Diablo IV Season of Blood review: Bloody fun times

I had originally decided to skip the second season of Diablo IV, the Season of Blood.

I found myself exhausted after grinding the first season, Season of the Malignant, getting quite bored of the grind.

But after reading the 1.2.0 patch notes and how much Blizzard had put into fixing quality of life issues, I decided to give it another shot. And to my surprise, I found the game a lot more fun and less tedious to play.

For starters, Season of Blood adds a whole bunch of QoL tweaks. The stash is now searchable (thank god!), you get teleported straight into Nightmare dungeons, a better looking minimap, no more having to deal with gems, and my favourite tweak of them all, lowered enchanting costs.

The latter is seriously the main reason why I quit playing the first season after just hitting level 70 on my Rogue. It made trying to get certain affixes on my gear a ridiculous grind of selling loot just to be able to afford to reroll and affix for 3 million gold.

It got to the point where I wasn’t even trying to find upgrades — instead my brain was focused on only picking up items to sell. That’s when I knew I was done with the game for good, or so I thought.

Blizzard seems to have paid attention to the complaints and have made adjustments to Diablo IV that actually make it more fun and less chore.

The game starts you with all the Paragon Points and Skill Points available if you've unlocked them previously, so you don't have to grind up Renown again.

Stash access has been added to most towns, and the Purveyor of Curiosities has also moved closer to the waypoint.

But of course, Blizzard giveth, and Blizzard taketh. Helltides are no longer the exclusive source for Forgotten Souls, which could mean less people doing them to grind for the rare material.

That's a shame, really. I quite enjoy playing Helltides, running around slaying demons and beasts for drops and opening the Mystery chests. And when the Helltides recede, you can also go hunt vampires to farm loot, too.

Which leads me to Season of Blood. Unlike the first season which had you repeatedly running a tiny dungeon trying to get the right drop, Season of Blood makes it easier to access the new Vampire powers, and you can get them with a moderate amount of grind.

However, levelling up the powers will require a lot more effort, as you'll need to farm a new material, Potent Blood, to level them up. These mainly drop in Blood Harvest areas, which rotate between the different zones.

You'll need to farm Blood Lures, and use them to activate altars to trigger certain events. These in turn spawn lots of mobs to kill, and you get loot drops as well as keys to open chests in the area.

One thing the new Season introduces is Pacts, which are a sort of resource you need to have on your armor to activate your Vampiric powers.

These can be easily managed if you spend enough time grinding Potent Blood, as you can get pact drops that you can add to your armor.

Honestly, it's a really pointless addition to the game, and these pacts take up slots in your inventory instead of being included in the consumable bag.

Lastly, besides the new events and class tweaks, Blizzard has also added new end game bosses for you to aspire to.

Given that I never bothered with killing Uber Lillith, perhaps I may take the time to try and kill the new Echo of Duriel. That requires quite a bit of grinding to get access to, but given how fun the game feels now, maybe I'll get there.

Diablo IV Season of Blood has started and offers a Battle Pass that gives you cosmetic loot as well as premium currency that you can use to buy a new season's Battle Pass or cosmetics.

Season of Blood ends on January 24, 2024.

Aloysius Low is an ex-CNET editor with more than 15 years of experience. He's really into cats and is currently reviewing products at canbuyornot.com

For more gaming news updates, visit https://yhoo.it/YahooGamingSEA. Also follow us on Twitter, as well as our Gaming channel on YouTube, and check out Yahoo Esports Southeast Asia’s Facebook page!