On January 18th, the developers of Diablo 4 talked about the plans for Season 3 in a live stream. There was information about the leaderboards, the companions and the new dungeons. You can find the most important information from the stream here.
The most important thing from the stream:
According to Adam Fletcher, Community Development Director, this will be “possibly the biggest season” Diablo 4 has had to date. With her comes a mechanical companion, the Seneschell, who you can even pet.
There will also be a new meeting point with special dealers in Season 3 and leaderboards where you can check out other players’ builds.
Diablo 4: The announcement trailer for Season 3
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Leaderboard features
How do the leaderboards work? You can compete with other players on the leaderboard in Diablo 4 as soon as it is available. In principle, you don’t need to be at level 100, the only requirement is to unlock world level 4. You can do the associated dungeons as often as you want.
In the stream, the developers explain that the leaderboard will come into play with a delay in Season 3 because they want the players to explore the season first. At the weekly boards they value a fair challenge, which is why the dungeon is always structured the same way.
You can filter within the leaderboards and only see the positions of your clan or your friends. In addition, the players’ profiles should be linked on the board so that you can view their current builds. However, that doesn’t mean they played the build in the leaderboard dungeon.
New stones get an extra slot in the inventory
It was already known that you would have a mechanical companion in Season 3 of Diablo 4. In the stream, the developers emphasized that the stones you can use for the Seneschal will not take up space in your inventory.
Where are the stones stored? The Guidance and Attunement Stones will have a single tab, similar to the vampiric powers in Season 2. In the tab you can equip and experiment with the stones and thus their abilities:
The goal of the developers is for you to be able to experiment with the companions; there should be “vast possibilities” for what you can do with your seneschal. They emphasize that you don’t have to be afraid that the companion will become useless when you reach higher levels, because his skills also level up.
New dungeons should be worthwhile
What are these new dungeons? The new dungeons, which are called vaults here, should be worth it. They are filled with traps and construct enemies, so contain many dangers – but also many rewards. You can reach the vaults via a gate hall, the new meeting point for players. There should also be a waypoint and special dealers there.
There is also the option to turn the vaults into nightmare vaults. There should be seasonal vault seals for this, similar to the seals for the nightmare dungeons that you already know.
In the stream, however, the developers note that they don’t just want to offer content that takes you into the dungeons. There will also be new events and activities that take place in the open world, in the form of “Arcane Quakes” that you have to fight.
Class updates
What will be adjusted to the classes? The developers say they want to “balance two competing concepts that we believe players want to make the game fun.”
They’ve found that on one hand, players want to feel like they can have fun with the powerful builds they discover. On the other hand, players want the meta builds to be updated, so the same things aren’t always the best choice.
Below you can see a few screenshots from the English live stream:
Adjustments to the loot should be made
What about Uber Uniques? The biggest opportunity for Uber Uniques should still lie with Uber Duriel. However, the process by which necessary materials for the bosses are farmed should be adjusted. There should be more opportunities to collect materials for the “Beast in the Ice”.
There will also be an Uber Dungeon with the new boss Malphas, who is part of the seasonal quest and later becomes the Uber Boss.
What about other loot? The loot at world level 4 should also be adjusted. According to the developers, it didn’t feel rewarding that loot with an item power of 925 was mainly obtained from world bosses.
As far as the items and especially the loot filters are concerned, the developers say they have heard the feedback and adjustments are planned for Season 4. They can say more about this before the next season.
Further adjustments in Season 3 and beyond
What else is planned? With Season 3 there will be a few “Quality of Life” adjustments. We list a few of them below:
You can see an example of possible updates in the screenshots from the stream:
The developers also plan to adapt the social features, which is said to be planned “during the lifespan” of Diablo 4. They do not specify a specific time period. Adjustments to the Field of View are currently not planned.
However, they are planning a revision of the code in the future, which would be a “massive update”. Here, too, there are no concrete schedules yet. The developers say they will continue to integrate some of the feedback from the community.
The developers of Diablo 4 recently said in an interview that they welcome feedback from players and will take it into account in future content. There should be some exciting things in Season 4 in the future that are influenced by the feedback: Players constantly complain about Diablo 4 – Blizzard praises feedback, but some things will only get better in months