The cow level has occupied thousands of players since the release of Diablo 4. To find the iconic Easter egg, fans are constantly searching for puzzles and their solutions. With Vessel of Hatred, there apparently are a few new breadcrumbs on the long path to the goal.
What kind of items are these?
- On September 4th, the PTR for Season 6 of Diablo 4 will start, to test the comprehensive changes to Vessel of Hatred.
- However, data miners from wowhead have already found a few items in the game data: a Rusty Bardike, an Unusual Key, a Rusty Old Bell, a Crooked Staff, and a Cattywampus Skullstone.
- All of these items are “white,” meaning they are not particularly special, but also not garbage. The assumption: You need these items to find the secret cow level. This is suggested just by the suspicious names.
This is special about the items: Anyone who has played Diablo 3 may have already noticed the names of the items. Most of them are needed in the predecessor to open special levels.
The description of the Rusty Bardike states that it “smells like dung.” In Diablo 3, you can open the non-cow level by putting the Cattle Bardike into Kanai’s Cube.
The controversial Pony Level can be entered in Diablo 3 by crafting the Shepherd’s Staff. To craft it, you need, among other things, Wirt’s Bell and the Cattywampus Skullstone. The new items have descriptions hinting at their past:
- The rusty bell has the letter W on it.
- The Cattywampus Skullstone has the same name – it may even be the same stone.
- According to the tooltip, all three items “once had great significance.”
The Unusual Key might be the most interesting item. It simply states: “A large metal key. Although it appears ordinary, you feel that it has a certain power.” Large keys are needed, by the way, for barn doors…
Whether these are really new items for the cow level or just Easter eggs with references to the past, we do not know yet. On the PTR, there will probably be no possibility to explore more, but at the latest with the release of Vessel of Hatred on October 8th.
We even asked the heads themselves at gamescom about the cow level, but they only said: No idea what you’re talking about.
The search for the cow level – How far have the people gone?
The hunt for the cow level began even before the release of Diablo 4. Officially, there is no cow level, but this has always been a joke among Diablo developers. After all, there are cow levels in both Diablo 2 and Diablo 3.
Players have already killed thousands of cows in search and have found several steps to the solution, it seems. After the death of enough cows, you receive strange artifacts that you can cleanse to obtain a key.
The key opens a cellar in Scosglen, where piles of cows and dead villagers can be found. If you kill the cows, you receive a stamina elixir that gives you a minimal buff, but so far has no other purpose. Here, the research is currently more or less stuck and will probably continue only with the new items.
However, there are a few more steps that involve a wishing well and lucky coins. Whether these relate to the cow level is still unknown, but the suspicion is there. Here, the trail currently ends at a strange ring: Players find a secret item for the first time, the rarest and worst in the game so far
