Diablo IV has six Uber Uniques that are the rarest and some of the most powerful items in the game. Players have spent hundreds of hours without ever coming across them—until now. A trick for easily earning them was recently discovered and Blizzard has now removed the items from the game entirely to try and stop the madness.
Previously only farmable in Nightmare dungeons, Uber Uniques were added to the game’s Helltide event in the latest patch, an in-game event where a particular zone on the map turns blood red and fills up with extra tough enemies. Players quickly found out that there was a way to significantly increase their chances of getting the Harlequin Crest, better known as Shako, one of, if not the, most powerful item in Diablo IV. That’s because characters like Barbarians don’t have many Unique helmets, meaning Helltide chests that only give out helmets are much more likely to grant those players Shakos instead.
I think Blizzard’s response was appropriate for this stage of the game – removing all harlequin crests from the game until they fix the issue. Right now, removing the item completely doesn’t really disrupt that many people outside of the exploiters because it was a pretty rare find, but as time goes on and the game is out longer, this option is less and less viable.
What I think is screwed-up is how something like this got past their “world-renown”, “follow the sun” QA that “needs time to test everything exhaustively to make sure things that are implemented as fast as possible are done right.” It kind of blows the whole excuse of why they can’t iterate faster on some of the quality of Life improvements that would be mostly innocuous, out of the water…
It also goes to show how smart-loot is a lot more work than just the old MF days of D2… something they should have been more aware of.