Diablo 2’s New Protector’s Stone Is Still Broken by a 20-Year-Old Damage Bug

Diablo II: Resurrected has new classes.

New endgame encounters.

New Unique Jewels.

And apparently at least one bug old enough to remember dial-up internet.

Players are once again warning each other about Protector's Stone, one of the powerful Unique Jewels introduced with Reign of the Warlock.

The problem is not really Protector's Stone itself.

It is what happens when the jewel meets Diablo II's ancient interaction between Enhanced Damage and added minimum or maximum damage.

Socket Protector's Stone into the wrong piece of equipment and part of its attractive damage bonus may simply stop working correctly.

Patch 3.3 is now live ahead of Diablo II: Resurrected Ladder Season 15.

The old Enhanced Damage bug is still not among the listed fixes.

Twenty-five years of Diablo II development later, some traditions remain sacred.

Protector's Stone Looks Like an Amazing Physical Damage Jewel

Protector's Stone is one of the special rewards associated with the Colossal Ancients endgame encounter in Reign of the Warlock.

It can roll with:

• 1% Chance to cast Level 15 Fade when struck
• +30-50% Enhanced Damage
• Adds 10-30 Damage
• -5-10% to Enemy Physical Resistance
• +3-5% Experience Gained
• 15-35% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
• 25-50% Extra Gold from Monsters

For physical builds, that is an unusually attractive collection of stats on a single socketable item.

Enhanced Damage.

Flat damage.

Enemy Physical Resistance reduction.

Magic Find.

Experience.

Gold.

It is basically a physical character asking Santa for a jewel and accidentally receiving the entire catalogue.

Unfortunately, two of those damage modifiers are exactly where Diablo II's old code starts becoming uncomfortable.

The Enhanced Damage Bug Has Been Around Since Original Diablo II

The problem is commonly known as the ED/min-max damage bug.

It affects jewels combining Enhanced Damage with added minimum or maximum physical damage when they are placed in non-weapon equipment.

Players have tested variations of the interaction for years.

The precise result depends on the combination of modifiers involved, but the important practical warning is simple:

Enhanced Damage on Protector's Stone does not behave correctly when the jewel is socketed into armor, helmets or shields.

A lengthy bug report on Blizzard's forums specifically connects the legacy problem to Protector's Stone, with players continuing to bump the thread months after Reign of the Warlock launched.

Another player tested the jewel in non-weapon equipment and reported the same issue.

And another.

And another.

This is not exactly an undiscovered corner case.

Players Are Still Getting Caught by It

The most painful part is that Protector's Stone is valuable enough for players to build equipment decisions around it.

On August 5, one player reported buying an expensive version of the jewel and placing it into Arreat's Face.

They then discovered that the damage interaction did not work as expected.

The response from other players was essentially:

Yes.

That bug.

Still.

Another player asking about placing Protector's Stone into Guillaume's Face was advised in July not to do so because the Enhanced Damage portion would not work correctly there.

The result is an especially strange situation for a newly introduced chase item.

Blizzard created a powerful physical-damage jewel in 2026.

Players then have to consult knowledge accumulated from original Diablo II to determine where it can safely be socketed.

Weapons Are Currently the Safer Choice

If you have a good Protector's Stone, the current community advice is generally to use it in a weapon if your build allows it.

The long-standing Enhanced Damage interaction does not produce the same problem there.

That severely limits the jewel's flexibility, however.

A physical build may already depend on specific weapon sockets for Shael runes, attack-speed jewels, runes, damage setups or other requirements.

Helmets and armor would otherwise be obvious homes for Protector's Stone.

Something like Arreat's Face or Guillaume's Face immediately comes to mind.

Except Diablo II remembers a bug from approximately the Bronze Age and objects.

There have also been separate reports involving Protector's Stone interacting strangely with native weapon damage values, meaning the jewel has generated more than one damage-calculation discussion since release.

For an item designed to make physical damage easier, it has generated an impressive amount of mathematics.

Patch 3.3 Fixed Plenty of Other Things

The timing is what makes the issue particularly noticeable again.

Blizzard has just released Patch 3.3 ahead of Season 15.

The update contains numerous bug fixes and balance adjustments.

Warlock received another round of changes.

Blizzard fixed the collision problem that had players arguing that Abyss Warlock had become dramatically stronger.

The studio also adjusted the Reign of the Warlock economy, including changes to Worldstone Shard and Ancient Statue drops.

Several old items received balance changes.

Skills were fixed.

Controller interactions were fixed.

Terror Zones were adjusted.

But the Enhanced Damage/min-max interaction is not listed among the Patch 3.3 fixes.

Players noticed.

The forum thread accompanying Blizzard's Season 15 announcement almost immediately included another complaint that the ED bug remained unaddressed.

Why Hasn't Blizzard Just Fixed It?

That is the obvious question.

It is also difficult to answer from outside Blizzard.

A bug surviving for decades does not necessarily mean the fix itself is simple.

Diablo II's physical damage calculation touches weapons, off-weapon Enhanced Damage, character skills, auras, minimum damage, maximum damage, jewels and various equipment modifiers accumulated across decades of game development.

Changing an old interaction can create new problems elsewhere.

And Diablo II players are extremely good at discovering those problems.

Usually within seventeen minutes.

Still, Protector's Stone changes the argument somewhat.

This is no longer merely an obscure legacy interaction involving rare old jewels.

Blizzard introduced a brand-new endgame reward that deliberately combines Enhanced Damage and flat physical damage on the same jewel.

That puts the old bug directly in front of players again.

A New Item Shouldn't Require a 20-Year-Old Warning Label

That is ultimately why players keep bringing this one back.

Protector's Stone is not a forgotten item from Lord of Destruction.

It belongs to Diablo II's new era.

Reign of the Warlock represents Blizzard doing something extraordinary with this game: creating substantial new Diablo II content more than two decades after the original development ended.

We have already seen how that creates strange problems elsewhere, including the fact that the Warlock era cannot currently be played using Legacy Graphics because those original assets never existed.

Protector's Stone demonstrates the opposite problem.

The item is completely new.

The code underneath it is extremely old.

And somewhere between those two eras sits a physical-damage bug waiting for someone to socket an expensive jewel into a helmet.

Until Blizzard changes it, the safest advice remains remarkably old-fashioned:

Think very carefully before putting Protector's Stone anywhere except a weapon.

Diablo II may have entered a new era.

Its bugs occasionally decline the invitation.

Sources

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: ED/Damage Jewel Bug

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: ED Max Damage Jewel Bug

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: Protector's Stone Enhanced Damage Not Applying

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: Protector's Stone Weapon Damage Bug Report

Blizzard: Diablo II: Resurrected Ladder Season 15 and Patch 3.3

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Diablo 4’s Warlock Is Hitting for 80,000 Trillion Damage on the Season 15 PTR

Diablo 4 damage numbers have officially reached the point where commas are becoming a gameplay mechanic.

Players testing the Season 15 PTR have reported Warlock builds hitting for as much as 80,000 trillion damage.

That is 80 quadrillion.

And before anyone starts deleting their current build, there is an important qualification:

These are PTR numbers.

They are being generated inside a test environment specifically designed to expose broken interactions before Season 15 goes live.

Judging by the numbers, that part appears to be working beautifully.

Blazing Scream Has Reportedly Reached 80,000T

The discussion started during Blizzard's 3.2.0 PTR, which ran from August 4 through August 11.

Warlock players quickly noticed that several Hellfire builds were performing far beyond the rest of the class.

One detailed PTR feedback thread reported Apocalypse hits around 12,000T.

That was already substantial.

Then players started testing Blazing Scream.

According to the reports, Blazing Scream builds were clearing Pit 150 relatively easily, with one reported hit reaching approximately 80,000T.

At that point we are no longer balancing numbers.

We are balancing telephone numbers.

Season 15 Gave Blazing Scream Some Very Serious Toys

The damage did not appear from nowhere.

Blizzard made several significant Warlock changes for the 3.2.0 PTR.

One of the biggest involves Elegy.

The Unique now turns Blazing Scream into an Archfiend Skill while granting it 30-50% increased damage.

It also gives Blazing Scream the Skull Splitter Variant for free, with Lesser Demon skulls dealing the same damage as the main skull.

Then there is The Eightfold Idol.

Blazing Scream can leave Sigil of Subversion trails behind, while enemies standing on the appropriate trail take another 60-80% increased Abyss or Hellfire Skill damage.

That is already a healthy collection of multipliers.

Season 15 then adds another layer through Soul Splinters.

Soul Splinters Are Making the Situation Even Stranger

The new Soul Splinter system is one of Season 15's major mechanics.

Several Splinters provide enormous bonuses alongside equally substantial drawbacks.

The most suspicious interaction during PTR testing involved the Splinter of the Black Soulstone.

Its intended effect is straightforward.

Killing enemies temporarily absorbs their souls, with each soul increasing your damage while also increasing the damage you take.

The highest version grants 5% multiplicative damage per soul.

That stacks.

And during the PTR, Warlock players discovered something slightly unfortunate.

The deaths of the Warlock's own demons appeared to count as enemy kills.

A player testing Blazing Scream reported being able to rapidly generate around 200 stacks without actually killing monsters.

That makes evaluating the true strength of the build considerably more difficult.

If a seasonal effect designed around killing enemies is also rewarding you whenever your disposable demons disappear, the damage meter is going to become ambitious very quickly.

It May Not Just Be the Seasonal Mechanic

The community feedback does not blame everything on Soul Splinters.

Players have also highlighted Overwhelming Aspect.

Its Season 15 version increases Occult Skill damage against Elite enemies for each stack of Overpower, with the bonus doubled against Hexed targets.

That creates another potentially enormous multiplier when combined with the rest of the Warlock's scaling.

Players have additionally pointed toward Moloch's Beating Flame as another contributor to the extreme Hellfire numbers.

The important distinction is that several things appear to be stacking together.

This may not be a single broken skill.

It may be a collection of individually powerful effects discovering each other.

Which is generally how Diablo builds become either extremely fun or extremely unemployed after the next patch.

The Bigger Problem Is Warlock Balance Within the Class

The funny part is that players asking Blizzard to reduce these numbers are often Warlock players themselves.

Their concern is not simply that the class is too powerful.

It is that Hellfire builds appear dramatically stronger than other Warlock archetypes.

One PTR discussion claims that Hellfire setups were already clearing beyond Tier 140 before the new seasonal systems arrived, while some Abyss builds struggled around 120.

Season 15 then appears to widen that gap.

That connects directly to the broader problem we recently looked at with Diablo 4's extreme endgame scaling.

A difference of twenty or thirty tiers does not represent a small balance discrepancy once monster health begins scaling exponentially.

It can represent orders of magnitude.

So when one Warlock build casually reaches Pit 150 and another archetype struggles dozens of tiers lower, simply saying both are technically viable does not tell the whole story.

Players Don’t Want Blizzard to Nerf the Wrong Thing

This is where the feedback becomes more nuanced.

Several players are worried Blizzard will see the enormous PTR numbers and simply nerf Warlock.

They would rather Blizzard identify which Season 15 interactions are actually causing the extreme scaling.

That distinction matters.

If Blazing Scream becomes absurd because a seasonal Soul Splinter is incorrectly treating friendly demon deaths as enemy kills, nerfing Blazing Scream itself could leave the build unnecessarily weak once the seasonal bug disappears.

The same applies to interactions involving individual Aspects or unusual multiplier stacking.

The PTR exists specifically so Blizzard can separate those problems before the patch reaches live servers.

Blizzard has explicitly said that feedback from the 3.2.0 PTR will be used to adjust balance and remove bugs before Season 15 launches.

So an 80,000T Warlock is not necessarily a preview of what players will be doing all season.

It is closer to an extremely enthusiastic bug report.

Season 15 Warlock Is Probably Not Shipping Like This

That is the important takeaway.

Do not build your entire Season 15 plan around dealing 80 quadrillion damage.

Blizzard still has time to change coefficients, fix Soul Splinter interactions and adjust individual Warlock items before the season goes live.

And considering players are actively asking Blizzard to investigate the build, there is a very good chance something changes.

But the PTR has already demonstrated one thing.

Diablo 4's multiplication problem is alive and well.

We recently reached the point where players struggle to see what is killing them.

Now we may also be approaching the point where they struggle to read what they are killing things with.

80,000 trillion.

Season 15 hasn't even started yet.

The calculator is already sweating.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Warlock Balance Feedback — Overperforming Hellfire Builds

Diablo IV Forums: Season 15 Class Balance Discussion

Diablo IV Forums: Season 15 PTR Feedback Summary

Blizzard: The 3.2.0 PTR — What You Need to Know

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Diablo 4 Players Say the Real Problem With One-Shots Is That You Can’t See Them

Diablo 4 has swords falling from the sky.

It has poison pools.

Earthquakes.

Fire chains.

Exploding monsters.

Player spells covering half the screen.

And somewhere underneath all of that is apparently the attack that just killed you.

A new Diablo 4 community discussion has once again turned toward the game's notorious falling swords, but players are increasingly arguing that the swords themselves are not the real problem.

The problem is visual clarity.

Diablo 4 can throw so many overlapping enemy mechanics, death effects and player abilities onto the battlefield that avoiding dangerous attacks sometimes becomes less about recognising the mechanic and more about successfully locating it underneath the fireworks.

The sword is dangerous.

The poison puddle is dangerous.

The earthquake is dangerous.

The real boss fight is identifying which shade of red is currently trying to murder you.

Players Are Still Complaining About the Falling Swords

The latest discussion appeared on Blizzard's Diablo IV forums on August 17.

The original topic revisits one of Diablo 4's more controversial ways of keeping players moving: swords that appear above the character, follow them briefly and then slam into the ground for heavy damage.

Players have complained about the mechanic for months, particularly in higher difficulties and Hardcore.

One Hardcore player described the swords earlier this year as more frightening than connection problems after losing a character when several of them appeared while other environmental hazards restricted movement.

The mechanic itself can be avoided.

The swords follow the player briefly before committing to their landing position, meaning continued movement gives you a chance to escape the impact.

One player in the new discussion even says the timing feels more generous this season, with a longer delay between the sword stopping and actually falling.

That observation has not been documented as an official Blizzard change, but it highlights something important.

If you can clearly see the sword, you can react to it.

That is where things begin falling apart.

The Sword Is Not Alone

One response in the current discussion neatly describes the actual problem.

Imagine a falling sword appearing inside a poison pool.

Now add an earthquake.

Then cover the same area in giant fire chains and player spell effects.

The game has technically communicated every individual mechanic.

The player can technically respond to all of them.

Visually, however, the battlefield has become soup.

That matters because Diablo 4 increasingly relies on reactive mechanics to threaten powerful endgame characters.

If enemies simply deal slightly more ordinary attack damage, highly defensive builds may ignore them entirely.

So the game uses ground effects, explosions, delayed attacks, projectiles and other mechanics that demand movement.

In isolation, that is good combat design.

You see danger.

You react.

You survive.

The problem begins when six pieces of good combat design happen in exactly the same square metre.

Monster Density Makes Everything Harder to Read

Modern Diablo is built around density.

Players want large packs.

They want abilities hitting twenty enemies simultaneously.

They want screens full of demons exploding into gold, materials and increasingly complicated equipment.

Low-density ARPG combat tends to feel slow.

But density also multiplies every mechanic attached to those monsters.

If one enemy can leave something dangerous behind when it dies, that is manageable.

If ten of them die simultaneously, the floor becomes an insurance claim.

The current forum discussion specifically points toward the number of on-death mechanics as part of the problem.

Killing the enemy does not necessarily remove the threat.

Sometimes it creates the threat.

That also produces a strange reversal of normal ARPG logic.

Your character becomes more powerful.

You kill the pack faster.

The entire pack triggers its effects simultaneously.

Congratulations on your improved DPS.

Please evacuate the postcode.

Realmbreakers Are Creating Similar Complaints

The falling-sword discussion is not happening in isolation.

A separate forum thread posted on August 18 complains about Realmbreakers apparently killing players from long range before they realise what is attacking them.

The discussion quickly moves toward their damaging ground pools.

One player argues that the pools can begin dealing damage without enough warning and suggests giving them a clearly visible outline before the damaging area appears.

That would be a relatively simple principle:

show the danger before applying the damage.

Diablo 4 already does this successfully with plenty of mechanics.

The Blood Maiden's attacks, major boss mechanics and many elite abilities give players a visual window to react.

The frustration comes from situations where the warning is too subtle, arrives too late or disappears underneath everything else happening on screen.

One-Shots Feel Worse When You Don't Know What Killed You

There is another part of this problem that Diablo 4 still handles poorly.

Death information.

If the player gets flattened by an obviously telegraphed boss attack, the lesson is straightforward.

Do not stand there next time.

If the screen explodes and the game simply reports that your character “was slain”, there is very little to learn.

Was it poison?

Physical damage?

An on-death explosion?

A projectile?

Did your resistance fail?

Was your armor too low?

Did something hit you for twice your maximum life?

Good luck.

Several players in the latest discussion are asking for better death information, including a breakdown showing how much damage the killing blow dealt.

That would not prevent one-shots.

It would at least make them understandable.

There is a considerable difference between:

I died because my Poison Resistance is terrible.

And:

I died because Sanctuary briefly became red and then I wasn't alive anymore.

Turning Off Damage Numbers Apparently Helps

Players are already finding their own ways to reduce the noise.

One suggestion in the current discussion is simply turning off damage numbers.

That removes one entire layer of rapidly changing information from the battlefield.

Another player suggests Blizzard should provide an opacity control for player effects.

That idea could become increasingly valuable as builds become more spectacular.

Diablo 4's abilities are designed to look powerful.

That works wonderfully when a Sorcerer fills the screen with magic.

It works slightly less wonderfully when the Sorcerer's magic prevents the Sorcerer from seeing the unexploded ordinance underneath it.

There is a balance between spectacle and information.

At the moment, some players think Diablo 4 has wandered too far toward spectacle.

Not Everyone Thinks the Swords Are a Problem

It is worth noting that this is not universal.

Hardcore players in the same discussion argue that the falling swords are clearly visible and audible enough to avoid consistently.

They also make an interesting point about player behaviour.

Hardcore teaches players from level one that survival matters.

Softcore often teaches the opposite.

If killing twenty monsters at once is faster than carefully fighting six, dying occasionally may simply be an acceptable efficiency cost.

That encourages aggressive builds, low defensive investment and enormous pulls.

Eventually those habits meet an attack designed specifically to punish standing still.

The sword wins.

There is probably truth on both sides.

Players can build more defensively.

Players can pay more attention.

And Diablo 4 can communicate lethal mechanics more clearly.

Those ideas are not mutually exclusive.

Difficulty Should Come From Reacting to Danger, Not Finding It

This is ultimately what makes the visual-clarity argument more interesting than another debate about whether Diablo 4 is too difficult.

Difficult attacks are fine.

Deadly attacks are fine.

Even one-shot mechanics can work when the game clearly tells players what is about to happen and gives them a meaningful opportunity to respond.

The frustrating deaths are the ones where the explanation only becomes obvious after watching a recording frame by frame.

Blizzard does not necessarily need to remove falling swords, poison pools, explosions or dangerous monster affixes.

It may simply need to make sure players can actually see them.

Reduce unnecessary effect clutter.

Strengthen dangerous telegraphs.

Give hostile ground effects clearer outlines.

Add better death information.

Consider opacity controls for friendly spell effects.

Diablo 4 should be chaotic.

It is Diablo.

Half the appeal is turning hundreds of demons into an expensive particle-effects demonstration.

But when the game asks players to dodge a lethal sword falling from the sky, there is one fairly reasonable requirement.

Let them see the sword.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Swords Falling On My Head

Diablo IV Forums: Stupid Overhead Sword Kill

Diablo IV Forums: Falling sword tactic?

Diablo IV Forums: Realmbreaker one-shot discussion

Blizzard: Diablo IV Patch Notes

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Diablo 4’s Tower Scaling Shows Just How Insane the Build Gap Has Become

There is a difference between a strong Diablo 4 build and a weak Diablo 4 build.

Then there is whatever is happening at the top of the Tower.

A current community discussion has put numbers on just how violently Diablo 4's endgame scaling accelerates at the highest tiers.

According to the calculation being debated, moving from Tower Tier 120 to Tier 150 requires dealing with roughly 4,142 times as much effective monster health.

Not 4,142%.

Approximately 4,142 times.

And if one build clears Tier 150 significantly faster than another build barely clears Tier 120, the theoretical performance gap becomes even more absurd.

At some point, the Tier List stops being a list and becomes a geological survey.

The Calculation Starts With 32% Per Tier

The argument comes from a discussion on Blizzard's Diablo IV forums about the way monster health scales at the extreme end of the Tower.

According to the player calculations being discussed, each tier above 120 effectively multiplies the required damage by approximately 1.32.

One tier does not sound particularly dramatic.

Thirty tiers do.

The calculation looks like this:

1.32<sup>30</sup> = approximately 4,142.

In other words, the health requirement represented by Tier 150 is more than four thousand times the Tier 120 baseline under that scaling model.

That does not mean every Tier 150 build literally deals exactly 4,142 times the real-world DPS of every Tier 120 build.

Movement speed matters.

Monster density matters.

Pylons matter.

Boss selection matters.

And the Tower contains enough RNG that high-level players have already been asking Blizzard to rethink parts of the mode.

But the underlying health curve illustrates something important.

A relatively small difference in Tower tier can represent an enormous difference in required character power.

A Three-Minute Clear Makes the Comparison Even Wilder

The original forum post takes the calculation one step further.

Imagine one build takes nine minutes to clear Tower 120.

Another clears Tower 150 in three minutes.

If you simply use completion time as an additional rough indication of throughput, the theoretical gap climbs from around 4,142x to more than 12,000x.

That particular comparison is more controversial.

Other players correctly point out that clear time cannot be converted directly into damage because sufficiently powerful characters eventually become limited by things like movement, enemy positioning and dungeon mechanics rather than raw DPS.

A character capable of deleting everything instantly cannot kill enemies before reaching them.

Teleportation remains stubbornly faster than mathematics.

Still, the exact multiplier is almost beside the point.

Whether the practical gap is 4,000x, 2,000x or something considerably smaller, Diablo 4's strongest builds are operating in a different universe from many perfectly functional endgame builds.

This Is Why Diablo 4 Balance Can Look Fine Until It Suddenly Doesn't

At ordinary difficulty levels, two builds can feel reasonably close.

Both kill monsters.

Both finish activities.

Both generate enormous numbers accompanied by explosions.

Move far enough up the Tower, however, and small differences begin compounding.

One build gets another multiplicative damage source.

Another gets stronger resource scaling.

One interaction double-dips.

A new Unique adds another multiplier.

A seasonal power multiplies the multiplier that was already multiplying something else.

Do that enough times and the difference is no longer 20%.

It is several Tower floors.

And several Tower floors can represent exponentially more health.

This is also why seemingly modest Diablo 4 balance changes can have enormous consequences at the extreme endgame.

We recently looked at how Season 15 changes the fundamental stat scaling of several classes, while new systems continue adding powerful multiplicative effects.

Each individual change can look manageable.

The final build eventually becomes a spreadsheet with anger issues.

The Tower Was Built to Expose Exactly This

There is also an argument that the Tower is doing its job.

Blizzard created the mode specifically as a competitive endgame challenge.

The Tower uses timed runs and increasingly difficult tiers to determine leaderboard placement, with the highest-performing characters competing for rankings and seasonal rewards.

Blizzard even added a build viewer so players can inspect the setups used by top leaderboard entries.

If Tower 150 were only slightly harder than Tower 120, the leaderboard would struggle to separate extraordinarily powerful builds from merely excellent ones.

Extreme scaling creates room at the top.

That is useful.

The problem appears when that leaderboard gap begins exposing enormous balance differences between skills and classes rather than simply differences in optimisation.

A player who regularly pushes the Spiritborn leaderboard recently argued that the Tower itself also suffers from excessive RNG, citing monster combinations, density, boss selection and Sanctification effects as factors capable of deciding high-tier runs.

So the final Tower number is measuring several things simultaneously:

• Build strength
• Player execution
• Equipment optimisation
• Dungeon RNG
• Pylon usage
• Monster selection
• And increasingly ridiculous amounts of damage

Mostly that last one gets the screenshots.

Diablo 4 Has Been Here Before

Anyone who played Diablo III for long enough may recognise the direction of travel.

Damage starts relatively understandable.

Then items introduce multipliers.

Sets introduce larger multipliers.

Difficulty rises to compensate.

More multipliers arrive to beat the new difficulty.

Eventually everyone is discussing percentages that would make an accountant quietly leave the room.

Diablo 4 originally launched with much smaller damage numbers than Diablo III's late-game extremes.

Three years of systems, Uniques, Paragon interactions and seasonal additions have gradually changed that.

The Season 15 PTR is already experimenting with additional major damage sources, including a Soul Splinter capable of granting up to 100% multiplicative damage in exchange for disabling Critical Hits.

Power is fun.

Multiplication is fun.

The problem comes when every new system needs another multiplier simply to remain relevant beside the old multipliers.

The Difference Between Builds Matters More Than the Damage Number

The real issue is not whether Diablo 4 characters deal millions, billions, trillions or numbers requiring scientific notation.

The screen can display whatever Blizzard wants.

The important question is how far apart viable builds are.

If one fully optimised build reaches Tower 120 and another reaches 150, the tier difference may look modest on a leaderboard.

Thirty levels.

Nothing dramatic.

But exponential scaling means those thirty levels can hide an extraordinary difference in effective power.

That makes balancing weaker skills increasingly difficult.

Buff something by 50% and it sounds enormous.

If the strongest alternative is effectively orders of magnitude ahead at the extreme end, 50% barely moves the elevator.

This is why some players in the current discussion are asking Blizzard to reduce the overall spread rather than simply handing weaker builds increasingly enormous percentage buffs.

Diablo 4 does not need every build to perform identically.

That would arguably make an ARPG considerably less interesting.

There should be discoveries.

There should be powerful combinations.

There should absolutely be builds that make you wonder whether someone at Blizzard forgot a decimal point.

But when the difference between two endgame builds can be illustrated using a multiplier above 4,000, balancing becomes something considerably stranger.

Tier 120 and Tier 150 are separated by thirty numbers.

Mathematically, they may as well live in different postal codes.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Multipliers, the 1,242,600% imbalance!

Diablo IV Forums: Tower needs a Rework

Blizzard: Diablo IV 3.1 PTR — Tower and Leaderboard updates

Blizzard: Diablo IV Patch 2.5 — Tower scaling and Pit parity

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Diablo 4 Players Have Explored 65/65 Skovos Areas — And Still Can’t Get the Achievement

Diablo 4 players have successfully explored every corner of Skovos.

The game agrees.

65 areas discovered out of 65.

The achievement system has apparently decided that mathematics is merely a suggestion.

Players are continuing to report that the No Island Unturned challenge remains incomplete even when their Skovos exploration counter shows 65/65, preventing some of them from earning the associated achievement and Amazonian Charge mount.

The problem is particularly frustrating because Blizzard already fixed the original version of the Skovos exploration bug.

Unfortunately, that fix appears to have created a second problem for players who explored everything too early.

Skovos Originally Asked Players to Find 67 Areas

When Lord of Hatred opened Skovos earlier this year, completionists quickly ran into something strange.

The region's exploration tracker expected players to discover 67 locations.

Players searched beaches.

They searched temples.

They searched suspicious bits of coastline.

They wondered whether the Cow Level was somehow involved.

Eventually it became clear that players weren't simply overlooking two extremely well-hidden rocks.

The available map contained only 65 areas that could actually be discovered.

Blizzard subsequently changed the requirement, and the Skovos exploration counter now correctly displays 65/65 rather than 65/67.

Problem solved.

Mostly.

Players Who Already Had 65/67 Can Still Be Stuck

The particularly unlucky group appears to be players who completely explored Skovos before the requirement was corrected.

Those characters previously showed 65/67.

After the update, they now correctly show 65/65.

But for some players, No Island Unturned still remains listed as incomplete or even “Not Started”.

The likely problem is relatively straightforward.

The game appears to award the challenge when a new Skovos area is discovered.

If you had already discovered all 65 locations before Blizzard changed the requirement, there is nothing left for that character to discover.

The counter knows you have finished.

The achievement apparently never receives the memo.

And Season 15 Hasn't Fixed It

This would be easier to dismiss as an old expansion-launch bug if players weren't still reporting it now.

They are.

One of the longest-running bug threads was bumped again on August 17, with a player saying that the problem remains in Season 15 despite having 65/65 exploration on both Softcore and Hardcore.

Another current report describes exactly the same situation: 65/65 areas discovered, achievement status “Not Started.”

A separate PlayStation player reports being stuck at 99% overall achievement completion because No Island Unturned refuses to unlock.

There are reports going all the way back to May.

At this point, the island has been turned over quite thoroughly.

The achievement has not.

There Is a Workaround — Unless You Were Too Thorough

Some players have managed to trigger the achievement by exploring Skovos again on the opposite game mode.

If you originally completed the map on Softcore, for example, starting the campaign on Hardcore and discovering all 65 locations there can reportedly cause No Island Unturned to unlock.

The same principle can work in reverse.

That is inconvenient.

But at least it is something.

The real problem affects players who already fully explored Skovos on both Softcore and Hardcore before the requirement was corrected.

They have no untouched realm left to use as a trigger.

Players have also reported that creating another character on a realm where exploration is already shared does not solve the problem.

For that group, the current solution appears to be:

wait for Blizzard.

Every completionist's favourite endgame activity.

Make Sure You Actually Have 65/65 First

There is an important distinction between this bug and simply being stuck at 64/65.

If your map still says 64/65, you probably are missing an area.

Players continue to find tiny pieces of Skovos that are remarkably easy to overlook, including a small pocket near the Dark Refuge area in Lycander.

Finding the final legitimate location can still trigger the achievement normally for players who did not previously complete the old 65/67 requirement.

The bug discussed here specifically affects people whose map already says:

65/65.

If that is you and No Island Unturned still says incomplete, running around Skovos staring suspiciously at every beach probably isn't going to help.

The Amazonian Charge Mount Can Be Caught in the Problem Too

No Island Unturned is more than another checkbox for completionists.

Players affected by the issue have also reported being unable to receive the Amazonian Charge mount reward tied to their Skovos exploration progress.

That makes the missing retroactive completion considerably more annoying than an incorrectly displayed percentage.

Players did the exploration.

The map confirms that they did the exploration.

The game simply needs to recognise that 65 out of 65 is generally considered complete.

This Looks Like It Needs a Retroactive Fix

That is what affected players are now asking Blizzard to implement.

Not another change to the number of locations.

Not another hidden area.

Not another journey around Skovos on a third character.

A retroactive check that looks at characters or realms with 65/65 exploration and awards No Island Unturned accordingly.

Until that happens, some of Diablo 4's most dedicated explorers are stuck in the unusual position of having explored 100% of an island while receiving 0% of the achievement for doing it.

Mephisto may be the Lord of Hatred.

But nothing generates hatred quite like staring at 65/65 next to an unfinished achievement.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: No Island Unturned — “Not Started” with 65/65 discovered

Diablo IV Forums: No Island Unturned and Amazonian Charge not granted after requirement update

Diablo IV Forums: Cannot complete No Island Unturned

Diablo IV Forums: No Island Unturned still not possible on PlayStation

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Diablo 4 Players Are Killing Their Own Party Members in Infernal Hordes

Infernal Hordes already contain enough things trying to kill you.

Apparently your party members can now join the list.

A fresh Diablo 4 bug report describes players being repeatedly killed by other members of their own party during Infernal Hordes, despite the activity having absolutely nothing to do with PvP.

The latest report was posted on August 20 by a player who says another Barbarian repeatedly appeared as the cause of death.

More importantly, this does not appear to be an entirely new problem.

Several earlier reports point toward a deeply strange interaction involving Wyrdskin, Barbarian shouts and friendly players.

Sanctuary has friendly fire now.

Possibly.

And naturally, the Barbarian may be responsible.

A Barbarian Apparently Kept Killing Their Teammate

The newest report comes from Blizzard's official Diablo IV bug forums.

The player says they have been killed by other players while participating in Infernal Hordes as part of a party.

During the most recent run, another Barbarian allegedly killed them repeatedly.

According to the report, the problem had also happened more than a week earlier, leading the player to assume it would eventually be fixed.

It wasn't.

Another forum user immediately asked whether the Barbarian was using Wyrdskin.

That is where things become considerably more interesting.

Wyrdskin Has Been Affecting Friendly Players for Months

Wyrdskin is supposed to make attacks apply Vulnerable to distant enemies and Weakened to close enemies, while increasing damage against targets suffering from both effects.

The important word there is enemies.

Players have been reporting since at least May that the Wyrdskin Charm can apparently treat friendly players rather less diplomatically.

One Barbarian playing alongside a Paladin discovered that using Rallying Cry could apply Weakened to the Paladin.

The interaction then appeared to trigger the Paladin's Thorns, causing damage to be reflected back onto the Barbarian.

The player tested the problem by removing Wyrdskin.

The friendly-fire behaviour disappeared.

Later reports described the same basic problem with Wyrdskin applying Vulnerable and Weakened to party members.

By July, players were reporting something worse.

They could actually die from it.

Players Have Reported Deaths Outside PvP Zones Too

A July console bug report described two Whirlwind Barbarians using Wyrdskin and becoming Vulnerable and Weakened around each other.

The player also reported taking enormous damage when Thorns entered the equation.

In one case, the combat log reportedly named another player as the source of death even though they were not participating in PvP.

Removing Wyrdskin once again stopped the behaviour.

Another report came from a Hardcore Barbarian who said they were killed by another player during a Realmwalker encounter outside a PvP zone.

That player was also using Wyrdskin.

For a normal character, unexpected friendly fire is irritating.

For Hardcore, it is the sort of bug capable of converting several dozen hours of character progression into a character-selection-screen memorial.

We Don't Know If Wyrdskin Caused the Latest Infernal Hordes Deaths

There is one important distinction.

The player reporting the August 20 Infernal Hordes deaths did not confirm that the other Barbarian was using Wyrdskin.

They had not inspected the character's equipment when the deaths happened.

So we cannot say that Wyrdskin definitely caused this particular incident.

But the similarities are difficult to ignore.

We already have multiple reports involving Barbarians, Wyrdskin, friendly players receiving enemy debuffs and combat logs crediting other players with kills outside PvP.

Now another player is reporting almost exactly that outcome inside Infernal Hordes.

At minimum, Blizzard appears to have a friendly-player interaction worth investigating.

The Latest Patch Doesn't Mention Fixing It

Blizzard released Diablo IV Patch 3.1.3 on August 12 with another collection of fixes for Season of Death Awakening.

The patch addressed several class issues and even fixed a problem involving teleporting to Infernal Hordes.

There is no listed fix for Wyrdskin applying Vulnerable or Weakened to friendly players.

The previous 3.1.2 patch did include a Wyrdskin fix, but it concerned the gloves failing to appear correctly on character models.

So Blizzard has successfully made Wyrdskin easier to see.

It may still be trying to murder your friends.

Infernal Hordes Probably Didn't Need Friendly Fire

Infernal Hordes are already built around throwing increasingly dense waves of enemies at players while they race to generate Burning Aether.

As we have seen with other Infernal Hordes bugs, even relatively small mechanical problems become considerably more noticeable inside a timed activity.

Getting killed is supposed to be part of the danger.

Getting killed by Dave from your own party is less traditional.

Until Blizzard confirms exactly what is happening, players using Wyrdskin alongside other Barbarians or Thorns-heavy characters may want to keep an eye on their debuffs and combat logs.

Especially in Hardcore.

The demons are supposed to be on the other team.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Killed by players during Infernal Hordes

Diablo IV Forums: Rallying Cry killing me with Paladin in party

Diablo IV Forums: Wyrdskin and Thorns letting players kill each other outside PvP

Diablo IV Forums: Hardcore player killing bug report

Blizzard: Diablo IV Patch Notes

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Diablo 2’s New Warlock Era Doesn’t Support Legacy Graphics — And Players Are Divided

Diablo II: Resurrected has always had one particularly wonderful party trick.

Press a button and 2021 disappears.

The rebuilt monsters, dynamic lighting and detailed environments vanish, replaced instantly by the pixels, sprites and 800x600 memories of Diablo II's original era.

Then Reign of the Warlock arrived.

And for players entering Diablo II's newest era, that button effectively stopped being part of the experience.

Reign of the Warlock content does not currently support Diablo II: Resurrected's Legacy Graphics mode, leaving players divided over whether Blizzard should recreate the new expansion in an art style originally built more than 25 years ago.

For some players, that sounds like an unreasonable amount of work for a nostalgia feature.

For others, switching between old and new Diablo II was part of what made Resurrected special in the first place.

Legacy Graphics Were More Than a Joke Button

When Diablo II: Resurrected launched in 2021, Blizzard made a very deliberate choice.

The new graphics were essentially built over Diablo II rather than replacing it entirely.

Players could switch between Resurrected and Legacy visuals while playing and immediately see how closely the remake followed the original environments, monsters and animations.

Blizzard continued improving that feature after launch.

Patch 2.4 even introduced three different Legacy Graphics emulation options: GDI, Glide and Resurrected.

Blizzard described the Resurrected option as its preferred emulation mode while preserving the unfiltered GDI presentation for players who wanted something even closer to the software-rendered original.

This was not a forgotten setting buried in a menu.

Blizzard actively maintained it.

Then Diablo II started receiving things the original game had never contained.

Warlock Creates a Problem the Original Remaster Never Had

Reign of the Warlock is fundamentally different from earlier Diablo II: Resurrected updates.

Balance changes are easy enough.

A Terror Zone can reuse an existing area.

A revised Unique can reuse an existing item graphic.

But the Warlock is the first completely new playable Diablo II class in 25 years.

There is no original Warlock sprite hidden on an old Blizzard hard drive waiting to be switched on.

There is no classic animation for Miasma Chain.

No 2000-era Warlock wearing every possible armor combination.

No original set of walk, run, cast, attack, hit-recovery and death frames.

Someone would have to make them.

And Diablo II’s Old Graphics Were Not Exactly Simple

This is where the debate gets more interesting.

It is easy to look at Diablo II's original graphics today and think:

They're sprites. How difficult could it be?

Very.

Diablo II's characters were originally created as 3D models and then rendered into enormous collections of 2D frames.

A character needed animations from multiple directions.

Armor and equipment had to visually work across those animations.

Weapons changed appearance.

Different actions required different sequences.

Warlock would need to fit into all of that.

One player in the current discussion estimated that properly building a complete Warlock sprite library would effectively mean recreating a significant fraction of Diablo II's original character-art workload.

Then come the new skills.

The new items.

Interface additions.

And whatever Blizzard adds next.

Suddenly the nostalgia toggle has its own development roadmap.

Some Players Still Want Blizzard to Do It

That has not stopped people asking.

A forum thread from May includes players requesting Legacy Graphics support for Reign of the Warlock, with one saying they enjoy the original visuals so much that they are reluctant to progress into the new era without them.

Another player went considerably further:

They said they would actually pay another $30 for a legacy graphics pack.

That may sound extreme.

But Diablo II has a very unusual audience.

This is a game where selecting the correct shade of brown from the year 2000 can constitute an important artistic principle.

Others Think Blizzard’s Resources Are Better Spent Elsewhere

The opposite argument is fairly convincing too.

Diablo II: Resurrected still has bugs.

It still has balance issues.

Reign of the Warlock itself is still being tuned.

Patch 3.3 just changed several parts of the expansion ahead of Ladder Season 15.

One tiny-looking collision fix has already led players to believe Abyss Warlock became dramatically stronger in practical combat.

Blizzard also changed Worldstone Shard and Ancient Statue drop rates, while continuing to adjust the expansion's item economy.

For players who want more balancing, more endgame content and more bug fixes, assigning artists and engineers to recreate an entire new class in 25-year-old graphics is not necessarily where they want Blizzard spending its limited Diablo II resources.

Could Blizzard Fake It?

Players have suggested compromises.

One idea is to use placeholder legacy assets.

Give Warlock a recolored sprite from another class.

Simplify newer spell effects.

Reuse existing monster graphics wherever possible.

Another proposal is allowing Legacy Graphics in Reign of the Warlock while disabling the Warlock and incompatible expansion items.

That would preserve access to newer quality-of-life systems while letting people continue playing older classes with the classic presentation.

Technically elegant?

Probably not.

Very Diablo II?

Absolutely.

The Era System Makes the Divide Even More Noticeable

Reign of the Warlock introduced an unusual solution for protecting Diablo II's history.

The game is now divided between separate eras:

• Diablo II Classic
• Diablo II: Resurrected
• Diablo II: Reign of the Warlock

Characters can exist separately across those partitions and move forward through the eras.

They cannot move backward.

Blizzard calls the system “Play your Era, Your Way.”

That makes a lot of sense mechanically.

It also makes the graphical difference rather poetic.

You can preserve old Diablo II mechanically.

You can preserve its old graphics.

But once you step into the genuinely new Diablo II timeline, something eventually has to be new.

This Is the Strange Price of Diablo II Getting New Content

For decades, Diablo II nostalgia had an enormous advantage.

The past was finished.

Everything Blizzard needed to reproduce already existed.

Reign of the Warlock changed that.

For the first time, Diablo II: Resurrected is not merely restoring or modifying Diablo II.

It is creating Diablo II content that never existed in Diablo II.

That sounds obvious.

Artistically, it creates a surprisingly difficult question.

If Blizzard adds a new class in 2026, how much effort should it spend pretending that class was also made in 2000?

Some players would clearly love to see it.

Others would rather Blizzard spend those resources on Season 16.

There probably is not a perfect answer.

But there is something wonderfully Diablo II about a game receiving its first new class in 25 years and immediately inspiring an argument over whether Blizzard should remake that new class to look 25 years old.

Sources

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: Legacy graphics for Reign of the Warlock?

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: No Legacy Mode in Reign of the Warlock games?

Blizzard: Rain Annihilation in Reign of the Warlock

Blizzard: Diablo II: Resurrected Patch 2.4 — Legacy Graphics Emulation

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Diablo Immortal Is Rebalancing Six Classes for Bout of Realms — Four Are Missing

Diablo Immortal is about to rearrange part of its PvP meta in the middle of one of the game's biggest competitive events.

Blizzard has announced a new balance patch scheduled for August 26, with changes targeting six classes:

• Crusader
• Druid
• Monk
• Tempest
• Warlock
• Wizard

The changes are being announced early because Blizzard wants Bout of Realms teams to have more time to think about compositions, builds and strategy.

But four classes are conspicuously absent.

Barbarian, Blood Knight, Demon Hunter and Necromancer.

Players noticed immediately.

Because nothing says competitive balance quite like reading the patch notes and checking whether your class survived the invitation list.

The August 26 Changes Are Not Bout-Only

There was initially some confusion over whether Blizzard was creating a special balance ruleset specifically for Bout of Realms.

Community Manager Jadai clarified that this is not the case.

The adjustments were not created exclusively for the tournament.

They are normal class balance changes that will affect the game more broadly, but Blizzard is revealing them early because Bout of Realms is its most competitive mode and organized teams need extra preparation time.

That makes this considerably more important than a temporary tournament modifier.

If you play one of these six classes in Battlegrounds or elsewhere, these changes matter to you too.

Warlock Is Getting One of the Most Important PvP Nerfs

Warlock receives three listed essence adjustments, and the biggest attention is already falling on Measured Halves.

Spiteful Sacrifice will still become a moving channeled attack that throws dark-energy swords forward.

But Blizzard is changing how it behaves.

The attack interval is being increased, meaning volleys happen less frequently, although each volley will hit harder.

Movement speed while channeling is being reduced.

Range is being reduced.

And most importantly, the Sacrificial Power bonus projectiles will no longer lock onto enemy players.

Instead, they fire at the target's current position.

A moving opponent can therefore dodge them.

That is a meaningful PvP change for a class that has already generated plenty of balance arguments since arriving in Diablo Immortal.

We recently looked at how Warlock was still receiving extensive fixes to its skills and legendary interactions.

Now Blizzard is moving beyond cleanup and directly changing how some of its most important PvP tools function.

Tempest Gets More Survivability and Longer Channeling

Tempest is receiving changes to both Dream and Drown and Cyclone's Call.

Dream and Drown will now let Cascade-generated waves grant an absorb shield when they hit enemies.

Blizzard is also adding a maximum trigger range so waves cannot continue spawning around targets that are too far away.

Cyclone's Call gets a more substantial redesign.

Crosswinds remains a moving channeled skill, but Tempest will now be immune to knockback while channeling.

Enemies struck by multiple wind blades in quick succession can also suffer an additional hit.

Blizzard says wind-blade damage is increasing while energy costs fall and regeneration improves.

Translation:

Longer spinning.

More blades.

Less opportunity to politely ask Tempest to stop.

Crusader’s Shield Charge Is Becoming an Actual Charge Again

Crusader receives changes to Anointed in Blood and Forced Abjuration.

The latter is especially noticeable.

Shield Charge currently turns into a forward shield swipe that knocks enemies back, slows them and builds damage through successive hits.

After the patch, it will instead make the Crusader dash forward, damaging, knocking back and slowing enemies along the path.

Hitting an enemy also grants an absorb shield.

The successive-hit damage scaling is being removed, while base damage increases.

For a skill called Shield Charge, moving forward aggressively does feel suspiciously appropriate.

Druid and Monk Get More Focused Adjustments

Druid's Promise the Obscure modifies Werebear Mangle into four directional attacks with knockback and control immunity.

Blizzard says its cooldown is being reduced and its damage scaling is being simplified around maximum Life.

Budding Union is also changing, with Circle of Life healing less when only a single target occupies the area.

That pushes the ability slightly harder toward its intended group-support identity.

Monk's Mystic Allies receive more Life through Fate and Fortune.

Nest of Vipers will also allow nearby summons to benefit from Dragon's Strike rather than limiting the effect to the Monk.

Some conditional crowd-control damage is being removed, while baseline damage increases to compensate.

Wizard Beams Are Being Pulled Back

Wizard gets changes to Frostfield and Disintegrate.

Lissana's Sorrow will increase the Chill applied by Creeping Chill.

Searing Judgement is more complicated.

Disintegrate's beam distance will be reduced.

The maximum Burn stacks required to trigger its additional damage will increase, meaning the burst happens less often.

Blizzard says the burst damage itself is being increased to compensate.

Wizard will also remain immune to knockback while channeling.

So this is less “beam deleted” and more “beam asked to respect personal space.”

Players Immediately Asked Where the Other Four Classes Went

The first community reaction was predictable.

Where is Barbarian?

Where is Necromancer?

Where is Demon Hunter?

And what about Blood Knight?

One player directly asked whether Barbarian had simply been forgotten.

Others argued that Necromancer badly needs PvP attention, while Demon Hunter players and opponents are already debating current stealth and survivability builds.

Those complaints do not automatically mean Blizzard should change every class in every patch.

Sometimes the correct balance adjustment is no adjustment.

But announcing a competitive balance pass involving six out of ten classes inevitably makes the other four much more visible.

Bout of Realms Makes the Timing Much More Sensitive

Diablo Immortal's current Bout of Realms is already underway.

Preliminary matches run from August 18 through August 22, with the Finals scheduled from August 25 through August 29 and the Championship Match on August 31.

That makes the August 26 balance update especially interesting.

According to Blizzard's currently published schedule, the class changes arrive during the Finals window.

Teams may therefore enter the tournament using one version of a build and find themselves competing under different balance conditions later in the event.

Blizzard clearly understands that compositions take planning, which is precisely why it announced the adjustments early.

We have already seen how seriously Blizzard treats this format through previous Bout of Realms tournaments and their increasingly competitive team structures.

Changing class behavior around that environment is never going to be invisible.

These Numbers Are Not Final Yet

There is one very important caveat.

Blizzard explicitly says the descriptions, statistics and balance changes revealed on August 19 are not final.

They can still change before the patch goes live on August 26.

That means players should not dismantle entire builds, swap classes or begin writing memorial speeches for Measured Halves quite yet.

But the direction is clear.

Warlock loses some tracking and range.

Tempest gains shields and stronger channeling.

Crusader gets a more mobile Shield Charge.

Druid, Monk and Wizard receive targeted adjustments.

And four classes sit outside the balance list entirely.

For casual players, that means another round of build tinkering.

For Bout of Realms teams, it means spreadsheets.

Many, many spreadsheets.

Sources

Blizzard: Balance Patch Update / Bout of Realms Preparation — August 26

Blizzard: Rise to the Top in Bout of Realms

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Diablo 4 Player Runs Kurast Undercity 10+ Times for Primordial Dust — Gets Zero

Diablo 4 has many ways to tell you that your build is not finished yet.

Apparently one of them is sending you into Kurast Undercity more than ten times and giving you exactly zero of the crafting material you went there to farm.

A Diablo 4 player is reporting that Volatile Primordial Dust has stopped dropping for them in Kurast Undercity, despite repeatedly using Tributes designed to reward Horadric Cube materials.

The player says they completed more than ten runs while specifically trying to farm Volatile Primordial Dust for an amulet.

The result:

0 Volatile Primordial Dust.

That does not prove the material is currently bugged.

It does, however, add another uncomfortable data point to a crafting resource that players have already spent most of Season 14 complaining is far too scarce.

The Player Was Specifically Farming Cube Materials

This was not someone casually running Undercity and wondering why a random material never appeared.

The player says they deliberately used Horadric Cube Materials Tributes while farming.

The relevant Legendary Undercity option is the Greater Tribute of Ingenuity, which enhances the final reward with Horadric Cube materials.

That is exactly the sort of activity players have been recommending when someone asks how to farm Volatile Primordial Dust.

Community farming advice has repeatedly pointed toward Kurast Undercity with Cube-material Tributes as one of the better targeted methods.

Which makes running it ten or more times without seeing the material considerably more noticeable.

Volatile Primordial Dust Is Used for Transfiguration

Volatile Primordial Dust is one of the rarer Horadric Cube materials introduced with Lord of Hatred.

Its main purpose is Transfiguration.

That means it sits directly inside one of Diablo 4's most expensive endgame crafting loops.

You take an item you have already spent time building.

You spend a rare material.

You roll the dice.

And, as we have already seen with the player whose near-perfect amulet became locked without receiving a visible Transfiguration reward, the system is not particularly forgiving when something goes wrong.

The scarcity of Volatile Dust therefore matters far more than the loss of another miscellaneous crafting reagent.

Players can burn through substantial amounts of it while chasing the correct result.

This Material Was Already a Bottleneck

The new Undercity report arrives after weeks of complaints about Volatile Primordial Dust.

Back in July, we covered how the Volatile Dust grind was turning solo endgame crafting into a second job.

One player described spending three hours farming approximately 40 Dust and then consuming the entire supply in roughly ten minutes of crafting.

Other players said the Season 14 drop rate felt substantially worse than before.

A July forum discussion includes players saying they were running Material Reserve Nightmare Dungeons and Cube-material Tributes while still struggling to maintain a supply.

Another complaint posted in early August estimated a farming rate of only 7 to 20 Volatile Primordial Dust per hour.

So even if the new player's zero-drop streak turns out to be brutal RNG rather than a bug, it is happening inside a system where the resource economy was already under pressure.

Kurast Undercity Is Supposed to Be One of the Better Options

That is what makes this particular report interesting.

Players who run out of Volatile Dust are regularly directed toward:

• Kurast Undercity with Horadric Cube Material Tributes
• Material Reserve Nightmare Dungeons and Escalations
• Cube Spoils through War Plans
• Whisper rewards
• Elite farming

Even popular Diablo 4 farming guides recommend using an Undercity Tribute with Horadric Cube Materials when you need Cube resources quickly.

And Blizzard itself has previously fixed a tooltip problem involving Cube Dust, specifically noting that the tooltip did not properly indicate that the material could be obtained from Undercity activities.

In other words, Kurast Undercity absolutely belongs in this farming ecosystem.

Whether every individual Cube material is guaranteed on every run is another matter.

Zero Drops Does Not Automatically Mean Bugged

This distinction is important.

We currently have one fresh player report describing more than ten runs without Volatile Primordial Dust.

Blizzard has not confirmed a drop bug.

The Greater Tribute of Ingenuity promises Horadric Cube materials broadly. It does not appear to guarantee that every Cube material, including Volatile Primordial Dust, will appear on every run.

That leaves RNG as a completely plausible explanation.

Ten unlucky runs can happen.

Diablo has built an entire franchise around demonstrating this scientific principle.

But when players specifically target the activity recommended for Cube materials and repeatedly receive none of the material creating their crafting bottleneck, it is worth watching.

The Bigger Problem Is How Much Dust Transfiguration Can Consume

This is ultimately why players care.

If Volatile Primordial Dust were used once every few hours, a streak of bad drops would be annoying but manageable.

Transfiguration can consume it considerably faster.

Players chasing very specific endgame outcomes can make dozens of attempts.

One recent feedback thread describes the resource as the main limitation of the current Transfiguration system and argues that Dust should drop from far more endgame activities.

The complaint is not simply that good items should be easy to obtain.

It is that the crafting system encourages repeated experimentation while the material supply actively discourages it.

That creates a strange loop.

The Horadric Cube says:

Try again.

Your material tab says:

Absolutely not.

For Now, This Is One Report Worth Watching

We would not call Kurast Undercity broken based on this report alone.

There are too many players successfully obtaining Volatile Primordial Dust from Cube-focused activities for that conclusion.

But more than ten targeted runs for zero Dust is enough to raise the question, particularly after an entire season of complaints about the material's availability.

If other players begin reproducing the same sudden zero-drop behavior, then we may be looking at something more specific than Season 14's already unpopular drop rate.

Until then, the safest conclusion is simpler.

Diablo 4 has an endgame material that players desperately need for repeated crafting attempts.

One of the activities recommended for farming it just gave one player more than ten consecutive lessons in disappointment.

Sanctuary's crafting economy remains extremely efficient.

At consuming your materials.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Player report regarding Volatile Primordial Dust not dropping in Kurast Undercity

Diablo IV Forums: Volatile Primordial Dust Nerfed to the Ground

Diablo IV Forums: More Volatile Primordial Dust

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Diablo 4 Says These Eternal Characters Are in Endgame — But War Plans Are Still Locked

Diablo 4 has found an impressively philosophical way to define the word “Endgame.”

Some Eternal characters are being displayed as Lord of Hatred (Endgame) on the Character Select screen.

There is just one problem.

They still cannot access parts of the endgame.

Players have been reporting the issue since shortly after Lord of Hatred launched, with older Eternal characters sometimes failing to inherit the correct campaign-completion state even after Lord of Hatred has been completed elsewhere on the account.

In one particularly clear example, a player says their Eternal characters have already skipped the campaign and Character Select explicitly shows them as being in Lord of Hatred's Endgame state.

Yet War Plans are unavailable.

Tyrael is missing from the War Plans table in Temis.

Several waypoints remain locked.

Endgame, apparently, is now more of a state of mind.

The Character Select Screen Says Everything Is Fine

The current problem is closely related to the Eternal campaign skip problem we recently covered, but this particular version is even stranger.

The affected characters are not simply being told to complete the campaign again.

According to the player report, Diablo 4 already recognizes them as being in:

Lord of Hatred (Endgame)

That should be the destination.

Blizzard's own Lord of Hatred documentation describes “Story Complete: Endgame” as the option available after completing the expansion campaign. Once unlocked, existing characters can also skip the campaign from Character Select instead of replaying the story.

The problem is that the label and the actual character state do not always appear to agree.

War Plans Simply Aren’t There

The most obvious symptom is War Plans.

War Plans are one of Lord of Hatred's central endgame systems. Once properly unlocked, players travel to Temis, use the Command Table and build chains of activities including Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, Infernal Hordes, the Pit, Undercity and boss content.

For the affected Eternal characters, that onboarding appears to be missing.

The player says Tyrael is not standing beside the War Plans table.

The table is effectively dead.

That creates a particularly nasty progression problem because War Plans are not just another optional side activity. They feed directly into Diablo 4's current endgame structure and Activity Trees.

And even when War Plans do unlock correctly, they have their own problems. We recently covered players completing every activity only to find their War Plan progression stuck at 9/10.

Some players cannot finish the board.

Others apparently cannot get the board in the first place.

Efficiency.

The Horadric Cube Has Been Caught in Similar Progression Problems

This is not the first time old Eternal characters have struggled to inherit Lord of Hatred unlocks correctly.

Back in May, players reported completing Lord of Hatred on one character and then discovering that older level 60 Eternal characters still could not use the campaign skip.

One PlayStation player specifically said they had completed Lord of Hatred on an Eternal Sorcerer but could not skip the campaign on two other Eternal characters.

The reason they cared was simple:

They wanted access to the Horadric Cube and War Plans without replaying the entire expansion campaign.

Another player in the same discussion reported that some Eternal characters received the Character Select campaign-sync option while others did not, despite all of them predating Lord of Hatred and being the same level.

That suggests this is not simply someone missing an obvious quest marker.

Finishing Lord of Hatred Is Supposed to Unlock the Skip

Blizzard's intended behavior is fairly clear.

Once Lord of Hatred has been completed, players can create a character using the Story Complete: Endgame starting state.

Blizzard also specifically says that previously created characters can skip the campaign directly from Character Select.

That matters because the affected characters are doing exactly what Blizzard's interface tells them to do.

The campaign is marked as skipped.

The game calls them Endgame characters.

And yet the world state appears to remain partially trapped somewhere before that point.

This Looks Like a Character-State Problem

Blizzard has not publicly confirmed the precise cause, so anything beyond the visible symptoms remains speculation.

But the reports look remarkably like Diablo 4 is failing to synchronize several different progression flags.

One flag tells Character Select:

This character is in Endgame.

Another apparently tells Temis:

Absolutely not.

That would also explain why players report a mixture of symptoms rather than one simple missing button.

Some cannot select the campaign skip.

Some can select it but still lack War Plans.

Some find waypoints locked.

Some do not see the expected endgame NPCs.

And some Eternal characters on the same account apparently work perfectly normally.

The Latest Patch Notes Don’t Mention a Fix

Diablo 4's latest listed live patch is 3.1.3 from August 12.

It includes several War Plans fixes, including a problem where teleporting to Infernal Hordes could fail on lower difficulties.

But Blizzard's patch notes do not mention repairing campaign-state synchronization for older Eternal characters.

That is important because these reports have now survived well beyond the immediate Lord of Hatred launch period.

This is not simply expansion-launch confusion from the first afternoon.

Players were reporting campaign-skip problems in May.

The “Endgame but no War Plans” report arrived in July.

And there is still no specifically documented fix in the current live notes.

Eternal Characters Are Exactly Where This Should Work Best

There is an extra irony here.

Eternal Realm exists partly so players can keep old characters alive indefinitely.

These are the characters people have spent seasons building, adjusting and preserving.

They are precisely the characters most likely to predate Lord of Hatred.

Forcing those characters into broken or inconsistent progression states defeats much of the point.

It is also why this problem is more serious than a missing quest icon.

Lord of Hatred made the Horadric Cube and War Plans fundamental parts of Diablo 4's modern endgame. If an old character cannot correctly transition into that state, a substantial portion of the expansion effectively disappears.

For Now, “Endgame” Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Endgame

There are community-suggested workarounds floating around, including changing difficulty, relogging and looking for missing onboarding quests.

We would not treat any of those as a confirmed fix.

The underlying issue appears inconsistent between characters, and Blizzard has not published an official workaround for this particular progression state.

So the safest description remains straightforward:

Some Diablo 4 Eternal characters are being marked as Lord of Hatred (Endgame) while still missing the systems that designation is supposed to unlock.

When the game's own Character Select screen says you have reached the endgame, expecting to find the endgame seems reasonably fair.

Sanctuary apparently requires additional paperwork.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Eternal characters with no War Plan

Diablo IV Forums: Can't skip campaign after completion

Blizzard: Prepare for the Reckoning — Lord of Hatred Draws Near

Blizzard: Diablo IV Patch Notes

Read More

Diablo 4 Switch 2 Leak Points to September 15 Release With Both Expansions

Diablo 4's long-rumored Nintendo Switch 2 version has suddenly become much harder to dismiss.

We no longer just have ratings-board sightings and vague suggestions that Blizzard is working on something.

A new report from Dealabs leaker billbil-kun now gives us a date.

A price.

A version name.

Expansion details.

And even the slightly depressing contents of the physical box.

According to the leak, Diablo 4 will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 on September 15, 2026 as the Age of Hatred Collection, including the base game, Vessel of Hatred and Lord of Hatred.

Blizzard has not officially announced the Switch 2 version yet.

But at this point, the demon is beginning to leave quite a lot of footprints.

The Reported Release Date Is September 15

Dealabs reports that Diablo 4 is scheduled to arrive on Nintendo Switch 2 on September 15.

The information comes from billbil-kun, whose leaks have repeatedly proven accurate across games, hardware and subscription announcements.

Video Games Chronicle has since reported the same new details, while stressing that the port remains officially unannounced.

The timing would be extremely interesting.

BlizzCon 2026 begins on September 12.

The leak claims pre-orders for the Switch 2 version are also planned to open on September 12.

Three days later:

Launch.

That does not exactly require Deckard Cain to interpret.

It Reportedly Includes Both Expansions

The Switch 2 release is reportedly called the Age of Hatred Collection.

That means Nintendo players would not be receiving a stripped-down version of Diablo 4 from 2023.

The package reportedly includes:

• Diablo IV
• Vessel of Hatred
• Lord of Hatred

That would put Switch 2 players directly into the current version of Diablo 4 rather than making them buy years of content separately before catching up.

And there is quite a lot to catch up on.

Lord of Hatred has transformed Diablo 4's endgame through systems such as War Plans, the Horadric Cube and newer progression structures.

Unfortunately, some of those systems have also created problems. We recently covered how players can finish every War Plan activity and still become stuck at Rank 9/10.

Welcome to Sanctuary.

Here is your handheld.

Here is your endgame bureaucracy.

The Price Is Reportedly $69.99

The leak lists the Switch 2 edition at:

• $69.99
• €69.99
• £62.99

Given that the package reportedly includes both expansions, this would position the Switch 2 release as the current complete Diablo 4 bundle rather than a budget port of the base game.

That distinction matters because Lord of Hatred is no longer simply optional side content sitting beside the original campaign.

Much of Diablo 4's current progression structure assumes players are engaging with the expansion systems.

We have seen that especially clearly with older characters, where some Eternal characters are still having trouble accessing the campaign skip and the progression state required for newer endgame content.

A fresh Switch 2 account would presumably begin with a much cleaner path.

Presumably.

This is Diablo.

There Is a Physical Edition — Sort Of

Collectors should probably lower their expectations before making shelf space.

The leak says Diablo 4 will receive a retail boxed release for Switch 2.

But it reportedly will not contain a cartridge.

It will not even use Nintendo's Game-Key Card format.

Instead, the box is said to contain a download code.

So technically:

Physical box.

Digital game.

Modern preservation remains a delightful subject.

Blizzard Has Already Said the Hardware Isn’t the Problem

A Switch 2 version has always made technical sense.

Former Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson said back in 2025 that Switch 2 had the performance required to run Diablo 4.

His concern was not raw hardware.

It was live-service functionality on a device people regularly play handheld and away from a permanent internet connection.

That is the more interesting challenge.

Diablo 4 remains an always-online game.

Putting it on a handheld platform does not suddenly turn it into Diablo III's wonderfully portable offline experience.

If the port is real, Blizzard will need to make that relationship extremely clear.

This Has Been Building for Months

The September leak does not appear from nowhere.

Earlier ratings-board activity already suggested Diablo IV and Lord of Hatred were being prepared for Nintendo Switch 2.

At the time, ratings alone were not enough to tell us whether the project would actually launch, when it might appear or what would be included.

The new leak fills in most of those blanks.

September 15.

Age of Hatred Collection.

Both expansions.

$69.99.

Code in a box.

There are only so many details you can add before a rumor begins wearing launch-day clothes.

BlizzCon Looks Like the Obvious Reveal

If the reported September 12 pre-order date is correct, BlizzCon is the obvious candidate for an official announcement.

The event begins that same day.

A first-day Switch 2 reveal followed by immediate pre-orders and a September 15 launch would give Blizzard an extremely tidy announcement cycle.

There is another possibility.

Gamescom Opening Night Live takes place on August 25, and Blizzard has repeatedly used Gamescom to show major Diablo and Warcraft material.

That could allow Blizzard to reveal the port earlier and save BlizzCon for something larger.

And Blizzard certainly has other Diablo 4 material to discuss.

Season 15 is already becoming one of the more substantial system updates we have seen recently. The PTR tested Soul Splinters, which may have been one of its strongest new ideas, alongside Challenge Dungeons, Legacy Uniques and Rebirth.

Blizzard also deliberately held some Season 15 content back from the PTR, something we discussed while asking whether public testing is solving Diablo 4's problems or spoiling too much before launch.

BlizzCon still has secrets left.

A Switch 2 Launch Could Be Excellent Timing for Diablo 4

A portable Diablo 4 has obvious appeal.

Diablo III was a remarkably natural fit for the original Switch.

Diablo II: Resurrected followed.

Diablo 4 is the missing piece.

And launching it as a complete collection after Lord of Hatred rather than rushing the base game onto Nintendo hardware years earlier may actually work in its favor.

Switch 2 players would arrive after years of itemization revisions, endgame rebuilds and quality-of-life improvements.

Even Season 15 is already preparing another overhaul of high-end gearing, including the new direction for Mythic crafting.

They may be arriving late.

They may also be arriving at a considerably better version of the game.

Still a Leak Until Blizzard Says Otherwise

The amount of detail is convincing.

The previous ratings add weight.

billbil-kun has an excellent history with this kind of information.

And September 15 fits neatly around BlizzCon.

None of that makes this official.

Blizzard has not announced Diablo 4 for Nintendo Switch 2.

Nintendo has not listed it for September 15.

There is currently no official Switch 2 store page we can point you toward and say:

There.

The demon lives here now.

But compared with the vague rumors from earlier this year, we now have something much more specific.

If the leak is correct, Diablo 4 is less than a month away from becoming portable.

Provided, of course, you also bring an internet connection.

Sources

Dealabs: Diablo IV Switch 2 Release Date, Price and Physical Edition Report

Video Games Chronicle: New Information on Switch 2 Diablo 4 Port

Read More