Everyone has dreamed of taking care of a little robot spider who is scarily good at killing demons, and now Diablo 4 season 3 will finally make it a reality.
The Season of the Construct, starting January 23, will give every Diablo 4 player a spider companion named the "Seneschal", that can be equipped with powerful skills. Like season 2's vampiric powers, you'll be able to tailor the Seneschal to your build as you progress through the seasonal questline. A combination of unique magical stone items lets you tweak how its spells work, like multiplying the amount of lightning bolts it shoots or giving it the ability to keep a protective barrier around you.
These new seasonal items, divided into 12 "governing" stones and 27 "tuning" stones of varying rarity, will drop off enemies in "Arcane Tremors" around the open world and seasonal dungeons called vaults. You can equip your Seneschal with two governing stones which will act as basic abilities and then attach tuning stones to augment each one.
Don't fret: The Seneschal can't die, senior manager of game design Daniel Tanguay said in a group interview with PC Gamer last week, and it will scale with your character's power. "We wanted to avoid the situation where you basically upgrade to the point where your Seneschal is useless," Tanguay said.
Season 3 will kick off with the discovery of vaults underneath the dunes of Kehjistan. You'll discover an artifact created by returning character Zoltun Kulle called "The Loom", which has been corrupted by the demon Malphas. It's a Diablo game, so you'll need plenty of gear to eventually fight Malphas as the season's new boss encounter. Vaults will be the season's main source of loot, but you'll need to carefully slip past spike traps and spinning pillars of fire to get the rewards at the end of them. Controller players probably won't break a sweat dodging these hazards, but luckily season 3 will also add WASD controls to the game if you want to stick to keyboard and mouse.
Every time you get caught by a trap, you'll lose one stack of Zoltun's Warding, which will determine how many treasure chests you can open at the end. By using Pearls of Warding at the start of a vault, you can essentially bet on how successful your run will be by choosing how many stacks of Zoltun's Warding you'll have to play with. Some classes have skills, like the Barbarian's leap, to let them breeze through the traps unscathed, but Blizzard says your Seneschal will have shield skills to help less fortunate builds and classes survive, too.
Season 3 will add several other features to the game, including:
- A new seasonal hub area called The Gatehall with vendors and portals
- Persistent Helltide events with five minute breaks in between
- An extra stash tab
- A skill tree respec mode that lets you swap skills before confirming the changes
- Guaranteed item power 925 drops from various activities after level 75, including tier 90+ Nightmare Dungeons
- Six new unique items (some with new transmog looks!)
Later in the season, a level 100 fixed weekly dungeon with leaderboards and rewards called The Gauntlet will arrive. Enemies will drop Proofs of Might instead of loot and you'll be ranked against other Diablo 4 players for how many you can collect in the shortest amount of time to finish the dungeon. The top players in the world will be immortalized on the Hall of the Ancients, a permanent leaderboard that closes at the end of each week. If it's anything like season 2's Abattoir of Zir, it'll be a joy to watch as players come up with the strangest builds to conquer them.
"We're actively trying to avoid just saying, 'Okay, this is going to be our seasonal template. Here it is, let's crank 'em out.', Taranguay said when asked about how the team is managing the first fully live service Diablo game.
Given the hugely positive response to season 2 and all the changes that went into making Diablo 4 a faster, more bountiful action RPG, it's reassuring to see that season 3 looks like it will continue in that same direction. With season 4 planning massive changes to save you from having to stop and scrutinize item stats every 10 minutes and the first expansion launching later this year, the future of Diablo 4 is as bright as a game about an army of demons could be.
Diablo 4 season 3, the Season of the Construct, launches on January 23.
