Have you managed to get your hands on one of Diablo 4's six ultra-rare "Uber Unique" items in the past day or so? In response to a recent bug that dramatically increased the drop rate of some of Diablo 4's rarest and most popular items, Blizzard has temporarily A severe clampdown: no Uber Unique items will drop in Diablo 4 at all until the studio can issue a patch by the end of the day.

The problem arose yesterday after Blizzard released the 1.0.4 patch for Diablo 4. Somehow, the patch had the unintended side effect of making the game's Helltide event (and its associated Helltide chest) spit out items that should be the most coveted in the game at a ridiculously high rate. Players were picking up Shako (a nickname for the mega-rare "Harlequin Crest") as if it were mass-produced in Shenzhen.

Blizzard, of course, was having none of it, so the ultra-rare spigot was shut off completely while the studio worked out a solution; in a post on the Diablo forums, Blizzard's community manager said the company was "working on a solution to the Helltide Chest's Uber Uniques dropping in-game has been temporarily disabled while we address issues related to the drops."

This means that "players will not have access to the six Uber Unique items until the hotfix, which is expected to take place on Friday afternoon Pacific Time." On the plus side, drool-worthy, less rare uniques will continue to drop from Helltide Chests without much fuss.

Diablo players are not necessarily overjoyed, with many complaining that Blizzard seems to be moving much faster to stop the soaring Uber Unique drops than to fix other issues.Diablo 4 on the subreddit, one player said that Blizzard ignores "underpowered builds, max quests, gem tabs, more stashes, and actual social features" while moving incredibly fast as soon as players start "getting good loot" summed up the complaint with a meme suggesting that.

This may not be fair, but it is not an uncommon sentiment. Another commenter, eclipse4598, lamented that "it took two weeks to fix the druid dropping barb uniques" while "it took two hours to fix the chaco dropping too much." Another, GreenAirport5280, blames Blizzard for "literally hot-fixing the fun at 8:40 at night."

Of course, some of the anger is pure salt. Some players are simply frustrated at the missed opportunity to get an easy ultra rare, with a user called Rchrdzzz complaining in a comment that garnered about 1,500 upvotes, "So many people got a free Shaco and everyone else can go fuck themselves." Similar comments came from other users with busy lives elsewhere.

But honestly, the most interesting people in this community are those who have succeeded in getting their hands on the shako and now live in fear that Blizzard will take it away from them. Some have even devised elaborate and perhaps fatalistic plans to hide their ill-gotten gains from the developers. A player named Sanrichin reported, "I sent [my shako] to my alto, sold it to a vendor, and now I have it in my buyback stash."

Another representative Put808 had an even more complicated plan: "I'm waiting for everything to [settle down] before I send it to the alt inventory, delete the alt, and restore the recently deleted character."

Good luck to them, and good luck to anyone who thinks they can hide Blizzard-made items in Blizzard-made games from Blizzard itself. If Blizzard decides to recall the buggy shako (I'm not saying they will), I hope you all hang on to your own shako. As for the rest of you, when Blizzard puts out a hotfix this afternoon Pacific time, the Uber Uniques will resume dropping (as usual, a very small percentage).