Diablo IV Season 1 Release Date Set for July 20: Malignant Quest Line, Broken Builds, More

gadgets.ndtv.com:

Diablo IV's much-awaited season 1 update will release July 20, nearly a month-and-a-half since the game debuted to rave reviews. Dubbed ‘Season of the Malignant,' the update was shown off during a developer live stream, held early Friday, detailing new quests, items, and further focus on its battle pass. As the title suggests, the upcoming season introduces a brand-new questline where the realm of Sanctuary is slowly getting corrupted by a plague, turning all living things into Malignant Monsters with new powers. The chapter is set after Diablo 4's main campaign where you bested Lilith, Daughter of Hatred, to rid Sanctuary of evil, and serves as a side story within the open world. The season starts at 10:30pm IST/ 10am PT.

As a festering curse widens its reach across Diablo IV's Sanctuary, the player will be summoned back to Kyovashad at level 1 to meet a new character Cormand, a former priest from the Cathedral of Light, who assigns us the new task of ripping the infected hearts out the Malignant creatures and using them to raise our power. Elite monsters you find in the world have a chance of spawning as a Malignant version, who upon defeat, drops an exposed Malignant Heart. You can interact with this item to start a ritual that spawns an even more powerful version of the elite enemy, surrounded by a group of corrupted mobs. Once you kill that — yeah, it's double the work — you earn a Caged Heart, which essentially functions like a gem that can be slotted into rings or amulets to tremendously boost your power. It's a way for you to create “stupid, new broken builds” that the developers hope are rightfully balanced.

Diablo IV Review

During Diablo IV's season 1, all ring and amulet drops will come with coloured sockets