The reports began appearing almost immediately after the Season 15 launch problems were resolved. In one PC Bug Report thread, a player described a Season 14 build that had been constructed around several Mythic Uniques created through the Horadric Cube. Those items moved to Eternal after the seasonal transition, but the returning Crafted restriction now means only one can be equipped at a time. Other Eternal players have reported similar behavior involving older Mythics that they say were obtained through different crafting methods or ordinary drops.
Blizzard has not yet published a bug acknowledgement specifically addressing these reports, so there is still an important distinction to make.
The restriction itself is intentional.
Which items are currently being caught by it may not be.
Season 15 Intentionally Brings Back One Crafted Mythic
The one-item limit is not a surprise. We have been following it since August, when Blizzard first revealed that the one-Crafted-Mythic restriction could return in Season 15.
The reason is the new Horadric Cube recipe.
Season 15 replaces the much more random Mythic conversion system with Upgrade Direct Item to Mythic. Instead of placing a Unique in the Cube and hoping the output belongs somewhere near the build you actually intended to play, the new recipe performs a direct 1:1 conversion.
A well-rolled Tibault's Will can become its corresponding Mythic version.
The existing affixes remain.
Tempering remains.
Masterworking remains.
The randomness is largely removed from the transformation itself.
That level of control comes with a restriction. Blizzard's final Season 15 notes state that Mythics created with the Cube's Upgrade Direct recipe receive the Crafted tag, and characters can equip only one item carrying that tag.
So far, everything is working exactly as advertised.
The problem is the next sentence.
Blizzard Says Only the New Cube Recipe Should Get the Crafted Tag
Blizzard is unusually specific here.
The official notes say that only Mythic Uniques crafted using the Upgrade Direct Item to Mythic recipe should receive the Crafted tag. Mythics made through Jeweler Rune Crafting should not receive it. Mythics obtained from the Blacksmith's Mythic Cache should not receive it either.
That matters because the entire purpose of the rule is supposed to be limiting the extraordinarily deterministic new Cube recipe, not placing a universal equipment cap on every Mythic that has ever passed through a crafting interface.
The intended Season 15 structure is therefore:
- Horadric Cube Upgrade Direct Mythic: Crafted tag, limited to one equipped
- Jeweler Rune Crafting Mythic: no Crafted tag restriction
- Blacksmith Mythic Cache: no Crafted tag restriction
- Naturally dropped Mythics: no Crafted tag restriction
Players should still be able to equip several Mythics at once.
Only one of those Mythics is supposed to come from the new deterministic Cube upgrade.
That is what makes the current Eternal reports so strange.
Some Eternal Players Say Old Mythics Are Suddenly Crafted
In a separate Eternal Realm discussion, multiple players described logging into older characters and discovering that previously legal equipment combinations could no longer be used.
The common detail was the Crafted tag.
Some players said Mythics they had worn before Season 15 were now considered Crafted. Others reported that only certain items received the tag despite having been obtained through similar methods. One Eternal player said Mythics created through the Jeweler or acquired as drops were also affected, although these are individual player reports rather than a Blizzard-confirmed description of the bug.
That last point is particularly important.
If Jeweler-created or naturally dropped Mythics are genuinely receiving the limiting Crafted status, that directly contradicts the rules Blizzard published for Season 15.
But until Blizzard confirms the exact affected item history, we cannot know whether every player's memory of where a three-month-old Mythic came from is perfectly accurate.
Stashes have a way of turning archaeology into a profession.
Season 14 Is Part of the Problem
The history of the Crafted tag makes the situation even messier.
Season 14 originally launched with a one-crafted-Mythic restriction. Any character could use several naturally dropped Mythics, but only one Mythic carrying the Crafted designation could be equipped.
Players hated it.
The restriction worked directly against Season 14's new Mythic crafting system, which encouraged players to invest huge amounts of resources into creating and upgrading Mythics and then politely informed them that most of those crafted items could not coexist on the same character.
Blizzard eventually removed the limit in Patch 3.1.1a. We covered the aftermath in our look at the Season 14 loot fixes that followed, and by August the question had become whether Season 15 was about to reintroduce the exact same frustration in a narrower form.
It was.
The difference is supposed to be precision.
Season 14's rule broadly affected crafted Mythics.
Season 15's rule is explicitly supposed to affect only one recipe.
Old Crafted Tags May Never Have Actually Gone Away
One theory emerging from the forum discussion is that Season 14 may have removed the equipment restriction without necessarily stripping the old Crafted designation from every existing item.
That would explain why the Season 15 update could suddenly make old equipment illegal again.
Imagine an old Season 14 Mythic still carrying an invisible or irrelevant classification that no longer mattered because the one-item restriction had been disabled.
Season 15 turns the restriction back on.
The game sees Crafted.
The character sees an empty equipment slot.
The player sees several months of farming lying on the floor.
That explanation is plausible, and players in the discussion have independently suggested something similar. Blizzard has not confirmed it, however.
We therefore do not yet know whether Season 15 is incorrectly adding Crafted tags to old items, merely reactivating restrictions on tags that were already there, or doing some combination of both.
Armory Swaps Can Apparently Unequip Multiple Mythics
One of the stranger reports involves the Armory.
A player in the Eternal discussion described changing loadouts and seeing three Mythics drop out of the build because the newly active Season 15 equipment rule no longer allowed them to remain equipped together.
For a moment, according to the player, it looked like three Mythics had dropped.
Unfortunately, Sanctuary had not suddenly become extremely generous.
They were the items the character had been wearing several seconds earlier.
That is more than a cosmetic inconvenience. Armory loadouts exist specifically so players can switch between complete builds without manually reconstructing them. If an older build contains several items now flagged as Crafted, loading it can effectively dismantle part of the setup.
That becomes particularly irritating on Eternal, where preserving old builds is one of the main reasons the realm exists.
Eternal Is Where Retroactive Item Rules Hurt the Most
Seasonal characters live with change.
Every few months, a season ends, balance shifts, systems move and everybody begins another climb from level 1.
Eternal is different.
It is where characters, equipment and old builds are supposed to accumulate.
A player who has maintained an Eternal character across several seasons may have Mythics from different versions of Diablo IV's itemization system. Some were drops. Some came from older crafting systems. Some were created under rules that no longer exist at all.
That makes retroactive restrictions especially dangerous.
Changing how a new item is created is one thing.
Changing whether an item earned months ago can still be equipped beside another item is something else entirely.
Season 14 Players Invested Heavily Into Those Mythics
This is also not a case of someone losing access to a disposable leveling Legendary.
Season 14 heavily encouraged Mythic crafting.
Its entire Mythic Uniques 3.0 system revolved around making any Unique potentially Mythic. Players farmed Pandemonium Fragments, Resplendent Sparks, Runes, Gold and upgrade materials, then invested further resources into Tempering and Masterworking.
We repeatedly covered the awkward relationship between that system and the original equipment restriction, including how Season 14 could give players better access to Mythics while still making the resulting endgame feel strangely constrained.
When Blizzard removed the restriction, those crafted items finally became normal pieces of complete endgame builds.
Now some of those builds appear to have collided with the returning Season 15 rule.
The New Rule Makes More Sense Than the Old One
There is still a reasonable balance argument behind Season 15's intended restriction.
The new Cube recipe is extremely powerful.
It does not simply give you a random Mythic.
It lets you choose a specific Unique that already has the affixes, Tempering and Masterworking you want and convert that exact investment into its Mythic form.
Without some limitation, extremely optimized characters could potentially convert several perfect Uniques into perfect Mythics with far less randomness than the usual loot chase.
One Crafted Mythic therefore functions as a build decision.
Which item deserves the deterministic upgrade?
Everything else can still come from drops, Rune Crafting or Blacksmith caches.
That is considerably easier to defend than Season 14's much broader restriction.
But it only works if the game actually distinguishes between those acquisition methods correctly.
This Is Why Blizzard Rewrote the Rule So Explicitly
The wording in the final Season 15 notes appears designed specifically to prevent the confusion players experienced last season.
Blizzard does not merely say that Crafted Mythics are limited to one.
It explains which recipe creates the tag.
It explicitly says Jeweler Mythics do not receive it.
It explicitly says Blacksmith Mythics do not receive it.
And it explains that these alternatives allow players to continue equipping multiple Mythics together.
We highlighted that distinction yesterday when covering Blizzard's final reversal of the controversial Iconic Mythic PTR changes.
Season 15 was supposed to give players tighter control without reintroducing the broad restrictions of early Season 14.
The current Eternal reports suggest at least some old items may not have received the memo.
Blizzard Has Not Confirmed a Fix Yet
As of September 16, Blizzard has not published a hotfix note specifically addressing old Eternal Mythics receiving or retaining the Crafted restriction.
That matters because we should not describe every affected Eternal item as definitively bugged until the company establishes the intended handling of pre-Season 15 gear.
The official wording nevertheless gives players a strong reason to question the current behavior.
Only Mythics made using the Season 15 Upgrade Direct Item to Mythic recipe are supposed to receive the limiting Crafted tag.
An old Eternal Mythic cannot have been created with a Season 15 recipe that did not exist when the item was made.
That is the contradiction Blizzard needs to clarify.
Do Not Salvage Old Mythics Yet
For affected Eternal players, the sensible response right now is patience.
If an old Mythic suddenly cannot be equipped because it carries a Crafted designation, there is little reason to immediately salvage or replace it until Blizzard explains whether this behavior is intentional.
If the restriction is corrected server-side or through a hotfix, destroying an expensive Season 14 Mythic in frustration would become a very permanent solution to a potentially temporary problem.
The items still exist.
The builds still exist.
The current equipment rule is what appears to be standing between them.
Season 15’s Mythic System Is Better, if It Only Applies to Season 15 Mythics
There is a slightly unfortunate irony here.
The new Mythic system itself is one of Season 15's better itemization ideas.
The direct Cube upgrade solves the old problem of spending huge resources and receiving a completely unrelated Mythic.
Jeweler crafting remains available without the Crafted restriction.
Blacksmith caches remain unrestricted.
Natural Mythic drops remain valuable.
And players can choose one exceptionally deterministic Mythic to anchor a build.
That is a sensible ecosystem.
What is considerably less sensible is logging into Eternal and discovering that yesterday's legal build apparently violated tomorrow's crafting rule before tomorrow existed.
Season 15 is allowed to change the future of Mythic crafting.
It probably should not require Eternal characters to own a time machine.
