Diablo 4 Players Still Can’t Claim Rank IX Rewards Months After Blizzard’s Fix

Diablo IV Season Rank IX has a fairly simple instruction.

Complete ten objectives.

Get the rewards.

Some players have completed ten.

Others completed eleven.

Some reached twelve or thirteen.

The reward button has occasionally responded with the digital equivalent of:

No.

A long-running Diablo IV bug report about the Rank IX Capstone and Gilded Laurel of Hatred became active again on August 23, months after Blizzard shipped fixes specifically targeting Season Rank IX progression.

The thread now has around 1,600 views and more than 20 replies, with reports stretching all the way back to early May.

That would be frustrating enough on its own.

The awkward part is that Blizzard already told us this problem was fixed.

Rank IX Says Complete 10 Objectives

Rank IX sits at the very end of the Season Journey and is deliberately aimed at Diablo IV's most dedicated seasonal players.

Unlike the earlier ranks, it presents a large collection of difficult endgame objectives and asks you to complete any ten to unlock the Capstone reward.

Those objectives include high-Torment activities across the game's endgame systems.

War Plans.

Nightmare Dungeons.

Kurast Undercity.

Legion Events.

Helltides.

Lair Bosses.

The Tower.

The sort of things you are generally doing after your character has stopped worrying about finding boots and started worrying about whether a 4GA item will survive contact with the Horadric Cube.

The headline reward is the Gilded Laurel of Hatred, alongside several high-end crafting and progression rewards.

Complete ten objectives.

Claim the Capstone.

At least theoretically.

The Reports Started Almost Immediately

The main bug thread began on May 2.

The original player had already completed at least ten Rank IX objectives but could not claim the final reward.

Others quickly confirmed the same behaviour.

Ten objectives.

No reward.

Then eleven.

Still nothing.

Several players reached twelve completed challenges without unlocking Rank IX.

One eventually reported that the game recognised completion after objective number eleven.

Another says it finally worked after thirteen.

That immediately suggested the visible counter and the hidden progression system were not agreeing on which objectives actually counted.

Which is inconvenient when the entire requirement is:

count to ten.

Blizzard Specifically Fixed Rank IX on May 26

Blizzard clearly knew something was wrong.

Patch 3.0.3, released on May 26, included two remarkably relevant fixes.

Blizzard said it had fixed:

• An issue where certain Season Objectives and Challenges did not give credit toward the ten objectives required for Rank IX Capstone rewards
• Various cases where Season Rank objectives did not contribute correctly to Season Rank completion or could not be completed as expected

That sounds like the fix.

And for many players, it presumably was.

But the original thread did not disappear.

A player was still reporting the same basic issue on June 17, saying they had completed ten gold objectives plus another objective without receiving the Rank IX reward.

Then the thread became active again in August.

So whatever Blizzard corrected in May does not appear to have eliminated every possible failure state.

There May Actually Be More Than One Rank IX Bug

That becomes even clearer when looking at newer reports.

A separate PlayStation bug report from August describes a different Rank IX problem.

That player successfully completed the rank.

The interface even marked the rewards as Claimed.

There was just one small issue.

The rewards were not actually there.

The player checked inventory.

Stash.

Reward tabs.

Logged out.

Restarted.

Changed characters.

Nothing.

That suggests Rank IX may currently have at least two different ways to ruin your evening:

One where the game refuses to recognise that ten objectives are complete.

And another where the game recognises completion, says it gave you the reward and apparently forgets the middle part.

Some Objectives May Still Be the Real Problem

The original May reports suggest that not every completed objective was being counted equally.

Some players found that completing additional challenges eventually forced Rank IX to unlock.

That means a possible workaround remains:

keep completing Rank IX objectives beyond the required ten.

That is not a particularly satisfying workaround.

Rank IX contains some of the hardest seasonal objectives in the game.

If the UI says ten are enough, asking someone to casually complete three extra high-end challenges until one happens to register is not exactly elegant.

But if your Rank IX is currently stuck at ten completed objectives, it may be worth attempting another objective before assuming the entire character is permanently blocked.

Players should also make sure the objectives themselves are fully credited in the Season Journey rather than relying solely on having completed the underlying activity.

This Is Especially Annoying Because Rank IX Is Optional Prestige Content

There is an argument that Rank IX is not essential.

And that is true.

You can experience virtually all of Diablo IV's seasonal content without completing every final challenge.

The Gilded Laurel of Hatred is primarily a prestige reward.

It says:

I did the ridiculous endgame things.

That arguably makes a tracking bug worse, not better.

Nobody accidentally wanders into Rank IX completion.

You deliberately complete ten high-end objectives because you want the achievement and the reward attached to them.

Having the game fail to recognise that accomplishment defeats the entire purpose of the system.

If you complete something difficult and receive nothing, Diablo has stopped being a loot game and briefly become unpaid volunteer work.

Season 14 Has Had Several Progression Systems Fighting Their Own Counters

Rank IX is also not alone.

We recently covered how players can explore all 65/65 areas of Skovos and still fail to unlock No Island Unturned.

The map says complete.

The achievement says otherwise.

War Plans have produced similar frustrations, including players getting stuck at specific progression levels, while the broader debate over having to repeat War Plan progression on every alt continues.

Even the secret Cow Level currently has players dealing with hidden progression states that can soft-lock the Anger quest.

These are different bugs.

But they share the same particularly irritating flavour:

The player completes the task.

One part of Diablo IV knows they completed the task.

Another part apparently needs convincing.

There Is No New Rank IX Fix in the Latest Patch Notes

Blizzard has continued patching Diablo IV throughout the summer.

But the latest live fixes do not contain another specific correction for the Rank IX Capstone problem.

The May 26 patch remains the major official fix addressing Season Rank objective tracking.

Meanwhile, the original report was active again as recently as August 23.

That does not mean every player is currently unable to claim Rank IX.

Clearly many people have successfully earned and equipped the Gilded Laurel of Hatred.

The issue appears inconsistent.

Which may be precisely why it has survived.

What Can You Try If Rank IX Won’t Unlock?

There is no guaranteed community workaround, but based on the reports so far, affected players can try:

• Verify that ten Rank IX objectives are actually marked complete in the Season Journey
• Complete an additional Rank IX objective beyond the required ten
• Log out and restart Diablo IV after completing another objective
• Check whether the Capstone becomes claimable on the original seasonal character
• If the reward says Claimed but is missing, document the missing items separately rather than repeatedly completing more objectives

Most importantly, screenshot the Rank IX page.

If ten or more objectives visibly show as complete while the Capstone remains locked, that gives Blizzard something much more useful than:

It doesn't work.

Ten Should Probably Mean Ten

Diablo IV is full of complicated mathematics.

Damage multipliers stack on damage multipliers.

Monster health rises exponentially.

Players are currently discussing builds that deal numbers large enough to require commas in places most calculators were not emotionally prepared for.

Rank IX should be simpler.

Complete ten objectives.

Get reward.

Blizzard already fixed several problems preventing those objectives from counting correctly in May.

Three months later, players are still reporting that the final step can fail.

Maybe objective eleven works.

Maybe objective thirteen works.

Maybe restarting helps.

But the Season Journey does not say:

Complete ten objectives, possibly several more, and see what happens.

It says ten.

At this point, Diablo IV's endgame has plenty of difficult challenges.

Counting them probably should not be one of them.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Season Rank IX Bugged — Can't Claim Gilded Laurel of Hatred

Diablo IV Forums: Season 14 Rank IX Rewards Marked as Claimed but Not Received

Blizzard: Diablo IV Patch 3.0 Notes

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Diablo 4 Players Say Killing the Fathomless One Too Fast Can Break Saltwind Stronghold

Diablo IV normally rewards you for killing bosses quickly.

Saltwind Stronghold has apparently decided to experiment with a different philosophy.

Players fighting Grigg'sal'tosh, the Fathomless One in Skovos are continuing to report an extremely strange progression problem:

If you kill the boss before its scripted swallow mechanic happens, the Stronghold may refuse to complete.

The Fathomless One can be dead.

The boss arena can be empty.

The fight can still technically be running.

And the player may find themselves trapped on the beach with no way to activate the final Stronghold altar.

The latest report was posted on August 23.

And the workaround is wonderfully backwards.

Stop doing so much damage and let the monster eat you.

The Fathomless One Is Supposed to Swallow You

Saltwind is one of Skovos' three Strongholds and contains one of Lord of Hatred's more elaborate boss encounters.

The Fathomless One is a huge sea creature fought in a confined coastal arena.

But simply reducing its health to zero is apparently not the entire encounter.

During the fight, the boss is supposed to swallow the player.

You then find yourself inside the creature and must destroy four internal targets before being expelled back onto the beach.

After that sequence completes, you can finish the boss normally and cleanse the Stronghold.

It is a pretty memorable mechanic.

Assuming your build gives the boss enough time to perform it.

Players Have Been Killing It Before the Script Happens

The original bug report appeared back on April 29.

A player said they killed the Fathomless One three times in a row, only for the encounter to remain active after its death.

They could not complete the Stronghold and had to leave the area.

Another player immediately suspected the problem:

the boss was dying too quickly.

That theory has continued to fit later reports.

On August 20, another player confirmed the problem was still happening.

Their Fathomless One never swallowed them.

They killed it.

The Stronghold did not complete.

Then, on August 23, another player posted the clearest explanation yet after repeating the Stronghold around five times.

They eventually discovered that killing the boss was not enough.

They had to deliberately wait near its mouth until the swallow mechanic triggered.

Only after completing the internal phase and then killing the boss did the Stronghold finish correctly.

The Current Workaround Is: Let It Eat You

If your Saltwind Stronghold appears stuck, the latest community workaround is surprisingly simple.

Restart the boss encounter.

Then:

• Do not burst the Fathomless One down immediately
• Move around the beach and periodically approach its mouth
• Wait for the boss to swallow your character
• Destroy the four objectives inside the creature
• Allow the game to spit you back into the arena
• Then kill the boss

The player who posted the August 23 solution says the Stronghold completed properly after doing exactly that.

There is also an older workaround that has helped several players:

Lower the difficulty to Normal.

That may sound unrelated.

It probably is not.

Reducing the difficulty also reduces the chance that an endgame character deletes the boss before the scripted phase can happen.

Players on both PC and Xbox have reported that switching to Normal allowed them to complete the encounter.

In other words, Normal may not be fixing the boss.

It may simply be protecting the boss from you.

This May Be Half Bug, Half Terrible Communication

The newest player to solve the encounter argues that this is not technically a bug at all.

The swallow mechanic is simply mandatory.

The problem is that Diablo IV does very little to tell you that.

That distinction is worth making.

If the encounter requires a scripted phase, then waiting for the swallow is part of the intended fight.

But if the game allows the boss to die before that required script executes and then leaves the Stronghold permanently incomplete, the result still behaves like a progression bug from the player's perspective.

The game accepts the boss death.

It simply refuses to accept that you won.

There is also no obvious quest instruction saying:

Do not kill this boss yet. Please stand in front of its mouth until consumed.

That would probably help.

Strong Builds Make the Problem More Likely

This is one of those bugs — or encounter-state problems — that becomes more visible as Diablo IV's power level increases.

A freshly geared character may naturally spend enough time fighting the Fathomless One for every phase to occur.

A highly optimised Torment character may not.

The boss appears.

Cooldowns are pressed.

Several billion damage happens.

The Fathomless One dies before it has finished its theatrical presentation.

The Stronghold script then sits there waiting for a scene involving a creature that is already dead.

It is the same strange design tension we have seen elsewhere in Diablo IV:

Players spend the entire game becoming stronger.

Then one encounter quietly asks them not to be.

Saltwind Matters for More Than One Boss Fight

This is especially annoying because Strongholds are tied into broader Skovos progression.

Completing Saltwind contributes to Renown and full regional completion.

We have already seen how fragile that progression can feel when players reach 65/65 discovered areas and still fail to receive No Island Unturned.

Getting stuck inside one of the region's required Strongholds is therefore more than a funny boss glitch.

It can interfere with players trying to fully clear Skovos.

And because Saltwind unlocks as a permanent Stronghold after completion, anyone hitting the problem is effectively blocked from finishing that part of the map until they repeat the encounter correctly.

The Fathomless One Has Had Other Strange Issues Too

The swallow sequence itself has generated additional reports.

One April player says the camera went completely rogue after the internal section, flying far beyond the arena before eventually returning when the boss died.

So the mechanic clearly involves more scripting than an ordinary health-bar fight.

That makes sequence-breaking more plausible.

And it also explains why brute-forcing the encounter may not always work.

Diablo IV has recently produced several similar situations where progression and scripted events disagree about what the player actually accomplished.

We just covered a Legendary Escalation run that reportedly threw a player out before the final dungeon, while the secret Cow Level's Anger quest can become stuck around hidden item and kill-state requirements.

The individual causes differ.

The result feels remarkably similar.

You did the hard part.

The game is still waiting for paperwork.

There Is Still No Official Fix Listed

The Saltwind thread remained active through August 23.

Players were still able to reproduce the incomplete encounter months after the first April reports.

We could not find a current Blizzard patch note specifically saying the Fathomless One's early-kill progression issue has been fixed.

So if you have not completed Saltwind yet, the safest approach is simple:

Do not immediately vaporise the boss.

Let the swallow phase happen.

Complete the internal objectives.

Then resume the traditional Diablo activity of making the health bar disappear.

If the boss still refuses to cooperate, lowering the difficulty to Normal has worked for multiple players.

Diablo 4 Has Finally Created a Boss You Can Be Too Strong to Kill

There is something almost beautiful about this problem.

ARPG players spend hundreds of hours optimising characters for one purpose.

Kill things faster.

Find another multiplier.

Reduce another cooldown.

Delete bosses before they can move.

Then Diablo IV places one giant sea monster in front of them and quietly says:

Please stop.

The Fathomless One does not need another nerf.

It needs enough time to eat you.

Because apparently in Saltwind Stronghold, the correct boss strategy is:

lose the first phase on purpose.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Saltwind Stronghold — Fathomless One

KeenGamer: Diablo IV Lord of Hatred Skovos Region Guide

Icy Veins: Skovos and Saltwind Stronghold Overview

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Diablo 2 Players Are Still Testing a Gloam Easter Egg That May Give 4,200% Magic Find

Diablo II has spent 26 years teaching players that Gloams are horrible.

They fire lightning across the screen.

They attack from places you cannot see.

And apparently, if you ask four of them very nicely not to kill you, they may give you 4,200% hidden Magic Find.

An obscure Diablo II easter egg has resurfaced again in 2026, with players continuing to test a bizarre ritual involving exactly four Gloams, Black Souls or Burning Souls.

If the conditions are correct, the monsters stop attacking, move into formation and begin drawing letters with their lightning.

The letters are references to members of the original Diablo II development team.

That part is real.

The considerably stranger part is what supposedly happens underneath it.

Community reverse-engineering and player testing indicate that completing the full ritual in Hell difficulty adds 4,200% Magic Find for the remainder of that game.

The bonus does not appear on the character sheet.

Because apparently 4,200% Magic Find was not quite weird enough already.

How the Gloam Easter Egg Works

The basic setup sounds like the sort of instruction somebody would have invented on a forum in 2003.

You need exactly four Gloam-type monsters nearby.

Other enemies must be cleared away.

You then stop attacking.

Your Mercenary and summons cannot attack them either.

Eventually, the four Souls stop behaving normally.

Instead of firing lightning directly at you, they begin moving into formations and using their attacks to draw letters on the ground.

After completing the sequence, they return to normal behaviour.

Which means the traditional reward for successfully performing the ritual is still:

Four Gloams trying to kill you.

Diablo II remains Diablo II.

The Hidden Magic Find Is the Really Strange Part

The easter egg became much more interesting when modders and players began examining what the game was actually doing during the sequence.

A long-running Blizzard forum report claims that every completed letter adds hidden Magic Find based on difficulty:

• Normal: 50% per participating Soul per letter
• Nightmare: 100%
• Hell: 150%

With four Souls participating across seven letters, the Hell calculation becomes:

4 × 7 × 150 = 4,200% Magic Find.

The value is not displayed in Diablo II: Resurrected's normal stat interface.

Players instead noticed dramatic changes in item-quality distribution after performing the ritual, while members of the modding community say the relevant behaviour can be found in reverse-engineered Diablo II code.

That is much stronger evidence than simply killing Baal once and getting a Shako.

But Blizzard has never published an official modern explanation saying:

Yes, those four lightning ghosts just gave you 4,200 MF.

So the safest description remains community-documented rather than officially confirmed.

Players Are Still Doing It in 2026

This is not merely an old forum curiosity.

Players have continued experimenting with the ritual throughout 2026.

One February discussion shows players successfully triggering it and debating how the enormous hidden MF bonus was originally discovered.

Another player in July said they finally managed to complete the ritual and immediately began running high-value farming areas in the same game.

The original Blizzard thread was even bumped again on August 24.

Although, amusingly, the newest contribution was primarily to remind everyone that the monster is called a Gloam.

Not a Gloom.

Twenty-six years later, Diablo II's real endgame is spelling.

Why Would Anyone Need 4,200% Magic Find?

There is a major catch.

Magic Find has diminishing returns when determining Unique, Set and Rare item quality.

So 4,200% MF does not mean you suddenly receive forty-two times as many Unique items.

Far from it.

Once your Magic Find is already reasonably high, piling thousands more onto the character produces increasingly small improvements to Unique-item odds.

That means performing the entire ritual before every two-minute farming run would be spectacularly inefficient.

By the time the Gloams have completed their electrical PowerPoint presentation, a normal character could have killed Mephisto several times.

Reign of the Warlock May Have Made the Easter Egg More Useful

This is where modern Diablo II becomes interesting.

Reign of the Warlock encourages players to remain inside the same game for longer periods.

Heralds of Terror reward extended Terror Zone farming, and the newer endgame systems give players more reasons to keep clearing rather than immediately creating another game.

That changes the economics of the Gloam ritual.

If the hidden Magic Find lasts until you leave the current game, spending several minutes activating it makes more sense when you plan to stay in that session for a long time.

Especially now that Season 15 has reduced the effectiveness of ordinary Magic Find for Latent Sunder farming, players are once again looking carefully at every strange corner of Diablo II's loot systems.

The Gloam bonus will not improve every special drop system.

But for ordinary item-quality farming, several thousand hidden MF is at least interesting enough to experiment with.

You Can Apparently Stack It

And because Diablo II never knows when to stop, players say the ritual can be performed more than once in the same game.

A second successful pack of four Gloams can reportedly add another full bonus.

That would theoretically take the player to 8,400% additional Magic Find.

At that point, the practical benefit is increasingly questionable because of diminishing returns.

But practical benefit has never stopped Diablo players from making a number larger.

If Blizzard accidentally added a button labelled:

+0.3% efficiency, but the number becomes enormous

somebody would press it.

The Hardest Part Is Keeping Four Gloams Alive

Actually performing the ritual is less relaxing than the word “easter egg” suggests.

You need to:

• Find a zone containing Gloam-type monsters
• Leave exactly four alive
• Remove every other nearby enemy
• Prevent Mercenaries and summons from attacking
• Avoid killing the Gloams yourself
• Survive long enough for the entire animation to complete

Popular locations include the Great Marsh, Swampy Pit, Plains of Despair, Worldstone Keep and Throne of Destruction.

High Lightning Resistance is strongly recommended.

Possibly also emotional preparation.

You are deliberately leaving four Souls alive and waiting for them to do something.

Every instinct developed while playing Diablo II is screaming at you to do the opposite.

Is the 4,200% Magic Find Bonus Actually Real?

The evidence is unusually good for something this ridiculous.

The monster behaviour itself is well documented.

Players have repeatedly reproduced it in Diablo II: Resurrected.

The Magic Find effect has been tested using characters with deliberately manipulated negative Magic Find values, while Diablo II modders have pointed toward the corresponding logic in reverse-engineered game code.

Still, we would draw an important line between:

community verification

and

official Blizzard documentation.

Blizzard has never given players a nice tooltip explaining the Gloam ritual or its hidden loot bonus.

And considering the easter egg has survived for decades, perhaps nobody should encourage them to look at it too closely.

Diablo II Still Has the Best Kind of Weird Secrets

This is why the Gloam ritual remains fascinating even if performing it is not mathematically optimal farming.

Modern games tend to document everything.

Systems have tooltips.

Quests have markers.

Patch notes explain the mechanics.

Diablo II contains four floating lightning monsters that suddenly stop murdering you, spell out developer references and apparently alter your hidden loot calculations by several thousand percent.

And players are still arguing about it decades later.

Reign of the Warlock has turned Diablo II into a living game again, complete with new classes, new items and debates over things like a dedicated Charm Inventory.

But sometimes the best Diablo II content is still something Blizzard quietly buried inside the game before many of today's players had broadband.

Four Gloams.

Seven letters.

Potentially 4,200% hidden Magic Find.

And somehow the least believable part is that you have to resist killing them.

Sources

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: Old Easter Egg Allows You to Get Huge MF Boost

The Phrozen Keep: D2MOO Diablo II Reverse-Engineering Project

Diablo II Community: Gloam Easter Egg Testing and Code Discussion

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Diablo 2 Season 15 Players Are Already Asking Where Everyone Went

Diablo II: Resurrected Ladder Season 15 has been running for barely two days.

Players are already asking whether everyone went somewhere else.

A new discussion on Blizzard's forums claims the latest Ladder feels like the least populated reset some longtime players can remember, with fewer public games and considerably less excitement around starting from scratch.

There is one rather important problem with declaring Season 15 dead:

We do not have official player-count data.

And other players looking at the same European servers say the new Ladder looks perfectly healthy.

So this is not evidence that Diablo II has suddenly lost its audience.

What it does reveal is a more interesting question.

After Reign of the Warlock brought players back in force, has Blizzard given them enough reason to reset again?

“Never Have I Seen a Ladder This Dead”

The newest discussion appeared on August 24, just over two days after Season 15 began in Europe.

The opening post is not subtle.

The player describes it as the quietest Ladder they have personally seen and calls for Blizzard to announce something substantial for Diablo II at BlizzCon.

Other players quickly offered possible explanations.

One says this is the first Ladder in a long time they had zero motivation to play, arguing that Season 15's item changes simply are not significant enough to justify another full reset.

Another points toward changes that have made Non-Ladder more attractive.

And another simply says:

EU looked alive enough yesterday.

Welcome to population analysis without population numbers.

There Are Actually Signs That Plenty of People Are Playing

A separate forum discussion from the Season 15 launch weekend paints a very different picture.

One European player checked the Ladder rankings shortly after launch and found themselves around rank 9,791 after killing a single monster in the standard Expansion Softcore Ladder.

By the following day, the same player reported more than 11,000 characters having reached at least level 2 in that specific European Ladder category.

They also posted ranking information suggesting very substantial activity in the separate Reign of the Warlock Ladder.

Those numbers cannot be converted directly into unique players.

One person can create multiple characters.

Different regions, Hardcore, Softcore, Expansion, Pre-Expansion and Reign of the Warlock split the audience into separate pools.

And Blizzard does not currently publish a convenient live counter showing exactly how many individual people are playing Diablo II: Resurrected.

But they do make one thing clear:

Season 15 is not literally empty.

The Playerbase Is More Fragmented Than It Used to Be

This may explain part of the perception.

Modern Diablo II is no longer one simple online population.

You can play:

• Pre-Expansion Ladder
• Pre-Expansion Hardcore Ladder
• Lord of Destruction-style Ladder
• Hardcore Ladder
• Reign of the Warlock Ladder
• Reign of the Warlock Hardcore Ladder
• Non-Ladder versions of those eras
• Offline

Then split all of that between regions.

A healthy total population can therefore still produce a surprisingly quiet-looking public game list in one particular mode.

And Diablo II players increasingly do not need public games for ordinary progression.

Many farm solo.

Others play with established groups.

Public games concentrate around familiar activities such as Tristram runs, Tomb runs, Chaos Sanctuary and Baal.

A quieter lobby does not necessarily mean nobody is playing.

Sometimes it means everybody is somewhere else killing Mephisto alone.

Non-Ladder Has Become Much More Attractive

This is perhaps the strongest explanation offered in the current discussion.

Historically, Ladder had a very obvious advantage.

Fresh economy.

Fresh leaderboard.

Exclusive items.

Exclusive Runewords.

If you wanted the newest toys, you restarted.

That distinction has softened.

Season 15 just moved eight former Ladder-only Runewords into Non-Ladder, including Cure, Bulwark, Metamorphosis, Ground, Temper and Hearth.

Reign of the Warlock has also given permanent characters considerably more long-term progression to pursue.

For someone sitting on years of equipment, perfect bases, crafted gear and high-level characters, the question becomes reasonable:

Why throw all of that away again?

Season 15’s New Items May Not Be Enough of a Hook

Blizzard did make balance and item changes for Patch 3.3.

Several Uniques and Set items were redesigned.

There are Terror Zone adjustments.

Sunder farming changed.

And Warlock received another round of fixes.

But there is no new class.

No new Act.

No enormous new endgame system.

No equivalent of Reign of the Warlock's original surprise.

For some players, that is fine.

Ladder itself is the content.

The joy is racing through Normal, Nightmare and Hell with nothing.

A cracked sash feels useful again.

A Spirit sword feels exciting again.

Someone finds the first Shako and briefly becomes a regional economic power.

But for players who recently performed that entire journey, another reset needs a stronger reason.

The Timing May Be Working Against Blizzard

Another criticism is simply that players are not ready to restart.

One forum response argues that Diablo II is a slower-progression game than Diablo IV, yet its seasons are beginning to feel similarly frequent.

That matters more now that Reign of the Warlock has expanded the amount of long-term progression available.

A player may still be developing their Non-Ladder Chronicle.

Still hunting Colossal Ancients.

Still trying new Warlock builds.

Still collecting the expansion's newer chase items.

Then Ladder appears and says:

Excellent work. Please delete your wealth and begin with a club.

There is a particular kind of Diablo player for whom that sentence is irresistible.

Not everyone is that player every three or four months.

Patch 3.3 Also Hit One of Warlock’s Popular Builds

Season 15 did not arrive without controversy either.

Patch 3.3 corrected an unintended damage bonus on Bind Demon.

Blizzard calls it a bug fix.

Players running dedicated Demon Summoners call it something rather more dramatic.

As we covered in our look at the Bind Demon changes in Patch 3.3, some summoners are reporting enormous practical damage losses against endgame targets.

That does not determine the health of Ladder.

But it does mean some Warlock players entered the new season with their planned build suddenly looking less attractive.

Likewise, Blizzard changed Sunder Charm farming for Season 15, reducing the value of the Magic Find route while pushing players more heavily toward Heralds.

Season 15 contains changes.

The debate is whether they are changes people wanted badly enough to restart for.

BlizzCon Is Sitting in the Background of This Entire Discussion

There is another elephant in the Blood Moor.

BlizzCon is approaching.

Multiple players in the current discussions say they are waiting to see what Blizzard announces before investing heavily in another Ladder.

That makes sense after Reign of the Warlock.

Before that expansion, expecting substantial new Diablo II content would have sounded optimistic.

Now Blizzard has proved it is willing to build new classes, systems and items for a game originally released in 2000.

That changes expectations.

If players believe another significant announcement could be weeks away, some will naturally stay on their established characters until they know what comes next.

Diablo II Has Always Had a Population That Comes and Goes

This is also worth remembering whenever another “Is Diablo II dead?” thread appears.

The game has been doing this for more than two decades.

Players disappear.

A Ladder resets.

They return.

A major patch arrives.

They return.

A new Diablo game launches.

They disappear.

Someone mentions Diablo II at dinner.

Three weeks later they are farming Ancient Tunnels at 2 a.m.

It is a remarkably difficult game to permanently stop playing.

Season 15 May Have a Motivation Problem, Not a Population Crisis

That is probably the fairest conclusion this early.

There is simply not enough reliable data to claim Diablo II: Resurrected has suffered some enormous Season 15 population collapse.

The current evidence is anecdotal and contradictory.

Some players see quiet public games.

Others report active European servers.

Ladder rankings already contain thousands upon thousands of characters.

And the community remains fragmented across multiple game eras, difficulties and regions.

But the complaints still tell us something useful.

A Ladder reset works best when players desperately want an excuse to begin again.

Season 15 seems to have some players asking why they should.

That is a different problem.

And perhaps a more interesting one for Blizzard.

Diablo II does not necessarily need more people.

It may need to make starting naked in the Rogue Encampment for the fifteenth time feel irresistible again.

Sources

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: Lowest Population I Have Ever Seen

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums: How Many Players Are Playing the Game?

Blizzard: Diablo II: Resurrected Ladder Season 15 and Patch 3.3

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Diablo 4’s Secret Cow Level Quest Has a Nasty Soft-Lock Problem

Diablo players spent decades insisting there is no Cow Level.

Diablo IV has apparently found a new way to preserve the tradition.

There may be a Cow Level.

You just might not be able to finish unlocking it.

Players working through Diablo IV's elaborate secret Cow Level puzzle are continuing to report problems with the Anger portion of the questline, including Amazon Training items refusing to drop, Mother's Rose failing to appear and progression becoming stuck after seemingly innocent actions such as salvaging the wrong piece of equipment.

The longest-running bug report became active again on August 23.

And because this is a secret Diablo quest involving hidden conditions, unusual drops and very little explanation from the game itself, figuring out whether you have encountered a bug or simply failed one invisible requirement can become an adventure of its own.

The cows may not be the hardest part of the Cow Level.

The Anger Step Requires a Full Amazon Training Set

The problematic section revolves around the Anger path.

Players first activate the appropriate Anger ritual, follow its clues and eventually begin collecting pieces of the Amazon Training set from Corrupted Amazons.

The process includes obtaining the Training Helm through the associated training-dummy step and then farming the remaining Amazon equipment.

Once the full set is equipped, players can defeat Vasha the Unbroken, who is supposed to drop the quest item known as Mother's Rose.

That Rose is then used at the Temple of Courage as part of the wider Cow Level puzzle.

At least when everything works.

One Player Salvaged the Boots — And the Drops Stopped

The original bug report describes a Barbarian who successfully collected and equipped all five pieces of Amazon Training gear.

While waiting for Vasha, the player removed the boots because of an inconvenient Fury-draining effect.

Then they returned to town to clear their inventory.

And accidentally salvaged the boots.

Normally that should be annoying but recoverable.

Farm another pair.

Continue the quest.

Instead, the player says Corrupted Amazons completely stopped dropping replacement Training Boots.

They tried resetting the Anger ritual.

They salvaged the remaining Training pieces.

They reread the relevant journal.

They repeated the training-dummy step.

They disabled their Loot Filter.

They cleared multiple areas full of Corrupted Amazons.

Nothing.

This is generally the point where a secret puzzle stops feeling mysterious and starts feeling personal.

Mother’s Rose Is Another Failure Point

Even players who successfully rebuild the entire Amazon Training set can encounter the next problem.

Vasha sometimes does not drop Mother's Rose.

Reports have continued through August on both PC and console.

One PlayStation player reported on August 20 that they had the complete five-piece set equipped, repeatedly killed the required Amazon elite and still received no Rose.

Trying alternative characters did not help.

Repeating earlier steps did not help.

Even temporarily abandoning Anger and working on another portion of the Cow Level mystery failed to solve it for that player.

Other affected players describe spending hours repeating the same sequence.

Which is thematically appropriate.

The step is called Anger.

A New Workaround Suggests the Killing Blow May Matter

There is, however, a particularly interesting new player-discovered workaround.

On August 23, a player who had been stuck across two separate characters reported finally getting Mother's Rose to drop after changing one thing:

they removed anything capable of stealing the killing blow.

That meant dismissing the Mercenary.

Removing the Reinforcement.

Disabling summons.

Then personally landing the killing blow on Vasha.

Mother's Rose dropped.

The player's partner reportedly tried the same method and also succeeded.

That does not prove the killing blow is the underlying cause of every Mother's Rose failure.

We are dealing with a community workaround, not a Blizzard-confirmed mechanic.

But if you have the full Amazon Training set equipped and Vasha repeatedly refuses to cooperate, it is one of the easiest things worth trying.

There is another useful detail:

Mother's Rose reportedly appears at the player's feet rather than inside Vasha's normal loot pile.

So check the ground carefully before assuming it failed again.

Other Players Have Fixed It by Resetting the Entire Anger Sequence

The killing-blow method is not the only workaround players report.

Another commonly successful sequence is:

• Salvage every Amazon Training piece you currently have
• Reactivate the Anger ritual
• Read the relevant journal again
• Hit the training dummy until the Amazon Training Helm drops
• Equip each Training item as you refarm the full set
• Keep the complete set equipped when fighting Vasha

Several players say this forced the quest state to recognise their progress again.

One August player reported destroying all the quest equipment, restarting the sequence and then equipping each new piece immediately as it dropped.

Vasha finally dropped Mother's Rose.

Another player fixed the issue by completing a different Cow Level sin first, then returning to Anger and repeating the sequence.

There is also an August 17 report where switching equipment through the Armory before re-equipping the complete Training set appeared to trigger a successful Rose drop.

None of these methods works for everyone.

Which is precisely the problem.

Using an Alt May Actually Make Things Worse

Creating another character sounds like the obvious solution to a broken quest state.

But players have discovered another complication.

Parts of the secret Cow Level progression may need to remain on the same character.

The original bug reporter eventually managed to obtain Mother's Rose using a Warlock after failing on the Barbarian.

They transferred the Rose through the stash.

The Barbarian then tried to use it at the appropriate brazier.

Nothing happened.

The Warlock could activate the brazier.

That suggests simply farming the missing item on another character and transferring it may not preserve all the hidden progression flags associated with the quest.

Again, Blizzard has not publicly documented the exact hidden-state rules.

But based on the current reports, the safest approach is to complete each major branch on the same character whenever possible.

The Brazier Can Become Another Dead End

Mother's Rose is not necessarily the end of the trouble.

Some players report reaching the Signal Brazier at the Temple of Courage only to find it non-interactable.

Others have seen the Rose consumed without the expected follow-up behaving correctly.

That creates several possible failure points inside one branch:

• Training Helm does not drop
• Amazon Training set stops progressing
• A salvaged piece cannot be reacquired
• Mother's Rose does not drop
• Mother's Rose works only on the character that earned it
• The brazier refuses to activate
• The brazier consumes the item without advancing correctly

There are secret quests.

Then there are secret QA departments.

Blizzard Has Not Publicly Confirmed a Fix

The main PC bug report has now passed 1,000 views and remained active as recently as August 23.

Separate Mother's Rose reports have appeared on both PC and PlayStation this month.

We could not find a Blizzard response confirming a cause or a permanent fix for the Anger soft-lock.

That means the workarounds remain entirely community-driven.

If you are currently progressing the Cow Level mystery, there are therefore a few sensible precautions:

• Do not salvage Amazon Training items until Anger is completely finished.
• Keep all five pieces equipped when fighting Vasha.
• Try to complete the entire Anger branch on one character.
• If Mother's Rose refuses to drop, remove Mercenary, Reinforcement and summons and personally land the killing blow.
• If progression appears completely stuck, resetting the Anger ritual and refarming the entire Training set has worked for some players.

None of those guarantees success.

But they are considerably better than repeatedly killing Amazons for four hours while questioning every decision that brought you here.

The Secret Cow Level Is Becoming Almost Too Diablo

There is something wonderfully appropriate about Diablo IV's Cow Level mystery being this complicated.

The original Secret Cow Level grew from rumours, obscure rituals and players insisting something existed long before Blizzard openly acknowledged the joke.

Diablo IV has taken that spirit and apparently added hidden quest flags, salvaging hazards and a boss who may care who personally delivers the killing blow.

The mystery is fun.

The bugs are less charming.

A secret quest can ask players to solve strange clues.

It can make them hunt obscure equipment.

It can absolutely make them perform ridiculous rituals in pursuit of cows.

But once the player has solved the puzzle correctly, the game should probably let them continue.

There is a difference between:

There is no Cow Level.

And:

There is a Cow Level, but you accidentally salvaged its boots.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Cow Level Anger Step Soft-Locked

Diablo IV Forums: Mother's Rose Not Dropping During Anger Quest

Diablo IV Forums: Mother's Rose and Cow Level Problem

Diablo IV Forums: Amazon Cow Level Problem

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Diablo 4 Players Say Royal Gem Salvage Is Still Losing Materials

Diablo IV has already fixed a bug where salvaging expensive high-tier Gems returned fewer fragments than intended.

Apparently the Jeweler may not have received the memo.

A long-running Diablo IV bug report became active again on August 23 after more players reported Royal Gems apparently disappearing or returning far fewer Gem Fragments than expected when salvaged.

One player says they salvaged six Royal Rubies and initially appeared to receive enough materials for only two of them.

Then they left the Jeweler.

When they returned, the game showed even fewer craftable Gems.

Another player claims to have salvaged 140 Royal Sapphires purchased from a vendor before discovering that most of the expected fragments were missing.

There is one important complication:

some of what players are seeing may be caused by Diablo IV's confusing Gem crafting interface rather than fragments literally vanishing.

Either way, something about the system is making players understandably nervous about putting months of shiny rocks into the salvage window.

The Latest Report Came on August 23

The original bug thread dates back to early July.

At the time, one player reported salvaging stacks of ten Royal Rubies, Royal Skulls and Royal Diamonds.

Instead of receiving what they believed should have been the full equivalent in Gem Fragments, they said the game credited only enough for roughly one Gem from each stack.

Other players quickly reported similar behaviour.

One PS5 player said they experienced the same problem.

Another reported salvaging 60 Royal Gems and receiving effectively nothing useful back.

Then came the fresh August 23 report.

The player says:

Six Royal Rubies went in.

Materials equivalent to roughly two appeared to come back.

They left the Jeweler and returned.

The number of Gems the interface said they could craft dropped again.

That is not the sort of magic trick anyone visits a Jeweler for.

Blizzard Already Fixed a High-Tier Gem Salvage Bug in June

This makes the situation particularly interesting because Blizzard has already acknowledged a very similar problem.

Patch 3.1.0, released on June 30, specifically included this fix:

Fixed an issue where salvaging high-tier Gems returned fewer fragments than intended.

That means high-tier Gem salvage definitely has had a documented bug during the current Diablo IV era.

If the August reports represent the same underlying problem, it may have returned.

If they represent something different, the Gem system has managed to invent a sequel remarkably quickly.

But There Is a Big Catch: Crafting Requires More Than Gem Fragments

This is where we need to be careful.

A player looking at the Jeweler does not necessarily see a direct display of how many Gems their fragments alone can produce.

Crafting high-tier Gems also requires other materials.

Grand Gems, for example, require Gem Fragments alongside Forgotten Souls and Gold.

That means the number displayed as craftable can suddenly fall because you are short on Forgotten Souls or Gold even if your Gem Fragment total is correct.

One player responding to the August 23 reports argues that this is exactly what is happening.

And there is precedent for the confusion.

An earlier July thread began with a player convinced that salvaging ten Royal Rubies had failed.

After checking the numbers more carefully, they discovered that the fragments were actually present.

They simply did not have enough Forgotten Souls to craft the Grand Gem they wanted.

The thread title was eventually changed to:

“Nope just me being stupid!”

Diablo IV itemisation occasionally provides its own fact-checking service.

Not Every Report Can Be Explained That Easily

That does not mean every complaint should be dismissed as user error.

Several players specifically say they watched their Gem Fragment totals, rather than merely the Jeweler's craftable-item number.

One player spent several days tracking their fragments after noticing unusual changes.

They reported cases where salvaging Gems failed to increase the stored fragment total at all.

They later saw the numbers behave normally again, only for the apparent totals to drop after crafting another Gem.

The behaviour appeared inconsistent rather than simply being a fixed salvage ratio.

That makes the current bug difficult to diagnose from player reports alone.

There may be multiple things happening:

• A genuine Gem Fragment accounting bug
• A regression of the previously fixed high-tier salvage issue
• Confusing crafting limits caused by Forgotten Souls or Gold
• UI values failing to update correctly
• Or some combination of the above

None of those options inspires tremendous confidence before salvaging a stack of Royal Gems.

Royal Gems Are Too Expensive for Players to Experiment Casually

The frustration makes sense because these are not Chipped Gems picked up while leveling.

Royal and Grand Gems represent substantial resource investment.

Players farm Gem Fragments across Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, Infernal Hordes and other endgame activities.

Higher-tier crafting also consumes Gold and Forgotten Souls that compete with Diablo IV's numerous other crafting systems.

Losing even a handful of Royal Gems hurts.

Losing dozens is exactly the sort of event that makes someone stop testing whether the bug still exists.

One July player explicitly said they refused to salvage additional Royal Gems until they knew the system had been fixed.

That remains fairly sensible advice today.

The Safest Approach Is to Test One Gem First

Until Blizzard clarifies the latest reports, players planning a large conversion should probably avoid dropping an entire stack into the Jeweler at once.

If you need to salvage Royal Gems:

• Check your exact Gem Fragment total first
• Check your Gold and Forgotten Souls
• Salvage a single Gem
• Verify the fragment total changed correctly
• Leave and reopen the Jeweler to make sure the value persists
• Only then consider salvaging a larger stack

That will also help distinguish a real fragment-loss bug from the UI simply telling you that another crafting material is missing.

And if the fragment number itself genuinely decreases or fails to increase, screenshots or video showing the before-and-after totals would be particularly useful in Blizzard's bug report forum.

There Is No New Fix Listed Yet

Blizzard's latest live patch, 3.1.3 from August 12, contains fixes for classes, War Plans and several encounters.

It does not list another Gem salvage fix.

So the June 30 correction remains the latest official acknowledgement we could find regarding high-tier Gem salvage.

The August 23 reports therefore leave us with an awkward situation.

Blizzard says the old problem was fixed.

Some players say they are still losing materials.

Other players say the crafting interface is simply misleading them.

The difference matters enormously when a stack of Royal Gems is sitting in the salvage window.

For now, the most sensible strategy may be the least exciting one:

count everything before pressing the button.

The demons are allowed to steal your loot.

The Jeweler probably shouldn't.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: Gem Bug — No Mats After Destroy

Diablo IV Forums: Gem Salvage Still Broken?

Diablo IV Forums: Gems Disappearing From Inventory

Blizzard: Diablo IV Patch Notes

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Diablo 4 Players Say War Plans Are Making Alts Feel Like Work

Diablo IV gives players twelve classes to experiment with.

War Plans are apparently making some of them wonder whether one is enough.

A fresh round of community discussion is once again asking Blizzard to make War Plan progression account-wide, with players arguing that rebuilding the system from scratch on every alt turns what should be an exciting new character into another endgame checklist.

One player summed up the problem this weekend after looking at a stash full of gear they could use on alternative characters.

They wanted to make more characters.

Then they remembered they would have to progress another War Plan.

The enthusiasm disappeared.

That does not mean everyone wants War Plans shared.

Some players actually like having another progression system to develop separately on each character.

And Blizzard itself has already acknowledged the debate.

The studio says it is investigating moving War Plan progression away from being purely per-character.

For now, however, every alt still gets its own paperwork.

War Plans Were Supposed to Give Diablo 4 Endgame More Structure

War Plans arrived with Lord of Hatred as one of Diablo IV's biggest endgame overhauls.

The basic idea is genuinely good.

Instead of repeatedly choosing unrelated activities from across Sanctuary, players create chains incorporating things such as:

• Nightmare Dungeons
• Helltides
• The Undercity
• Lair Bosses
• Infernal Hordes
• The Pit

Completing activities progresses their respective War Plan trees, unlocking modifiers and rewards that make those parts of the endgame more interesting or lucrative.

Blizzard originally described War Plans as a way to create a playlist of activities while targeting the rewards you actually want.

On a first character, that gives the endgame another progression layer.

You are not merely running Helltides.

You are improving what Helltides can become.

You are not merely clearing Nightmare Dungeons.

You are building toward stronger versions of that activity.

The problem appears when the player creates character number two.

Your Alt Starts With None of That Progress

War Plan progression currently belongs to the individual character rather than being shared across the seasonal account.

That means a player can spend a substantial amount of time developing activity trees on their main, create an alt and discover that their shiny new Barbarian, Sorcerer or Warlock has none of it.

The gear can be waiting in the stash.

Gold is waiting.

Materials are waiting.

Paragon progression has account-wide elements.

But the War Plan?

Back to work.

This complaint has existed since the system launched, but it is resurfacing again in August as players approach the later parts of Season 14 and begin considering additional characters.

A new August 22 discussion calls account-wide War Plan points essential and argues that repeating the entire grind on multiple characters simply does not feel worthwhile.

Another player responded that the system is currently “single handedly preventing any motivation to play an alt.”

That is one person's experience rather than a universal verdict.

But similar posts have been appearing for months.

Players Say They Are Finishing Characters Before Finishing War Plans

One of the more interesting complaints is not simply that War Plans take time.

It is that character progression can move faster than War Plan progression.

Players report reaching the point where a build is geared, functional and approaching the end of its seasonal journey while several War Plan trees remain unfinished.

That creates an odd incentive.

You have finished building the character you wanted.

You now want to try another class.

But the game asks you to remain on the first character long enough to finish progression systems whose rewards you may barely need anymore.

Or start again on the alt.

One current forum response argues that many War Plan nodes are simply not attractive enough to justify that repeated grind.

That player said they would not mind rebuilding War Plans on alts if every point felt exciting.

At the moment, they do not even consider completing every tree worthwhile on the main.

That may be the more fundamental problem.

The grind is easier to tolerate when the destination is irresistible.

Blizzard Has Already Made War Plans Faster

Blizzard is not ignoring the system.

Recent updates increased War Plan Activity XP scaling at higher Torment difficulties.

Infernal Hordes received increased base Activity XP.

Helltide objectives were reworked.

New War Plan options were added for Helltides and Escalating Nightmares.

Patch 3.1 also introduced Party War Plan synchronization.

A group can now generate the same War Plan board and share objectives and progression while playing together.

That is a substantial quality-of-life improvement.

It also makes the alt problem slightly stranger.

Four different players can coordinate one War Plan.

Two characters belonging to the same player cannot share their progression.

Sanctuary believes strongly in teamwork.

Just apparently not with yourself.

Blizzard Says It Is Investigating Account-Wide Progression

The important part is that Blizzard has already acknowledged exactly what players are asking for.

During the June 23 developer Q&A, Lead Systems Designer Art Peshkov was asked whether War Plans could become account-wide.

The answer was essentially:

Blizzard is investigating it.

The team specifically mentioned potentially making War Plan progression work per partition, similar to Paragon, rather than purely per hero.

That would potentially allow Seasonal characters to share progression with other Seasonal characters while keeping Eternal, Hardcore and other partitions separate where appropriate.

Blizzard did not announce a release date.

It did not promise the change for Season 15.

And as of August 23, War Plans remain character-specific.

But this is no longer merely a community wishlist item Blizzard has never discussed.

The developers know.

The question is what implementation they eventually choose.

Not Everyone Wants Fully Shared War Plans

There is a legitimate argument against simply making everything account-wide.

An alt that inherits every completed progression system risks having surprisingly little left to do.

Diablo IV already makes subsequent characters considerably easier to establish than the first.

Your stash can contain powerful equipment.

Materials and currencies are available.

Various account progression systems have already been completed.

If the alt also arrives with every War Plan activity tree finished, some players argue that another piece of character progression disappears.

One current discussion suggests a better compromise:

do not share the progression completely — add a substantial catch-up bonus.

If your main has heavily developed War Plans, every later character could gain War Plan Activity XP much faster until they approach that level.

The alt still develops its own board.

It simply does not need to repeat the original grind at full speed.

That is probably the most interesting middle ground.

Shared Points Could Be Better Than Shared Builds

Another compromise appears repeatedly in the current discussions:

share the points, not the selected nodes.

That distinction solves several problems.

A Sorcerer may want very different activities from a Barbarian.

Your main might be built around Pit pushing.

Your alt might need Nightmare Dungeons for Glyph progression.

A third character might want Infernal Hordes.

If every character inherited exactly the same configured War Plan, account-wide progression could actually remove flexibility.

Instead, Blizzard could make earned activity progression account-wide while allowing each hero to spend or configure those points independently.

That keeps character identity.

It removes duplicate grinding.

And it would still allow War Plans to function as actual plans rather than a permanent account-wide template.

There Is Another Problem: Players Want More Choice Over the Activities

The account-wide debate is now merging with another long-running War Plan complaint.

Players want more control over which activities appear.

War Plans are supposed to encourage players to diversify their endgame routine.

That is intentional.

If Blizzard allowed everyone to select only their favourite activity every time, the system could quickly become:

Run the mathematically best thing forever.

Which Diablo players are perfectly capable of doing without assistance.

But forcing an activity someone actively dislikes creates the opposite problem.

Several players say they simply stop engaging with a War Plan when it asks them to perform too many activities they do not enjoy.

That is particularly noticeable on alts.

A fresh alt may desperately need Glyph progression.

The player therefore wants the Pit or Nightmare Dungeons.

The War Plan decides it is time for something else.

Technically, that creates variety.

Emotionally, it creates chores.

The Best Version May Be Incentives Rather Than Restrictions

One of the better proposals from the latest discussion would let players assemble more of their own War Plan while using rewards to encourage variety.

Blizzard could still highlight certain activities with:

• Better reward tiers
• Bonus War Plan XP
• Higher chances of special rewards
• Temporary activity bonuses

Players could therefore run whatever they actually want.

Choosing a more varied plan would simply be more profitable.

That is fundamentally different from saying:

You are doing Infernal Hordes now because the board said so.

Choice plus incentives generally feels better than restriction plus rewards.

Diablo 4 Already Has Enough Reasons to Make Alts

This is why the current criticism matters beyond War Plans themselves.

Diablo IV has become increasingly alt-friendly in other areas.

There are more classes.

More build-defining Uniques.

More ways to transfer useful gear between characters.

And Season 15 is already forcing players to reconsider class choices through another major round of balance changes.

We have recently seen Warlock PTR builds producing completely absurd Season 15 damage numbers, while other classes are receiving substantial changes of their own.

That naturally makes players want to experiment.

Maybe the main is finished.

Maybe another class suddenly looks interesting.

Maybe a perfect item drops for something you are not currently playing.

Maybe your stash contains a ridiculous 4GA base, assuming you can resist letting Transfiguration turn it into a permanent life lesson.

Those are exactly the moments when an ARPG should make creating another character irresistible.

A progression system should not be the thing that makes you decide against it.

War Plans May Be Solving the First-Character Problem Twice

War Plans make a lot of sense on the first character of a season.

The endgame needs structure.

It needs long-term progression.

It needs reasons to rotate between activities.

War Plans provide all three.

The question is whether the second character needs the same lesson.

The player already learned how War Plans work.

They already completed the progression.

They already demonstrated willingness to run the activities.

Repeating all of it does not necessarily create another meaningful journey.

Sometimes repetition is progression.

Sometimes repetition is just repetition.

Blizzard Already Has Several Ways to Fix This

The good news is that none of the proposed solutions requires removing War Plans.

The system itself has plenty of potential.

Blizzard could:

• Make War Plan progression account-wide within each seasonal partition
• Share earned points while keeping each character's node choices separate
• Add a large catch-up multiplier for alts
• Let completed War Plans generate account-wide XP tomes for other characters
• Give players more control over activity selection
• Make every War Plan node valuable enough that rebuilding genuinely feels rewarding

Any of those could preserve the system without asking someone with four characters to complete effectively the same progression four times.

Blizzard has already said it is investigating the problem.

That makes this less a question of whether the feedback has been heard.

It has.

Now players are waiting to see what Blizzard does with it.

An Alt Should Feel Like a New Character, Not a New Shift at Work

Diablo is built around starting again.

New seasons.

New characters.

New builds.

New items that suddenly make you want to level a class you ignored for six months.

Repetition is fundamental to the genre.

But good repetition gives you a different experience the second time.

A Sorcerer should not feel like a Barbarian.

A Warlock should not feel like a Rogue.

Leveling a new build should change how you approach Sanctuary.

Grinding the same War Plan progression again?

That part feels considerably more familiar.

War Plans were created to give Diablo IV's endgame more purpose.

If players are avoiding alts because they cannot face doing those War Plans again, the system may have succeeded slightly too well.

The first character needed an endgame plan.

The fifth probably just wants to kill demons.

Sources

Diablo IV Forums: How to “fix” Warplans

Diablo IV Forums: Shared War Plans

Diablo IV Forums: Account-Wide Progression vs Activity Choice

Diablo IV Developer Update Q&A Notes: Account-Wide War Plans

Blizzard: Season of Death Awakening — War Plan Updates

Blizzard: Lord of Hatred — War Plans Explained

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Diablo 2 Players Want a Charm Inventory — And the Old System Is Getting Harder to Defend

Diablo II has one of the most elegant inventory systems ever designed.

It is also completely ridiculous.

Your character has forty inventory squares.

A sword might take six of them.

A suit of armor takes six.

A Grand Charm takes three.

And if you are playing an optimised endgame character, a large part of those forty squares may already be occupied before the first monster drops anything.

That old tension has returned to the Diablo II: Resurrected forums, where a new request for a dedicated Charm Inventory has grown into one of the more active current community debates.

The proposed solution is simple.

Give Charms their own inventory.

Only Charms placed there provide bonuses.

Charms sitting in the normal inventory remain inactive.

Character power stays capped.

The regular inventory becomes available for its other traditional purpose.

Picking up loot.

Which seems relevant in a game primarily about picking up loot.

Players Are Asking for a Separate Charm Inventory Again

The latest discussion began on August 17 and has since grown past 120 replies.

The original proposal suggests creating a separate inventory capable of holding Small, Large and Grand Charms.

Only Charms placed inside that dedicated space would activate.

If the Charm Inventory had roughly the same usable capacity players currently dedicate to Charms, the system would theoretically provide no direct increase in maximum character power.

You could still equip the same number of Skillers, resistance Charms, Magic Find Charms, Annihilus, Hellfire Torch, Sunder Charm and whatever collection of tiny rectangles your build requires.

The difference would be that killing a monster and seeing an interesting item drop would no longer trigger an immediate logistical meeting.

At the moment, heavily optimised characters often keep only a handful of regular inventory squares empty.

Some use the Horadric Cube as emergency storage.

Some simply leave most items on the ground.

Others deliberately sacrifice a few Charms because being able to pick things up is apparently a luxury statistic.

But Inventory Space Was Always Part of the Price of Charms

This is why the argument is not as simple as it initially sounds.

Charms were introduced with Lord of Destruction as items that provide passive bonuses simply by sitting in your inventory.

That creates an intentional trade-off.

Every Charm gives you power.

Every Charm also removes carrying capacity.

Want another +1 skill Grand Charm?

Excellent.

You have three fewer spaces for loot.

Want enough resistance Small Charms to compensate for an aggressive equipment setup?

Also fine.

Your backpack now resembles the world's smallest geological exhibition.

The limitation forces the player to decide how much convenience they are willing to exchange for character strength.

Some players in the current discussion argue that removing this sacrifice would fundamentally change Diablo II rather than merely modernise it.

One of the better arguments against a Charm Inventory is that loot efficiency itself has value.

A player with more empty inventory can remain in combat longer, collect more items and make fewer trips to town.

Separate the Charms from normal storage and you have therefore increased that character's efficiency even if their sheet damage remains identical.

That Is Technically Power Creep — Just Not the Usual Kind

This has become one of the central arguments in the debate.

Supporters say a Charm Inventory is not power creep because it does not increase the number of active Charms.

Opponents respond that efficiency is itself a form of power in Diablo II.

Both arguments have some merit.

If a character currently carries 30 squares of Charms and 10 squares of free space, giving them a separate 30-square Charm Inventory plus the complete original backpack would obviously make that character more efficient.

They can pick up more loot.

They return to town less often.

They may have an advantage during public multiplayer loot scrambles because they actually possess enough empty squares to grab the thing that just dropped.

None of that increases Blessed Hammer damage.

It absolutely changes how efficiently the character farms.

The question is whether that particular form of power is still interesting.

Reign of the Warlock Has Already Changed Diablo II’s Approach to Inventory Management

This is where the argument becomes much harder in 2026.

Blizzard has already decided that some forms of old Diablo II inventory friction are no longer sacred.

Reign of the Warlock added Advanced Stash Tabs with stackable items.

There are dedicated tabs for Materials, Gems, Runes and consumables.

The expansion also introduced a built-in Loot Filter and the Chronicle for tracking collected items.

Blizzard's stated goal was straightforward:

Spend more time killing monsters and less time organising the things those monsters leave behind.

That is a very different philosophy from Diablo II in 2000.

And it is difficult to argue that stackable Runes somehow destroyed the spiritual integrity of Sanctuary.

We recently saw another example when Season 15 unlocked eight former Ladder Runewords for Non-Ladder characters.

Modern Diablo II is already willing to revisit old restrictions.

It simply does so carefully.

Blizzard Has Always Been Cautious About Changing the Core Game

That caution matters too.

When Diablo II: Resurrected was originally developed, Blizzard repeatedly described its approach as preserving the underlying game while making quality-of-life changes around it.

Auto Gold Pickup arrived.

Shared Stash tabs arrived.

Controller support arrived.

Inventory quick-move features arrived.

Later updates added more lobby improvements, accessibility options and even a Loot-to-Cube controller command.

The original philosophy was effectively:

remove unnecessary friction without removing Diablo II.

A Charm Inventory sits directly on the border between those two ideas.

It clearly removes friction.

It also alters a mechanical trade-off that has existed for roughly 25 years.

That makes it a much more interesting design decision than adding another stash tab.

The Current Solution Is the Horadric Cube — Which Says a Lot

Veteran Diablo II players already have a Charm Inventory workaround.

It is called:

put the loot in the Cube.

Players fill most of their normal inventory with Charms while leaving enough room to pick up something small.

Larger valuable items can then be moved into the Horadric Cube.

Blizzard even added a dedicated Loot to Cube command for controller users years ago.

That means the game has effectively acknowledged the behaviour.

It works.

It is also clumsy.

You cannot inspect and reorganise everything as naturally.

Large drops still create awkward situations.

And each farming session becomes a repeated sequence of opening containers inside containers because your backpack has been converted into a passive skill tree.

Diablo II players have spent decades becoming extremely efficient at inconvenient things.

That does not necessarily make those things good.

Reign of the Warlock Has Added Even More Things Worth Picking Up

The other problem is that Diablo II's world is no longer finished.

For decades, the inventory system existed inside a game whose total item ecosystem was essentially known.

Reign of the Warlock changed that.

There are new Warlock-specific items.

Grimoires.

New Runewords.

New Uniques.

New crafting materials.

Statues.

Unique Jewels from the Colossal Ancients.

Latent Sunder Charms.

And whatever Blizzard decides to add next.

We have already seen Season 15 change how players farm Latent Sunder Charms, pushing dedicated hunters more heavily toward Hell difficulty and Herald encounters.

That means players are being encouraged to hunt more specialised loot while operating with the same forty-square character inventory Diablo II used decades ago.

The stash became modern.

The loot filter became modern.

The backpack remains extremely committed to the Clinton administration.

A Charm Inventory Does Not Have to Be 10x4

This may be where a compromise becomes possible.

A dedicated Charm Inventory does not necessarily need to replicate the entire normal inventory.

Several players have suggested smaller layouts.

An 8x4 Charm Inventory would provide 32 active Charm squares.

A 10x3 layout would provide 30.

That would actually reduce the theoretical maximum Charm capacity compared with filling the current 10x4 inventory completely.

Players would gain normal loot space.

But they could lose a little absolute Charm power.

Suddenly the system creates a different trade-off rather than simply removing one.

It could also be unlocked gradually.

Perhaps additional Charm rows arrive through difficulty progression.

Perhaps the final section requires defeating the Colossal Ancients.

The player who started the current forum discussion specifically suggested making the inventory an endgame reward tied to the new Ancients.

That is actually a very Diablo II solution.

You do not receive convenience for free.

You kill something horrible for it.

There Is Also a Cleaner Technical Rule: Charms Outside the Bag Do Nothing

The most important part of almost every sensible Charm Inventory proposal is this:

Charms in the normal inventory should not provide bonuses.

Without that restriction, a dedicated bag would obviously become enormous power creep.

Players would fill the Charm Inventory.

Then fill the normal inventory.

Then discover some new and exciting way of fitting another Charm into the Horadric Cube.

Diablo players should never be challenged to find more multipliers.

They will.

Restricting active Charms to one dedicated space preserves a hard cap.

It also provides a clear visual distinction between:

Charms you are using

and

Charms you just picked up.

That alone would make identifying potential upgrades substantially less irritating.

The strongest Argument Against It Is Also the Most Diablo II Argument Possible

Opponents still have a legitimate point.

Diablo II is interesting partly because it frequently refuses to give players everything they want.

Your belt is limited.

Your inventory is limited.

Your stash was originally tiny.

Skills require commitments.

Items have weird requirements.

Resistance penalties punish progression.

Immunities force builds to adapt.

The game constantly asks:

What are you willing to sacrifice?

Charms fit that philosophy beautifully.

You can have another Skill point.

But the Grand Charm occupies three squares.

You can have more Magic Find.

But your inventory becomes smaller.

That friction is not accidental.

It is Diablo II.

The danger is gradually sanding away enough irritating edges that the strange old game underneath becomes something much more conventional.

But Quality of Life Is Not Automatically the Enemy of Diablo II

Reign of the Warlock has already demonstrated that preservation does not have to mean paralysis.

The expansion added the first new Diablo II class in 25 years.

It created entirely new endgame content.

It introduced modern stash systems and loot filtering.

It even created the wonderfully strange situation where new Warlock content cannot use Legacy Graphics because no 2000-era version of that content ever existed.

Diablo II is no longer simply being preserved.

It is being developed again.

That changes the question.

We are no longer asking whether Blizzard should alter a museum piece.

We are asking which parts of a living 2026 game still benefit from restrictions designed for 2000.

The Charm Inventory Debate Is Really About What Diablo II Should Become

That is why this discussion keeps returning.

It is not really about forty little squares.

It is about what Diablo II: Resurrected is supposed to be now.

If the goal remains perfect mechanical preservation, the answer is easy.

No Charm Inventory.

The inconvenience is part of the system.

If Reign of the Warlock marks the beginning of a genuinely new Diablo II era, the answer becomes more complicated.

Blizzard is creating more loot.

More endgame.

More progression.

More systems.

At some point, making players reserve most of their backpack for passive statistics may stop feeling like meaningful resource management.

It may simply feel old.

A dedicated Charm Inventory would absolutely change Diablo II.

The interesting question is whether Diablo II has already changed enough that it finally makes sense.

After 25 years, perhaps the greatest endgame reward Blizzard can offer is not another +1 to Skills.

Perhaps it is the ability to pick up a pair of boots without first rearranging eight rocks.

Sources

Diablo II: Resurrected Forums — Please Add a Dedicated Charm Inventory to D2R

Blizzard — Reign of the Warlock: Loot Filter and Advanced Stash Tabs

Blizzard — How We’re Making Diablo II: Resurrected More Accessible to Everyone

Blizzard — Diablo II: Resurrected Patch 2.4.3 Quality-of-Life Updates

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