Blood shard price increase isn't detrimental to players

Sep 25, 2014 09:37 GMT  ·  By

The recent modifications made to Diablo 3 with the release of patch 2.1.1, particularly those relating to the Kadala merchant, result in more Legendary items for players, despite the higher costs, according to a new explanation from Blizzard.

Diablo 3 received update 2.1.1 earlier this week, which implemented a suite of changes to the game's classes, such as the Witch Doctor or Crusader, as well as to its various mechanics, from the regular Nephalem Rifts to the more challenging Greater Rifts and much more.

Kadala saw some major tweaks recently

One pretty big change affects Kadala, the merchant that offers players different items in exchange for Blood Shards they pick up during their adventures in the game. Until now, players were able to buy gear costing anywhere from 5 to 15 or 20 shards, quickly filling up their inventory and then running back to the blacksmith to salvage those that weren't any good.

With the change, the items cost a lot more, while the drop rate of legendary-level items has also been increased. However, fans aren't that thrilled with the changes and have begun complaining on Blizzard's forums.

The changes benefit players, according to Blizzard

In order to explain things in a better way, Blizzard's Travis Day has broken down the reasons for the change and confirmed that, after the new patch, players will get about a third more legendary items for the same amount of blood shards they spend.

"The Kadala change is primarily meant to be a quality of life change for players. Having to fill up your inventory and run back and forth to the blacksmith could be a mildly cumbersome experience and we wanted to improve that," he explains.

"All items on Kadala had their cost increased, when this was done the chance for her to give you items was also increased but by more than the cost justified. For the same number of shards as before players will now walk away with 1/3 more legendary items."

The change also factored in other play styles

Day also mentions that Blizzard took into consideration the fact that some players use Kadala's inexpensive gear to salvage into crafting materials. For them, the drop rate of such materials has been increased in Rifts and Greater Rifts, so they shouldn't worry.

"Since we wanted this change to be purely better for players and we know that many people get their crafting materials from Kadala we also decided to add a lot of extra crafting reagent drops to Greater and normal Rift Guardians," Day says.

"The overall impact should be that you are getting roughly the same amount of crafting materials, except instead of getting primarily yellow mats like Kadala gives you, the mats on the Guardians could be white, blue, or yellow. This should help even out the quantities of assorted material types instead of flooding players with just one type like Kadala was inclined to do."

Day pledges that he and his team are constantly monitoring the game and will revert any changes that have a negative impact on the game.