Diablo 4 Season 1 Start Date

Diablo 4 is finally here, but while its acclaimed story campaign regarding Lilith’s future for the Sanctuary and grindable endgame activities are here now, there’s still something missing. The ARPG’s first live season hasn’t begun yet. Before Diablo 4’s release, Blizzard announced that the game’s first season wouldn’t launch alongside it.

Once Diablo 4’s first season launches, we can expect new gameplay offerings, quests, a Battle Pass, and a unique theme to tie it all together. Not much has been shared about the season’s gameplay content yet, but I have some tidbits regarding the Battle Pass and the expected release date of Diablo 4 Season 1.

What to Expect From Diablo 4 Seasons

If you’re new to the fray, a season in Diablo 4 is similar to that of Diablo 3, wherein it’s an opportunity for you and all other players to start with a clean slate. The concept of seasons starts with creating a Seasonal Character. This character will become a non-seasonal character upon the season’s conclusion. Seasonal Characters can participate in the unique additions of the updates. You’ll begin the leveling process “fresh” each season before the character retires in the Eternal Real, where they’ll remain playable without having the benefits of a Seasonal Character.

These moments are an excellent opportunity for you to experiment with another class, especially since the new seasons would update the meta and shift the ranks of how each class performs. So whether you’re a veteran or a newcomer to the Diablo franchise, the seasons should provide ample chance for you to create a new chapter in your journey.

What is Season Journey?

Simply put, Season Journeys are objectives where you can do a variety of missions while progressing through chapters. It’s akin to the way the seasons in Diablo 3 were structured. You must follow the chapters to complete different objectives to progress through the season’s story and unlock rewards.

The objectives range from short tasks such as completing local events and collecting specific materials to taking on dungeons and strongholds in different regions. In the later chapters, it’s not out of the realm to see that you’d be tasked with doing seasonal activities and Nightmare dungeons.

Diablo 4 Season 1 Battle Pass

Arguably the pièce de résistance of the upcoming and future seasons in Diablo 4 is the implementation of the battle pass. Besides a Season Journey with its own unlock to earn and objectives to complete, the first and the other future seasons will feature a Battle Pass.

You’ll need to get Favor XP if you want to progress through its tiers and unlock free goodies, which can be done by completing World Events and quests, slaying monsters, and finishing the many Season Journey objectives. There will be three tiers of the Battle Pass for each season: a free tier, a premium tier, and an accelerated premium tier. The premium tier costs around $9.99, while the accelerated premium tier comes with an exclusive cosmetic and costs $24.99.

If you’re not keen on spending more money after buying a copy of Diablo 4, that’s fine—there’s a free track of the Battle Pass you can grind for. However, it’ll only offer you gameplay-related benefits, while the premium and accelerated premium Battle Passes will have cosmetic-only rewards besides the benefits.

I have yet to see the final version of the Season 1 Battle Pass for Diablo 4, but based on the pre-released images they revealed, you can expect the following items to be added to the free version:

• Titles
• Gold
• Smoldering Ashes
• Season Boots
• Emotes
• Emblems
• Cosmetics (although these will come few and far between)

Smoldering Ashes and Season Boots?

The Smoldering Ashes—in particular—is one of the most significant rewards you can get. It’s a unique currency you can use to upgrade and unlock season blessings; these blessings will be active for all your characters. For Season 1, the season blessings consist of the Urn of Aggression, the Urn of Prolonging, the Urn of Bargaining, and the Urn of Reclamation. They all provide passive buffs for you. Here’s a list of their effects:

• Urn of Aggression: Boosts the XP you earn from monster kills.
• Urn of Prolonging: Boosts the duration of your Elixirs’ effects.
• Urn of Bargaining: Boosts the amount of gold you can earn by selling from vendors.
• Urn of Reclamation: Boosts the chance of getting rare materials through salvaging.

Meanwhile, Season Boots are more or less XP boosters you can use on your character to speed up unlocking more tiers in the Battle Pass.

When Will Diablo 4’s Season 1 Start?

There’s no concrete date yet when Season 1 will start, but you can expect it to start around mid to late July and last for three months. If you actively read Blizzard’s blog posts, they’ve stated that they want to give their players time to finish the campaign before proceeding with the seasonal content. That way, you can dive into Season 1’s story without worrying about the grind. Blizzard also plans for their seasons to be quarterly, so the first season should last around three months before the next season arrives.