It’s been a little over one day now since the launch of Vessel of Hatred, the first paid expansion to Diablo 4. The launch was several hours late, thanks to the discovery of some last-minute bugs, but it now appears there’s more to complain about here than we initially realised.
One problem, in particular, has been driving a lot of players up the wall. No matter how they bought the expansion, the game sometimes decides they do not own it, and either kicks them out of the session, or doesn’t allow them to start.
This is a fairly typical license validation issue, and in this case, it was limited to consoles. Still, it’s a problem PlayStation and Xbox players really didn’t need to deal with. If you browse the Diablo 4 subreddit, you’d see that it was among the most common problems at launch.
Blizzard quickly let players know that it’s aware of the issue, and offered some workarounds while it worked on a fix. Some of them include logging out and back in, and switching to a non-Spiritborn class before switching back. While those workarounds did work, they didn’t do much to help with the frustration caused by getting kicked out of content you paid for.
The good news is that no one should have to deal with that anymore. Overnight, Blizzard deployed hotfix 2.0.2 on consoles, and the headline change is a fix for that issue. The hotfix also came with “performance and stability improvements.”
One other platform where some players have also been having Vessel of Hatred – albeit different – access issues is Steam. For that, the “fix” is to contact Blizzard Customer service, as confirmed by community head Adam Adam Fletcher.
On the subject of Vessel of Hatred and the new Spiritborn class, it currently appears to be the most powerful class in Diablo 4. There are two very strong Spiritborn early and midgame builds, which can help you breeze through the campaign and early hours of the expansion. If you’re looking for even more bang for your XP buck, we have some solid tips on the fastest and most efficient ways of levelling up in Season 6.
