Blizzard recently revealed a ton of details on the upcoming Season of Blood during a Developer Update livestream for Diablo 4, and with it, players got an extensive look at the new and changing content coming to the game and a ton of quality-of-life improvements.
We have all the details on what was revealed in this guide, including the new content, improvements, changes to endgame, and what players can look forward to in the game’s upcoming season.
Related: Diablo 4 Complete Strategy Guide – Crafting, Locations, Endgame, & Error Codes
All Announcements Coming in Diablo 4 Season of Blood
During the live stream, there were a ton of details revealed about the upcoming season that included new content, seasonal features, and a huge list of quality-of-life changes and tweaks to the game’s systems. With so much discussed, it turned out to be a massive information dump that all sounded rather promising for the game.
Below we have listed out all the new content and changes for Diablo 4 coming in Season of Blood. You can also find details on the official blog post.
New Content
Along with a new battle pass, seasonal journey, and questline to complete, there is a load of new content coming to Diablo 4 with Season of Blood, some for the season, others for the whole game that will remain once the season is over.
Vampiric Powers and Pacts
The big new mechanic coming in Season of Blood is the Vampiric Powers, which will give players a ton of unique abilities and effects that they can use and equip to vary up gameplay and strengthen their builds. There will be 22 powers available to unlock and use, all of which are class agnostic, so you can use whatever ones you choose. These can then be upgraded by spending Potent Blood, a currency earned from the season, to make them more powerful and unlock additional ones.
These will also interact with a new keyword: Vampiric Curse. This new keyword will see you store souls as you kill enemies affected by this curse, and when you cast a Defensive, Macabre, or Agility Skill, they will be unleashed and damage nearby enemies, with up to eight souls able to be sorted.
In order to equip and use these powers you will need Pacts, a resource that comes with all your main armor during the season and will have various amounts of Pacts on them. There are three types of Pacts, Ferocity, Divinity, and Eternity, and different Vampiric Powers will cost different amounts of Pacts to socket and use. As you get more armor, use Pacts to upgrade your Pact total, and unlock new abilities, you’ll have more options to customize and tweak your character however you choose.
Blood Harvest and Hunter’s Acclaim
Along with your new Vampiric Powers, there is a new world event called Blood Harvest for players to engage in and earn rewards, Potent Blood, and gear.
This event is similar to Helltides and will see players take on multiple new enemies, including the Blood Seekers, and complete various objectives in the affected area, such as freeing prisoners, killing powerful enemies, completing World Events, and disrupting rituals. This will be a prime area for players to earn currency and Pact Armor during the season. You will also find Blood Lures so draw out Blood Seekers, and Seeker Keys to free more prisoners or open Seeker Caches for more rewards and items.
This event will also be active during the season and will move at set intervals to a different region, with all the items you earn, such as currencies and keys to unlock prisoners, carrying over, so you do not need to start from scratch when it does move.
Doing these and completing objectives, both in and out of the Blood Harvest, will earn you Acclaim, which you can turn in for rewards at billboards in towns.
5 New and Returning Endgame Bosses
Season of Blood will see 5 endgame bosses added to the world for players to defeat, each requiring different items to summon and right, and each will have higher chances of dropping unique and uber-unique gear, as well as having some Cosmetic items to earn.
These new bosses will be available from World Tier 3 and can be challenged in both the Seasonal and Eternal Realm. The bosses are:
- Grigoire, The Galvanic Saint (World Tier 3 and 4) – Gather enough Living Steel from the Tortured Offering in Helltides.
- Echo of Varshan (World Tier 3 and 4) – Defeat Grotesque Debtors during Whispers of the Dead for a chance to receive parts of Varshan’s body. Tree of Whispers collections will have a guaranteed body part drop.
- The Beast in the Ice (World Tier 4) – Gather Distilled Fear while completing Tier 30 or higher Nightmare Dungeons.
- Dark Master (World Tier 4) – Defeat a World Boss on World Tier IV or complete a Legion Event to get Exquisite Blood.
- Echo of Duriel (World Tier 4) – Defeat both Grigoire, The Galvanic Saint, and Varshan in World Tier IV to collect Mucus-Slick Eggs and Shards of Agony.
Each of these has different requirements to summon, and all of them have a chance to drop certain unique items, and additional cosmetic rewards like mounts.
Quality of Life Changes
Along with new content, Season of Blood will see Diablo 4 get massive changes to multiple systems and features in the game, ranging from inventory management to mounts, EXP gains, and certain content types getting tweaks. It’s a massive list, and all of the changes look to be positive ones.
General Improvements
There are a few changes to some of the main gameplay elements in Diablo 4 coming in Season of Blood, including some great news regarding Renown rewards. Going forward, all Renown rewards will persist between seasons and characters, meaning players will no longer need to redo content like Waypoints and Strongholds to get these rewards. They will have them on all characters going forward, so less grinding there.
There will also be changes to EXP bonuses with World Tiers, as any bonuses you have will now be Multiplicative with the World Tier Bonus. Put simply, your exp bonuses will be lumped together and depending on your World Tier will be multiplied, so expect more EXP from completing content.
Additionally, overworld enemies in World Tiers 3 and 4 will now scale with your level, Incenses will grant EXP bonuses, and persist after death, two waypoints will be available in each zone, and players will get 2 more character slots in the character select screen, and Scrolls of Escape will now be consumed on disconnects.
Town Tidying
Towns and their vendors will be getting some tweaks, with Purveyors of Curiosities now being closer to waypoints in major towns, more stashes being added to all towns with waypoints, additional stashes added near important vendors in major towns, and the Occultist will now be available at the Tree of Whispers.
Mounts
Mounts will be getting some love in this season, with improvements to controls and responsiveness, so don’t expect them to get caught on as much terrain. They will also see a 14% speed boost to their base speed, and Spur will have a 50% duration increase, as well as be able to break through barricades.
Additionally, all dismounts will get cooldown reductions, so you can jump on your mount and use your combat dismount more often, With dismount cooldowns now being five seconds, forced dismounts being 15, and combat skill dismounts being three seconds.
World Events and World Bosses
World Events and Bosses will now spawn more frequently, with Legion Events downtime being reduced to 25 minutes, and World Bosses down to three and a half hours from the original six.
Additionally, both will have warning timers increased so players have more time to reach them, including a message that will broadcast to every player 15 minutes beforehand. They will also have a few bugs fixed that prevent markers from appearing on minimaps.
Nightmare Dungeons and Affixes
Nightmare Dungeons are getting quite a few changes, starting with teleports now placing you directly in the dungeon to reduce loading screens. Additionally, events inside Nightmare Dungeons will now have higher mob density, and NPCs will be more resilient so they won’t get one-shot.
On top of that, traps will now be clearer, CC against players has been reduced, and Paragon Glyphs experience will be increased, so you can level them up faster. Certain dungeons will see objectives completely removed, and many will get redesigned in order to make finding objectives easier and have less backtracking for players,
Certain Affixes will also be getting some changes, namely Backstabbers, Monster Critical Resist, Death Pulse, Lighting Storm, and Drifting Shade, all of which have been reworked to be a little less punishing or work more effectively without being unfair.
Endgame
Nearly every endgame activity will be getting some changes, with the main ones being increases to EXP and reward. For starters, Whispers will have larger gold rewards and more EXP, and Helltides will also see an EXP increase. Whisper Caches will now always give items depending on your chosen type, so if you pick boots, you are getting some boots.
Helltide chests will also have clearer detailed icons on the minimap so you know which ones are nearby. Nightmare Sigil will also now always be within five levels of the high Nightmare Dungeon you have completed.
With these changes and some of the other tweaks, the developers claim leveling up will be 40% faster than in the Season of the Malignant.
UI and UX
Season of Blood will come with changes to multiple UI and UX systems, starting with the Stash system, which will allow you to filter and sort your items to find items quicker. There will also be the ability to favorite items in your inventory so they cannot be sold or salvaged accidentally. Extracted Aspects with the same effect will also be grouped together when sorted.
There will also be a Streamer mode coming, combat text will now be able to be hidden, the minimap will have a further zoom out, and an auto-run will be added. Smoldering Ashes will also become available quicker in the season.
Items and Gearing
With regards to gear and items, these will be getting some nice reworks, starting with Gems. going forward players will no longer get Gems, but instead Gem Shards, which they can use to craft Gems at the Jeweler. As well as that, Enchantment costs will be reduced.
A big change is to crafting materials which will now drop in place of low-quality gear when on World Tiers 3 and 4. So in World Tier 3, Normal and Magic items will no longer drop, and in World Tier 4, Only Ancestral items will drop, and the rest will be materials. This will save you from needing to break it down yourself.
Related: Diablo 4: Should You Return For Season 2?
On top of that, item power will now be directly correlated to Monster level, and Whisper Caches will provide a +10 Item Power reward, Legendary Caches will provide a +20 Item Power reward, and Helltide Cache rewards will provide a +20 Item Power reward.
Campfire Chat and Steam Announcement
Along with all these announcements, we also got the news that Diablo 4 would be coming to Steam the same day as Season of Blood, with full crossplay and Cross-progression. There will also be a Campfire Chat coming on October 10, which will dive into class changes and balancing in greater detail, and there will be another Developer Update before the season is released on October 17.
Published: Oct 4, 2023 09:19 pm