Diablo 4 update removes Lord of Hatred's loot-snatching portals, with War Plans fixes to come

Blizzard's latest Diablo 4 update strips out the automatic exit portals that were stealing away your hard-won loot, with Blizzard admitting the feature "missed the mark." These patch notes for the action RPG's new expansion also put a stop to the ability to infinitely farm Nemesis boss lairs, and start making changes to fix the frustrations of trying to complete War Plans in party play, with more set to arrive in Season 14.

Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred makes major endgame changes, and on the whole I'm a pretty big fan. The introduction of War Plans gives the gear grind much more of a logical but flexible structure, providing you with reasons to engage with all the various activity types, and quickly jumping you into the next thing as soon as possible. With the introduction of a loot filter for the new expansion, it's easy to start blasting from Nightmare Dungeon to The Pit to Lair Bosses with barely a moment's pause.

Unfortunately, the introduction of a 'helpful' automatic portal that spawns at the end of Pit and Tower runs has been causing more trouble than it's worth. I've already fallen victim to this at least twice myself. You go to snag the loot that's dropped, accidentally click on the portal that's just popped up, and find yourself warped out of the event with no way to return, leaving potentially valuable loot lost to the void.

With the latest hotfix, that portal is gone - you'll now just have to use your own one as you would in the past. "Our intention with adding this portal was for quality of life," Blizzard explains, "but it missed the mark." The new update also fixes an issue where you could infinitely farm Nemesis boss lairs by joining a group and repeatedly swapping difficulties, and corrects a quest-blocking bug for 'The Soil, The Seed, The Fruit' when playing in co-op.

As for War Plans more generally, one of the most bizarre elements is that they don't sync nicely across other players in your group. I assume the intent here was to avoid easy ways to powerlevel people, but it makes completing them in co-op a bit underwhelming, as you won't always earn rewards if your activity list doesn't match up to those of your friends.

A first fix has now been implemented for this. "When you jump in to help a friend complete a War Plans node, you're supposed to keep earning rewards and progression," Blizzard notes. You'll now correctly get a rewards cache when completing other players' activities, which you should be able to open for a selection of loot. It also provides the meta progression experience for the activity you've just completed (this was initially set to 80%, but was quickly raised to award the full 100%).

Alongside this, community manager 'Lyricana' adds, "We wanted to share that there are plans for Warplans updates that pertain to co-op/party play." These aren't expected to arrive until the start of Season 14, unfortunately, and details aren't set in stone, but the current plan is to allow parties to vote to reroll all their boards to match each other. Doing so will cost you Marks of El'Druin.

Diablo 4 update 3.0.1 hotfix 4 is live now. It's good to see Blizzard adjusting quickly; Lord of Hatred has certainly revived my interest in the ARPG, and I've already got a couple of friends telling me they're tempted to return. With that in mind, the solo-first nature of War Plans is probably my biggest gripe at the moment, so I'm glad it's on the calendar to fix.