With the first of two live developer streams having recently concluded, here’s everything to look forward to with the upcoming Season of Blood.
Diablo 4’s second season, the Season of Blood is set to begin on October 17th, 2023 at 10AM PST. Ahead of this, Blizzard will be hosting a pair of livestream covering the changes; the first of which has recently concluded. The second, a Campfire Chat, will begin on October 10th, 2023 and will mostly be covering the major changes in the upcoming season as well as patch notes.
Below is all the information we’ve been given prior to the release of Diablo 4 Season 2.
Diablo 4 Season 2 Start Time and Theme
Diablo 4 Season 2: Season of Blood is set to start on October 17th at 10AM PST. This was announced near the end of this first stream.
The Season of Blood story follows Erys, a vampire hunter, tracking down the vampire Lord Zir. She assists you throughout the seasonal story, enlisting you in her hunt. She does become a little wary of you as you are afflicted with Vampirism
Season of Blood’s New Contents Breakdown
As you progress in the Seasonal Story, you become afflicted with Vampirism. This allows you to start collecting Pacts, which enable you to activate new Vampire Powers. Additionally you’ll be able to collect Potent Blood from stronger enemies as well as Lord Zir’s lieutenants, which is used to improve these abilities.
Pacts are applied to Gear, both dropping with random Pacts as well as standalone crafting items to apply, remove, and otherwise adjust your Pacts as desired. These are displayed when hovering over an item, as well as small icons along the bottom of the item itself. An item can have up to a maximum of 3 Pacts, raised to 4 with Sacred, and again to 5 with Ancestral gear.
Each Vampire Power requires a specific number of pacts to be activated and used in your Sanguine Circle. This means you’ll need to do a bit of fine-tuning as you go to have your perfect set of power activated in your set of Pacts. However, you’re limited to having five Vampiric Powers at a time in your Sanguine Circle.
Most enemies in Blood Harvests as well as Lord Zir’s lieutenants can drop Potent Blood, the Seasonal Currency. Potent Blood is used to unlock and upgrade your Vampiric Powers. However, there are some Vampiric Powers that can only be obtained from the Hunters’ Acclaim.
Hunters’ Acclaim is a new Seasonal Reward System tied to the new Blood Harvest World Event. This offers a variety of items and rewards as you progress through the 18 Tiers of the system.
The Blood Harvest World Event takes over a Zone of the map like Helltide. Unlike Helltides however, they will be always available and simply swap to a new region when they end. You also do not lose any of the materials you’ve gathered like Blood Lures or Vampiric Keys earned in a Blood Harvest as they carry over indefinitely.
Blood Lures are used in Blood harvest areas and allow you to summon Lord Zir’s lieutenants in groups. This allows you to earn a lot more Potent Blood very quickly.
Additionally, enemies can drop Vampiric Keys, used to free prisoner and other similar events during Blood Harvests for additional rewards.
Diablo 4 is coming to Steam
The hosts of the stream also revealed that Diablo 4 will be available on Steam with the release of Season 2, but is now available for Wishlisting. It still has access to the same Crossplay and Cross-Progression as all other platforms.
Unfortunately, if you already own the game on another platform, like Battle.net, you will need to re-purchase the game to play it on Steam.
They’re doing this with the hopes of growing the player base more. We expect this will work as they intend. We do also expect that people will pointlessly leave negative reviews, similar to Overwatch 2’s launch, but that remains to be seen.
New Endgame Bosses and Progression
Unlike Previous Seasons, there’s now more “aspirational” content in the form of New (and returning!) bosses. They highlighted the four permanent additions to the base game and Eternal Realm, in addition to Lord Zir who is Seasonal Exclusive.
All of these bosses have specific Loot pools, allowing for the target farming of Uniques and Uber Uniques. They’re also designed with different elements in mind, so in addition to direct changes, you’ll be more likely to find value in Elemental Resistance this season.
Echoes of Varshan
Varshan returns this Season! While he doesn’t offer Malignant hearts as a reward, he will still have good rewards, including opening the path to the Duriel encounter later on! You’ll likely want to have high Shadow Resistance for this encounter.
To access him, you’ll need to complete Whispers of the Dead to collect body pieces to reassemble him and fight him, bringing some extra value to completing Whispers. However, he will; not drop anything for Duriel until World Tier 4 despite being accessible in World Tier 3.
The Beast in the Ice
Not much was shown or mentioned of this boss aside from an Intro animation. He’s not directly tied to Duriel’s encounter though. We can only assume from the name that the fight will demand you have high Ice Resistance.
Based on what flowchart shown in stream, it seems to be a bonus boss accessed through Ancestral Nightmare Dungeon Rewards, with Tier 31+ being mentioned. This makes this boss World Tier 4 only.
Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint
Only the intro animation for this encounter was shown, but does reveal some of the bosses mechanics. His arena is divided into 9 sections by Galvanic Pillars, which appear to charge certain combinations of the 9 section with Electricity, likely dealing high damage over time while on them. Come prepared with High Lightning resistance!
Grigoire is tied to Helltides, being accessible in World Tier 3. Similarly to Varshan, he will not drop anything needed to face Duriel until World Tier 4.
Duriel, King of Maggots
Remember that one-off fight with Duriel near the end of the campaign? Yeah, probably not. Either way, Duriel is back as a new Level 100 Boss. While not as challenging as a Lilith, he will take a bit of effort to reach and a lot of Poison Resistance to survive.
Duriel has a higher chance to drop Uber Uniques, which means they’ll be much more attainable in Season 2 and beyond! If that wasn’t enough, Uber Uniques dropped by Duriel will only drop as perfect rolls, being 920 Item Power with maxed Affixes. This bonus however only applies to Uber Uniques, as other times will still roll at the range for a Level 100 monster.
As mentioned previously, to access Duriel you’ll need to defeat both Varshan and Grigoire in World Tier 4 to be able to attempt this fight. It’s likely they’ll each drop some required material to attempt the boss.
Lord Zir
We don’t know much about this encounter other than Lord Zir is the big bad for Season 2. They were fairly adamant about disclosing much about the fight.
We do however know that access to the boss is locked behind World Bosses and Legion Events to some degree. What this entails exactly remains to be seen.
Quality of Life Changes
They went of a ton of Quality of Life changes come to the game, which are listed below.
General
- Scroll of Escape is used automatically when disconnecting in Hardcore Mode, to prevent unpreventable character losses.
- Incenses now also provide XP bonuses and last through death like Elixirs.
- XP Bonuses (like those from Elixirs, incenses, and Seasonal Bonus) are added together and act as multiplicative bonuses to WT bonuses.
- Estimate of ~40% faster to Level 100 compared to Season 1.
- More Waypoints are unlocked with Campaign Skip, 2 more in each zone.
- Renown rewards now all persist between characters, there’s no requirement to redo any of the renown again for any character after its been completed once.
- Overworld Monster Level trailing is removed, which improves both XP and Loot drops.
- Two additional Character slots added
- Occultist near Tree of Whispers
- Stashes in all small town with waypoint
- Additional Stashes near Vendors in large towns
- Purveyors of Curiosity moved closer to waypoints in some cities
Mounts
- More responsive and get stuck less or slow down in addition to jump over the jump traversals.
- Faster base Movement Speed, increased to be faster in town.
- Spur Speed Boost lasts 50% longer and breaks barricades.
- KBM is less finicky about mouse position for most speed.
- Dismount cooldown reduced to 5 seconds, from 10 with manual dismount.
- Forced Dismount is reduced to 15 seconds, from 30.
- The Dismount Combat skill is reduced to 3 seconds, from 10.
Nightmare Dungeons
- NM Dungeon Teleport places you into the dungeon.
- Events have increased density, protect NPCs no longer fold like paper in higher world tiers.
- Traps have has their readability improved and overall CC is greatly reduced from all sources.
- Paragon Glyph experiences increase, leveling Glyphs will be faster
- Backstabber affliction applies Vulnerable on back hit instead of directly increasing damage, Vulnerable Damage Taken is increased.
- Crit Resist Affliction reduces the damage of Crits for a short duration instead of directly reducing crit damage.
- Lightning Storm bubble grants 35% Movement Speed for 5 seconds after, and can only spawn when there is a direct path to the bubble (no traversals)
- Drifting Shade spawns less often and presists for less time
- Some Dungeons have had some objective removed, allowing for “Boss Rush” strategies. additional events are along the critical path.
- Some dungeons have had layout changes, to streamline them and make finding objectives easier. This also applies to the normal variation of these dungeons as well as some non-nightmare dungeons.
World Events
- Legion Events will happen every 25 minutes instead of 30. Warning Timer increased to 10 minutes.
- World Bosses happen every 3.5 hours, instead of every 6. Warning Timer increased to 1 hour, from 30 minutes. added broadcasts alert when WB is 15 minutes from spawning.
- Both Events no longer bug out when pinned on the edge of the map
Endgame
- Nightmare Sigils from Caches will now award a Sigil within 5 levels of the highest level of NMD completed.
- Whisper Caches have greatly increased Gold drops.
- Whispers and Helltide XP have been increased significantly.
- Whisper Caches only drop items of cache type
- Helltide chests are marked by type on map
UI/UX
- Items can be marked as Favorite or Junk, favorited prevent selling and salvage
- Extracted Aspect will be grouped by Power in Inventory and Stash
- Sorting of Affixes is more consistent, meaning affixers are more likely to show up in a specific order.
- Dungeon Tooltips that have Whispers active will also display their Aspect and other information.
- Stash and Inventory can be filtered and searched
- Streamer mode is being added, which hides character names and battle tags
- Combat text for certain events (dodge, fortify, etc) can be turned off in settings
- Auto-run added, allows you to move toward your cursor or facing direction while still sorting inventory and such.
- minimap is zoomed out further to cover a larger area.
Items
- Gems drop as Fragments, allowing you to craft Gems. Each Gem has its own fragment material and can be crafted into current gems.
- Enchantment Costs are rebalanced to be a little cheaper, they start higher but increase at a slower rate.
- Low Tier Normal-Rare drops will drop as materials instead of items.
- Higher level monsters drop higher item power potential. Increases by 2 per monster level, dropping at Power 920 at level 100, and levels above this reduce the range until it reaches 920-920 at peak.
- Whisper Caches grant +10 Item power from the cache, +20 for Legendary Caches. Does not exceed 920 cap.
- Helltide Caches have +20 Item power minimum. Does not exceed 920 cap.
- Uniques dropped by Duriel will always be perfect rolls. 920 Item power and all affixes at max value.
Stream Q&A
They ended the stream with a lengthy Q&A segment, below are all the questions in order and their responses.
- Any plans to expand Itemization?
- Have ideas of things to add for itemization, with the first steps in this update. Lot of plans in motion.
- More plans for Open World content?
- Want a mix of Open World and Dungeons, which a lot of Open World stuff is generally Seasonal related content. Additionally, there are things added this patch like farming parts to farm bosses that use more Open World elements.
- Any Chance of removing Paragon Glyph level caps?
- Diablo 4 is designed with capped progression in mind, but are looking at ways to expand progression after Level 100 without adding tedium.
- Paragon Board Reset Button?
- Not discussing today, hinted that its coming.
- Any plans to improve Uber Unique stats?
- To be discussed more in Campfire Chat October 10th, but there’s room for improvement
- More social options?
- Lots of plans for Guild and expanding Social Features, nothing to discuss at the moment.
- Will there be more coins in Battlepass?
- They have adjusted the values based on feedback, possibly more to come.
- Are Set items coming?
- Coming later on, now there there are more ways to get access to unique. Plan is to expand and enable other build options with Aspects first so builds have options early in the game as well.
- How do Duriel and Lilith Echo compare in difficulty?
- Duriel is easier than Lilith, to overcome the added need for getting items to attempt the encounter.
- Are the New Bosses permanent and added to Eternal?
- Yes! They are available in Eternal from Day 1 of Season 2.
- Crafting Specific Affixes on Nightmare Dungeon keys?
- It’s being discussed, but they would like to have it as an option.
- Any visual improvement to readability of the New Bosses attacks and mechanics?
- There is, for both new and old bosses.
- Will we be able to save builds to Wardrobe in the future?
- Something they’d like to be added in the future.
- Plans for trade UI to reduce need for 3rd party tools?
- Trade Chat has some baked in stuff, but definitely want to expand it.
- Still looking at allowing to improve the Codex of Power?
- Plans to improve being looked into, nothing to share yet.
- Does the Steam release require another purchase of the game to play on Steam?
- Unfortunately yes.
- More post-100 Content?
- In the Works, more of a focus now with progression to 100 being sped up.
- Do Nightmare Dungeon Rotate in the season?
- Same 25 all season, no plans to rotate mid-season.
- Stash Tabs plans?
- No additional tabs just yet, but are aware of the need for more tabs.
