Details Regarding Blood Shard Cap and Season 3 Legendaries

by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

With the Patch Test Realm (PTR) for Patch 2.2.0 in full swing right now, people are enjoying the increased drop rate as an incentive to get in there and test.

Season 3 Legendaries

Season 3 recently went live as part of that testing and, as such, some questions have surfaced. To date, we have not been told which items will be exclusive to the next season, so forum goers are naturally curious as to whether there will be a slew of new items or if a batch of the current ones will end up getting marked as season-only. Nevalistis chimes in:

Posted by Jahor

The new gems and some of the new legendarys very likely will be Season 3 only.

This is correct. The Season 3 Legendary items went into the 2.2.0 PTR patch without being flagged as Seasonal items, so they are currently dropping for everyone regardless of which game mode you are in. Of course, this will change for when the patch goes live, but in the meantime, it allows a greater pool of folks the opportunity to try them out and test them. 🙂

She also came back to add a response regarding the newly introduced gems with this last patch:

Posted by JayDog

Why weren’t the “Bane of the Strickin” and the “Iceblink” new legendary gems dropping for everyone then?

The exception is actually the Legendary gems, which should be flagged as Seasonal only. I’m checking into Mutilation and some of the other details; as soon as I have additional clarification, I’ll be happy to share it!

Long story short here, there will be certain items that are season-only, but they’re dropping for all character designations to allow for a wider range of testing. The Legendary gems, however, will be Season Three only both on the PTR and once the game goes live although we will have to see what Nevalistis discovers concerning the Mutilation gem, as it’s not included in the initial introduction to Season 3 splash screen we encounter on the PTR right now.

Increased Blood Shard Cap

A small victory was won by the community with the advent of this last update to Patch 2.2.0 on the PTR, as a mechanic was introduced to increase the maximum amount of Blood Shards our characters can cart around. With the system only being explained a few lines deep into the patch notes, players required clarification and, of course, Nevalistis delivered:

Just a few clarifications:

• The boost to your cap is not retroactive. You will need to run additional solo Greater Rifts after 2.2.0 goes live to update your Blood Shard cap.
• Your cap will increase by 10 per solo Greater Rift level completed. For example, if you complete a level 20 solo Greater Rift right after the patch launches, your cap will increase to 700 (a bonus of 200). If you then complete a level 21 solo Greater Rift, your cap will increase by another 10 ( and so forth).
• Your “Personal Best” is defined by the highest Greater Rift level you reach. In the case of increasing your Blood Shard cap, this only applies to your highest solo Greater Rift level reached.

Hope this is more clear!

The community has been begging for an increased cap for a long time and this feels like a great way to not only deliver on that request, but also to reward players for climbing up the Greater Rifts even when the Leaderboards might not have space to do the same.