The first content patch for the excellent Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls is due to go live on PC this week. The update will be available in the Americas within the next few hours, while Europe should receive it shortly afterwards, Blizzard has announced.
Patch 2.1 brings in a number of new features, alongside a wealth of tweaks and changes to class and item balance (you can see the full patch notes here). The headline feature is Seasons, which will officially start this Friday. If you have a free character slot, you’ll be able to create a new Seasonal Hero, who will start off with no items, levels or character levels. Seasonal Heroes are then ranked on leaderboards. For the duration of the Season - said by Blizzard to last “a few months” - Seasonal Heroes will be able to earn Season-only Legendary items (which will drop in normal gameplay once the season ends), as well as exclusive Transmogs which will become available to all characters once earned.
On top of Seasons, a portal to the new Goblin Realm will now open at random after killing Treasure Goblins at level 70. The Goblin Realm comes chock full of high-level loot, while a new boss - the Baroness of Greed - will drop new Legendary items.
Last but most certainly no least, Greater Rifts are being added to the game. As the name suggests, Greater Rifts are special versions of the regular rifts found in Adventure Mode. To open a Greater Rift, you first need to acquire the Keystone of Trials, which has a chance to drop from any regular Rift Guardian. Once looted, the Keystone can be used to open a gateway to the Realm of Trials, which will see you battling against progressively more difficult waves of enemies against a timer. Once your time is up or your hero dies, the game evaluates your performance and grants you a Greater Rift keystone. Similar to the Realm of Trials, your time in a Greater Rift is timed. Kill the Rift Guardian in 15 minutes, which drop more Greater Rift Keystones allowing access to the next difficulty level of Rift. More details about the Greater Rift system can be found here.
There’s no word yet on when - or if - the content featured in 2.1 will make it over to the console version of the game, though Blizzard has previously said they’re committed to providing continued content support and updates to both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions (apparently technical issues means that they can’t say the same about the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions).
Dale Morgan
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