Diablo 4 Season 11 is Making a Massive Change To The Pit

Blizzard has confirmed that The Pit is going to be free for players to enter in Diablo 4 Season 11. This means that players will no longer need to spend Runeshards to open The Pit in Diablo 4, which is going to be a very interesting change to the grind. It's not the only change coming to The Pit in Season 11, with Blizzard looking for ways to freshen up the activity.
The Pit of Artificers was first added to Diablo 4 back in Season 4, and quickly became an essential endgame activity for players. It allows players to fight through dungeons and a final boss fight on a timer. At the end of a Pit run, players can upgrade Glyphs from their Paragon Boards, making it very important for players looking to absolutely max out their Diablo 4 builds. The Pit operates on different difficulty tiers, which players can select themselves. There are up to 150 tiers of The Pit, and players must first unlock them by beating previous tiers to move up the ladder. Since The Pit's inception, it has been a staple endgame activity, but that's about to change when Season 11 launches on December 11.
Amid the massive Diablo 4 Season 11 patch notes, it was revealed that there is no longer a cost to enter The Pit. Previously, players had to spend their Diablo 4 Runeshards to enter The Pit, which restricted how many times players could run it. Because The Pit is so important to Glyph leveling and Season Rank progress, this Runeshard requirement could really slow players down as they enter the endgame, so this Season 11 change is going to be massive in this regard. Players no longer have to take the time to farm Runeshards outside of The Pit, allowing time for other activities.
There are also a couple more noteworthy changes coming to The Pit in Diablo 4 Season 11. The patch notes also confirm that players can now enter The Pit before level 60, allowing players to test out the speed and power of their build before the endgame starts. While a small change in theory, in practice, it could be huge in transforming The Pit from an endgame activity to a constant for every build, especially when Runeshards are no longer required to enter. The final change is that the starting tier begins at Tier 10, which was previously reserved for Torment 1 and above.
It's not clear why Blizzard has decided to make these changes to The Pit in Diablo 4 Season 11, but players should welcome them. As with everything in a live-service title like Diablo 4, it's always possible that if the alterations affect the game's balance in a negative way, Blizzard will revert them as they worked in previous seasons of the game.
Diablo 4 Season 11 launches on December 11, alongside a whole host of other balance changes and seasonal mechanics. Divine Gifts and Sanctification are the new seasonal offerings, replacing Season 10's popular Chaos Armor, while changes to Tempering and Masterworking headline the main set of updates elsewhere. Some players think that Diablo 4 could even drop the long-awaited Paladin class at The Game Awards, although that should be taken with a pinch of salt. There are also rumors that TGA could see the announcement of Diablo 4's second expansion, which is planned to launch in 2026 after Blizzard missed its goal of annual expansion releases following 2024's Vessel of Hatred. Again, it's best to wait and see what Blizzard has planned, and it will announce upcoming content when it's ready.