Diablo 4’s new item upgrade is good news for more than just your Season 4 characters: “Things that were just ok in previous seasons are now insanely powerful”

Diablo 4 Season 4 isn’t too far away, bringing with it a substantial overhaul to the game’s item system, which, according to the game’s lead producer, will make its mark on your old characters as well as your new ones.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Tim Ismay said that “the thing that’s really exciting about Season 4 that we’ve never had is that it will be a really good time to go back and play your old characters as well.” That’s because while there’s content that’s specific to the new Season 4 Realm, many of the biggest item changes coming with the new season are also available on the Eternal Realm, which allows players to return to characters they created earlier in the game’s history.

Ismay outlines the new powers that are available, as well as the Greater Affixes, Masterworking, and Tempering systems that are available as part of the item upgrade, all of which will be available to old characters. Of those, he says that Masterworking, in particular, “makes so many builds unlocked that existed before.”

Those builds might have been decent before, the kind of thing where “you could play them in endgame and they did ok.” Now, however, “you might find things that were just ok in previous seasons are now insanely powerful.” Ismay says that he’s looking to revisit an old Necromancer build, as well as an Incinerate Sorceress, “and just see how powerful I can make these characters that before were ok, but turn into gods under this new system. I really want to encourage players to check back on some of your older characters. I think you’ll be blown away with how much fun they can be.”

Diablo 4 Season 4 doesn’t start until May 14, but players have been able to try the new content out already thanks to the recent PTR. Elsewhere in our interview, Ismay said that his hope is that the most powerful content from the test server makes it into the new season almost unscathed, and that as long as they don’t crash the game, even the most OP builds should still feel as powerful as they did before.

Diablo 4 will “probably” get more Public Test Realms, but devs remain torn as they “take away some of the excitement” of new seasons.

I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.