Great forces gather beyond the gates of Hell, wanderer. Do you dare to cull their threat?
The second Public Test Realm (PTR) for Diablo IV is coming soon, offering you the chance to test upcoming changes and features for Season 5. PTR will be available from June 25 to July 2 for players with a PC Battle.net account.
The purpose of the PTR is to test updates and features before the launch of Season 5. Then we’ll make adjustments to Season 5 using your feedback before it goes live for everyone. The feedback we receive helps us to fine-tune balance changes, eliminate bugs, and create the best experience possible. Having a PTR gives us a chance to test new systems, and we’re grateful for your time spent playing.
Your experience in Sanctuary is about to burn even hotter: here’s an overview of what you need to know.
Codex
New Season 5 Eternal Quest: The Eyes of the Enemy
Slay the Infernal Hordes
Battle Fell Priests
New Weapons and Items
Quality-of-Life Updates to Endgame Bosses and more
Future Accessibility Items
Features Offered for Testing
How to Provide Feedback
How to Install the PTR
New Eternal Questline: The Eyes of the Enemy
Season 5 features a new story where enemies are cut-down, alliances shift, and unlikely friends emerge from the shadows. The PTR features a new Questline that takes place after the events of the Main Questline and is available on both Seasonal and Eternal Realms, and will remain on the Eternal realm once Season 5 has concluded.
Head to Hawezar in World Tier III and investigate a disturbance amongst the cityfolk there. Completing this Questline will allow you to battle the Infernal Hordes, the new gameplay activity coming with Season 5. Note that you only have to complete this Quest once across your Account.
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Slay the Infernal Hordes
Helltides were only the beginning of the horrors lying in wait. Confront seemingly endless waves of Hell’s Legions in the Realm of Hatred, as the Infernal Hordes grow more powerful with each passing day.
- The Infernal Hordes is an activity where you slay hordes while earning Burning Aether to unlock powerful weapons and rewards. Successfully slay the Hordes and you’ll be able to fight the powerful Fell Council.
- Enter the Realm of Hatred by using an Infernal Compass
- Hell Compasses can be found by defeating Endgame Bosses, Helltides, Nightmare Dungeons, and Whispers.
- A Hell Compass will be granted to you upon completing the newest Eternal quest.
Infernal Hordes
- Infernal Hordes has time-limited waves, lasting 90 seconds each.
- Collect Burning Aether during a wave to spend at the end of a successful Infernal run.
- At the end of the 90 seconds, kill the remaining enemies and decide between three Infernal Offers. Once selected, the next wave will begin.
- Successfully slay all waves in the Tier you are attempting to advance to the Well of Hatred then battle the Fell Council. Upon defeating the Fell Council, spend your Burning Aether on Spoils of Hell.
Infernal Offer
Upon defeating each wave, Hell will tempt you with an Infernal Offer.
- The Infernal Offer gives you a choice of three different Boons & Banes that modify your run. Select one!
- Ex: Elite damage increased, Elites grant increased Burning Aether
- Choose wisely—Infernal Offers will stack across the duration of your Infernal Hordes run. Many can be active at the same time!
- Infernal Offers are your chance to increase the difficulty in order to earn more Burning Aether, or select a more modest Infernal Offer if the intensity is too great.
Burning Aether
- Earn Burning Aether by slaying Aether Fiends and Aether Lords, or by destroying Soulspires and Aetheric Masses.
- Burning Aether is earned individually, regardless of playing solo or in a group. This lets you decide how to spend it at the end of your run.
Spoils of Hell
- On a successful run, you’ll use Burning Aether to unlock Spoils of Hell. There will be four different Spoils of Hell available on completing your Infernal Hordes run.
- Spoils of Equipment
- Spoils of Materials
- Spoils of Gold
- Spoils of Greater Equipment
- This Spoil of Hell guarantees an item with a Greater Affix!
Infernal Compass
- There are 8 Tiers of Infernal Compasses, which scale in difficulty and World Tier.
- Each Infernal Compass Tier increases the number of waves starting at five for Tiers I-III, increasing until a maximum of 10 waves with a Tier VIII Infernal Compass. It also increases the starting difficulty of Monsters, and increases the potency of your rewards while decreasing your number of revives.
- Abyssal Scrolls can be earned and used to upgrade your Infernal Compass by upgrading their Tier. Infernal Compasses will only drop at Tiers I-III; Abyssal Scrolls will be needed to increase their level to a Max of Tier VIII.
Infernal Compasses can be used at the following levels and World Tiers:
- Tier I
- Available at World Tier III
- Tier II
- Available at World Tier IV
- Includes Bonus Affixes which increase crafting materials, and Legendary and Unique Drop rates!
- Tier III
- Available at Level 100
- Includes Bonus Affixes
- Includes Spoil of Greater Equipment
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Battle Fell Priests
- If you manage to survive the Infernal Hordes, the Fell Council await. Originally meant to protect us from the Prime Evil Mephisto during the events in Diablo II, these noble priests were corrupted and became Champions of the very demon they swore to oppose.
- There are 5 Fell Council Members in total, each equipped with different unique abilities. Every time you face the Fell Council, there will be 3 different members to fight you – each three will be selected to fight you at random. Be wary of their unique abilities in the various combinations you’ll encounter them.
- Once you inflict enough damage on the Fell Council, the Priests will become more frenzied in their attacks. Stay on your guard if you wish to live.
- Upon defeating the Fell Council, you can spend your Burning Aether on the Spoils of Hell.
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New Weapons and Items
The forges in the Burning Hells burn the fiercest, leading to incredible possibilities for the weapons they produce.
- Season 5 introduces new Legendaries, Uniques, and items.
- These new Legendaries and Uniques can be earned by slaying enemies across Sanctuary, but have the best chance of appearing when playing the Infernal Hordes.
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Quality-of-Life Updates to Endgame Bosses and more
We are making some overall quality-of-life improvements to the way endgame boss fights are accessed.
Endgame Bosses
- You no longer need to reset the dungeon to replay the same boss. Upon killing them, the summoning Altar reappears and allows you to use more resources to play them again.
- Summoning Varshan now only requires Malignant Hearts. Trembling Hands, Blackened Femurs, and Gurgling Heads have been removed from the game.
- Endgame Bosses now drop additional gold instead of Rare items.
Beast in Ice
- The Beast in Ice boss fight now functions as a standard dungeon; you no longer have to craft a sigil to enter the fight.
- Any leftover Beast in Ice sigils held by previous Seasonal Realm or Eternal characters can be used to summon Beast in Ice instead of using Summoning Materials.
- The boss fight is now much closer to the entrance, so you’ll no longer need to progress through the Dungeon before the fight.
- Sigil Dust has been removed as a material cost to summon.
Helltide and Whispers
- We’ve significantly reduced the time it takes to complete Whisper bounties. We’ve now made it so that there are always enough Whispers to earn 10 Grim Favors within a given Helltide, should now take significantly less time to complete. Additionally, icons have been updated to be consistent with other Whispers.
- Increasing your Threat now consistently scales with the health of slain Monsters.
- We’re adjusting Baneful Heart drop rates as they were dropping too frequently to feel valuable.
- Chance to get one from a Tortured Gift starts at 13%, and increases each time you fail to get one. Once you are rewarded a Baneful Heart, the chance resets to 10%.
- Hellborne and the Helltide Assassin starts at 1% chance to drop a Heart, and also increases each time you fail to get one. It now resets to 2%.
- The Cull Demons Whisper Bounty now includes Fallen, Cull Fallen Whisper Bounty now replaced with Cull Cultists.
Loot Rewards
- Resplendent Spark awards for defeating Tormented bosses can now be earned separately on both Hardcore and non-Hardcore.
- Resplendent Sparks and Scattered Prisms will no longer be automatically picked up. Additionally, these items can now be found in the lost items Stash if forgotten when they drop.
- Unique and Mythic Unique Items can now be acquired through Whisper Caches, the Purveyor of Curiosities, and Tortured Gifts in Helltide.
- The chance to find Mythic Uniques through all non-boss drop locations has been increased.
Treasure Goblins
- The loot Quality from Treasure Goblins has been improved. They can now drop 1-3 Legendary Items and 2-6 Rare Items. The higher the number of Legendary Drops, the lower the number of Rare Drops. The opposite is also true e.g. if 2 Legendary Items drop, then 4 Rares will drop in addition.
- Now drop 1-2 Elixirs and are guaranteed to additionally drop Common Ore, Herbs, Leather, and Gem Fragments.
- Increased the amount of Gold that drops.
- Examples:
- Level 1 in World Tier I: 40k Gold
- Level 100 in World Tier IV: 150k Gold
- In World Tiers III and IV, Treasure Goblins also drop Forgotten Souls.
- Additionally, they now have a 10/20/30% chance to drop 1-2 Scattered Prisms in World Tiers I and II/World Tier III/World Tier IV respectively.
Weapons
- We’re now allowing more classes to use different weapon types. This includes updating innate affixes to be more useful across classes and adjusting their conditional requirements.
- For instance, Sorcerers will now be able to use One-handed Swords and Maces.
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Future Accessibility Items
In the Season 5 PTR, we have three large quality-of-life and accessibility features we’re looking for feedback on. These features are designed to allow players to easily navigate the world and find the destinations of their quests. They are work-in-progress features, so every piece of feedback helps us make adjustments prior to their official release in a later update.
Auto-Pin
This is a new feature that automatically drops a map pin on the destination of your selected quest or task from your in-game Journal . When a pin is dropped, your mini-map shows a route to follow to get to the chosen destination. This becomes the default when selecting quests, and further enables additional navigation features.
Audio Navigation Assistance
With this feature enabled, the player receives spatial audio pings that direct the player towards their placed pin on the overworld map. This feature, in conjunction with auto-pin navigation, allows players to navigate through quest content while having their destination tracked through audio navigation. For best results we recommend using headphones for the immersive sound. Players can adjust both the volume and the interval of the ping to find a level that meets their needs.
Compass
The compass feature enables an on-screen HUD element that circles around the player and points towards their placed in-world pin. In combination with auto-pin, this provides consistent guidance to the player. Players can change the color of the arrow to match their particular needs and ensure it is clearly visible while slaughtering the denizens of hell.
These features can be enabled by using your Accessibility Menu with the in-game Settings.
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Features Offered For Testing
We will have servers for PTR in our largest regions: North America, Europe, Korea and Japan, South America, and Australia. Characters on your account have been copied ahead of time to help prepare for the PTR, although some of their items may be out of date compared to how they are currently set up in-game. Once you log-in through Battle.net, your account will carry over the following account-based progress:
- Campaign Completion
- Mounts and Skill Points
- Fog of War
- Altar of Lilith Stat bonuses
As so many of the changes apply to the endgame, the following features will be offered:
- Instantly boost your character to Level 100.
- Upon entering the PTR and arriving at Zarbinzet, there will be an NPC named ‘PTR boost’. They will only have one dialogue option, which is ‘Boost me to level 100.’
- Upon boosting, you will receive:
- All New Legendaries
- 1 new Unique for each Class
- 100 million gold
- 1,000 Obols
- Two random sets of Ancestral gear at item power 920
- Upgraded Potions
- Fully unlocked Paragon Glyphs
- Up to 10 Tempering Manuals (class specific)
- Base amount of all consumable materials
- Does not include materials for resources specifically earned for Masterworking, Scattered Prisms and Resplendent Sparks.
- Materials to enter the Pit and Nightmare Dungeons are granted.
- Completed Class system mechanics (eg: enchantments for Sorceress, etc).
- Note: This boost can be repeated with new characters on the PTR, and you can trade between characters as needed.
- Fog of War will be completely cleared.
Please note: some things will be missing intentionally so we can test the flows we want to watch.
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How to Provide Feedback
Your feedback on the changes you will see and experience in the PTR is important to us, and is vital in ensuring that Season 5 is the best it can be when it goes live in Diablo IV proper. If you participate in the PTR, please let us know what you think!
You can provide feedback through the in-game feedback tool or the Diablo IV PTR forums. Pressing the ‘Esc’ key while in the in-game menu will bring up the ‘Report a Bug’ menu. You can select the dropdown filter and select the ‘In-game feedback tool’ to provide feedback without leaving the game.
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How to Install the PTR
Here are the steps to join the PTR:
- Open the Blizzard Battle.net App and select Diablo IV from your Games list.
- In the selector above the Play button, there is a game version drop down menu.
- Select the option 'Public Test Realm'
- Click Install to Install the PTR client. This becomes a Play button when ready.
- Click Play to log in to the PTR, and select any of the available Test Servers.
- Create a new test character
- Note: Create a Seasonal Mechanic for any testing related to the Seasonal themes
- Enter the game and test Season 5!
If you’re a PC Game Pass or Game Pass Ultimate user, you’ll be able to access the PTR through the same flow as other Battle Net users. Access the Battle Net client through the Xbox App, then continue to access the PTR through Battle Net.
