Diablo 4’s Reliquary battle pass is so scummy that players are accidentally giving Blizzard more money due to frequent miss-clicks

Blizzard’s move to make Diablo 4 a massive live-service ARPG has always been an uncomfortable move for players of the decades-old franchise. Technically, there’s more content than ever, but that content is largely limited seasonal content, and it’s supplemented by hideously egregious microtransactions.

In a recent update, Blizzard intoduced the new Reliquary system, an alternative to the battle passes players are used to. Designed to allow you to “customise your path”, the new system is actually tricking people into spending more money on Diablo 4 as a whole.

Diablo 4 Reliquary miss-clicks

Since the introduction of the new cosmetic unlock feature, players have also had to deal with yet another currency: Favor Tokens. While the Reliquary itself is bought with Platinum, Favor Tokens are used to purchase individual rewards within the pass. Favor Tokens can be earned in game via around 40-60 minutes of grinding to unlock a single reward, but there’s a catch.

When a player goes to redeem an item on the Reliquary, they’re met with three options: Claim with Favor Token, Purchase with Platinum (a premium currency) or Cancel. With the paid option placed slap-bang in the middle of the menu, some players have found themselves accidentally using their Platinum instead of their tokens.

Even worse, Diablo 4 doesn’t actually give players a warning or confirmatoin window to actually use Platinum for Reliquary items. On console, it’s even worse, as pressing “X” on a controller claims an item for free claims, but “X” buys with Platinum and “Y” buys with Favor Tokens on the Reliquary screen. Additionally, you also start on the “Cancel” button on console, requiring double the amount of button presses to not accidentally spend money on the game.

This could just be an oversight on Blizzard’s part, but it is a huge issue right now. The inconsistency between the two screens is bad enough, but the fact that there’s no warning or confirmation window for actually using paid currencies in the Reliquary screen is infuriating.

Additionally, this new Reliquary system comes as a replacement to the original Battle Pass system which was just fine. In fact, the old system gave players less freedom to pick exactly which items they wanted, but players who finished the passes ended up with more value than this new system with earned Platinum and more.

As Blizzard aims to keep the game alive for a decade of new updates with bi-annual expansions and continuous seasons, the annoying monetisation efforts need to be buckled. As a long-time Diablo fan, nothing hurts more than seeing the series sold piecemeal to players.

About the Author

Lewis White

Lewis White is a veteran games journalist with a decade of experience writing news, reviews, features and investigative pieces about game development with a focus on Halo and Xbox.

Diablo 4

• Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X
• Genre(s): Action, Action RPG, RPG