Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor Martyr – Summary of All Seasonal Loots (V2.9.0)

Season journey is a mode that allows people to experience the past seasons in Inquisitor-Martyr.

You could build a dedicated character for 1 of the 7 seasons, enjoy or get tortured by the seasonal mechanisms, and harvest seasonal items.

Regrettably, NOT every season is worthy to play in the sense of loots.

1. Some season items were already returned to normal droppings, and some seasons didn’t offer attractive items from very start.

2. Also, there are bugs in dropping such as some seasonal items hardly drop in high difficulties, and some seasonal items seldom(if ever) drop with enhanced skills.

This kind of information is not explicitly expressed in official compendium… So, I believe a guide like this is needed to provide guidance for people who mainly care about the value of season loots.

After all, it’s huge labor to play through all seasons, better to know what we’ll get before we start 🙂

===============================================================
Notes before reading:

1. The standard is “whether one item would be useful in designing builds viable in +18 difficulty “, but the comments are inevitably subjective, tend to be strict and are restricted by the knowledge of myself.

So if you feel some items are not getting the attention they deserve, please leave a comment and let me know they could be good at +18 levels as well.

2. This guide will talk about the drop rate of different seasons, but remember we could always farm a campaign boss to get the loots (if you don’t feel bored)

Here’s the all-in-one summary table for all the 7 seasons.

To put it in even simpler way: do the 5th season (Judgement).

The most powerful seasonal items are from S5 and S6, but S6 items are now confirmed to drop everywhere (V2.9.0 2024-02-06).

So play S5 we will have S5 + S6 items and an acceptable drop rate.
(Not the best drop rate if you compare it to S3 or S7, but good enough)

Also take note that some items may have dropping bugs.

As the first season, the Inferno season items were conservatively designed and not good even at the time they were introduced…… and they stay that way til today.

*In historical versions, these items were designed around a DoT mechanism “Inferno”, but this was cancelled in later versions and all “Inferno” items are combined to the “Burning” DoT mechanisms since then.
========================================================
12/14 of the listed items were already returned to (polluted!) non-seasonal relic enchant pool.

2 items are still unique for this season, but weak value (Bone Searer) and ambiguous mechanism (Ultimatum) makes them not attractive.

*It is also suspected that the weapon “Ultimatum” never drops with enhanced skill set (needs more confirmation)
=========================================================
Season 1 also has annoying seasonal goal such as “Finish all challenges in the game”.
The annoying part is not the challenges themselves, but the random way that challenges are rolled in each week.
=========================================================
Overall conclusion: it’s a season you could safely skip, at least in the sense of loots.

1. About half of the S2 items (11/21) have been officially returned to normal relic enchant pools.
These include the most valuable items such as:
“Celtor’s Flux” (a rosarius field that extends activation time with killing)
Relic weapons : chance to trigger a 3 sec 100% crit hit period upon hit.

2. 9 of the rest 10 items were related to seasonal Warp Anomaly mechanisms.
Some of them may have potential, such as:

Vortex of Despair: Upon interacting with a Warp Anomaly, gain an Aura that causes 150% Weapon Damage as Warp Damage every second for 12 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

Any relic item: 40.0% to 50.0% chance to spawn a Warp Fleck on killing a Champion enemy.

*But, I haven’t seen a mature build (which fights efficiently in +18 levels outside S2) with these items, so cannot recommend them at this time.

3. “The Bleak Coil” provides XP buff and could be useful for a while in early game, but clearly there’s no need to build a character for it.

4. Drop bug in v2.9.0 : the seasonal weapons seem never drop with enhanced skill
(I have done enough testing to convince myself but please tell me if I’m wrong)

============================================
Overall conclusion: some unique items remain for S2, but their values remain to be tested.
S2 also didn’t have very good drop rate. So not recommended for new players.

S3 items are designed around the Thunder of Authority (ToA) system, and 22/27 of them have already officially returned as normal relic enchants.

ToA is a high damage chain-lightening attack that could activate in various situations, usually when hitting enemies. Its base damage also increase with character so it is designed towards end game.

ToA is a viable system in hard levels. But since it doesn’t show significant advantages over Enrage builds, its use is not widespread.

Still, players may find adding a bit ToA in their builds could further improve overall damage output (by socketing Magistratus shards on weapons, and adding chance to activate ToA on hitting enemies)

I have marked the items in the list that I believe to be most useful in designing a ToA build (Damage, crit damage, reduce cooldown). As you can see, all of the useful ones have returned.

Bolt-pistols fight good with ToA builds. Don’t forget to combine with the bullet-split psalm codes.
===========================================================
In conclusion, S3 no longer offers unique items now. But the boss fights and very high drop rates may still be fun for new players.

Most S4 items are designed around the so called “Killstreak” effects, which is a damage & XP buff that activates if enough enemies are killed in 10 seconds, and lasts for 10 seconds (exact number not known, maybe above 10)

There are 7 levels of Killstreak, from Killstreak to Extermination.

Of all the S4 items, only the “Redemption” inoculator has good potential outside S4.

S4 dropping rate is not that good, so choose S4 only when you feel like you need this “Redemption” in your builds.
===========================================================
Other details:

1. “Empyrean Elites” are referring the 19 seasonal enemies in S4.
Outside S4 only the helbrute Chainborn could be found in Great Church so all the items related to “Empyrean Elites” are not useful outside S4.

2. “Body count” refers to the seasonal mechanism that spawns Empyrean Elites and activates Empyrean Echo Spell with killing seasonal enemies (Revenant enemies).

In S4 the relics that increase body count will help our looting. Outside S4 they are of no use.

Judgement season provides several powerful items:

1. The Harbringer of Judgement is somewhat too powerful. The judgement spells could deal very high damage without obvious cooldown.

2. Vigor of Skitarii effectively increases damage output of TA’s constructs.

3. Emperor’s Vision increases AoE size and is useful in some occasions.

(This item drops scarcely in high difficulty levels, need to harvest at +0 difficulty)

4. There are also several season weapons that improve user experience by having skills that deal further splash damage.

S5 also have decent drop rate. Though not as high as S3 and S7, the dropping is good enough.

All in all, S5 is currently the most worthy season to play.

S6 is the last season that the devs seriously designed seasonal items.

S6 items don’t have unique enchants——but the range of items these enchants appear are special (similar to Ancient relics).

This resulted 2 useful items in end game:

1. Warbringer of Frenzy (Enrage eye)
Normally, the neural implant is the only position that gives +1 enrage on crit hit, and crit strength with enrage levels.

With this eye implant we can free the neural implant with the job of keeping enrage high, and use it for crit strength.

(You will probably need to harvest this at +0 levels)

2. Sage’s solace
An armour that offers HP leech , attribute points and the ability to stun enemies.
=====================================================
Still, we have confirmed that these items drop for every season and non-season

So there’s no need to play S6 right now.

The final season only offers 6 useless purity seals.
(Not through dropping, only available from seasonal item pack in shop)

Still, S7 is generous in dropping. And the boss battles could be fun, if you don’t mind about all the death-explosions and ground damage.

Inquisitor-Martyr has huge enchant pools, and holds many creative ideas.

But it is also a buggy game and lacks polishing in many aspects : many mechanisms are not polished enough (could be too strong or too weak), some items are bugged or won’t drop in some situation.

I hope this guide could offer these information, and help people spend their time in a better rewarded way 🙂