Diablo 3 Season 26 Kicks Off Today, Includes Brand-New Activity

Diablo III continues its seasonal updates as we move closer and closer to the launch of Diablo IV, and the latest of these, Season 26, kicks off today at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET. It sounds like it’s going to be pretty spooky, so you best play with light on if you’re worried about getting scared. Maybe.

The theme for Season 26 is Echoing Nightmare, which is also the name of a new activity that has you fight through a “densely packed, increasingly challenging event” that shows what happens if you fail in your mission as a Nephalem. Cosmetic rewards are returning items originally featured in Season 14, including portrait frames and a Justice pennant.

The update comes as Blizzard also continues making tweaks and additions to Diablo II: Resurrected, its remake of the classic dungeon-crawler. Patch 2.4 updates each class, acting as the first gameplay update for Diablo II in over a decade.

Full patch notes for Diablo III are below. Alongside the changes across all platforms, the Xbox Series X version now also runs at native 4K, while the Series S version remains at 1080p.

Diablo III Season 26 patch notes

Season Theme Details:

• Petrified Screams and the Echoing Nightmare can only be accessed with seasonal characters.
• Only one player is required to transmute a Petrified Scream to open an Echoing Nightmare in a multiplayer game.
• Similar to a boss encounter, all players in a multiplayer game must accept a prompt to enter.
• While within an Echoing Nightmare, the difficulty scales as players progress in the encounter. Players can progress faster by defeating monsters quickly.
• Players receive the following rewards upon completing an Echoing Nightmare: EXP, Legendary Items, Blood Shards, Gems, and a new Legendary Gem, Whisper of Atonement.
• The Whisper of Atonement is a Legendary Gem used exclusively for Augmenting Ancient Legendary items. It drops pre-ranked based upon the player’s performance in the Echoing Nightmare.
• Rare monsters now spawn within an Echoing Nightmare.
• Meteors now fall from the sky.
• Hellish Machinations now appear, which spawn streams of Exploding Lunatics.
• Rift Guardians now spawn.
• Increased the frequency of which monsters spawn.
• Updated the Shadow Clone explosion to better reflect the area of effect.
• The exit timer has been increased to 60 seconds.
• Increased the possible rank a Whisper of Atonement can drop to 125 based on the Tier completed.
• Monsters in Echoing Nightmares can no longer be Frozen, Stunned, Rooted or Knocked Back.
• Fixed a bug that caused Conduit Shrines to deal less damage than intended.

New Updates (Post-PTR)

• Monsters from the Echoing Nightmares no longer drop gold, items or health globes.
• Adjusted the damage done by Exploding Lunatics and Meteors to be more deadly.
• Adjust Meteor and Fallen Lunatic Molten damage to be Physical.
• Adjusted the difficulty of Tiers 100+.
• Replaced the Shield Pylon with a Speed Pylon.
• Adjusted the EXP rewarded by Echoing Nightmares to be aligned with Greater Rift turn-in rewards.
• Reduced the Echoing Nightmare closing timer to 30 seconds.
• Prevented Echoing Nightmares from being opened in games lower than level 70.
• Adjusted the drop rate of Petrified Screams from Greater Rift Guardians.

Greater Rift Updates

We wanted to improve the Greater Rift experience through quality of life updates, balance changes and addressing community feedback. We reviewed all of the maps and monsters that appear in Greater Rifts and reworked the probabilities overall to make sure players spend more time with the content they enjoy. Less spaghetti and more chickens!

Orek’s Dream: Greater Rifts have a small chance to roll as Orek’s Dream. These dreamlike rifts have a curated list of maps and monster compositions.

• 3 maps have been added and 2 maps have been removed from the Greater Rift pool.
  • Added: Fields of Misery, Desolate Sands and Briarthorn Cemetery
  • Removed: Sewers of Caldeum, and Hidden Aqueducts
• The probability of Greater Rift maps has been adjusted.
• The probability of monster groups has been adjusted.
• The following monsters have been adjusted to grant more progression and EXP within Greater Rifts.
  • Blazing Guardians
  • Smoldering Guardians
  • Frost Guardian
  • Noxious Guardian
  • Shock Guardian
  • Blood Clan Spearman
  • Dark Moon Clan Impaler
  • Moon Clan Impaler
  • Blood Clan Impaler
  • Ice Clan Impaler
  • Hell Witch
  • Vile Temptress
• Players can speak to Orek to close an active Greater Rift. This option is only available when in a single player game.
• Further increased the progression granted by some monsters in Greater Rifts.
• Additionally, increased the progression granted by Fallen Shaman, Fallen Conjurer, Fallen Prophet and Fallen Firemage.
• Updated visual effects upon entering an Orek’s Dream.
• Updated the Orek’s Dream vignette to be more pronounced.

Items

Barbarian

• Legacy of Raekor (4-piece Bonus): Furious Charge gains the effect of every rune and deals 1000% increased damage. For every 1% Life you are missing, the damage of your Ancient Spear is increased by 2%.
• Legacy of Raekor (6-piece Bonus): Hitting enemies with Furious Charge or Weapon Throw increases the damage of your next Ancient Spear by 5500% and causes it to release multiple spears from its target. This effect stacks and each spear throw consumes a maximum of 5 stacks.
• Arreat’s Law: Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear deal 150-200% increased damage.
  • Weapon Throw generates up to 25 50 additional Fury based on the distance of the enemy hit. The generated Fury can go above the maximum cap by 200 Fury.
  • Ancient Spear refunds up to 25 50 Fury based on the distance of the enemy hit and resets your Fury cap to its base maximum.
• The Three Hundredth Spear: Increase the damage of Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear by 150-200%. The attack speed of Weapon Throw is increased by 200%.
• Skular’s Salvation: Increase the damage of Ancient Spear by 150-200%. If your Ancient Spear – Boulder Toss hits 5 or fewer enemies, the damage is increased by 100%.

Developer’s Note: We’ve added additional Weapon Throw buffs to give players more build options when playing the reworked Legacy of Raekor set. We’ve also updated Arreat’s Law to allow players to reach new levels of Fury.

Developer’s Note: We reworked Raekor’s Legacy to give the set its own identity. It felt natural to the team to infuse the charging fantasy of Raekor’s Legacy with the Barbarian’s ranged skills.

Crusader

• Thorns of the Invoker: The attack speed of Punish and Slash are increased by 100% and deal 67,500% of your Thorns damage.
• Norvald’s Fervor: Gain 200% increased damage while using Steed Charge and for 5 seconds after it ends.

Developer’s Note: Norvald’s Fervor is overperforming across multiple sets. We want to bring its power down, but we are Increasing the utility of Thorns of the Invoker to compensate.

Monk

• All Mystic Allies spawned by Inna’s Mantra 6-piece bonus now have their duration refreshed with each attack.
• Mystic Ally – Fire Ally: Mini allies now have Passability.
• Mystic Ally – Earth Ally:
  • Earth Ally boulders speed has been increased. Boulders always leash to the player regardless of how many monsters are on screen.
  • Prevented Earth Ally boulders from being slowed by missile dampening.

Developer’s Note: We’ve made improvements to Mystic Ally that should make the skill feel more fluid and less clunky at times.

• Bindings of the Lesser Gods: Enemies hit by your Cyclone Strike take 150%-200% more damage from your Mystic Ally for 5 seconds.

Developer’s Note: We’re happy with the gameplay of Inna’s Mantra Monks, but the Fire build is overperforming, so we removed the Fire Ally bonus from the Bindings of the Lesser Gods.

Bug Fixes | 2.7.3

• Prevented players from changing difficulty while an Echoing Nightmare is active.
• Fixed a bug where Boon of the Hoarder allowed gold to drop in Echoing Nightmares.
• Fixed a bug where Orek’s Dream vignette sometimes goes away on Shrouded Moors and Festering Woods when entering anything other than level 1.
• Fixed a bug that caused Orek’s Dream opening VFX to display inconsistently.