Reports of a Diablo 4 Helltide cinders nerf have been made, with the drop rate for aberrant cinders being cut almost in half after the release of update 1.1. This comes after the controversial Season 1 patch notes which, along with a bunch of nerfs, has increased the cost of Helltide Mystery Chests from 175 to a whopping 250. Multiple users now state that they can’t even accumulate 250 cinders after being in the Helltide for the full hour of the event, though nothing in the patch notes says that their drop rate was nerfed. Here’s whether the aberrant cinders were shadow nerfed in Diablo 4 Season 1.
Has Diablo 4 Helltide aberrant cinders been nerfed?
Yes, the drop rate for aberrant cinders in Diablo 4 has been significantly decreased after the Season 1 patch on July 18, but this may be an unintentional bug.
A thread on the official Diablo 4 forums entitled “Cinder Drop Rate Shadow Nerfed” and several posts on the Diablo 4 Reddit like this one have many users saying that cinders are barely dropping. It’s unclear why this is happening, but according to Community Manager PezRadar on the forums, Blizzard is looking into the issue. If this lowered drop rate for cinders in indeed an accident, we may see a hotfix for this sooner rather than later.
For now, we recommend concentrating your efforts on Nightmare Dungeons instead of Helltide events for grinding levels and items until this is addressed.
The 1.1 patch notes stated that the developers wanted to increase the danger of Helltides. This is why monsters in the Helltide are now 3 levels higher than the player instead of just 2 levels higher. On the flipside, all interactable objects in Helltide zones now have a chance of dropping cinders and killing Elite monsters in Helltides have an extra +10% chance for dropping an extra equipment item.