Seasons

This page lists information about seasons and gamemodes.

Timeline

Season Dates

Season	Start Date	Length (days)	Details
Season 1 - Awakening	2020-11-06	127
Season 2 - Transcendence	2021-03-12	133
Season 3 - Domination	2021-07-23	134
Season 4 - Enlightement	2021-12-03	169 (120+49)	Replaced by Crafters Race League while it was active, and resumed afterward until season 5
Crafters Race League	2021-04-01	36
Season 5 - Ascension	2022-06-24	155	Non-ladder implemented - characters from previous season (s4) were the first to be transferred
Season 6 - Fortification	2022-11-25	155
Season 7 - Revelation	2023-04-28	148
Season 8 - Depravity	2023-09-22

• Season length does not exclude beta-related downtime (typically about 5 days)

Project D2 is updated each season with new quality-of-life features, balance adjustments, and additional content. Seasons are planned every 4-5 months and coincide with ladder resets. Seasonal changes affect all gamemodes except some rare cases mentioned below.

Developer Streams

Prior to each season, there are typically 3 developer streams (1 per week) where some of the upcoming changes are discussed. The season start date is announced during one of these streams, along with start dates for both the closed beta and open beta. The tentative patch notes are released when the closed beta begins, but before that, "spoilers" from the dev streams are typically compiled and listed on reddit or the wiki's Patch Notes page.

Closed Beta

The closed beta typically begins a week after the final developer stream and lasts for 7-10 days, providing an opportunity for bug fixing and balance tweaking before the game is shown to a wider audience. It runs alongside the season on a separate realm, and both the closed beta and season are shut down around the same time. At that point, ladder characters begin to get transferred to non-ladder and the main realm is prepared for the open beta, which typically begins the next day. Only singleplayer is available during the downtime.

Open Beta

The open beta is a "test run" of the ladder reset on the main realm which acts as a stress test for the servers as well as a final chance to find and fix bugs. It lasts for 2-3 days and is followed by another downtime period which is used for final adjustments and switching the main realm back to its normal mode. Singleplayer isn't available on the open beta so players who want to switch back and forth between them will need to either use two game installations or revert their game files to the previous season when going back to singleplayer.

New Season

The final patch notes are shared on stream, which typically starts at 5pm-6pm UTC and goes on for a couple hours. After the patch notes have been shared, the new season begins. If any bugs need to be fixed during the season, an announcement will be made on the discord and a changelog will be provided there as well.

Beta

The closed beta uses a separate realm which has special commands. See: Beta Commands

Beta keys are given to those who:

• donate $50 total over any amount of time - players are encouraged to only donate if they want to contribute to server costs, rather than just to access the beta
• reach 99 in the current season
• contribute to the community by creating pd2-related content, making guides, working on the wiki, etc
• some keys are also given out at random on stream after the beta begins (either directly from the dev stream or through other streamers)

Beta keys are sent via email and will come with instructions for setting up an account and getting started. There are also beta-only discord channels - if you're in the closed beta but don't have access to the beta discord channels, submit a ticket and provide your beta key to gain access.

The open beta is available to everyone and uses the main realm.

Ladder

Multiplayer has two main gamemodes: "ladder" has everyone's progress reset each season whereas "non-ladder" doesn't and is more suited for longterm or casual play, showing off "trophy" gear from previous ladders, or player-vs-player combat with optimal gear. Ladder is more active and many players play a lot more during the beginning of each season when the reset is fresh and everyone is on a relatively even playing field.

There are no inherent gameplay differences between ladder and non-ladder during most seasons, with one exception. When major new endgame content is included in a season, that content may be restricted during the first part of the season so that it gets to be experienced first by those playing on the ladder.

• Season 4 - Rathma disabled
• Season 7 - Difficulty levels above level 1 for Diablo Clone & Rathma disabled

When a season ends, ladder characters get transferred to non-ladder. Items in the shared stash pages however, do *not* get transferred. These items can be moved to a character or their personal stash page in order to ensure they end up in non-ladder instead of being deleted.

In some cases, a new season may mean that certain items are being modified in a way that makes them incompatible with previous versions. If this happens, it'll be announced ahead of time and players will be encouraged to drop those items beforehand to avoid characters becoming unplayable. For singleplayer, there's also a converter tool which updates those items so they don't have to be dropped, and players can always revert their game to the previous version and drop the items manually if needed.

Fundamentally altered items per season:

• S2: maps, Standard of Heroes
• S3: maps, any item with Enhanced Damage or Maximum Damage per Level
• S7: maps (including dungeons & arenas)
• S8: items with Open Wounds Damage per Second

Singleplayer

This lists all differences between the multiplayer and singleplayer versions of the game.

Differences

• The /players X command (X is 1-8) artificially adjusts the number of "players in the game", which affects the nodrop rate and monster difficulty
• Non-PlugY: The shared stash is not enabled for singleplayer since PlugY already includes its own shared stash which has more features suited for offline play
• Major new endgame content may be restricted during the season it's introduced, in which case it won't be available in singleplayer or non-ladder during that time:
  • Season 4 - Rathma disabled
  • Season 7 - Difficulty levels above level 1 for Diablo Clone & Rathma disabled
• The DPS meter doesn't work in singleplayer (nor do new commands such as .roll or .party)
• The "lock inventory" button doesn't work in singleplayer

Singleplayer-Only Bugs

• PlugY: Having too many maps in a stash page can cause crashes if that page is the most recently visited stash page

  Fix: Reduce the number of maps stored per page, or switch to another page before leaving the stash

• PlugY: Having gold in the shared stash can cause issues such as preventing oskills from working correctly

  Fix: Remove all gold from the shared stash, or disable the shared gold feature in the config file

• PlugY: The "toggle stash" button may be set to the wrong stash upon loading until interacting with the current stash - this happens if the most recent stash interaction prior to saving/exiting involved using a PlugY stash button instead of manipulating an item in the stash

  Workaround: Add or remove an item from the stash prior to saving/exiting (this also fixes the button at any time if it's set wrong)

• PlugY: Stash navigation may be buggy if the stash pages are empty - the navigation will appear to jump between the wrong pages, but it is actually just displaying the wrong page numbers for all pages between the first page (page 1) and the first index (page 10)

  Fix: Put an item on page 10 or higher and save/exit

• Andariel quest bug (vanilla bug - fixed in multiplayer)

Also see: Bugs