Now, in somewhat related news, the unofficial and top Yuzu piracy subreddit ‘r/NewYuzuPiracy’ has been banned. According to PC Gamer, the subreddit – covering Switch game piracy “as well as emulation” – jumped from around 37,000 members on 1st May to more than 70,000 members before it was shutdown earlier this week.
Diablo 4 introduces players to an expansive world comprised of several regions, and a larger story told in several Acts that spans the open world. Whether you blast through the story first, or take your time and delve into optional Dungeons and Side Quests before confronting Lilith and completing the main story, there’s much more waiting for you in the Post Game — but it may not be obvious where all the new features and challenges are hiding.
No matter where or when you begin these new adventures, we have all the important info you’ll need to start the grind towards level 100 and becoming the strongest adventurer in the land. Below you’ll find the most important new features that become available to you after beating the main story:
Tree of Whispers
You’ll encounter the Tree of Whispers during your time in Diablo 4’s main story, but it still has a part to play after the campaign, becoming a recurring font of increased experience gain and loot that you can take part in again and again.
After the story, the Tree of Whispers will issue a variety of bounties, ranging from everything from Dungeons to World Bosses and more. Completing them will earn you Grim Favors, and once you’ve accumulated ten, you can return to the tree to choose from one of several rewards that can be very worthwhile. Just remember, these bounties are timed, so don’t one half finished! You can view even more tips and info in our Tree of Whispers Guide.
Gaining Paragon Points
While you technically don’t have to complete the main story to activate this feature, it’s likely that you may reach level 50 after finishing all of the Main Acts. At level 50, the Paragon Board will become available to your character, allowing for further customization outside of your main Skills. Each board contains various types of tiles that can offer anything from basic stat boosts to new Legendary Powers.
Leveling up after this point will earn you Paragon Points, and you’ll be able to build out your Starting Board towards 8 other Paragon Boards that all hold different bonuses. Which path you build out toward may largely depend on the skills you utilize, so be sure to spend some time carefully scanning the board to plan your priority list. See more of our tips for planning in our Paragon Points and Boards Explainer.
Capstone Dungeons
If you thought the story of Diablo 4 was over after the final Act, guess again! Diablo 4 has introduced a set of challenging dungeon events called Capstone Dungeons, which can only be attempted once your Character has reached specific power levels. By reaching level 50, level 75, and level 100, you’ll unlock access to these respective challenging Dungeons and their Bosses.
Capstone Dungeons are important not only for continuing the story, but for unlocking new events and features that would otherwise remain hidden. The first Cathedral of Light Capstone Dungeon in particular – available only at level 50 – is the only way you can increase the World Tier Difficulty and gain access to harder challenges and features that won’t appear otherwise that are mentioned below.
Increasing the World Tier
Depending on how fast you wanted to clear the story, it’s possible you completed the main Acts on World Tier 1, or you may have bumped things up to World Tier 2 in Kyovashad’s World Tier Statue for a more difficult adventure and a chance at more experience and loot. Things will only get harder from here on out, but you can’t just flip a switch to increase the risks and rewards.
Instead, to reach World Tier 3’s Nightmare difficulty, you’ll have to complete the first Capstone Dungeon that unlocks at level 50, and you need to beat it on Tier 2’s difficulty. This is the only way to cause new events to appear, like the Helltide Events and Nightmare Sigils, as well as chances to gain new tiers of loot like Sacred and Unique Items. Getting to World Tier 4 will be even harder, as you’ll need to complete the second Capstone Dungeon at level 75 while still on World Tier 3 difficulty! You check out our guide to all the World Tier Bonuses and Challenges.
Helltide Events
One of the more alluring events unlocked by World Tier 3’s difficulty mode, huge swaths of Diablo 4’s open world will become host to demonic invasions, transforming areas into dangerous zones marked in red on your map for an hour every so often, and in different parts of the world. While active, your goal is to fight off as many demons as possible and participate in Events to earn unique materials not found elsewhere.
Enemies you defeat, chests you open, and plants you harvest can contain new items like Forgotten Souls, Fiend Roses, and Abberant Cinders that are extremely important for upgrading your best gear to become even better. You can check our Helltide World Event Guide for more tips on how to make the most of your time in these areas.
Perhaps even more important are the abundance of special chests that only appear in Helltides, known as Tortured Gifts. These will require the Abberant Cinders you gain while completing events in a Helltide, and can offer you exceptional gear. The most sought after are Helltide Mystery Chests called Tortured Gift of Mysteries, which have a chance of spawning in a few different locations in each Helltide Zone.
Nightmare Dungeons and Glyphs
The last big feature that unlocks at World Tier 3 is the ability to gain Nightmare Sigils and access the extremely difficult Nightmare Dungeons. As these Sigils start to drop, you’ll find that they correspond to a specific dungeon in the world, and each Sigil also has a list of different positive and negative modifiers that will be active in the Nightmare version of the dungeon. Be sure to view our Guide to Nightmare Dungeons to learn more.
These dungeons can be incredibly challenging, as you might expect, and only allow for a finite amount of revives, but the rewards will be great. You’ll even be able to start Salvaging Sigils to create even tougher dungeons, which can help earn Glyphs. Glyphs are essentially Perks that can be added to specific pieces of your Paragon Board, and will become even more empowered based on nearby perks selected close to the socket. You can view our guide to How Glyphs Work for more information.
The Callisto Protocol will receive a new piece of DLC called Final Transmission. It will launch as a timed exclusive on PlayStation for 48 hours on June 27, and then be released on all other platforms on June 29.
Striking Distance Studios posted a short teaser trailer showing protagonist Jacob Lee waking up and coming across a big robot that makes its way towards him. The studio calls it a “heart-pounding final chapter,” indicating that this could be the game’s only story DLC. However, it’s possible more non-story DLC could be added in the future.
Prepare for Final Transmission, the heart-pounding final chapter of The Callisto Protocol.
Play 48 hours early on June 27, exclusively on PlayStation, followed by a wider release on June 29 for all other platforms. pic.twitter.com/m6aBxqMGto
— The Callisto Protocol (@CallistoTheGame) June 16, 2023
Unfortunately, The Callisto Protocol also reportedly underperformed in sales when it debuted. In IGN’s The Callisto Protocol review, we said, “The Callisto Protocol is a satisfyingly gory spiritual successor to the Dead Space series, but it’s ultimately more of a striking modern mimic than a scary new mutation.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
I spend quite a lot of my time thinking about dice games, so my attention was piqued by the new demo for Dicefolk – a sort of Pokémon battler but with dice (and also it’s a roguelike).
In a panel “Campfire Chat” discussion via Twitch and YouTube, Diablo 4 devs addressed one of the game’s more annoying issues: inventory clutter.
Many Diablo 4 players have discovered that endgame looting requires numerous visits back to town to sell and store one’s goods, due to a high level of clutter. Chief among the list of things that quickly fill up a player’s limited inventory space is gems.
“There are many colors of Gems, there are many qualities of Gems, and this can have the effect of taking up lots of inventory space,” explained Game Director Joe Shely.
Thankfully, Blizzard has plans to address this issue in a future patch, which would remove those upgrade materials from your inventory altogether.
“The idea is to change the way you acquire Gems so they are a shelve in your materials or currency tab, rather than your inventory.”
“The idea is to change the way you acquire Gems so they are a shelf in your materials or currency tab, rather than your inventory. The way that would work is you go to craft your Gem in the same way you do today and you just use a certain amount of that material,” said Shely.
While this would go a long way to alleviating some of the irritation that comes alongside multiple teleports back to town when completing a single dungeon, players should not expect that relief in the near future. True to their messaging prior to launch, Blizzard remains focused on fixing only the most crucial issues and creating new content, with quality of life improvements being added to later updates.
“We’re looking to get it in around season two,” Shely said.
Upcoming RTS Last Train Home will task you with protecting an armoured train as it barrels through post-World War I Russia to escape the civil war. And boy, does it look cold out there.
In an extensive Diablo 4 “Campfire Chat” on Twitch and YouTube, Blizzard discussed, among other things, the community concerns around server disconnects, and their plans for the first “real patch” due before the launch of the game’s first season.
It’s not been uncommon for players to get disconnected from Diablo 4’s servers in the few short weeks since they began exploring Sanctuary, and while only a minor inconvenience to most, it’s been a real problem for the game’s most hardcore players who play on the aptly named “Hardcore” mode. In this mode, a single character death results in that character’s permanent deletion, and Hardcore players have reported losing those characters due to disconnects from the server resulting in their character standing idle until killed.
The panel, which included Franchise General Manager Rod Fergusson and Game Director Joe Shely, talked about the issue and their plans to fix it.
“These can be some of the must frustrating situations for a Hardcore player, because in many cases it’s completely outside of your control,” Skely explained. “We have already a mechanism in the game that allows players to escape from boss fights that has very strict controls on it, called the Scroll of Escape. Because it has these controls in terms of being consumable and being a rare drop, this is the place where we want to add disconnect protection.”
“Basically the way this will work is: if you get disconnected, for any reason, if you have one of these Scrolls of Escape it will trigger even though you weren’t there to trigger it, and it will teleport you to town,” Shely added.
“We already have a big ‘real patch’ coming.”
Skely specified that the team wants this mechanic to be limited, so it can’t be abused by those who might want to pull the plug on their computer every time they find themselves in a bind, to be consumed only in the rare, emergency situation.
Since Diablo 4 launched, a number of hotfixes (11 to be exact) have been deployed to address balance changes, improve game stability, and more, but Blizzard is already preparing for their first “real patch,” which may require server downtime to perform maintenance.
“We already have a big ‘real patch’ coming,” Fergusson announced. “That’s something that’s gone through certification. It’s out there. It’s going to address a lot of things, including performance issues.”
That patch, according to Blizzard, contains a whopping 13 pages of fixes and improvements that Blizzard didn’t delve into on-stream, but said would get a full set of patch notes once deployed. No specific date for the patch was given, but Blizzard shared it plans to deploy it before season one is launched and it may require server downtime.
We’ve been given our first proper look at Star Trek: Infinite, the new grand strategy game from Stellaris makers Paradox, in action – and yep, it’s definitely a Star Trek game from the makers of Stellaris.
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over.Today, Ollie recaps his first trip to LA and Summer Game Fest…
