Hotfixes Bring a Big Boost in Legendary Drops

Update 4/10: Hotfix is now live in all regions.

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Edit: These hotfixes are now live in the Americas and Europe. They will be deployed to ANZ at approximately 5:00 a.m. PT and to Asia at approximately 1:00 p.m. PT on April 10.

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Hey all,

A series of hotfixes will be deployed today making more adjustments to overall reward structures within the game.

I wanted to take a minute to explain the reasons for the changes that we are making. A driving goal of our design has been to make killing monsters feel rewarding, we want you all to find tons of cool items that you are excited about but more importantly we want you to have fun while doing it.

Rifts have always been intended to be the most efficient play method in the game, currently they aren’t for a number of reasons. Part of this has to do with the high level of efficiency in farming that players find doing things like farming Manglemaw, Razorclaw and any other number of unique monsters. Another contributing element is that farming chests without having to actually fight monsters is far more effective than actually fighting the monsters. It is very important to us that chests are exciting to find and feel rewarding but presently they are far too common and reliable to farm in certain areas of the game.

Finally Kadala, she has always been intended to give players some degree of control over their item upgrades. While we don’t want players to simply pick and choose from a list of items at an excessively high cost, we do want you to have an answer to the question “How do I upgrade my boots?” Kadala is meant to be that answer, she is meant to give you some direct control over the types of items you find. Since we are increasing the overall reward structure of the game she is also going to be increasing but by a larger amount than the rest of the changes since she didn't feel rewarding enough to us.

Without further delay here is a list of the changes that will be coming in the hotfix.

The Bad!
Unique monsters now drop less items.
*Uniques were dropping far more loot than their difficulty would warrant.

Chest spawns have been thinned out across all acts of the game.
*Ideally chests become less common and something that players can’t flip games to farm. It is our goal to make them feel exciting and rewarding when you find them.

The Good!
The bonus legendary drop rate for rifts is being increased from 25% to 100%!
*This means that while in a rift your chance to find a legendary item from monsters, chests, elites, and everything else is double what it is outside of rifts. No this does not mean opening bounty bags in rifts is the new hotness. ;P

Kadala’s legendary drop rate has been significantly increased.
*Blood Shards are meant to be a compelling element of rift rewards and something players are excited to get.

Loot is an incredibly important aspect of Diablo games and we will continue to keep a very close eye on it. If more problems arise we will continue striving to address them. It isn’t our goal to take loot away from people, we just want to make sure they are having as much fun as possible while finding it and these changes all support that goal.

Good hunting and link the loot!

Travis Day

Nope. Legendary crafting mats have an independent drop table and their drop rates will not be affected by the change to Uniques.

No ETA to share at the moment for when these hotfixes will go live. Be sure to keep an eye on this thread for updates: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12427063132

Note: When the hotfixes do go live, they should go live for all regions at the same time.

Rift Bosses do not count as Uniques, so they will be not be affected by the hotfix to Unique drops. They will, however, be affected by the hotfix that will boost your chance to find Legendary items by 100% (up from 25%) while in Rifts.

Note that the 100% bonus to Legendary drops in Nephalem Rifts is multiplicative and will actually stack with the scaling Legendary drop rate bonus in Torment 1-6 (which in turn boosts your chance to find Legendary items by 15% per slider tick, also multiplicatively) .

Just checked with QA. The hotfix to Uniques should not affect purple Treasure Goblins/Pygmies/etc.

A better way to do the math for each Torment slider is: 15% for Torment 1, 32% for Torment 2 (1.15 * 1.15), 52% for Torment 3 (1.15 * 1.15 * 1.15), etc.

Correct, thanks!

Hotfixes are now live in the Americas and Europe: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12427063132

We are still working to deploy these changes to ANZ and Asia servers. :)

Quick update: These hotfixes are now live in the Americas and Europe (old news). They will be deployed to ANZ at approximately 5:00 a.m. PT and to Asia at approximately 1:00 p.m. PT on April 10 (new news).