After Last week’s blog post Announcing a laundry list of updates and changes for Diablo 4 following weekends of open betas, Blizzard today announced the third and final beta weekend in which every change will already be implemented.
Speaking of them LiveSteam today, Diablo 4’s developers say they hope the “Server Slam” will be a consistent release date for the action RPG, putting the team’s servers to the test, starting the weekend of May 12th. Ends at 12pm BST on Friday and 12pm on Sunday. Unfortunately, players who participated in the first two beta weekends will see their characters deleted as promised, and progress made in this final test will not carry over to the final game.
During this final beta weekend, players will reach level 20 instead of 25, designed to be an extra challenge when facing the world boss Ashawa, who will award an exclusive cosmetic mount to anyone who defeats her during the Server Slam. Full game.
But the level cap and new rewards aren’t the only changes in store, as a number of updates including balance changes to character classes and streamlined dungeon layouts will already be present in this initial look.
The most notable of the character class changes is the Necromancer, who has received buffs to his undead minions (who now die more easily) and corpse explosions (who now deal less damage), while other classes, like the Barbarian, have received buffs to bring them more in line with their monster-slaying counterparts. In the case of barbarians, this comes in the form of a 10% reduction in damage they take from all sources, among other favorable changes.
Reworks for dungeons include objectives that are more easily completed without tedious time-wasting backtracking, and a greater presence of special events that sometimes randomly spawn while exploring a dungeon.
Server Slam is open to all players on all platforms, and will feature two-player coach co-op on consoles. If you haven’t started your crusade against the Daughter of Hate yet, you’ll have another chance in a few weeks.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis And read his Game coverage here.
