Diablo IV requires completely new characters for battle pass every season

Players must create a new character every season to play through the Diablo IV battle pass, a Blizzard employee confirmed. The same system was also used in previous Diablo games, although the battle pass principle is new to the franchise.

In a response to game journalist Paul Tassi, Diablo’s general manager highlights Rod Fergusson on Twitter that the seasonal content for Diablo IV can only be played with a new character. He says: “To participate in seasonal quests, mechanics, the seasonal journey and the battle pass, you will need to create a new seasonal character. The main story can also be played with a seasonal character if you wish and will count towards the progress of the seasonal journey and the battle pass.”

Diablo IV will have a free season pass and a paid variant that will be released together with some kind of seasonal DLC pack. During these seasons, the first of which will launch sometime in late July, players will be able to play limited-time game modes, progress through stories and unlock special cosmetic items. This new content can only be accessed by a new character. After the season, this character will be transferred to the Eternal Realm, the game’s current base world where characters remain accessible forever, including cosmetic rewards earned during seasons. So players cannot access seasonal modes and items with existing characters, nor do these Eternal Realm characters generate XP for the battle pass.

Although in previous descriptions of the season system for Diablo IV, this game mechanic was hinted at, among other things on Reddit a lot of uncertainty about how this works. New players in particular don’t seem to understand how this system works, which is not surprising, because the principle only existed in previous Diablo games. In the franchise, the central gameplay loop consists of progressively strengthening a character; seasonal content is intended to go through that process in new ways, not to play through this content as quickly as possible with the strongest possible character. Presumably that is why Blizzard also linked the battle pass to the seasonal model.