Through the Diablo 4 Season of Blood update, Blizzard is making Helltides even more important to players looking to get their hands on stronger gear and unique loot. However, fans with less free time on their hands feel punished by Blizzard’s changes and find the entire system itself even more frustrating than before. Does this really mean we’ll see any Diablo 4 Helltide changes, though? Well, some are confident that the current system is “destined” to be updated – and improved.
We know Blizzard’s Diablo 4 might be one of the best RPG games of the year, but it’s far from perfect – even after the improvements we’ve seen in recent weeks. Players are rightfully finding fault in one of the major changes to the endgame experience made during the Season of Blood update. It might be trying to refine the experience in this case, but the developer’s changes to the Helltide event rewards is alienating a faction of fans who just don’t have enough free time to take full advantage of the system. This doesn’t just mean they’re missing out on the chance to get Diablo 4 uniques either, but also crafting materials that are vital if you want to improve your gear.
As you can see for yourself in the Diablo 4 Season of Blood patch notes here, Blizzard has drastically reduced the drop rate of Forgotten Souls (an important crafting material in both upgrading and rerolling your gear) from salvaging – essentially forcing players into Helltide events for them. An additional Developer’s Note on this alteration explains that “Helltide was designed to be the primary source of Forgotten Souls”. So, in an effort to “encourage players to participate in Helltide more”, Blizzard has made acquiring this resource through salvaging a lot harder and a lot less fruitful than it was before.
We know that this might not seem like much of an issue at first, because anyone who’s actively looking for Forgotten Souls is likely to be the right level to tackle a Helltide or two, but this is a limited-time, randomly-spawning event. So, if you’re not playing Diablo 4 at the right time, you’re going to miss out.
This is leading to the bold claim that Helltides themselves and the system that makes Helltide resources to important to item progression is “destined to change” – as phrased by Redditor ‘Such_Performance‘.
In their Reddit post, which many are rallying behind with their own calls for change, they explain that they feel as though Diablo 4 is punishing players who want to play, but only have limited free time to do so, by introducing this change. By not making Helltides more available, so many more players are going to struggle to acquire the resources they need to keep improving their gear. They even go as far as to suggesting that they should be a permanently available world event in World Tier III and above.
While we don’t know if this will ever come true, many are calling for Helltides to become more like Blood Harvests – an hour-long event that moves around the map, is always available somewhere, and can be joined by any player of any level. This positive reaction to the new world event could lead to some improvements in the future, but we shouldn’t expect any ahead of the Diablo 4 Season 3 release date – which is due at the end of January 2024.
This is a rare occasion, though, where almost everyone is in total agreement that Helltides should be permanently available – or other ways of upgrading and rerolling your gear should be introduced.
We think, if Blizzard did want to keep things from becoming too easy for high-level players, the drop rate of these important resources could be nerfed a little. However, making world events like Helltides available for everyone whenever they get the chance to play would be a fantastic improvement and – with any luck – keep people playing for longer. We can certainly imagine that the current system has put quite a few players off – especially if they’re struggling to improve their gear another way.
If you still want to make sure you’re hitting Helltides when you can, but you want to know what else is out there, you can check out the latest Diablo 4 world boss timer right here. For those of you just getting started in the Season of Blood, we also have a list of the best Diablo 4 classes here and some of the best Diablo 4 builds for each class, for you to check out, here.
Of course, if you’re just here to see if you’re interested in isometric RPGs, you can always try out one of the best games like Diablo before committing to Blizzard’s behemoth. There are some great options out there.