How to prepare for Diablo 4 season one (Season of the Malignant)

Diablo 4’s first season, Season of the Malignant, is right around the corner and ready to refresh the world of Sanctuary with new enemies, a new quest, and a whole lot more.

If you’re a completionist already, you’re likely set to go for when Season of the Malignant begins on July 20. If not, there are a few things you can do to be fully prepared for when the new content is live.

To play a season in Diablo 4, a new character must be created on the Seasonal Realm. Each season will have its own set of characters, and once that season ends, the seasonal character will be moved to the Eternal Realm, which is the ongoing and base Diablo 4 experience.

“Seasons provide us with an opportunity to introduce innovative gameplay mechanics into Sanctuary for a limited time,” Blizzard said. “Because Seasons reset, we can create crazy, fun season themes in a vacuum without needing to worry about balancing it with the mechanics introduced in past or future seasons—we start from a strong Eternal Realm baseline and build on top of it.”

Here’s what you should do ahead of season one’s launch on July 20.

Diablo 4 season one prep checklist

Finish the campaign

This one should go without saying, but to access the post-campaign content that comes with each season, you first need to finish the campaign. If you’re here, you’ve probably already done this. But if not, the clock is ticking.

Related: When does Diablo 4 Season of the Malignant release? Start date and time

This only needs to be done once on one character, and the campaign can henceforth be skipped on all subsequent characters, seasonal or otherwise.

Discover as many Altars of Lilith as you can

Altars of Lilith offer cool stat bonuses, and these will carry over between seasons. You won’t need to re-discover them, which is great news because there are a lot and they are found all over the map. There are 160 Altars in total.

Uncover as much of the map as you can

Thankfully, seasonal characters won’t need to uncover the map again, either. If you’ve made a point to get rid of the “fog of war” all over the map so you can see everything that Sanctuary has to offer, you’ll be happy to know that that progress will carry over for every season.

Decide which class you want to play

This could be the toughest task of all. Will you roll with a Necromancer, or maybe re-roll your Barbarian with a different build? The choice is yours, but season one’s patch notes could decide your fate.