According to the Season 16: The Season of Grandeur is Now Live Blog, successfully completing our first Seasonal Greater Rift 70 Solo is supposed to drop a guaranteed Primal item. The way it’s written, I thought it applied to both Normal and Hardcore Seasonal Characters. That is to say, I thought you could only get one guaranteed Primal item per Account per Region.
I completed Season 18 with my Normal Seasonal Demon Hunter, Zoey. Zoey already earned her Primal-o Achievement and her guaranteed Primal drop was a Primal Goldwrap Belt.
I only dabble in Hardcore. I’ve never unlocked Primal items on my Hardcore side. (I usually get my Hardcore Demon Hunter killed on Greater Rift 68 or 69).
With the new Captain Crimson’s Trimmings Set, I’ve decided to spend this past week trying to work on my Hardcore game. This new UE/CCT build is pretty impressive. Today, I managed to successfully work Pirotess up to Greater Rift 74 Solo so far. And without even “breaking a sweat”. 
I was surprised when she hit GR70. She didn’t get the Primal-o Achievement. I guess it’s global. But, she did get a Primal drop. So, either Normal and Hardcore are separate or it was just coincidental that she got the drop at the same time she unlocked Primal items.
For the screenshot below, I picked up about a half a dozen Legendary and Set items because they were covering up the Primal icon on the mini-Map.
Pirotess’ first Primal drop was a Primal Marauder’s Treads:
Now, I can be comfortable knowing that, when Season 18 ends, I’ll have Primal items unlocked for my Normal Characters and my Hardcore Characters on the Americas Region. 
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Today has been a good day! 
I went back into the game with Zoey (Normal). She ran the Bounties for Act III and then Act IV on Torment XVI (T16).
When she opened her Act IV Bounty Cache she found this:
I could be wrong but I think it’s one guaranteed primal per mode in season.
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Yeah. I’m definitely not complaining about it. It just doesn’t mention that in the Season 16 Blog, so I was surprised. Happy… but, surprised.
Well, I know what my priorities in future Seasons will be. 
Yes, the modes are indeed separate in pretty much every respect, including primal drops. That’s why my NS SC characters have them available, but my NS HC characters do not yet. And each season they have to re-unlock primals in each mode. Annoying, to be honest, but it’s consistent with everything else regarding separation between SC and HC.
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Okay. Thanks for the info. 
If I don’t get Primal items to drop any other time, at least I know I’ll get one guaranteed on Normal (Softcore) and one guaranteed on Hardcore. 
Glad to see some people having fun getting primals instead of constant whining how bad they are…
Wish you could get a guaranteed primal per each created char that completed GR 70 for the first time 
It’d be nice, but since the tradeoff here is that all characters can get primals in that mode (as far as I know anyway) once they’re unlocked, not getting a guaranteed one on subsequent characters stings a bit less. 
That’s a good point. I usually start seeing Legendary items drop at Character Level 7. Mostly, Leoric’s Crown or the Broken Crown. And once you’ve unlocked Primal items any Character has the same chance of finding a Primal version of any of those items at any Level. 
I have been getting primals on my barb from kadala/crafting/bounty/rare upgrade/legendary reforge caches before reaching GR 70 for first time. I had GR 70+ done of my monk.
Actually i got like 4 primals before reaching gr 70 
I had a first with the primal level 70 drop. In my other region - my Europe Monk character, for his first primal, which I had always been led to believe was a ‘usable item’, it was the slash in all directions belt for the crusader.
I suppose it’s usable for the Monk just not very usable. 
I didn’t know you could get Primal items from gambling or crafting until you unlocked them.
I got a Primal Hellfire Amulet from the Jeweler and a couple of Primal items from Kadala. This Season 18, the Blacksmith crafted me a pair of Primal Captain Crimson’s Thrust Pants. But, only after I unlocked Primal items.
Think about what would happen…
- Take the gear off your main hero and put it into the Stash
- Create a new level 1 hero
- Have new hero power-levelled to 70
- Take the gear from the Stash and put it on the fresh 70 hero
- Run a T16 rift on the fresh 70 hero (this unlocks access to GR75)
- Run a GR70 to get the free primal
- Take the gear off and put it back into the Stash
- Delete the hero
- Repeat
This method could result in you getting a guaranteed primal every 30 minutes or so. That’s why they’d never do it.
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Of course you could only do it with season chars created only ONCE, if you deleted your season char and create a new one, you would get nothing
PS.
I knew you’ll point that out…
He actually said he unlocked the mode with his monk.
You are not wrong, you get a guaranteed primal for GR70 solo completion in Softcore seasons and a for GR70 solo completed in Hardcore seasons.
Now, there was a bug back in S16 (I believe) when they started this buff which prevented the primal from dropping for doing the solo GR70. If it returned, you may wish to file a bug report.
My apologies. Rereading Druitz’s post, I realize they were confirming what TheTias stated:
I now see that Druitz meant all his other Characters were getting Primal items, but their Monk was the only Character that had unlocked Primal items.
My apologies to you too, Druitz. 
As far as I know primals can’t drop prior to LV 70 as there are no ancients capable of dropping prior to LV 70, at least none I’ve ever seen. Unless you’re getting them from crafting LV 70 items on a low level character, which is the only way I can think of to get primals pre-70.
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Well i was actually suprised when i opened bounty caches farmed on monk. My barb was fresh 70 and primal dropped. I thought that this was because i farmed boxes on monk but i used nee boood sharde and second primal dropped. 3rd was from rare upgrade and 4th from reforge legendary
