Diablo 4 Season 11 is bringing huge changes to Blizzard’s ARPG, among them a major departure for how the game’s map and Waypoints work.
Since launch, players of Diablo 4 every season have had to unlock most fast-travel Waypoints at the beginning of each new season. This was because discovering Waypoints and uncovering fog of war from the map was tied to Diablo 4’s zone-based Renown system, which partially reset each season.
Come Season 11, that will no longer be the case. In an interview with Diablo content creator DuQ, lead live game designer Colin Finer said players who skip the campaign at the start of a new season will have all Waypoints unlocked. Skipping the campaign requires players to have completed it once before.
It’s a big change that will make the start of each new season go significantly faster, as players will no longer need to mount up and manually travel to various locations, unlocking Waypoints along the way. Instead, Waypoints will be available from the start, letting players quickly and easily travel to wherever they need to go, which should substaintially speed up the start of each season.
The change goes hand-in-hand with one of Diablo 4’s other big Season 11 changes, as the game will be removing the current Renown system that Waypoints are tied to in favor of a new Season Rank system. Many of the most important rewards from Renown, like additional skill and Paragon points, will instead be tied to completing seasonal objectives as part of Season Rank. Altars of Lilith, another aging piece of Diablo 4 that saw players exploring the map and was tied to the Renown system, are also seeing a big change. They are being reworked to no longer grant permanent stat boosts and will instead grant experience and other minor rewards when discovered.
Other huge system reworks coming in Season 11 include significant changes to how Masterworking and Tempering gear works, adjustments to defense and healing, updates to make monsters smarter and more deadly, and the reintroduction of leaderboards in the form of a new challenge dungeon called The Tower.
Diablo 4 Season 11 is set to begin on December 9. Blizzard has not yet officially announced Diablo 4’s second expansion, but it’s expected to arrive in 2026, and just might introduce the Paladin class.
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