DiabloFans

 Diablo II: Resurrected Patch 2.4

Season 26: The Fall Of The Nephalem

Season 26 introduces the Echoing Nightmare, which is the first new activity added to the game. In the Echoing Nightmare, players will experience an intense, densely packed, increasingly challenging event that stretches their ability to stay in the fight as long as possible. To access the Echoing Nightmare, players must first collect a Petrified Scream from a defeated Greater Rift Guardian which can be transmuted using Kanai's Cube to summon a portal to the Echoing Nightmare.

Echoing Nightmares greatly reward players with EXP, Legendaries, Blood Shards, Gems, and a new Legendary Gem that is used exclusively for augmenting ancient legendary item

Season 26 begins on Friday, April 15th at 5:00pm in each region. Season 26 goes live on all Consoles world wide at 5:00pm PST, the same time as PC in North America. For timezone conversion, visit this site!

Table of Contents

• Season 26: The Fall of the Nephalem
• Discord Server
• Haedrig's Gift & Seasonal Rewards
• Seasonal Conquests
• Season 26 Starter Guides
• Level With A Cause
• Challenge Rift Week 251
• Patch 2.7.3 Notes

 DiabloFans Discord

Join us on our Discord server! It's the perfect place for finding people to group with, get your questions answered, and stay up to date on the latest news! You can join our server by clicking on the banner below, or by going here! 

If you don't use Discord you're missing out, but you can also find people to play with by using our forums! 

 Haedrig's Gift & Seasonal Rewards

Completing Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of the Seasonal Journey will reward you with three of Haedrig’s Gifts. Each Gift contains a few pieces from one of your Class Sets. Players can only unlock one Class Set in this manner per Season across Hardcore and Non-Hardcore, so choose wisely!

The set you will receive depends on the class of the character you’re playing when you open each Haedrig’s Gift. To collect a full Class Set, you’ll need to open all three on the same character.

Here are the sets granted by Haedrig’s Gift in Season 26:

• Barbarian – The Legacy of Raekor
  
• Crusader – Armor of Akkhan
  
• Demon Hunter – Embodiment of the Marauder
  
• Monk – Inna's Reach
  
• Necromancer – Pestilence Master's Shroud
  
• Witch Doctor – Zunimassa's Haunt
  
• Wizard – Delsere's Magnum Opus
  

In Season 17, Blizzard began re-introducing previous Seasonal rewards to make them available to players who may have missed them the first time around. This means that for Season 26, awards originally available from Season 14 are returning to the Season Journey.

Blizzard is continuing to provide new End of Journey rewards as was introduced in Season 17, with two new cosmetic rewards for those who complete the entirety of the Season Journey. These rewards will be the Rakkis' Remembrance Portrait and the Toothsome Trooper Pet.

 Seasonal Conquests

 Want to prepare your Conquests plans for Season 26? Here are all the conquests you'll face this season!

• Avarice & Avarita
  
• Divinity & Lionhearted
  
• Need For Speed & Speed Demon
  
• On A Good Day & I Can't Stop
  
• Years of War & Dynasty
  

 Season 26 Starter Guides

Any players looking to level quickly and get the best start to Season 26 should browse the selection of starter guides from various content creators below!

Weapon Upgrade & Gambling Suggestions:

If you wait to complete the weekly Challenge Rift for after Season 26 begins, you will be able to begin your season with a stack of materials and gold to jump start your progress! Because of this, it's possible to upgrade a level 70 rare crafted weapon to a legendary and extract that power into your cube to give yourself a damage modifier for leveling. Additionally, with the starting Blood Shards you can gain access to specific items from Kadala at level 1. You will find our item upgrade and blood shard gambling suggestions for the start of this season below!

Ultimate Seasonal Starter Guide:

Season 26 Class Guides By Bluddshed

Level With A Cause

Level With A Cause (#LWAC), a coalition of streamers from the Diablo III community, will be uniting once again for a charity fundraising event during the first three days of the Season 26 opening weekend in Diablo III. This marks the team’s 15th event over the last few years. Several Diablo III community members will be holding live-streams during this weekend in support of this charity drive. During these live-streams, viewers will be able to donate to the SaveTheChildren charity organization. 

Level With A Cause was founded prior to the start of Season 11 of Diablo III and has been a mainstay of the opening weekend of each new season since that time. The LWAC team has raised over $96,326 to date for deserving charities such as Save The Children, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and Take This. LWAC hopes to continue to grow and raise even more money for charities in the future. If you are a streamer looking to participate, more info can be found on the LWAC website. As a viewer, you can simply search for LWAC within stream titles on Twitch during the April 15th to 17th event.

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In the U.S. and around the world, Save The Children gives children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. When crisis strikes, they are always among the first to respond and the last to leave. They do whatever it takes to save children, transforming their lives and the future we share.

You can donate to the Level With a Cause charity event here!

Challenge Rift - Week 251

Challenge Rift Week 251 is live! Because Season 26 begins this Friday, we advise that you DO NOT complete the challenge rift until after you've made your seasonal character! This week the Challenge Rift features the Witch Doctor! If you are curious how Challenge Rift builds are chosen each week, you can view this official blog post!

Patch 2.7.3 Changes

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment (Official Post)

Patch Notes

Below you will find the patch notes for the upcoming update for Diablo III, Patch 2.7.3

Table of Contents:

• Seasons
• Greater Rift Updates
• Items
• Bug Fixes and Misc Updates

Note: All changes apply to all versions of Diablo III, including PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC unless otherwise indicated.

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Seasons

Season 26 introduces the Echoing Nightmare, an optional and rewarding end-game challenge where players fight within the memories of Nephalem who fell in a Greater Rift. Today’s Nephalem must stand their ground until they are inevitably Overwhelmed or defeated. Players must collect a Petrified Scream from defeated Greater Rift Guardians to gain entry to the Echoing Nightmare. Transmuting a Petrified Scream in Kanai's Cube summons a portal that players can enter to face the horrors of the Nephalem's past.

 

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 Exploding Lunatic and Meteor damage to Physical.
• Adjusted the drop rate of Petrified Screams from Greater Rift Guardians.

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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.

 

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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.

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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.