Diablo 4's Season 11, known as the Lord of Hatred update, throws players back into Sanctuary with a darker twist, as Lesser Evils like Azmodan, Duriel, Belial, and Andariel begin invading familiar content. These encounters don't just remix old activities, they form the backbone of the season's progression through Corrupted Essences. These rare drops are used to unlock Divine Gifts, which come with powerful bonuses or dangerous tradeoffs.
At first, farming them feels exciting, until many players run into a hard stop: once you're carrying 20 Corrupted Essences, they simply stop dropping. This limit applies only to what's in your active inventory, not your stash, but it's still a firm cap. People have noticed that if you're sitting at 19, a drop can still push you slightly over, but the moment you're at 20 or more, that's it. Any additional runs are effectively wasted until you spend or activate what you're holding. It's clearly intentional, a way to prevent stockpiling and push players to engage with the Divine Gift system instead of endlessly farming.
Each Lesser Evil feeds into the system differently. Azmodan, Duriel, Belial, and Andariel all drop their own themed essences, and over time these rank up as you collect more. Those essences power Divine Gifts, which are split into Purified effects that offer straightforward boosts like armor, speed, or crowd control, and Corrupted effects that increase rewards but add dangerous modifiers to your gameplay. Fully upgrading a Divine Gift takes a lot of investment, around 1,500 essences across multiple ranks, so managing when and how you spend them becomes part of the seasonal rhythm.
The cap changed how people approach farming. Instead of chaining boss kills nonstop, players are keeping a close eye on their essence count and making regular trips to Hadriel in town to activate or adjust their gifts. Some players have found small workarounds, like dropping essences on the ground temporarily to allow new ones to drop, then picking them back up once they're below the limit. Moving them to your stash doesn't help, though, since the game only checks what you're carrying.
Veteran players seem to be adapting the fastest by treating the cap as a pacing mechanic rather than a restriction. A common loop is farming up to 18 or 19 essences, spending them to activate or upgrade gifts, then jumping back into lairs or Helltides. New players encounter this system early through the seasonal questline, which does a decent job of teaching the balance between collecting and using essences before the difficulty ramps up. Since the system applies equally to every class, it keeps progression feeling fair and focused on gameplay choices rather than raw grind.
It's a small limitation on paper, but one that adds real texture to the season, turning boss hunts into something more deliberate and tying power directly to player decisions. As updates and fixes continue to roll out, some details may shift, but the cap itself looks set to remain a defining part of the game experience.
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