On January 18, the developers of Diablo 4 spoke during the livestream about the plans for Season 3. During this, there were details about the leaderboards, companions, and new dungeons. You can find the most important information from the stream here.
The most important points from the stream:
- Season 3 is set to bring a wealth of new content, including a mechanical companion that you can enhance with stones, new dungeons called “Vaults,” and a leaderboard that is supposed to launch in a few weeks.
- There will also be some “Quality of Life” improvements.
- The detailed patch notes for 1.3 are set to be available on January 19 on the Blizzard blog.
According to Adam Fletcher, the Community Development Director, this is expected to be the “possibly biggest season” that has ever existed in Diablo 4. With it comes a mechanical companion, the Seneschall, that you can even pet.
There is also supposed to be a new meeting point with special merchants in Season 3, as well as leaderboards where you can examine other players’ builds.
Features of the Leaderboards
How do the leaderboards work? You can compete with other players in the Diablo 4 leaderboard once it is available. Essentially, you don’t even need to be level 100; the only requirement is unlocking World Tier 4. You can run the associated dungeons as often as you like.
In the stream, the developers explain that the leaderboard will be introduced with a delay in Season 3 because they want players to explore the season first. In the weekly boards, they are focused on providing a fair challenge, so the dungeon will always be designed the same way.
You can filter within the leaderboards to only display the ranks of your clan or friends. Moreover, the players’ profiles on the board are supposed to be linked so that you can view their current builds. However, this does not mean that they played the build in the leaderboard dungeon.
New Stones Will Get an Extra Slot in the Inventory
It was already known that you will have a mechanical companion in Season 3 of Diablo 4. In the stream, the developers emphasized that the stones you can use for the Seneschall will not take up space in your inventory.
Where will the stones be stored? The guide and tuning stones will have a separate tab, similar to the vampiric powers in Season 2. In that tab, you can equip the stones and thus their abilities and experiment with them:
The developers’ goal is for you to be able to experiment with the companions; there should be “huge possibilities” regarding what you can do with your Seneschall. They emphasize that you shouldn’t fear that the companion will become useless when you reach higher levels because: its abilities level up too.
New Dungeons Are Supposed to be Rewarding
What kind of new dungeons are these? The new dungeons, referred to here as Vaults, are supposed to be rewarding. They are filled with traps and construct enemies, meaning many dangers – but also many rewards. You will access the Vaults via a portal, the new meeting point for players. There will also be a waypoint and special merchants there.
Additionally, there will be the option to turn the Vaults into Nightmare Vaults. For this, there are supposed to be seasonal vault seals, similar to the seals for the Nightmare dungeons you already know.
In the stream, the developers note that they do not only want to provide content that leads you into dungeons. There are also supposed to be new events and activities that take place in the open world, in the form of “Arcane Tremors” that you must fight.
Updates for the Classes
What adjustments will be made to the classes? The developers say they want to “harmonize two competing concepts that we believe players want to keep the game fun.”
They have found that players want to feel that they can have fun with the powerful builds they discover. On the other hand, players want the meta builds to be updated so that it is not always the same things that are the best choice.
Below are a few screenshots from the English livestream:
Loot Adjustments Will Take Place
What about the Uber Uniques? The biggest chance for Uber Uniques is still expected to be with Uber Duriel. However, the process of farming necessary materials for the bosses will be adjusted. There will be more opportunities to collect materials for the “Beast in the Ice.”
There will also be an Uber Dungeon featuring the new boss Malphas, which is part of the seasonal quest and later becomes the Uber Boss.
What about other loot? The loot at World Tier 4 will also be adjusted. According to the developers, it felt unrewarding that loot with an item power of 925 was mostly obtained from world bosses.
Regarding the items and especially the loot filters, the developers say they have heard the feedback and adjustments are planned for Season 4. They can provide more details 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. A few of them are outlined below:
- PC control with WASD
- Overhaul of the season journey, as it felt minimally rewarding
- Hell Floods are almost always available, with a short break of 5 minutes
- Overhaul of the skill tree regarding the reallocation of skill points
- Overhaul of the UI when trading gold
- There are also supposed to be two updates per season – one at launch, one mid-season.
An example of potential updates can be seen in the screenshots from the stream:
The developers are also planning to adjust the social features, reportedly this is “planned during the runtime” of Diablo 4. They do not provide a specific timeframe. Adjustments to the field of view are currently not planned.
A revision of the Codex, however, is planned for the future; it is said to be a “massive update.” Again, there are no specific timeframes yet. The developers say they will integrate a lot based on feedback from the community.
Recently, the developers of Diablo 4 stated in an interview that they appreciate feedback from players and will consider it in future content. Thus, there are supposed to be some exciting things in Season 4 influenced by the feedback: Players constantly complain about Diablo 4 – Blizzard appreciates feedback but some improvements will take months to materialize
