After last week’s blog post announcing a laundry list of updates and tweaks to Diablo 4 following back-to-back weekends of open betas, today Blizzard announced a third and final beta weekend where each and every one of those changes will already be implemented.
Speaking on their livesteam today, Diablo 4’s developers said that the “server slam,” which is meant to put the team’s servers to the test ahead of what they hope will be a steady launch day for the action RPG, will take place on the weekend of May 12th, starting at 12 PM PST on Friday and conclude at 12 PM PST on Sunday. Unfortunately, players who participated in the first two beta weekends will find their characters deleted, as promised, and progress made in this final test will also not carry over to the final game.
During this final beta weekend, players will max out at level 20 instead of 25, designed as an extra challenge for when they confront the world boss, Ashava, who will award all who defeat her during the server slam with an exclusive cosmetic mount in the full game.
But the level cap and new rewards aren’t the only change in store, as a whole host of updates, including balancing tweaks for the character classes and streamlined dungeon layouts will already be present in this early look.
Most notable among the character class changes is the necromancer, who has receieved nerfs to their undead minions (which now die more easily) and corpse explosions (which now do less damage). Other classes, like the barbarian, have received buffs to bring them more in line with their demon-slaying peers. In the barbarian’s case, this comes in the form of a 10% reduction to the damage they receive from all sources, among other favorable tweaks.
Reworks to dungeons will include objectives that are more easily completed without monotonous backtracking that eats up time, and a greater presence of special events that sometimes spawn randomly while exploring a dungeon.
The server slam will be open to all players on all platforms, and will include two-player couch co-op on consoles. If you haven’t begun your crusade against the daughter of hatred yet, you’ll have another chance in a few short weeks.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.
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