Stellar Blade, the Nier: Auotmata-ish PS5 character action game, has a bunch of chests to unlock that give you all kinds of sweet rewards, from healing items to gold to crafting resources. Many of these chests require that you input a sequence of buttons in an allotted time limit, while others need a passcode to open. There’s one in Xion, the game’s main hub world, that’s like this, demanding a passcode before unlocking. It’s called Aaron’s Locker and, truth be told, you may already have what you need to get the chest opened. – Levi Winslow Read More
I love destroying things. The physical destruction of objects can be funny and cathartic. Thankfully, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth lets me indulge my desires for destruction in a limited but fun way. While in Costa del Sol, you can hop on a “wheelie,” the game’s in-world equivalent of a Segway vehicle, and smash it into restaurant tables, seats, barrels, and other property. Fun! Better still, you can earn some neat items for riding around on a wheelie, and finding ways to weave some destruction into your travels can liven up the otherwise pretty boring process of gliding around on your own personal transporter device. – Claire Jackson Read More
Image: EA / Dice, Crunchyroll, Bethesda Softworks, Arrowhead Game Studios / Sony, Blizzard, Atlus, Screenshot: Fox News / Kotaku, Toei Animation / Konami, Ordz Games / Kotaku
Another week’s in the books for 2024, and there were some interesting updates in the world of games, anime, and more. Battlefield 2042 is no more, no one knows what’s next for Helldivers 2, Scrabble is woke, and Hatsune Miku fans are mad. Let’s get into it.
The Stellar Blade demo has been out since March 29, and if you manage to beat it, your save data will carry over to the full game when it launches as a PlayStation 5 exclusive on April 26. One thing I was curious about was the “Skin Suit,” an outfit for protagonist Eve that basically has her traversing the world in the nude and makes the game way more challenging. Surprisingly, at least in the demo, it’s an incredibly easy thing to unlock, so since I just learned how to get it, I figured I’d teach you how to get it, too. Sharing is caring, after all. – Levi Winslow Read More
This week, one of the biggest stories in gaming involved updates to an eight-year-old game. Yes, Stardew Valley developer ConcernedApe trickled out a series of details about the game’s latest patch that had fans hanging on every word in anticipation. We’ve got all the facts for you about this game-changing update, as well as a report on Overwatch 2‘s once-vaunted story missions, a story on the motivations behind an Apex Legends hack, and more.
Tekken 8 has been out since January 26 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. While you might be tempted to jump straight into its online matches, which you’re not prepared for—trust me—you should check out the game’s story mode first. Not only does it introduce you to many ofTekken 8‘s characters and themes, but it also sets up a bombastic, relentlessly over-the-top narrative about breaking the chains that hold us back. And it’s a great way to acclimate yourself to some of the game’s new mechanics. This is a story mode you shouldn’t miss. – Levi Winslow Read More
Pokémon Concierge, the stop-motion animated series that launched on Netflix in December, is a total vibe. After spending time watching a lovely series about a Pokémon resort, I almost don’t want to go back to battling and training. I just want to hang out with all these little guys and take a neverending vacation. Unfortunately, that’s not the core of most Pokémon games, but it is nice to picture what a Pokémon Concierge video game could look like. Thankfully, we don’t have to imagine it, as some artists have already created a mock-up of it for the original Game Boy, though it’s unfortunately not a playable game. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Over the weekend, I downloaded Palworldon my PC. I was excited. After all the weird trailers and screenshots showing Pokémon-like creatures using assault rifles or being shot with handguns, I was ready to earn official Xbox achievements as I killed Pokémon facsimiles using modern guns. It was hunting time. And then, after playing for over six hours, I realized that I had been tricked into playing another goddamn survival crafting game that wanted me to punch trees and mine stone for a few hours before it got fun. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Clockwise from bottom left: Tom Hiddleston in Loki (Photo: Marvel Studios), Aramis Knight and Iman Vellani in Ms. Marvel (Photo: Disney+), Tatiana Maslany in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law (Photo: Disney+), Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in WandaVision (Photo: Disney+/Marvel Studios), Samuel L. Jackson in Secret Invasion (Photo: Gareth Gatrell/Marvel), Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight (Photo: Marvel Studios), Alaqua Cox in Echo (Photo: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios) Graphic: Jimmy Hasse
Updated 1/12: The MCU shows no signs of getting any smaller, does it? And now that Echois here, it’s time to see where it sits in our ranking, from worst to best, of the whopping 26 Marvel shows that have premiered since 2013. Prepare for some ambitious Netflix fare, sturdy star vehicles, head trips like Legion, and—hang on, Helstrom, we’re getting to you—those not-so-hot titles, too. Dig in and let the non-superpowered fighting commence. – Sam Barsanti Read More
In a new press release from audio electronics company Altec Lansing, it was revealed that GameShark is returning, sort of via an artificial intelligence-powered successor called “AI Shark” You don’t care about that. Instead, the big news out of this press release is that it might have leaked the release date for the Nintendo Switch 2. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
After playing through Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s epilogue I can definitively say I was mostly let down by the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC. Don’t get me wrong, the “Mochi Mayhem” episode is an hour of silly fun alongside some of the best characters to grace the games’ Paldea region, but it is just that—silly, especially when compared to some of the games’ more memorable moments. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Think the first week of January is a slow one for news? Think again. A 13-year-old Tetris phenom has boldly gone where no one has gone before, beating the NES version of the classic puzzler by reaching a “kill screen” on level 157. Steam announced the occasionally baffling results of its annual players’ choice awards, and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall got a free-to-play, fan-made remaster.
Three Things We Learned From The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Demo
Before Starfield, before Skyrim, before Fallout 3 and Oblivion, before your parents even knew how to make you, there was The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. It was, and remains, Bethesda’s biggest-ever game, and now a fan-made rebuilding of the entire vast world in Unity has reached its 1.0 release. Oh, and it’s entirely free, and won’t be destroyed by lawyers! This new Daggerfall is an almighty achievement, and exactly the excuse you needed to return to Tamriel. – John Walker Read More
The results of 2023’s Steam Awards are in. Each year, Steam turns to the community to vote on the year’s best games across a wide variety of categories. This year saw Larian Studios’ RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 grab game of the year, while Lethal Company, a first-person cooperative horror game,got the “Better With Friends Award” for its co-op gameplay. The Last of Us Part I snagged Best Soundtrack, which seems odd because it came out in 2013, but it technically wasn’t added to Steam until 2023. – Claire Jackson Read More
Just two months after the third-person action-horror game Stray Souls came out, developer Jukai Studio abruptly shuttered its doors, citing myriad issues including poor game sales and multiple cyberattacks from an unknown perpetrator.The developer took to X/Twitter on December 22 to announce the sudden closure. Part of the problem, Jukai Studio said, was Stray Souls’ abysmal reception and sales, which made the team “completely unable to sustain the company.” – Levi Winslow Read More
Classic puzzle game Tetris has been around for over three decades, and in that time, plenty of people have reached its various endings, usually by clearing four rows of bricks at once like a digital demolitioner. That’s a challenge in and of itself, but now, someone has taken the concept of “beating Tetris” to the extreme by playing the NES game so hard it straight-up crashed, a phenomenon also known as the “kill screen.” – Levi Winslow Read More
Forever-in-development space sim Star Citizenmight not be finished after over a decade of dev work and announcements, but it does already contain a lot of expensive ships you can buy and fly around in. And if you want all of those ships in one big DLC pack, Star Citizen has an option for you. Just be prepared to spend over $48,000. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Here’s something unironically wonderful. Via a post by Larian Studios writer Rachel Quirke, we’ve just learned of a deeply moving tribute to a player’s father that appears in the studios’ award-winning RPG Baldur’s Gate 3. In October 2020, a member of the Larian forums posted to thank the developer for releasing the first act of the game in Early Access, because it allowed them to enjoy one last adventure with their father, who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. – John Walker Read More
Screenshot: Ubisoft Massive Entertainment / Kotaku
Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure game that follows scoundrel Kay Vess between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, previously had no release date beyond a very broad “2024” window. Today, however, a Disney Parks blog post quietly announced that it would launch in “late 2024.” This didn’t last long, as Ubisoft promptly swooped in to correct the record and re-assert the general 2024 timeframe. – Levi Winslow Read More
City of Heroes was a beloved MMORPG that launched in April 2004 and lasted just over eight years. In that time it won a dedicated community of players who, even after the game died, kept playing the MMO via private servers that existed in a weird legal gray area. But now, the developers behind City of Heroes have given one private server the official thumbs-up to keep on keeping on. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Pokémon’s profit margins probably don’t reflect it, but the franchise had a rough year in 2023. Without a new mainline role-playing game to dominate the series’ headlines, Pikachu and friends were, instead, shrouded in controversies throughout the past 12 months. Between Pokémon Go angering swaths of its community, scalpers making a public embarrassment of the franchise to people who don’t even pay attention to it, and Scarlet and Violet’s DLC underlining the problems ingrained within the Pokémon pipeline, the screws are coming loose on the hype train. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
The design of the video game controller as we’ve known it has largely remained the same for the last 20 years: a d-pad, two analog sticks, four face buttons, and four shoulder buttons. It persists from the first PlayStation’s DualShock, all the way through to the modern PS5’s DualSense, as well as various Xbox and Nintendo controllers. – Claire Jackson Read More
Photo: Valve / Kotaku / Roman Samborskyi (Shutterstock)
A Steam user on Christmas Eve had a question: How do you earn just one measly little Steam Point? They were at 68,999 points and wanted to hit 69,000 because, you know, it’s a nice number and all that. However, because of how Steam Points are earned, there seemed no simple way to get that one measly point. But then a Christmas miracle happened. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
2023 is almost over, folks. I’d say, “We made it,” but who am I kidding? 2024 will begin, and all the same shit that made 2023 a non-stop hellscape will continue in perpetuity. But 2023 did have a lot of cool games, and every December, we gather to talk about our favorites. We’re doing it here at Kotaku, as well. You might’ve seen some of our personal Game of the Year lists go up on the site already (like mine and senior editor Alyssa Mercante’s). We’ll be posting our site-wide Very Official top 12 list soon, but in the meantime, we wanted to ask you lovely folks: What was your favorite game you played in 2023? – Kenneth Shepard Read More
On the heels of The Game Awards, this week saw the launch of two expansions for fan-fave games: God of War Ragnarok and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. We also took a meaty deep dive into Analogue’s latest and greatest new retro console and did a year-three rundown on the state of the PS5.
What’s Coming Out Beyond Pokémon: The Indigo Disk | The Week In Games
From the latest and greatest to cult gems and retro classics, these are the games and consoles we’re loving—and loathing—this week.
Valhalla takes place after the events of Ragnarök, as Kratos seeks out the titular hall of heroes due to a mysterious invitation. Once inside, he finds himself faced with combat arenas built from his memories that repeat as he ascends through Valhalla. Old vistas and enemies are a decent enough framing device, and an effective way to unpack Kratos’ nearly 20 years of baggage. While the 2018 reboot used shame and fatherhood to interrogate the pornographic violence and carnage of the series’ past, Valhalla actualizes that idea without having to be tied to his relationship with his son Atreus. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Image: Daedalic Entertainment / Flux Games / IguanaBee / Natalie Schorr / Starbreeze Studios / Supasart Meekumrai / Kotaku (Shutterstock)
We made it. After a tumultuous 11 months of really high highs (the games) and really low lows (the layoffs), we’re finally rounding out the last month of 2023. Good riddance. And to really underscore that goodbye, we here at Kotaku thought it’d be fitting to take a look back at what felt like the longest year yet to compile some of the most buggy, broken, and busted games to drop in 2023. – Levi Winslow Read More
Today the company’s launching another retro console recreation, the Analogue Duo. And this time, it’s something of a deeper cut.
Just…god, there’s so much random info you gotta know to understand this thing’s deal. So before we get into it, here’s a tl;dr: Analogue Duo is a very solid PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16 replacement that looks pretty good on modern displays and controls pretty well, too. It’s also not for everyone. It may not even be for me. – Alexandra Hall Read More
The Indigo Disk picks up with new characters Kieran and Carmine returning to their Unova-based school, Blueberry Academy. The school invites you to be an exchange student, and Blueberry Academy is a Pokémon trainer’s dream facility, as it’s built around a terarium that emulates four different biomes. Students capture and study Pokémon in habitats analogous to their natural homes. It’s a decent enough framing for a reasonably sized open-world environment, while also bringing some familiar Pokémon back into the fray. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
A slick new VR headset, a “slim” console refresh, tons of flashy new accessories, and multiple exclusives, including the fastest selling PlayStation game ever, Spider-Man 2. The PlayStation 5 made big moves in 2023. So why does it feel like the console spent most of it resting on its laurels while flailing for a new direction? – Ethan Gach Read More
Starfield is officially out in Early Access for those who got one of several special editions of Bethesda’s long-awaited sci-fi RPG. Though everyone else will have to wait until September 6, several Kotaku staffers decided to shell out for the Early Access editions and spent the first night of launch zipping around space, hoarding junk in their ships, and blowing up pirates. Here’s what we had to say about our first few hours with Starfield.
This Narrative Adventure About Doomed Teenage Dinosaurs Feels Too Real
Ethan Gach: Starfield has to be the weirdest big new game experience I’ve had this year. I played five hours straight. I would have kept going but a space cowboy’s gotta sleep. At the same time there were so many things that underwhelmed or confused me. How far did everyone get and what was your most memorable moment?
Alyssa Mercante: I am currently trying to track down the VC guy with Sarah. I’m still a bumbling idiot in menus, still struggle to quickly determine how much ammo I have in my weapon, which ammo is for what, how to see the map of an interior space (can you?), and other stuff that’s almost all a mix of weird UI and my impatience.
It’s got the exact kind of grippiness in terms of gameplay loop that I’d expect from Bethesda—I don’t really care about any of this shit yet but I’m sort of lazily plodding on, and mostly enjoying it most of the time.
Levi Winslow: I’m maybe four hours in? I got to New Atlantis, met Sarah and the Constellation gang, then dipped off to Mars and Venus to hunt for Moara. I’m finding some of the systems quite cumbersome and unintuitive. Like, why do I have to bring up the weapon menu to select a different gun or whatever? It’s weird that in other Bethesda games, you can quick-swap between weapons on the fly, but you can’t in Starfield? Unless I missed something, which is totally possible. The game gives you so many tutorials for its menus and systems that a quick-swap could’ve been buried. Still, though, I’m having a blast living life as a space cowgirl. Currently, I’m on the hunt for some legendary ship.
Carolyn Petit: I admit, I only got as far as the door of Constellation’s base before calling it a night, and perhaps it’ll grow on me, but it just felt very dated to me, very much like Bethesda holding on to Bethesda design concepts that, in my opinion, it really doesn’t need to hold onto anymore. For instance, when I arrived in New Atlantis, I immediately walk past this group of people who are just dispensing exposition at each other in the clumsiest way. One character says something really disparaging and messed-up about a certain group of people, and someone else calmly replies, “That’s unfair,” before proceeding to rattle off an entire story about a positive experience he had with them, all while everyone else in the group just looks on. People just don’t talk or interact this way in my opinion, and I felt less like I was in a bustling new city and more like I was in line for a ride at Disneyland where animatronic figures are stiffly filling me in on the ride’s lore.
EG: Yea I didn’t immediately find a way to hot-swap weapons either. Between that and constantly being overloaded with enemy loot and no easy place to go to sell it all, I spent probably a third of my entire session last night just scrolling back and forth over a bunch of weapons (including to see which ones I actually still had ammo for).
My most memorable moment was talking down the initial pirates you run into outside of that first moon and then blowing them up with the literal red barrel behind them. 2010 is soooo back. I do agree Carolyn it feels very stagey in a dated sort of way. The game is constantly reminding you it’s a game, in a way I didn’t get from say, Cyberpunk 2077. It reminds me so much of The Outer Worlds in many ways, which was a much more satirical take on the whole genre.
LW: Just adding to your point about blowing up the first space pirates…
Levi shares a Reddit post showing how one person blew up the barrel behind the pirates before the cutscene could even begin.
CP: I also didn’t love that the game forces you to go do this combat mission so early on, before you even meet Constellation and really get introduced to the game’s core concept. To me, it felt a bit like Bethesda lacking faith in its own concept of this wide-open spacefaring game, as if it felt the need to reassure gamers: Don’t worry, this is still a video game-ass video game in which you get to gun down lots of dudes.
LW: I agree. I barely even listened to those dudes. Knowing what I was getting into, I skipped their dialogue and shot them up. Really, I just wanted some quick loot to sell for even quicker cash, which leads me to one of my biggest gripes with this game: There’s so much shit to collect. I know that’s very Bethesda but wow, the sheer amount of stuff to pick up and pore over in this game is staggering.
CP: That’s one Bethesda-ism I have no problem with. I find it comical and enjoyable. In that research base where you fight the pirates, I saw a little zen garden on someone’s desktop and immediately grabbed it for my own. It’ll be one of the millions of stolen items eventually decorating my ship or my space-house or whatever.
EG: Has anyone tried to do persuasion?
LW: Yeah I tried it on the dude at the bar when looking for Moara. (Jack, I think his name was. Maybe John?) I failed it, but then got Sarah to convince him to lower the price of his info, which worked.
CP: I tried to get out of killing the initial pirate boss with persuasion. I failed, and didn’t fully grasp how it worked. There was a pop-up that said something like “you can’t fail if your previous choice succeeded.” Huh? Anyway, I’m sure I’ll make sense of it in time but it was a little befuddling at first.
AM: I used one of my first skill points for speech, and tried persuasion with the bar guy as well. It worked, but I also did not fully comprehend what I was doing
EG: Yea, there’s a later mission where you are trying to convince a dad alienated from his son to hand over a map and at first it’s like, okay how are we gonna navigate 30 years of emotional baggage and then instead I said something like, you know giving him the map is what so-and-so would have wanted, and bingo. It was so goofy.
Claire Jackson and Zack Zwiezen enter the chat.
Zack Zwiezen: I’ve used persuasion a few times and it’s been helpful. Skipped the pirate boss fight, for example. I’m still learning how it works, but its nice to see Bethesda bringing back some RPG-ish systems like that. Reminds me of the weird Oblivion persuasion minigame! With the weird circle and sliding stuff around. I don’t think I ever got good at that one. This Starfield one seems a bit simpler and I think I mostly get it.
Claire Jackson: Good to know you can skip the pirate boss fight…my attempt at resolving that ended up with me bashing an ax into his face. And I was genuinely trying not to kill anyone. Period!
Maybe it’s just the nature of the game’s opening needing to hold your hand to learn all its complex systems and set you up for the quest, but I was also dismayed that I couldn’t choose to stay on the mining planet. I mean, I touched a weird thing, saw a weird thing, and now some rando is like, “Here take my ship and go talk to this space secret society or whatever, though they won’t have answers for you. Sorry. By the way, you’re a captain now!”
ZZ: It moves pretty fast and I wonder if that was a reaction to how slow Fallout 4‘s intro was and how people didn’t seem to like that.
EG: I was so relieved. No messing around.
ZZ: Agreed. It was nice to just get going. I was worried I’d have to spend four hours in the mine finding a sweet roll for someone.
CJ: I wanted to mess around lol. I wanted to just hang out and mine some stuff. The game wants me to be a hero so badly, and enough games do that for me that I kinda wanted this to unravel itself a bit more slowly.
ZZ: I will say, once you get through with that first big quest and intro stuff, the game truly goes, “Okay, do whatever you want.” At that point you can go be a space miner and never worry about the main story again.
CJ: That’s a relief. So maybe my space gal can be someone who just had one traumatic encounter with space pirates, dropped off some weird who-the-hell-knows-what to these brainiacs, and then just went about her life where she’ll unpack that PTSD-inducing episode after years and years of therapy. That’s all I want. Space therapy.
AM: Within moments of picking up my rock cutter laser I tried to kill someone in the mines, so the intrusive thoughts are already beating my ass.
ZZ: Hot tip: That laser cutter is a very good weapon early on and uses no ammo! It stunlocks people and can even blow up their packs, killing others. Handy! And fun.
EG: Starfield is definitely a resource-extraction fantasy. Mine stuff! Loot stuff! Steal stuff! Use it to do cool things. So far navigating relationships and political factions has really taken a backseat.
ZZ: It was nice to end my time with the first companion, Sarah, and not feel like she wanted to jump my bones. A break from Baldur’s Gate 3, haha. But yeah, it’s clear that certain parts of Starfield got more attention and resources than others.
EG: I found a mysterious map to a pirate hideout or something earlier this morning so that’s cool. The thing keeping me excited to come back at the moment is the fact that it still feels like there are a ton of possibilities lurking out there. Whether that’s actually the case or not, the early game is really good at making you at least feel like you’re barely scratching the surface.
LW: I agree. I’m sure the novelty of Bethesda’s systems will wear thin after a few dozen hours, but the early game has me hooked. Running up to my ship, hopping into the cockpit to blast off into the cosmos, getting into a couple of dogfights with space pirates then looting their ships, landing on a planet to sell my goods before embarking on a bounty—it’s all giving Cowboy Bebop, a fantasy I’ve longed for in video games. It’s not totally there. Some mechanics are still quite unwieldy, but Starfield is letting me live out that bounty hunter lifestyle, and I simply can’t get enough of that right now.
AM: I did get a similar feeling to one I saw Ethan mention on Twitter (X, whatever) before—I woke up excited to play this. For all the jank, for all the confusing menus, there’s enough good stuff here that I am willing to spend more time exploring, lurking, looting, and what have you. How long will this last me? I’m not sure yet. But for now, I’m not all that angry that I’m going into this long weekend with a cold—now I can just sit inside and play Starfield.
So the first game where I explored the option of romancing the same sex was Fallout 2, you can get married and explore the wasteland with your beau. She’s not all that useful, to be honest, and has never been the companion I’ve picked on replays. Yet at the time, as an impressionable teenager, it was mind-blowing, right? To be honest, though, I didn’t make a ton of it at the time. It was more, oh, this seems like some good mischief, let’s see where it takes me, let’s see how long I can keep her alive, even. It wasn’t charged.
It wasn’t until Dragon Age, which I played as an adult, that the romance choices in games started signifying something different to me. Morrigan, the mysterious witch who joins your party early on, almost feels like a fake romance choice. She’s designed to grab your attention, there’s a recent (unfortunate) quote by one of the DA writers that really lays bare how much she’s meant to be the sex appeal option. There’s one in every game, really, Mass Effect had Miranda. But the way Morrigan is written, the coyness at her center, made me feel like I was getting away with something. Playing as a man probably contributed to that feeling, because IRL what I was doing was gay as hell but in the game, it was extremely straight. I’m sure it helped that the game forces you to choose between love interests, if you’re leading them both on, something that only enhances the drama.
Mostly I appreciated that Morrigan is written in a way that makes it obvious she knows you’re looking, as it turns out, by the end you find out she was making sure of it the entire time. When the betrayal comes, it was weirdly satisfying: yes, I didn’t get what I wanted, but Morrigan having it her way was true to her character. And what’s gayer than yearning and tragedy, really? — Patricia Hernandez, editor-in-chief
Diablo IV is still a couple of months away, but Blizzard is already stomping down some of the game’s most popular classes ahead of its June 6 release date. The studio posted a new blog on its website reflecting on the game’s recent beta, and shared what’s basically a full set of patch notes it will implement ahead of Diablo IV’s launch. While there aren’t a lot of hard numbers to go off of, you can at least get a sense of where some of the game’s character classes will be by the time fans get to play them again.
8 Minutes Of Diablo IV’s Character Creator
What is Blizzard doing to my precious baby angel Necromancer?
At the end of March, Blizzard said Necromancers and Sorcerers were the most popular classes among beta players. This was especially significant for Necromancer, as the class was only available during one of the game’s two test periods, while the Sorcerer was available for both. Kotaku’s own Levi Winslow used Necromancer most, and said the class was “truly busted” thanks to its ability to revive dead skeletons to fight alongside them. While Blizzard’s new blog says these dead minions will die more often, there are no specific numbers or any mention of a smaller skeletal headcount being forced upon players. The developer notes the dead’s increased vulnerability will make raising them “a more active component” in playing the Necromancer, rather than something you can just set and forget.
The Sorcerer’s debuffs seem less all-encompassing, with Chain Lightning dealing less damage and specifically reduced effectiveness against boss characters. But beyond that, the class is getting some buffs with abilities like Charged Bolt and an increased Lucky Hit chance for Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
While players will be getting some changes in the final game, some enemies will, as well. The Butcher, an enemy who gave some players a tough time during the beta, may be getting some kind of rework before the game launches. The blog states that the team has “re-evaluated” the enemy for difficulty, and it will “present a greater challenge in World Tiers III and IV.” So it sounds like it might become easier on lower difficulties, but even harder on higher ones.
What’s happening in the Diablo IV pre-release patch notes?
Beyond balance changes, Blizzard is also tweaking Diablo IV’s dungeon layouts to avoid backtracking, which it says was a common complaint during the betas. Here is the full list of patch notes for those curious:
Dungeon Layouts
One of the most common pieces of feedback Blizzard received is that players felt they were doing a lot of backtracking within certain dungeons. The team has optimized multiple dungeons across all zones to minimize the need for backtracking. Here is a list of dungeons specifically in the Fractured Peaks zone which received layout updates:
Caldera Gate
Defiled Catacombs
Derelict Lodge
Forbidden City
Hoarfrost Demise
Immortal Emanation
Kor Dragan Barracks
Maulwood
Rimescar Caverns
Developer’s Note: Our primary goal with the Layout changes was to reduce certain kinds of backtracking which detract from a player’s experience. An example of this change is that players previously needed to enter side rooms to interact with Structure Objectives, causing them to retread the same path. Now, many of our Structure Objectives have been repositioned along main dungeon pathways, making them easier for players to reach and allowing them to readily explore the dungeon after defeating the Structure.
Dungeon Events
The chance for an Event to spawn inside of a dungeon has increased from 10% to 60%.
Dungeon Gameplay
To reduce the need to backtrack, small numbers of straggling monsters will seek out the player to help complete the Kill All Monsters objective.
When Animus is gathered, the player and nearby allies will:
Gain 10 Resource.
Reduce all active Cooldowns by 1 second.
Depositing Animus channel time was reduced from 3 to 0 seconds.
The time to Rescue was reduced from 3 to 1.5 seconds.
All Rescue objectives now drop a Health Potion upon completion.
While carrying the Ancient’s Statue, Bloodstone, Mechanical Box, or Stone Carving, you will receive a Momentum bonus granting a 25% move speed increase to you and nearby allies.
Pedestals have had their channel time reduced from 2 to 0 seconds.
Returning a Portable Object to its Pedestal now fully restores Health, Resource, Potions, and resets cooldowns for all nearby players.
All doors will now generate a minimap ping when they are opened.
All Structure Objectives in dungeons now have additional combat mechanics players must overcome.
Developer’s Note: While our dungeons offer a variety of Objectives to complete, player feedback stated that the action of completing each Objective felt tedious. We hope that providing bonuses, such as the increase to mobility while carrying certain Objective items, will streamline and vary the experience of completing Objectives. This adjustment is merely a starting point, and we intend to extend this philosophy to keys in a future update.
General
Effects like Stun and Freeze can be applied to Elite Monsters twice as long before they become Unstoppable.
Reviewed class skills to confirm that all classes have access to sufficient skills that remove control impairing effects.
Many Legendary Powers have had updates to their effectiveness.
Barbarian
A flat 10% passive damage reduction has been added for the Barbarian Class. Some Skill Tree passives had their damage reduction effects reduced to compensate.
The Whirlwind Skill now deals more damage and consumes more Fury.
The Double Swing Skill Enhancement refunds its full Fury cost when used on Stunned or Knocked Down enemies.
Druid
Companion Skills will now deal heavily increased damage.
All Ultimate Skills have had their cooldowns reduced.
Usability improvements have been made to Maul and Pulverize.
Using a non-Shapeshifting Skill will transform a Druid back into their human form.
Necromancer
Summoned Minions will die more often, requiring players to utilize Corpses more often.
Many bonuses in the Book of the Dead have had their stats increased.
The damage dealt by the Corpse Explosion skill has been reduced.
The brightness of the Skeletal Warriors and Mages has been reduced.
Rogue
Upgrades for Subterfuge Skills have had their bonuses increased.
Multiple passive Skills have had their bonuses increased.
All Imbuement Skills have had their cooldowns increased.
Sorcerer
Charged Bolt’s damage was increased and the Mana cost to cast has decreased.
Decreased the damage of Chain Lightning and reduced its effectiveness against Bosses.
Decreased the cooldown for the Incinerate Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Firewalls will now spawn underneath enemies more frequently when using its Enchantment bonus.
Increased the Lucky Hit chance for the Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Developer’s Note: Whenever we introduce changes to our Classes, it is with the goal of making both them and their Skills feel impactful and powerful—your feedback has helped us uphold this ideal. Some players have adeptly noticed that certain Skills were too powerful. One of our goals for Skills is to have them be interesting to wield and interactive in terms of itemization and combat feel. We’ve made some changes to help in this regard, with one example being the Necromancer’s Minions. We’ve made a change that makes them more vulnerable in combat, which will make raising the dead a more active component of the Necromancer’s gameplay. Launch is just the first step of our Class balance journey, and you can expect further updates that iterate on this pillar of Diablo IV.
UI
Fixed an issue where the built-in Screen Reader was not reading key prompts, game options details, and other UI text.
Fixed an issue where actions could not be bound to the mouse wheel.
Fixed an issue where Evade couldn’t be bound to the right Analog Stick on controller.
Chat will now display on the left side of the screen when using the centered action bar configuration.
A character’s stats will be displayed by default when players click the Materials & Stats button within their Inventory.
The Move and Interact inputs can now be mapped to one button while the Primary Attack input is mapped to a secondary button.
The sans serif font used in-game has been replaced with a new serif font.
Encounters
Fixed multiple issues that allowed bosses, like the Butcher, to become unresponsive.
The Butcher has been re-evaluated for difficulty and will present a greater challenge in World Tiers III and IV.
Bosses such as T’chort, Malnok, Vhenard, and others were reevaluated for melee character difficulty, resulting in changes to attacks and fight mechanics.
Fixed an issue where Vampire Brutes using the Shadow Enchant affix would chain-cast Impale.
Cellars
Increased the chance for a dungeon Event to occur in Cellars.
Cellars will now consistently reward a chest upon completion.
Fixed an issue where Cellars would prematurely be marked as complete.
Fixed an issue where the guaranteed elite monster would be absent from a Cellar.
General quality of life
Fixed an issue where players could increase attack speed by move-cancelling attacks early.
Fixed an issue where characters weren’t immune and untargetable after loading into an area.
The Reset Dungeon button has been disabled.
Fixed an issue that caused Gale Valley and Serac Rapture to have less monsters than intended until the campaign quests in those territories were completed.
