It turns out Diablo 4’s Dark Citadel is currently bugged and partially broken, and it took weeks after the last season launch for anyone to really notice.
Several posts on Reddit and forums highlight a lot of major issues affecting the activity, including missing loot drops and broken cosmetic rewards, making the mode effectively pointless for players still trying to run it.
What Is Broken in the Dark Citadel?
According to multiple player reports, the following issues are currently happening:
- No loot drops at all in Dominion of Zagraal
- Faeroch, the Incinerator in Labyrinth of Souls, also drops nothing
- Completing Dark Citadel Tier 4 for the first time does not award the Khazra cosmetics
- Some players report inconsistent behavior, with rewards working for a few and not for others
A lot of players wanted to farm the Dark Citadel this season with Paladin to finally get the exclusive cosmetics, but their holiday plans got ruined by the bugged content.
The Awkward Part Is No One Knew
According to multiple other reports from players as well, it seems the Dark Citadel has been broken for over two weeks, but no one really noticed.
This shows how little people play through the Dark Citadel, since you have the first post about it weeks into the season. Several players even admitted they forgot the Dark Citadel even existed, only remembering it briefly when the quest pops up to unlock it, before abandoning it again until the next season.
Others only realized something was wrong because it was their first time running the content, making it impossible to tell if the missing rewards were a bug or just normal.
The timing also made things worse. With the Paladin class now available, some players finally convinced friends to jump back into Diablo 4 and try seasonal content together. For those groups, the Dark Citadel bugs were a pretty rough introduction, especially for players specifically chasing Citadel-exclusive transmogs that do not drop elsewhere.
The Mechanics Are Fun but the Loot Is Not
A lot of players agree that the mode is fun to play through a few times, but the rewards were never great to begin with. This made it hard to keep coming back to it. The cosmetics are pretty much the only reason you run it the first time, and once you have them, everyone mostly ignores the Dark Citadel.
This makes the current situation worse, because the one thing people still care about is not dropping currently.
Players report that the issue has already been raised on the official Diablo 4 forums, but as of now, Blizzard has not publicly acknowledged or patched the problem. Given that the Dark Citadel is already one of the least-played content in the game, it might simply not be a priority anymore.
It is unknown if Blizzard will fix it soon or quietly let it slide. A lot of players worry about the future of raid-style content in Diablo 4. With the next expansion coming this year, it is also not impossible that the Dark Citadel will get a complete rework with the new content being added. We will keep you updated if anything is announced about the Dark Citadel or not in the upcoming month!
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