Following today’s Diablo livestream where Blizzard revealed that Diablo 4 Season 1 “Season of the Malignant” will be out this July 20, a ton more details regarding the game’s first season has been shared as well.

For starters, Blizzard confirmed that the incoming season will introduce new Malignant powers, there’s a new boss as well (though the studio didn’t want to discuss it further), new items and a ton more! Read on for the breakdown of it (thanks to PNDMike).

Note that the Season 1 patch will be out on July 18, though the season itself will kick off on July 20. Blizzard has also confirmed in the stream that a lot of the new stuff being introduced in Season 1 (including changes) will be available on July 18.

Diablo 4 Season 1 New Content and Details:

Season 1:

• Trailer playing. A great eveil is receding, but there’s a new festering curse. Lots of werewolf images.
• Season of the Malignant
• Starts July 20th.
• Takes place after the events of the D4 campaign. New threat emerged – malignance, corruption spreading in beast, demon, human hearts. Changing them into blood thirsty fiends.
• New character Kormand (ph). Ex-preist of the cathedral of light, diving deeper into the new threat. Finding himself out of his depth.
• Will start season in Kyovashad, can start new story right away. Start at level 1 and start following new storyline.
• Trying to add more stuff to seasons to appeal to everything a player does – new story, new challenges, new things to fight, new powers and builds, wants to hit all those notes.
• New mechanic, the threat – the malignant. Any elite monster can spawn as a malignant monster with additional powers, will expose a heart that can be interacted with to start a ritual. New more powerful version spawned. If you can beat the more powerful version, now it drops a caged heart item that can be used like a gem. Can be socketed into gear, “enormous amount of power” on par with a legendary item.
• New builds “stupid powerful, hopefully balanced”
• 32 new malignant powers. Come in categories (Brutal are blue) and can only go in sockets of matching colours. 3 colours of sockets, 4 colors of hearts. Wrathful hearts fit in any socket, rare and powerful. (Showed off two hearts but my youtube stream decided to auto downgrade down to 280p, so I couldn’t read the effects.)
• Super elites buff nearby enemies, want to fight them in higher world tiers to get stronger hearts. Can break down hearts into crafting materials to craft new items like “invokers.” Can use them at specific places (Malignant tunnels) to spawn malignant elites. Specific dungeons with malignants, and can guarantee a specific type of malignant. Targeted farming. Invoker items look like “turkey basters from hell.”
• New boss monster, not talking about it too much.
• New legendary items and powers.
• New unique items.
• New items not season exclusive, will show up in eternal realm too.
• Season patch will be out July 18th so season can launch on 20th. On 18th, all new stuff will be available on eternal realm (Sneak preview.) As well as new balance changes, features, etc.
• Seasonal journey feature. Season journey has 7 chapters, each chapter has a number of objectives to advance to next chapter. (Don’t have to do them all). Collect favor for things like collecting 15 gallowvine, complete any dungeon, complete a cellar, etc. Season journey can let you collect new legendary aspects.
• Don’t need the battlepass to have access to season journey.
• Battlepass has stuff for free players too, can unlock stuff without buying it.
• Special cosmetics, titles, in the season journey.
• Can play through original campaign in season and still unlock stuff during seasonal journey, won’t encounter malignant until you progress seasonal story. Some features only available after you beat the campaign.
• Can skip campaign to with new seasonal characters if you’ve already beaten campaign. They recommend beating the campaign before the season starts.
• Not all seasons will start in Kyovashad.
• New mounts and mounts armor – tier 1 battle pass rewared. New transmogs. Free stuff is “low fantasy” stuff like artisans tunic, epic stuff is premium.
• Some stuff will be class specific.
• Only difference between free and premium battle passes are cosmetics.
• Blessings are in the battle passes (free and premium). Smoldering ashes – if you have a character of a specific level, you can take them and use them to seasonal blessings. Invest ashes to give exp boosts, gold boosts, elixir durations, rare salvage material drop chance, malignant heart drop chance. Invest more ashes to improve boosts. Available to everyone, limited based on level of the player so if you were to use tier skips, can’t unlock stuff until you hit level requirement.
• Yep, pass skips are a thing.
• Emphasizing power that is part of the pass for all players, you don’t have to spend a cent. Premium stuff is transmog only, no items or pay to win.
• Renown and fog of war: When season 1 goes live, players can carry over fog of war they’ve explored, as well as all renown earned. Altars of Lillith carrying over. Will have skill points, extra potions, etc at the very start of the season with your character as long as they are unlocked in the eternal realm. Recommend clearing renown before season starts.
• Will need to log in with an existing character to migrate data – for example if you have one character with all map cleared, and one alt with partial map cleared, log in with your character with most progress to set your progress baseline, and will unlock all that progress across all your characters. Only have to do it once, can do it once the patch drops on the 18th. If you have one character who has done all of Fractured Peaks, and one character who has done all of Scosglen, log in to both characters to transfer their data over (you will unlock both regions’ progress) and you will unlock Scosglen map data and renown on the Fractured Peaks character and vice versa.
• Not the most elegant solution, but they had to implement it quickly based on player feedback. They are “making it work.” Reading lots of feedback. (Could they even be here, right now?!?! Hi devs)
• Season one patch “Super chonkers” (very, very large patch)

Speaking of Season 1’s new baddie, here’s what Blizzard had to say about this new boss and our first look at the new villain we have to take down:

One of the best places to acquire Malignant Hearts are in the new Malignant Tunnels, highly replayable Dungeons teeming with fearsome foes to eradicate. Scour this dank system of tunnels for the catalyst of Malignant Monsters and go toe-to-toe against Varshan the Consumed, the newest Boss battle, if you dare.

In addition to that, there’s also a few stuff about Diablo 4 discussed as well:

Diablo 4

• Lead producer who is specifically focussed on seasons is present. Confirming more than one season coming (lol). Season development was started before game launched.
• More feedback is going to addressed,
• New patch coming this afternoon, patch 1.04. Patch notes coming, not as “chonky” as last patch.
• Doing a gameplay adjustment in regards to helltide chests – will now have the chance to drop uniques. Rod didn’t know they couldn’t lol. Want chests to be useful for people trying to target farm specific uniques.
• Want to move fast but safe – reactive as they can, but in a way that prioritizes stability.
• Season 2 development underway.
• Hears that we want to “lock inventory.” (Mark as favourite / Not junk?)
• End game activity rewards changing – nightmare dungeons, helltides, etc.

Lastly, a fan Q&A was held for Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal. Read on for the Diablo 4 questions that were answered.

• D4: Any updates around respeccing a character? Heard feedback about respeccing costs and user experience. Things that will improve the flow of respeccing, but no date they can commit to. Evaluating gold economy to determine price. New reward in seasons called scroll of amnesias to reset whole character for no gold cost. Everything – all skills, all paragon.
• D4: Will seasonal mechanics be added to eternal realm after season ends? Initially, no. Malignant mechanics not planned to show up in eternal realm. Reserving the right to make mechanics to be permanent part of game if they really improve the game, evaluated on case by case basis. Seasons is designed to have new build possibilities that are only possible in that season to keep players excited and allows new players to start on similar playing field.
• D4 & Immortal: Can you say which cosmetics will be transmitted between characters? For instance in Immortal, in regards to transferring cosmetics, if you buy a cosmetic prior to blood knight will it transfer over? Purchases will not be retroactive, but will transfer over going forward. D4: Will transmogs carry over from eternal to seasonal? All transmogs transfer over with you from eternal to seasonal. If you ever unlock anything your whole account will have access.
• D4: Nightmare teleport was great, but why can’t we teleport into the dungeon instead of the entrance? It was a quick implementation from the team and something they are looking into and optimize in the future.
• D4: Will you be nerfing or buffing in the middle of seasons or only at season start? Want to create structure moments of time that they will talk about more in future streams on when to expect buffs and nerfs. Really want to try and reserve big buffs and nerfs, want to keep that more constrained. Want to have fewer off-cycle balance updates. Pretty stable throughout the course of the season, unless something super gamebreaking or broken emerging.
• D4: Stash space? We hear everybody about this, big plans to improve it. Not a quick fix. Reiterating that gems will be part of materials.
• D4: How much time between seasons? Seasons will last 3 months, minimum of 12 weeks.
• D4: Any plans on new classes for D4? Nothing to announce at this time.
• They are wrapping up here. Blog posts going up live right now / shortly with this information and patch notes and stuff.

There is also a new patch incoming today that will usher in new improvements. Once that’s out, we’ll be sure to let our readers know.

Thanks, PNDMike!