Diablo 4 items have this very specific, but occasionally very aggravating, little problem that makes building and strengthening alternate characters in the Blizzard RPG game especially difficult. If you’re after Diablo 4 uniques, specifically Sacred or Diablo 4 Ancestral items, there’s a fiddly kind of block on trading between your main and lower-leveled characters. Fortunately, with the Diablo 4 Season 1 release date, that’s about to change. Loot, level caps, and leveraging your alternates with higher-end gear are all being made more accessible, as one of the most annoying item issues in Diablo 4 finally gets a fix.
Picture the scene. You’re playing with your main character. You’re level 100. A Diablo 4 Sacred or Ancestral item drops with fantastic rolls which is scaled against your level, i.e. you have to be level 100 in order to use it. Sounds great, except you already have a slightly better item and you don’t need this one, so you naturally want to trade it across to one of your lower-level alternate characters.
But you can’t, because – yep – Ancestral and Sacred items are level-locked based on the character that finds them. Since the item is level 100 and your chosen alternate character is level 60, it’s a no-go.
And here’s another problem. While Sacred and Ancestral items have their usage scaled against your character, their stats and abilities are not. You can be a level 100, get a Sacred item drop, and it has the same stats as a Sacred item that you might have gotten at level 50.
However, since you got it at level 100, it’s scaled against your player level, meaning, again, you can’t trade it down to a weaker alternate character. Essentially, you have what could have been a level 50 item, but since it dropped for you at level 100, you cannot pass it down.
It’s aggravating, since you have a lot of items that could be used to help boost your alternate characters, and also have to filter through a lot of junk on your main character. With Diablo 4 Season 1, however, it’s all about to change.
Sacred items will now be capped at level 60, while Ancestral items will be capped at level 80. In practice, it means that if a Sacred item drops for your level 100 main you can still trade it down to an alternate character provided they are at least level 60 or above.
Likewise, you can give Ancestral items to any alternate characters that are level 80 or above. The change was explained by Blizzard associate game director Joseph Piepiora, in an interview with Gamestar.
As well as your own alternative characters, this change will also allow you to exchange unneeded Sacreds and Ancestrals with other, lower-level players, meaning that items will always have some use.
Similarly, it will prevent the issue whereby you upgrade a Sacred item by feeding it a Legendary, and then accidentally lock yourself out from being able to use it – even if you boost your level 60 Sacred with a level 75 Legendary item, as long as your character is still level 60 or above, it will be accessible.
It’s a valuable change, coming to Diablo 4 Season 1. Be warned, however, as Blizzard also plans to nerf your best build.
Check out the full Diablo 4 quest list to know exactly what to do next in Sanctuary. You can also peruse the full set of every Diablo 4 class to determine the ideal build for your next alt.