Diablo 4's Mounts Are Getting A Much-Needed Upgrade

Diablo IV's mounts will receive some welcome improvements in an update "coming soon in the future," Blizzard has announced.

Though they aren't unlocked until fairly far into the game's campaign (after which they are unlocked account-wide for all future characters), mounts are incredibly useful in Diablo IV. The game world is large, and even though there are ways to fast-travel, many of the locations players find themselves traveling to regularly are quite a distance away from the nearest waypoint.

Mounts do, however, have a few issues. For one, there is a cooldown associated with dismounting and remounting them. That issue goes hand-in-hand with the fact that the creatures of Sanctuary love erecting barricades. These barricades stop mounts in their tracks and require players to either try and go around them (which is sometimes impossible), or dismount, destroy the barricade, and then wait for the mount cooldown to reset before being able to proceed on their merry way.

Blizzard in a recent developer "campfire" chat livestream acknowledged that barricades aren't exactly fun and announced changes are on the way. What those changes were, exactly, were left to player's imaginations, but game director Joe Shely later clarified on Twitter that Blizzard would specifically be making it so the mount Charge ability will break through barricades. That means players will soon be able to speed through Sanctuary like never before, without having to stop every time a crew of skeletons decided it would be funny to block a road with a barricade.

Shely additionally shared in the replies that the cooldown associated with having to dismount in order to climb a ladder or descend a slope, only to then have to wait for the mount cooldown to reset, will be removed. Other mount improvements announced during the livestream include improved collision detection and mount-related bug fixes for those playing using a controller.

Though the livestream where these mount changes were mentioned largely dealt with Diablo IV's next update, patch 1.1.1, it sounds like the changes will come alongside another, to be determined update. Official Diablo IV update 1.1.1 patch notes will be coming August 2, so players won't have to wait long to learn definitively what will be changing. The update itself is slated to arrive on August 8 and will bring major buffs to Barbarian and Sorcerer in response to controversial nerfs that were released alongside Diablo IV's Season 1 update. Diablo IV's next patch will also add a much-requested additional stash tab, although Blizzard has cited performance concerns when asked if even more stash tabs will be added in the future.