Wave goodbye to yet another Diablo 4 power levelling trick as Blizzard releases a World Tier-focused hotfix

Diablo 4 character close-up — (Image credit: Tyler C. / Activision Blizzard)

I'm starting to think that Blizzard really isn't keen on all your Diablo 4 power levelling techniques, guys. The company is fresh off of a hotfix that completely defanged the game's juiciest, most XP-laden dungeons to stop you all from running them over and over, but that wasn't enough. Now Blizzard's gone and patched out a trick that would let low-level players reap the benefits of World Tiers they hadn't unlocked yet.

Hotfix 11 for Diablo 4 (via Wowhead) came out yesterday, and consisted of a whopping three bullet-pointed fixes. The first among them was that it "Resolved an issue where players in World Tier 3 and World Tier 4 could invite others to their party that were not eligible for those higher tiers".

Previously, players had been able to get access to Diablo 4's third and fourth World Tiers—which are meant to be gated until you've beaten the game—by joining a party started by someone who was already in one of those tiers. That might not sound that dramatic, but those higher-tier enemies pump out more XP, more gold, and rarer loot than their low-tier counterparts. They're also a fair bit harder, but that doesn't really matter if you've got your high-level friend with you to soak up their blows and hit back.

But nothing gold can stay, and now you'll have to actually beat the game (and the capstone dungeon that follows) if you want to get access to those higher tiers. How gauche!

Aside from trampling on my power levelling dreams, hotfix 11 also stayed on theme with a tweak that "fixed an issue where all World Tiers would display as unlocked when players may not have met the requirements". Apart from that, its only other patch note is "Further stability and improvements," which is so vague that I still don't understand why game companies even write it down.

Hotfix 11 was actually released on the same day—June 15—as hotfix 10, but the notes on that one are even more sparse. It "resolved an unintended damage interaction with the Druid’s “Toxic Claws” passive" as well as added, you guessed it, "further stability and improvements".

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.