Diablo 4 patch adds another way to score Unique loot

(Image credit: Blizzard)

The latest patch for Diablo 4 brings it up to version 1.0.4 and brings a modest-sized list of bug fixes as well as a few gameplay adjustments. Anyone who has been desperately farming for that one Unique item to pull your build together will be pleased to know there's now another way to earn them. As the patch notes say: "Helltide chests can now drop Unique items."

If you weren't aware Helltide chests didn't have a chance to contain Uniques, you're not alone. During the latest Diablo developer update, general manager Rod Fergusson admitted he wasn't aware that Helltide's mystery chests weren't dropping Uniques either.

As associate game director Joseph Piepiora explained, "We want to make sure that when players are trying to target farm for certain kinds of Uniques for their builds they need to grab in order to bring those things online that those […] Tortured Gifts that you get from Helltide are a really good opportunity to try and go for those."

Helltide events unlock once you reach Nightmare World Tier difficulty, turning a section of the map red to let you know you can earn Aberrant Cinders by killing bad dudes in that particular zone. Aberrant Cinders can be used to open Tortured Gift of Mystery chests, which always had a chance of containing Sacred Items as well as other gear and lots of gold. Adding Uniques to their loot pool will make Helltides an even more attractive place to farm, which is a weird sentence now I read it back.

Previously the best ways to score Unique items were by running Nightmare Dungeons and defeating world bosses on Torment difficulty or higher. We'll have to see whether the drop rate in Helltides makes them a competitive alternative.

The other big Diablo 4 news out of the developer update was about Season 1, which is apparently adding super gems that let you make "stupid, new broken builds". So that's something to look forward to.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.