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Cornell Otto
Here, we’ll discuss the latest changes to Uber Unique drop rate in Diablo 4 and how it affects the game.
I feel like many of you are probably not fully up to date on every latest change to the game. Since it’s the end of the season, there usually aren’t vast changes at this point.
And Christmas event that just released is boring and uninspired, to say the least. So you have good reason not to listen closely to what’s going on with Diablo 4 right now, at least until they start announcing details about Season 3.
That being said, one recent change to the game that you may have noticed is that the drop rate for Duriel’s Uber Uniques has doubled. That’s what I want to talk about here, because this change has serious implications for both future and past events.
Hardcore Diablo fans should be very aware that doubling things in a game rarely has the desired effect. Before we talk about this change, we also have to talk about Uber Uniques’ system of dropping a boss throughout the game. Because the system itself is highly questionable, to say the least.
Everyone praised the developers for their decision when they announced that Uber Uniques would be more suitable for the average player. Because the drop rates for these items have been so low since the launch of the game that only a handful of players in the world are lucky enough to get them.
Anything is better than this system, so that’s why everyone cheered when Duriel could drop Uber Unique items with about a 2% drop rate.
But little did we know it was another horrible system that players grew to hate over time. In order to fight Duriel and have a 2% chance of receiving one item, players must go through a heartbreaking grind.
The time varies depending on the class you play. But I think it’s safe to say that summoning Duriel at a time requires at least an hour of farming time.
Now, if a player kills Duriel in a group, it can increase the number of summons by 4x. But the problem remains: long hours of soulless grinding with a slim chance of getting really good items.
Trust me, 2% chance is small, especially if you want a specific Uber Unique. You can easily kill between 5 and 800 Duriel without dropping your target Uber Unique. And you can get multiple other unique items that are actually useless to your class.
It filled Reddit with posts, complaining about how many times they ran it without getting Unique drops they wanted. Other types of posts are where players post screenshots of the items they ultimately earned as proof of some kind of achievement.
But is beating a simple, easy-to-kill boss repeatedly really a tremendous accomplishment? Players are frustrated, and rightfully so. Wouldn’t it be better if it could drop Uber Uniques from any mob, but the chance of a drop didn’t limit them to a handful of players in the world?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the addition of Uber Bosses is completely useless. They serve their purpose well by letting players aim to farm regular unique items, such as Tempest Roar and Malignant Rings. But bundling Uber Unique items with Duriel is a huge mistake in my opinion.
Now let’s get back to the present and look at the recent changes to Uber Uniques drop odds. The fact that the developers made such a change, especially in the middle of the season, upset more people.
First, this doesn’t solve the problem of Duriel being a single semi-reliable way to get Uber Uniques. But that’s not the only problem. Let’s see how some player groups react to this change.
Players who have gotten Unique items they wanted despite tedious grinding without buffs may feel betrayed by the developers. Because it takes new players half the time to get the same items.
The second category of players are those who obtained Unique by purchasing Duriel summoning materials using Diablo 4 Gold or even real money. I personally see nothing wrong with using gold to purchase materials. But since duping is available to certain groups, material prices can become very low due to the excessive number of duped items being sold.
So, while buying with gold isn’t inherently a bad thing, duping is questionable. As for paying real money to get summoning materials, I do understand the reasoning: people want to skip dozens or hundreds of hours of grinding to reach Duriel by paying. I understand the motivation, but it’s still bad for the game as this is clearly a case of pay-to-win and will ruin the game in the long run.
So, the target group that should benefit from the double drop chances are players who have never obtained unique items and plan to get them later in the season. However, at the end of the season, the number of these players was not as high as the developers thought.
It’s entirely possible that some players who never got Uber Uniques evaded this chore, and they still have to do it after the change. At least the price of summoning materials is expected to drop due to increased drop rates.
So, overall, the developers made a controversial change to an objectively terrible system. They could have redesigned the entire system, or at least they could have waited until next season to introduce the change.
Regardless, this is yet another in a long line of terrible decisions from Diablo developers. Looking at this trend, they really have to do better to compete with the upcoming Path of Exile 2. What are your thoughts on this topic? Are you planning to take advantage of Uber Uniques? See you next time!
Today we’re talking about some changes that need to happen in Season of Discovery Phase 2. From addressing Hardcore and player complaints to fixing some PVP issues, including the economy we’ve been focusing on. Without further ado, let’s get started.
The first thing I want to talk about is PVP. I think there can be a lot of PVP improvements in Season of Discovery.
Of course, we’ll see more PVP highlights in Phase 2, as we’ll have Arena Grand Master and Tidal Charm. Players will go insane for PVP in these areas.
But I think PVP event could also be greatly improved. For example, in Ashenvale World PVP event, many players constantly run this event to farm reputation. But imagine if instead of this style mode where you have to kill the boss, there would be a designated player.
So, assuming a player is chosen, everyone in Alliance must protect him, while everyone in Horde tries to kill him at the same time. So, in this standard PVE mode, you just have to knock down the mobs, but you can also try to defend and kill someone on the other side.
I think this will be much better for Phase 2. And I think they could do more creative things to make PVP events more interesting.
There’s one other thing about PVP that I really think needs to be looked at, and that’s layering. If something to reduce layering further, it could bring some real benefits to PVP.
I’m just imagining the next phase of Arena Grand Master and Tidal Charm. If there were something like 11 layers in Crusader Strike, it would really take away the prestige and excitement of those items.
I’ve been looking around for my Runes and half of them just come from some random farming or something. I think this might be the “Discovery” part of Season of Discovery.
As a Priest, I absolutely love Metamorphosis Rune questline. But I completely missed this, which is why I upgraded Warlock myself.
I really think every class needs at least one Rune in every phase. I’m not saying every rune has to be an epic questline. But that’s a very exciting part of the mode to me.
Meanwhile, as a Priest, I just travel around the world killing various mobs for drops. But it’s not that exciting. And that also brings me to the issue of farming Waylaid Supplies.
The developers hope to have at least one rune that everyone has, which is a huge grind. And Waylaid Supplies is the kind of grind where you have to grind so many boxes to get one of your runes.
But a big problem is that Rune is actually very related to certain classes. For example, as a Priest, my AOE damage is very poor. In order to get my Mind Sear Rune, I have to do all Waylaid Supplies farming.
I absolutely love the idea of grinding through a difficult and challenging grind to earn one of your runes. But because it is some kind of consistent grind. You’ll get consistent results every time you grind a mob and don’t get anything, or grind a treasure chest, but don’t get anything in the chest. This can be very frustrating.
Hopefully Waylaid Supplies farming will become more consistent with future phase, and I’m sure we’ll do it again for another rune. But it can definitely be improved.
Currently, there isn’t enough to do in this mode, and perhaps the next phase should have a more serious grind to really reward the most serious players.
This is actually another complaint I’ve seen from some of the best players in the game. They enjoyed the mode, but they ran out of things to do after only putting in 80-100 hours.
The problem is that the character identity is a little lost. You can’t really work 300 hours straight in your role and really build this immense advantage. This has a very personal connection to your character.
I’m not saying you have to give them some insane legendary item to invest more time in. But there really should be something that you can spend a long time with and that is visually appealing to other players. Because if they get bored and there’s nothing to do, it actually hurts the mode.
The last and most important change that I think should appear in Phase 2 is Dual Spec.
I mean, we have a lot of different Runes, but we never use them. Because I’m always stuck with the same specs and I don’t want to pay WOW Classic SOD Gold to respec. Therefore, we need Dual Spec for this new Rune system.
And Dual Spec can really stimulate excitement and energy in the player base. Because when you get these Shadow Priest Runes, you’ll never use them because you’re playing Discipline Priest.
I feel like when the developers are hyping up this Melee Hunter build, it’s taking something away from the mode. And no one wants to run it because they have to be completely rested. Therefore, if they provide us with Dual Spec, this may be welcomed by more players. I think this is something that can really be done in the future.
These are just the most basic things I’d like to see changed in Phase 2. The coolest thing is that the developers are clearly listening to us. They want to hear your feedback, and they want to make this mode as great as possible. I’m sure we can have a lot more fun in the next phase!
WoW Classic Season of Discovery has had us looking all over Azeroth for new rune abilities. A lot of players are enjoying finding these runes blindly because it is super fun.
But some can be easily missed, so I wanted to cover the first 4 runes that you can find on a Rogue in the Human starter area. All of these can be found in either Elwynn Forest or Stormwind City.
Starting with number one, and it’s an easy one, it’s Shadowstrike.
Shadowstrike is the rune that lets you go invisible and teleport to your target. You get this at the very start of the game.
Simply go to your class trainer in Northshire and take the quest to recover a stashed item. If you head over the river and go to the Vineyards, it’s just south of this.
As you get to the mountain, you’ll see a little shack with a couple of Defias outside and there’s a chest in front. Defeat the Defias, pop the chest, and there’s your Shadowstrike rune. If you have enough SOD Gold, you can buy some weapons and armors to equip yourself so that you can easily defeat the monsters you encounter.
The rune we can go for next is the Quick Draw rune, which is a bit difficult to get.
Quick Draw is a quick shot with a ranged weapon that slows enemies down.
To get this rune, you need to pickpocket parts of a Treasure Map and put that map together. Then, go find the treasure and the treasure is the rune.
The 4 map pieces all drop from different Humanoid monsters around Elwynn Forest. So first, get to level 4 and unlock Stealth and unlock Pick Pocket. And then, start looking for the different Humanoids.
The top left piece can be found from Defias. So, go and pickpocket some Defias. We saw this one at Jerod’s Landing. There was a Defia there. Pickpocket it, got the piece. I assume it can be any of the Defias.
The top right one comes from Kobolds. And this one was pickpocketed at Jasperlode Mine, which is where you go in the Goldshire quest. There are the Spiders at the end. But you just pickpocket the Kobolds around here.
The bottom left one is from Gnolls, which are located conveniently at the bottom left of Elwind near Hogger (near the where the map changes over on the west).
Then, the bottom right piece can be found at Murlocs. And these are all around Crystal Lake, just east of Goldshire.
Once you find all 4 pieces, you’ve pickpocketed all four pieces, that’s when you put the map together. If you’re struggling to fight these, you can just stealth and pickpocket while other people are fighting, especially on release when these servers are completely full. You can just go and pickpocket as people are just clearing the different comps.
Once you’ve got them all, put them together. It tells you to head to the treasure west of Ridgepoint Tower, near the Wolf’s Den. So, head over there and you’ll see a stump. Go to this stump and use your scroll, use your map, and then you’ll find the Quick Draw rune.
Onto the third one, Mutilate.
This deals damage with 2 weapons, and it is a super powerful rune once you get dual wield.
It again requires pickpocketing to start or to learn about it. So, you need to pickpocket an important NPC. You can get this from Morgan the Collector in the house near where Princess is on the bottom right of the map.
But I’ve also heard it can be got from Garrick Padfoot in Northshire. But this guy gets defeated in like 2 seconds because of how many people are queuing up for it. So, Morgan the Collector definitely seems easy to get it from. And he survives a little bit longer, so you can actually pickpocket it.
This note tells you to follow the river north of Crystal Lake and south of the wall. Just head south of Northshire and follow the wall right up to the east side. There’s like a hidden Stealth guy here. Just talk to him and he’ll teach you Mutilate.
Some people are saying you need to be level 10 and have unlocked Dual Wielding to get this. But it’s worth getting. It’s not that hard to get.
Next up is Between the Eyes, a ranged finisher that also stuns. This is one thing Rogues have always wanted for gap closing.
Pre-warning, this includes a fight against two level 10 mobs. So, make sure you have friends or you’re leveled enough. And this can be found in Stormwind.
Just head to the Canals, like the lake around the Dwarven District, and look for a house on the left side. Head through and you’ll be in an alley. Follow it all the way to the end and you’ll see an open house. Head upstairs to the house and as soon as you get to the top, you’ll see a big bed. And there should be a chest in front of the bed.
If it’s not here, you need to wait for it to respawn because someone’s already done it. Click the chest and two mobs will spawn. Defeat those, and that’s how you get the rune.