Diablo Immortal gets numerous changes ahead of 2022 launch: Here's all you need to know

Diablo Immortal is Blizzard's upcoming smartphone entry in the acclaimed isometric action-RPG series. The free-to-play title will also be collaborated on by NetEase and had a closed beta period from October to January.

The developers continue to tweak the experience based on player feedback from the beta and have outlined it in-depth in an official blog post. Here's the rundown.

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Diablo Immortal aims to retain core soul of franchise

Key changes will be brought to the social, balance, and design aspects of the game. This is an MMO after all, or at least that's what the team is marketing it as.

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Social play

Bounties will be reworked to allow for solo play. These were repeatable, bite-sized missions, allowing bonus rewards for every four that are turned in. However, this also leaves solo players in an awkward situation as it requires them to team up with randoms to just do these quests. Hopefully, this change allows lone wolves to keep up the pace.

Blizzard also introduced the Hellquary during the Diablo Immortal closed beta. These are 8-player raids featuring massive bosses. Gamers seem to have complained about the difficulty of the raid bosses.

Lassal and Vitaath, in particular, were deemed too hard to beat, so the team will be adding pickable difficulty levels for these raids. Grouping, matchmaking, and raid management tools will also be improved.

Warbands are the game's term for consistent teams, and these will be expanded to allow 8 player groups. It also seems like Warbands will have "lucrative" bonuses for participating in missions and raids.

Cycle of Strife is Diablo Immortal's PvP endgame mode. It features a season-long tug of war between factions: Immortals and Shadows. The latter aims to overthrow the Immortals and inherit the title themselves, while the former fight for their position.

The team originally had a Dark House setup for Shadows to climb up in ranks among its own faction, but now players can have their Clans become Dark Clans. It's a more refined process that lets them stick closer in the battle to climb the ranks.

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Player experience

Diablo Immortal is a F2P game, so there are no surprises that it has a battle-pass feature. It apparently had a positive reception from gamers but what they aren't happy about is the Boon of Plenty. This is essentially a "boosters" system that grants benefits right away as long as it's active, like Rare Chests or increased stash storage.

It also costs real money like the battlepass, but given the meager rewards, fans have expressed displeasure. Thereby, Blizzard will look into solutions to make it better.

Additionally, the Legendary Gems have also been frowned upon. These items offer buffs to a single character, meaning gamers with multiple characters will be set back — another item on the checklist for the studio to address.

Diablo Immortal is also getting controller support at launch. They will be implementing features to seamlessly switch between controller and touchscreen at any time, as well as have the game detect a controller connection on boot. Blizzard seems keen to make console/PC players feel at home after the title was relentlessly mocked during the initial announcement.

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Changes to design

The Set Items will be overhauled. Essentially, Diablo Immortal features gear that constitutes a set. Combining varying pieces of gear from the same set grants additional gameplay bonuses.

However, certain gear was often received at a much lower level than the other pieces, so the system will be rebalanced for the future. Further care will be taken to ensure that certain Sets complement certain types of builds better.

Lastly, the World Paragon system will be reworked. To cut things short, it closes the gap between users of different levels. This means lower-level gamers can catch up faster to their max-level peers by gaining more experience points.

In turn, Paragon Level players, those who have maxed out their characters and gained access to the Paragon Trees to further enhance their characters, will get reduced experience if their level is more than 4 World Paragon Levels.

Diablo Immortal launches sometime this year for Android and iOS. The franchise is also set to get a new entry, Diablo 4, in the future for PC and consoles.