14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard has confirmed that it's just implemented a new series of hotfixes for the Greater Rifts mechanic in Diablo 3 and that it will soon roll out an increase to the number of rare crafting materials that drop from monsters.
Diablo 3 launched initially back in 2012 for the PC and Mac platforms, and last year it appeared on the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. Earlier this year, the Reaper of Souls expansion appeared for computers, while the Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition, which included the original game and the add-on, was released for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
During this whole time, Blizzard has been working hard on launching new updates and improvements for the main PC version of the game, either via regular patches for the actual client, or hotfixes that go live on the official servers and affect the actual gameplay.
New hotfixes are now live to tweak Greater Rifts
After confirming a set of incoming tweaks for the role-playing dungeon crawler last week, Blizzard has now rolled them out for the actual title, according to the official Battle.net forums.
The hotfixes are live on the official servers across all of the three main regions, i.e. Americas, Europe, and Asia, and affect the Greater Rifts that were introduced by patch 2.1.0 a few weeks ago.
More specifically, the Realm of Trials mechanic has been modified to offer better Greater Rift keystones when players enter it.
In case you forgot, in order to gauge the power of a player or a group of players, the Greater Rift mechanic needs them to enter the Realm of Trials, in which they fight waves of monsters. After dying, they are given a keystone for an actual Greater Rift of a certain level.
With the updated mechanics, the keystones will be of a higher level than before. More specifically, for a two-player group, they'll receive a keystone equal to their last wave completed minus four. If you complete level 20, you'll get a level 16 keystone.
Three-player groups get a keystone with their last wave minus five, while four-player groups get a keystone equal to their last completed wave minus six.
More rare crafting materials are also coming
Besides confirming the latest live hotfixes, Blizzard also mentions that a future one is going to target rare crafting materials. More specifically, the drop rate of such materials from monsters, including Rift Guardians, will be "greatly increased."
As of yet, the new hotfix doesn't have an estimated release date, but you can expect it to go live in the following days.