Many times, things just don’t go according to plan. With about a month left in the Diablo IV season, I'm only now jumping into the game. For the most part, I've been staying away from any news about the game to the point I did not even know about the Season of Blood. I have, however, been hearing about some of the controversy and find some of it a bit disappointing.

While I have mostly stayed away from any news regarding Diablo IV, I did hear duping at the start was a massive issue. Hopefully, those issues have been fixed. I’m not that shocked people found a way. We should see season 1 in a game like this as more or less another round of testing. I can only hope season 2 will have whatever issues that have arisen resolved.

I also knew somewhat that some of my progress made on the main server would get carried over into the seasons. I’m rather glad some more of the mundane tasks I don’t have to repeat every single season.

It’s kind of nice that we come with whatever knowledge of the maps we already have uncovered. It makes me want to go back and find every single little spot I might have missed the first time around. If nothing else just to ensure I get that renown at starting every season.

I was hoping the Sorcerer was going to get some needed buffs. I’m not shocked people are still finding it rather slow to clear. Along with some issues that it falls over dead depending on which way the wind is blowing. Perhaps season 2 will see some needed changes more so than whatever they did.

While I was tempted to read all the patch notes from the release till now. I frankly just want to get into the game and get this show on the road. I’m sure at some point I'll take some time and see what they did and did not change in the end.

Since the sorcerer and even more so the way I wanted to play, it looked like quite a weak build and I'm already quite behind. I decided to take the Flurry Rogue route. I want a fast character and I have a lot of ground to make up for. While it is a melee it should suit my needs quite well for a playstyle I will enjoy.

There is also the added fun I've only played a rouge for limited amounts of time. I never took one into many of the end-game content loops this game has. So, in a way, I'm rather thrilled to be playing something that is mostly new to me.

While it’s nice they give you the option to skip the campaign. I’ve yet to get bored of it. I thought since I've been away for a bit from the game I might as well do it at least one more time during my season open. Any further characters I make this season or the next I have a feeling I'll be skipping it.

I also don’t see it as an issue for them to require everyone to at least once beating the campaign before they can join in on the season. I’m hoping this is a bit of a sign that they are going to attempt to make seasons mean something. With how neglected Diablo III felt for so long I can only hope they give seasons in Diablo IV some real meaning.

One of the first things I did when I got into the game on my new rouge was claim my rewards from renown. I can’t express enough just how powerful having a couple of skill points right away felt.

You can also see they give you credit for any areas discovered and alters of Lilith. Everything else is up to you to do again. I can see some players hating to have to repeat anything. I, however, love dungeons, and since I'm doing the campaign anyway, I'll be looking forward to picking up as many side quests I naturally run into along the way.

This also meant before even getting into anything I already had my main skill that I'll be using throughout this play unless I switch into a different build at some point. So far, I've found Flurry to be quite nice to have. I can’t wait to see how it ends up going later in the game.

My first dungeon in Icehowl Ruins if you could even call it that was super easy. It feels like I had even less of an issue running it than my sorcerer did. All thanks to those extra skill points. It also helped along the way I looted some weapon upgrades.

Since I've already followed along to the story, I ended up just skipping any cutscenes the game has to offer. Perhaps later into the game when I reach parts, I've not done a lot I might slow down and let those play out. For now, however, I'm in a bit of a rush.

It was not long before I found myself in Kyovashad. That is when I realized I could use the horse. Having the horse right away like this is going to be quite a game changer in terms of time spent running around. I quickly mounted up my steed after picking out its look for gear and was on my way

I quickly moved around picking up some side quests before heading out for the next part of the campaign. Anything I could complete along the way I did. I’d later return to any towns as needed to do turn-ins.

By that time, I felt like I had fine-tuned the graphic settings I'll be running with this season. For the most part, everything was put on max unless it stated it needed 32 gigs of RAM to do so. Hopefully, I'll get some better monitors soon to crank up the resolution from what I normally game on.

For now, however, the numbers are quite impressive. I ended up putting an FPS limit on at 100 just to reduce my power consumption if it ever went over that. I’m not one of those people that don’t need high FPS I just need it to be smooth. While I could have done this in the AMD software for this game I just did it in a game since they had a fps limit option anyways.

I don’t know what is more satisfying. Later into the night, it became cooler in the house, so the temps kept dropping the longer I played. There is also the fact both the CPU and GPU hardly needed to do much to keep me between 75-100 FPS. I was rather thrilled about the power use overall and how cool the room remained.

Not that long after I started to run into some of the season-only content. I have not much of a clue about Malignant sockets let alone how to get what I need for them. I am, however, intrigued and can’t wait to discover more about what is included in this season.

Final Thoughts

This ended up being a rather short run for my first day. I mostly wanted to make sure everything was set up and ready to go. I also spent some time before starting to get an idea of a rough build I at least wanted to start with. I was mostly interested to see how my new PC would run this game and I'm thrilled with the results I'm seeing so far.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV.