Today’s the day. We finally have a host of info about Diablo 4 season 3, aka Season of the Construct. The theme this time around is the newly-revived construct mecha-enemies (and allies!) of Zoltun Kulle and his associates, and how that affects seasonal gameplay this time around.
I recently spoke with Blizzard devs Daniel Tanguay (Senior Manager, Game Designer), Madeleine James (Game Designer, Quests) about the upcoming third season of Diablo 4, and they shared a lot of good info about what’s to come on Tuesday, January 23, just one week from now. So, here’s what’s up:
- The new mechanic of the season is a little robot buddy called the “Seneschal” that has various powers you can upgrade it with so it can provide you with buffs, defensive protection or have it do damage on your behalf. I asked Blizzard about some details, and they told me it A) cannot die, B) does not require you to manually activate its skills and C) got so powerful in testing they had to buff seasonal boss health in some instances. You will use seasonal “tuning stone” drops to upgrade it, and you can combine a bunch of effects with them. Lighting, plus multishot, plus piercing, for instance, will light up the screen to fry enemies without you needing to do much of anything.
- The main overworld change is the addition of Arcane Tremors that will appear on the map with construct enemies, which include things like mechanical spiders and scorpions, where you will find materials for your construct upgrades. This is not as big or involved as a zone as last season’s Blood Harvest locations, however. Additionally, as a QoL change on the map, Helltides will now always be active somewhere, so you don’t have to wait for them.
- The new core seasonal activity is a type of dungeon called “Vaults.” These dungeons are filled with more elaborate traps than we’ve seen in any before, and there’s a mechanic where if you avoid taking damage from them as you complete the dungeon, you get bonus, better loot at the end. I am a little skeptical of this given that the fast-paced gameplay of Diablo does not really lend itself to avoiding trap damage entirely, but we’ll see. The main boss here is an unmoving construct that will require you to fight it while dodging traps in the arena.
- There are indeed new aspects and uniques this season, but we were not shown any specific ones yet. I was told at least a couple will finally have new models that will be available for transmog. In terms of other loot changes, you will now have better chances to get higher item level loot at higher levels, though the overall max for item level is not increasing.
- Leaderboards and ladders are coming, which include a standardized dungeon called The Gauntlet (launching later in the season) that players will try to land high scores for where everyone has the same layout and monster spawns. There are a whole bunch of ladders coming including ones for each class, solo ones, team ones, hardcore ones, etc.
- New stash tab!
So those are the basics of what’s coming next week. I am really excited to try out the construct buddy, as that sounds fun. I did ask whether the Seneschal was some sort of early testing for pets or the return of something like mercenary companions, but naturally, they wouldn’t confirm anything. I am more unsure of the whole “don’t get hit by traps” dungeon idea, but we’ll have to see how that works in practice. More soon with a vidoc tomorrow, I believe.
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