Blizzard has released its next Diablo 4 patch notes, which solve a range of gripes blocking quest progression and incorrectly restricting rewards across the action RPG. The new update also takes aim at a few cheeky tricks with War Plans that could be used to spawn effectively infinite loot goblins at a time, or continuously fight the Amalgam of Rage over and over. It shuts down some other notable exploits along the way, and corrects tooltips in the wake of an earlier fix for Ball Lightning Sorcerers.
The War Plans system has been an excellent and much-needed addition to the Diablo 4 endgame. Whether it’ll stand the test of time across multiple seasons remains to be seen, with Blizzard suggesting it will make the feature more co-op friendly in Season 14, but for now it’s a good start. It wouldn’t be an ARPG without players uncovering ways to break things and escalate numbers to ridiculous levels, however, and that’s exactly what happened with loot goblins.
The trick in question, demonstrated at its most extreme by ‘FP’ on YouTube below, involves using the Gauntlet node on War Plans. This ‘captures’ all enemies that you blast through while under the effect of a shrine, and then respawns them all for a second round the moment it runs out. Combine this with a specific self-replicating brand of loot goblin called the Gelatinous Syrus, which splits into multiple smaller versions of itself, and you can quickly rack up potentially thousands of them at a time.
In fact, it’s so effective that it counteracts its own success: FP mentions that a large amount of the loot that should have dropped actually vanishes among the sheer number of items piling up, and hypothesizes that around 400 goblins is the maximum the game can handle. You won’t actually have to worry about it for much longer, however, because Blizzard has put a stop to it in the new Diablo 4 update, which arrives on Tuesday May 26.
Also on the chopping block is a method (again, using War Plans) to infinitely summon the Amalgam of Rage boss. Other player-favoring exploits that have been snuffed out include the ability to transfigure the same aspect onto an item twice, and equip multiple unique charms at the same time.
Most of the other changes are helpful ones, however. Among them is a correction to the amount of Obols dropped from bags on higher Torment levels, which is currently lower than intended. There’s still no increase to the cap, however, so you’ll have to stay on top of spending them. Replacing the Helltide Blood Maiden with Duriel will now award the Grim Favors that it’s supposed to, and using the Choron War Plans modifiers will no longer prevent the Artificer’s Obelisk from spawning correctly at the end of Pit runs.
A number of quest blockers have been solved, including a missing bridge in the Lord of Hatred story mission ‘Death’ and ways to soft-lock yourself during ‘The Initiate.’ One of the more amusing corrections is the Nahantu side quest ‘Scales of History’ from the Vessel of Hatred DLC. This required an Elixir to complete, but these were removed from Diablo 4 as part of the new expansion’s game-wide progression rework. You’ll now be able to finish it without one.
The remainder of the patch includes fixing a debuff that was persisting beyond death in the Tormented Echo of Duriel fight, ensuring the Barbarian’s Lunging Strike correctly creates Dust Devils as it should, and granting the appropriate amount of Artificer’s Favor progression when tackling lower Tower tiers than the highest reached thus far. It also adds the Core skill tag back to Ball Lightning, although this is just an adjustment to the tooltip – its build-breaking absence was already addressed in a previous hotfix.
Diablo 4 patch 3.0.3 releases on Tuesday May 26. With no balance changes to note here, it seems like Blizzard is pretty satisfied with the current state of classes in Lord of Hatred. The good news is that we won’t be waiting long for our next check-in, as a Sanctuary Sitdown Q&A with the developers has been scheduled for Thursday May 28 at 1pm PT / 4pm ET / 9pm BST / 10pm CEST. It’ll be taking place in the Diablo Discord.
