The purchase gave it control over mega franchises like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and
King mobile games like Candy Crush Saga. We're already starting to see the impact on Xbox's bottom line with Microsoft reporting a huge 61% growth year over year in its gaming division, driven largely by its Activision Blizzard operation across PC, gaming consoles, and mobile. Microsoft isn't done though. Our sources, she wrote, indicate that Microsoft and Activision have approved the creation of a new team within its Blizzard subsidiary comp comprised mostly with employees from King.
Blizzard is known for beloved franchises like Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Overwatch, and Microsoft is keen to curate and serve these franchises more prolifically than Activision itself did previously. Military sci fi strategy series StarCraft, for example, has essentially been on mothballs since StarCraft remastered in 2017, and Xbox CEO Phil Spencer himself has name checked StarCraft during interviews
about the acquisition in recent years. Still, you need teams teams to work on these classic franchises, and that's exactly what Microsoft is gearing up to do. To that end, we're told that Microsoft and Activision's new team within Blizzard is tasked to work on smaller games based on existing franchises within the Blizzard universes. Given King's mobile expertise, it's possible that these will be mobile games aimed to support Xbox's planned mobile gaming store for iOS and Android.
Although we're not entirely sure that they'll be restricted specifically to mobile. Given Microsoft's platform agnostic strategy across mobile PC and console, it's entirely possible that any fresh projects could run across platforms. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently described how it wants Xbox to focus on a 3 pronged gaming approach across those endpoints with Xbox console at its core. There is a lot more in this article if you wanna hear more about it, but that's just the main
idea here. Moving on, and a lot of this is powered by Wowhead, because they have the good information for the show. So this one is titled aspect of splintering energy and fractured winter glass interaction changed in Diablo 4. This was posted 9 days ago by popular popular. There's not a whole lot in here. So, it's just gonna be a short little article. Blizzard has released a hot fix for Diablo 4, which changes the interaction between aspect of splintering energy
and fractured winter glass. This update will reduce the frequency of splintering energy arcs, but will increase the overall damage of this aspect to compensate. A bug has been fixed. I like when they fix bugs, that has caused players to die multiple times from one damage over time effect. So this is the game updates from August 15. So you may or may not have run into this. I'm assuming this is a sorcerer
thing. I've played a source for a little bit and I don't really know that much about it, but I'm having fun with the rogue right now. So yeah, aspect of splintering energy damage increased from 25 to 50% to 50 to 80% and aspect of splintering energy will arc to additional enemies less frequently. Here's a developer's note. In rare instances, this aspect alongside fractured winter glass could cause
detrimental server performance issues. Oh, no. To solve for this, we're reducing the frequency of it arcing to additional enemies and increasing its damage to compensate. Additionally, the amount of frozen orbs that can be launched from conjurations while using fractured winter glass has been adjusted in these rare instances. And then there's some bug fixes. Fixed an issue where damage over time effects could persist after the player has died and revived.
Also various stability improvements. I don't know what those are or how many there are, but that's what it is. There's a developer's note here. The team is continuing our investigations around issues and player reports tied to trading. For now, trade will continue to be disabled and we will follow-up with updates. Thank you for all your patience. Now I'm pretty sure they did follow-up on those updates, but I'm not sure exactly what
they did. Another one from Wowhead, Diablo 4 patch 1.5.1 patch notes, infernal hordes buffed, rogue tempers re enabled, master working bugs fixed. Now if the tempers are those little, like, you get a parchment thing and you can attach it to 1 of you have you can go find a blacksmith anywhere in sanctuary, that you've been to or other characters have and, you know, give that to them, and it would, like, you know, buff up whatever whatever you're using, you know, if it's a sword,
if it's, you know, anything. So that's what that is. This is written by Jez Artaras, and there's some patch notes here for, let's see, season of the infernal hordes patch notes 1.5.1. This was posted 8 days ago, so it's not really old at all yet. So I'm just going to read you some of this. Blizzard has released patch notes for Diablo 4 patch 1.5.1, including buffs to several infernal hordes modifiers.
Rogue tempering manuals are re enabled. I know mine has them again, and master working bugs fixed for you several unique items. The Diablo team has been monitoring your feedback as we introduce patches to keep your experience in sanctuary smooth. We will update the below list and to note whether the fixes are intended for PC, Xbox, PlayStation, or all platforms. So here's the game updates for 1.5 point one build.
This was, for PC. So that's this is what what they're talking about here, and that was posted on August 20, 2024. Infertile hordes. And, again, this part is for PC computers, not, you know, whatever else. Okay. The spoils of gold chest is now reusable. The sound effects that play when picking up a burning ether have been updated to be more prominent. The following infernal offerings have been updated to increase their rewards.
The exalted exile burning ether amount increased from plus 1 to plus 2. The surging exile burning ether amount increased from plus 1 to plus 2. The unstoppable elite burning ether amount increased from 1 plus 1 to plus 2, and the burning rain end of wave burning ether increased from 1 to 3 to 3 to 9 user interface and user experience. Trade chat is now separated by world tier.
That's interesting. I didn't know that it wasn't separated that way because I always play on, like, the basic tier because I just find it interesting, and I wanna, like, explore stuff and things like that. That's that's what I've been doing. I'll talk about that a little later. I didn't know that you couldn't like, if you've got a friend or someone on a higher level of the game than you are, I didn't know that you could previously, it seems, trade in chat to them, and I don't
know. It just seems a little like, okay. In addition, players will now be notified when there is a new patch update available. This is again for PC, so you'll know when you try to play your game and it's not working, you would get a patch note talking about that. Party leaders can now promote another party member to be the new leader.
That's interesting. So if you have, like, a party leader and they need to get offline for some reason or, you know, maybe their Internet went out or something, you can say, hey. My Internet's going out. Can you be the new party leader? Great. I'll be back later kind of thing, I think. Newly created characters are now always placed at the top of the character list. That's a game changer, I would think, on a PC. I have a I have iOS, so I don't have this, but a lot of people, I believe, are playing
Diablo 4 on their PC. So that's just a thing to know. And the clan name, if you have a clan name, it can now be changed. Miscellaneous. All players will receive a cache of legendary items with guaranteed greater affixes to make up for the issue seen with patch 1.5.0 where players were not getting items with guaranteed greater affixes from multiple sources. The alchemist control temper tempering affix for rogue has been re enabled with the following adjustments.
The flurry size at affix has been removed from rogue innovation and put into alchemist control. The ranks of trick attacks affix has been removed from the alchemist control. Extra visual effects have been added to the projectile trail for corpse bows to make it easier to track the projectile's origin. You know what corpse bows are. Right? It's like a bunch of sort of skeleton smooshed together and made into like a gun kind of thing. It's that's what that is.
Sometimes you can hear it before you see it. At least I can, because I'm playing rogue. Rogues are sneaky. Alright. Here's a little bit about bug fixes. I'm not even sure if this is just for the PC or not, but anyway, it might just be for the PC. So bug fixes. Accessibility. Fixed an issue where a non functioning non functional setting for read on hover was present. Fixed an issue where the screen reader announced Roman numerals as letters.
That's a problem because if you have someone who has a visual impairment, you could kind of see it, but maybe you can't see it because a lot of the text is kind of small sometimes. Right? If it's something that someone is using because they want to hear it more than see it because of visual impairment or whatever, and then the screen reader announces roman numerals as letters, that's gonna be really confusing to people, I would think. So I'm glad they fixed that one. Another section here,
user interface and user experience. We've fixed an issue where character stats were inaccurate in town when certain items were equipped. It does not mention what those certain items were, which class it's for, what level you have to be, none of that. So that's okay. Sure. That's a good thing to fix. Fixed an issue where the tooltip for fernal compasses had 2 instances of compass affixes. Fixed an issue where the name for echo of Varshan displayed as tormented echo of Varshan.
Fixed an issue where an error could display when comparing an ancestral mythic unique item, fixed an issue where the whisper icon for defeating the blood maiden overlapped the icon for the accursed ritual on the map, fixed an issue where the icons for infernal offerings were inconsistent between the mini map and the world map within the infernal hordes, fixed an issue where treasure goblins in Helltide could leave behind a portal indefinitely.
Now wouldn't that be fun? You just get up and jump through the portal and go after wherever the heck the treasure goblins were, which I think is, if I'm remembering this correctly, in Diablo 3, there are treasure goblins that will pop through portals and things like that. And I, I can't remember if you can chase them. It was like, it wasn't that long ago, but it wasn't like new game Diablo 3, you know? So that's kind of
interesting. Fixed an issue where the visual effect for poison could remain indefinitely on enemy corpses if they were killed while poisoned. That's a lot. Fixed an issue where thorns granted by the thorns while fortified tempering affects did not display in character stats. Fixed an issue where players using a controller would be sent to the equipment inventory tab when using an abyssal scroll, fixed an issue where the mini map was not accurate in certain infernal hordes instances.
Then we have some gameplay going on here. I'm gonna guess this is all for PC. I'm not really sure. So infernal hordes fix an issue where hellborne did not spawn as frequently as intended when the hellfire infernal offering was active. Fix an issue where the stalking devil infernal offering pedestal could appear again after being interacted with. Fixed an issue where the withered wanderer infernal offering reduction to all resistances did not actually reduce a resistance.
Fixed an issue where the treasure goblins spawned during an internal horde's encounter. Could become indefinitely unkillable preventing wave progression. Fixed an issue in local co op play where 1 player could collect the other player's burning aether after that player died. Finders, keepers, exclamation point.
Quests and dungeons. I don't know how much farther we want to go with this, but we'll go over to quests and dungeons and then just kind of stop there on this one because it's kind of long. Okay. Fixed an issue where the player could respawn on the other side of the objective while protecting Locron during the to the edge of the abyss quest. Fixed an issue where monsters could endlessly spawn during the Seething Mountain
quest. Fixed an issue where the Istel tornado encounter during the rising hells quest could persist indefinitely, fix an issue where the progression in the sins of the willing quest could be blocked if the player died during the ritual. That seems to have been that could that'd be a problem. Can you imagine trying to do that? I haven't done that thing particularly, but can you imagine that though? It's like, okay. I'm all set and I'm I'm good. There's the ritual and I'm dead. Why
not why am I dead? I think people were probably wondering about that. Fixed Fixed an issue where the 2nd spider caller monster in Sirocco caverns could fail to spawn, preventing progression. Fixed an issue where Stormbane's wrath didn't deal damage. Parentheses, not so wrathful after all. Fixed an issue where the aspect of inevitable fate could appear on a chest armor through a seasonal quest line reward. And then there's a whole bunch of other
things in here. Some of them are about Lilith, so I'm gonna just go for that one at the moment, but there's a lot more in there. Let's see. Fixed an issue where echo of Lilith sometimes couldn't be staggered during the first phase of the encounter. Fixed an issue where echo of Lilith Lilith could remain in the air indefinitely if staggered
immediately after landing. Fixed an issue where echo of Lilith would not progress to the 2nd stage of the encounter in certain circumstances, fix an issue where summoned lightning spear could would not consume stacks of crackling energy or grant the damage increase bonus, fix an issue where certain Aphexes were not affected by master working for the following unique items. Those items are the oculus, blue rose, and storm's companion.
So that's what that is. And then there's a miscellaneous fixed an issue where the corpses of Duriel and Grigor did not despawn soon after dying, various AU visual stability and performance improvements. So they're working on it. They really are. Over on Wowhead again, we have an article from it's from 14 days ago, but I thought it was pretty interesting, and it's got some really cool artwork at the top of it.
The hardest objectives needed to earn Diablo 4 season 5's secret title from 14 days ago by Garamoth, and this is what they wrote. Diablo 4's Diablo 4 season 5 hasn't even been out for a week. This is an a little bit older article, and it looks like its hidden season journey title has already been found. While most players are still working through their seasonal objectives, one redditor has just completed their journey and discovered the hidden achievement, Estelle's begrudging
ally. According to waste lads recent post, this secret achievement is earned by completing every season objective in the season of the infernal hordes, much like previous secret titles. Even with an expected acquisition method, though, this is a great feed for so early in the season. Congratulations
on your new title, waste lad. So there's a screenshot of this here from Reddit, and it's titled Estelle's begrudging ally completed on 8/10/2024, completed every journey in the season of the infernal and gets the reward of creators, comma, resolve as a player title. Players have been able to to earn hidden achievements like this one every Diablo 4 season thus far, but the difficulty in attaining these achievements
can vary widely depending on the objectives. There are typically an abundance of easily obtained quote freebie end quote objectives, such as craft elixirs at the alchemist and equip sacred legendary items in every slot. But there are usually some relatively difficult to obtain objectives as well. This season, 3 season journey objectives stood out to us as the most difficult, whether it was because the content was inherently challenging or simply
more time consuming than others. One is called the gathering fires, acquire 6,666 cinders during helltide in torment form. This one is not necessarily difficult in the traditional sense. It's the obligation that implies and the time. Collecting cinders during the helltide is easy, but this achievement requires you to collect them in world tier 4 specifically. And by the time you're in world tier 4, you'll more likely have moved on to bigger and better end game activities.
Players are generally diving into the pit, focusing in the on the new infernal hordes mechanic and starting their end game grinds. So spending time in hell tides might be seen as quote wasted end quote at this point in the leveling process. Number 2 is damnation's downfall. Defeat 20 helltide commanders during helltides summoned after completing helltide events similar to the Gathering Fires. This achievement is more time consuming than most.
Hell tide commanders aren't often accidentally spawned, so players will typically have to actively work to spawn the 20 required to complete this objective. While not uncommon to run into 1 or 2 during your early hell tide grinding and leveling, this still leaves 18 to catch up on some other time. The commanders themselves are pushovers with the right build, but the time investment here is the real struggle. And then the third one is anguish extinguish. This is about I'll
just read it. Use stygian stones to summon and defeat tormented echo of of Andario. Pinnacle content for many players means pinnacle difficulty. Players who have taken the time to put together a super strong meta build may just trump stomp this tormented maiden of ang anguish without breaking a sweat, but others who have less time to play or simply enjoy running off meta builds might struggle so hard that they run out of sweat to give. And that's the end of that article. There's also
some new stuff from Blizzard here. Now last time I did the show, I was talking about the Blizzard gear store with the spirit born stuff. It's still up. You can still get it. It's still live. That's where I got my Mephisto t shirt for $35. It's really cool. It's got a head of Mephisto. There's one with Lilith. It's a red shirt. The image of, like, those little Lilith statues that you see around sanctuary, it's there. It's got her name over it and some gold
stuff. There's, a vessel of hatred thing, all green with ruins around it. And, another one at the top, the spirit born black t shirt, those are still there. They're all about 30 or $35 if you want one of them. And then there's a new one that popped up, like, 9 days ago from, from Wowhead because they check these things out quicker than I can. So this one is titled Diablo Bliss Fest sales begin, bundles, enamel pins, a Narya statue, and more. So you can shop for these new bundles.
So I'm gonna read you a little bit about them. So Bliss Fest sales. I have never heard of Bliss Fest sales. I've heard of Blizzard having a convention. I've heard of Blizzard announcing a new game. I have not heard of Bliss Fest sales. So that's kind of interest interesting, and it's like you could shop bundles apparently in this. And I'm just gonna go through it, and you can decide whatever you want about this.
It says, Bliss Fest sales have come to the Diablo section of the Blizzard gear store. Check out prices up to 50% off on clothing bundles, enamel pins, the incredible Inarius statue, and more. Bliss Fest, a weeklong sale on the Blizzard gear store where deals rotate each day between different games or other Blizzard picks, has come to its 2nd day of sales this time for the Diablo franchise. For this was posted on August 15th with over 100 items on sale and some of
the discounts are definitely steep. So the bundles come in all shapes and sizes, whether you're looking for a jersey, a t shirt, or a statue of the mother of sanctuary, these discounts are sure to show you what you need. So there is a Diablo bundle, an Anarius one, and it's got a picture of Anarius and the glowy, wings and everything like that and a bunch of runes around them. There's the hat with Anarius and all of the into the wings,
on there. I'm not sure what the other stuff is exactly, but you could also get an a Narias, like, Funko Pop kind of thing, which I'm pretty sure I have over there. And then there's a t shirt well, not t shirt. It's a button down shirt with little triangles on it. As far as I can tell, it says diablo, and there's a mug with that. In the middle, we have the glowing red Diablo Lilith demonic bundle, which has that statue. There's a hat with her face on it and a couple other things. I can't
quite tell what they are. There's a jersey that looks like a hockey jersey with Lilith on it, and then there's, there's like a a shard and, some pins and maybe a wallet. And then also there's a Diablo immortal shirt with, you know, Diablo immortal in red letters. There's a hat that has the d on the front and the Diablo part on the side, and there's some kind of blizzard thing there. There's pins too. There's an Inarius collector's edition pin for 17.50.
There's a Diablo 4 Lilith Relic limited edition pin for $20, and then there's the Diablo 4 classes collector collector's edition pin where it's all the classes in the game. So there's a little more in here to talk about. And again, everything will be in the show notes when I'm done talking. So, the Inarius premium statue, father's day may have already passed this year, but the father of sanctuary is never out of style.
This premium statue normally has quite a high price tag, and while the statue is still one of the more expensive pieces in the Blizzard Gear store, this sale is a great time to take advantage of snagging one if it was already on your list. So that's kind of where that is. There's other blizzardfest
sales you can check out. I don't know if this one is a completely still viable or not, but it's kind of interesting that they are hyping their stuff and, focusing on, in some cases, Lilith and Inarius in this, you know, in this situation. I'm not sure how big the Inarius statue is gonna be. I don't I mean, I'm happy with what I've got right now. I don't have any room for anything bigger than that. So that's kind of how it's going
to go. In the meantime, what I've been doing is getting back into Diablo 4, playing my Rogue, and, just kinda going through, like, okay. It looks like I've already opened that waypoint, so I'm gonna go ahead and go there and see what these people need and and this kind of stuff. I don't know that I've got this rogue particularly through the main game, but it's fun. I'm having a really good time shooting people with the crossbow and shooting monsters with the
crossbow and stuff like that. So it's just a lot of fun again. And, I stopped playing for a while because I got really sick, but I'm better now. So I'll probably be playing that later today or tomorrow. And that's pretty much what I have for this episode. So I'm gonna close out the show right now. You've been listening to episode 460 of the Shattered Soulstone, your Diablo community podcast.
Missed an episode? You can find the show blog and listen to the show archives at www.shatteredsoulstone.com. Come join us in game, or particularly me. I don't know who else is playing in game right now. Our in game community and clan, both named Shattered Soulstone, 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 Soulstone website. Thank you for listening.