Upcoming Diablo 3 patch increases Legendary item drop rarity
Blizzard is hard at work on the next patch for Diablo 3, version 1.0.8, but designer Travis Day and others at Blizzard thankfully took some time to detail a few of the changes coming. For one, Legendary item drops will be have increased rarity, as will Rare items. Legendary items will also be tweaked to roll base stats based on the level of the monster that dropped them. "When a Legendary drops, the question that goes through a player's mind should never be 'is this a good item?' It should be 'how awesome is it?,'" Day wrote in a blog post.
Other changes include the ability to multi-craft, for players that need to quickly craft several copies of the same recipe. You'll also be able to directly compare items you're looking to purchase against current equipment, and senior technical game designer Wyatt Cheng promises improved co-op farming mechanics.
"We are looking to improve co-op farming efficiency in 1.0.8," Cheng said in a forum post. "Co-op play in general is a big focus of the 1.0.8 patch and efficiency is definitely one component of that. Co-op is already more efficient for some players, but this is the exception rather than the norm. The degree of co-op efficiency depends heavily on the co-ordination of the party, skill builds, and the relative gear level of the teammates. Since launch we've made some modest changes to encourage co-op play but there's still room to go farther."
One of these changes is the new Identify All feature, which will ensure co-op players never need halt dungeon progression to run back to town and identify items. "Sometimes the trip back to town to sort through a bag of gear is enough of a hurdle to make somebody feel playing co-op isn't worth it. Nobody wants to be in the dungeon fighting monsters while your teammate is off in town identifying a full inventory," Cheng concluded.
At the moment, there is no official launch date for Diablo 3's 1.0.8 update.
