Diablo 4 Season 2: Season of Blood Livestream Recap

Season 2: Season of Blood starts with a plot led by an ancient vampire -- a remnant of a lost age before Humans existed in Sanctuary. An age when the firstborn children of Inarius and Lilith, who are known as the Ancients existed in Sanctuary.

When Inarius altered the Worldstone to depower his children, those who were vampires lost their power. But among those who were slain during the Purge, not all were subject to permanent death. The Ancient vampire and his cohort were vanished to sleep for an eternity in the city of the Ancients; but due to the events of Diablo 4, the city became to awake with dire consequences for the humans living above.

During the events of Season 2, the player will be afflicted by the vampiric curse. The player is not under the control of the Vampire Lord Zir which allows you to stop his plan.

We will encounter a variety of new characters this Season of Blood, including vampire hunters. One of them of a dark past. This vampire hunter, named Erys, is voiced by Gemma Chan (actress who played Sersi in Marvel's Eternals and Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel).

Erys realizes that the player has these vampiric traits that makes them the perfect tool to put an end to Lord Zir.

One of the core seasonal mechanics is vampiric powers. The player has to kill vampires to acquire their blood, which allows to upgrade vampiric powers. However, there are costs associated to choosing any of these vampiric powers.

Armor pieces that you collect during Season 2, have these Pacts associated with them. There are three types of Pacts:

• Pact of Eternity
• Pact of Divinity
• Pact of Ferocity

These Pact items can be slotted into Helm, Torso, Gloves, Pants, or Boots. If you add a Pact into a Helm that has the maximum Pacts filled, that Pact won't have an effect.

There is a new tab in the Inventory, next to the Items, Consumables, Quest, and Sigil tabs. This new tab is to store the Vampiric Powers.

The Livestream video showed a tooltip after adding a Pact into a Gloves Legendary item which says: "Go to the Sanguine Circle."

You can use the Boons they provide in order to fuel the Blood Seals. There are up to 22 vampiric powers to choose from; and these are Class agnostic. You can combine the power of 5 different Blood Seals in the Sanguine Circle.

Among the vampiric powers revealed, when you evade through enemies a red icon appears above their head to identify them as vampiric cursed. This steals their souls and stores them when those enemies die. When you use an ability, that unleashes those souls upon enemies. The animation looks like a line-shaped AOE that unleashes multiple skeletal ghosts.

There is a Season of Blood vampiric power known as the Rising Moon that stacks with Basic Skills. When you reach a maximum of stacks, the player character goes into a vampiric blood rage.

There is a vampiric power that summons a Bat companion that flies above a target and bites them, stunning them.

There is a vampiric power that enhances channeling skills by spawning a blood pool beneath the player that adds an enemy damage reduction and enhances the damage you deal with that channeling skill.

This event looks like Helltide, but instead of several areas within a zone, this one looks smaller. The image below shows the area around Ked Bardu outlined in a green hue. This event will be active always, but switching location somewhere in the map in a cyclical way.

During this Blood Harvest event, vampires have overwhelmed an area, enslaving the populace to harvest their blood, and siring new vampires. Players will venture into this event to rescue prisoners, stop sinister rituals, and hunt for high-value enemies. This hints at some kind of Rare Elite boss that spawns (in Helltides to coin an example) which is going to drop Legendary items and special Blood Seals to empower our vampiric powers.

The difference between Blood Harvest and Helltides is that Blood Harvest is available at Level 1, and the event is available all the time, switching location at a certain interval.

The Helltides end and then spawns in another location 1:15 hours later. The Blood Harvest doesn't have that long interval until the next one is available.

Some items will drop that don't drop anywhere else but in the Harvent event. Things like Blood Keys to open caches, prisoner cages or cuffs. There is an item that allows you to bait Blood Seekers to come to you. These items that drop in the Blood Harvest won't disappear when the event ends in that specific location. The item is stored permanently and you can use it in the next Blood Harvest that spawns nearly immediately in another location in the world.

In Season of Blood, there will be 5 new (Lord Zir, The Beast of the Ice, Grigoire) and returning (Duriel and Echos of Vershan) Endgame Bosses in Tier 3 and Tier 4. Players can earn the materials to summon these Endgame Bosses by completing Whispers of the Dead events and Helltide events.

There are some new enemies with powerful elemental attacks, giving players more reason to seek out and equip gear that enhances their Elemental Resistances.

Hunting for these 5 Bosses gives players another opportunity to farm Unique items. The most challenging Endgame Boss has a chance to drop one of those extremely rare Unique items. This might mean: The Greatfather or Harlequin Crest type of Unique items.

The way this system works is that you have to go do Whispers of the Dead events where you might find Malignant creatures. You get an item from them and the Whispers Cache drops an item that allows you to summon Echo of Vershan in a small dungeon -- entrance located near the Tree of Whispers. Echo of Vershan has a chance to drop one of several possible Unique items.

As you complete Helltides, you will be able to summon Grigoire, The Galvanic Saint. You will need gear with Lightning Resistances for this Boss. You will loot Infernal Steel(?) from Helltide Caches that you later use to summon The Galvanic Saint.

Now when you kill Echos of Vershan and Grigoire, the Galvanic Saint in World Tier 4, both drop some of the components that you need in order to summon Duriel, King of Maggots (a Level 100 Boss).

Duriel has a chance to drop Unique items, and a low chance to drop Uber Unique items.

The Beast in the Ice can be summoned when you complete a Nightmare Dungeon Tier 30-100. There are chances for enemies in these Nightmare Dungeons to drop the components you need to craft a special Nightmare Dungeon Key to enter a lair dungeon that summons The Beast in the Ice boss.

While you can fight the story version of Lord Zir in World Tier 1 and World Tier 2, you will find a more challenging Lord Zir in World Tier 4 in Season 2: Season of Blood. How to summon Lord Zir? You have to collect materials from World Bosses such as Ashava and complete Legion Events. Once you gather the materials, you can craft an item that allows you to summon Lord Zir.

The materials to summon each of these Endgame Bosses can be traded.

• Gems will no longer be stored in the Inventory. These will go into the Stats & Materials tab.
• If you unlocked a mount in Diablo 4 Eternal Realm, those mounts will be available to you immediately in Season 2.
• Renown Rewards earned before Season 2 will be account bound and be available to Season 2 characters.
• New Season 2 Journey and Season 2 Battle Pass filled with new vampiric-themed cosmetics to collect.
• Updates to Unique powers in Unique items.
• Updates to Legendary Aspects for all different classes.
• Updating stats such as Elemental Resistance values across the game.
• Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerable, and Overpower stats will have some adjustments. These will be discussed in the Campfire Chat on October 10.

• Scrolls of Escape are now consumed if a Hardcore player disconnects while in combat, teleporting them to a safe location.
• Incenses now grant a bonus to Experience and they persist after death.
• Experience bonuses are now multiplicative with the World Tier bonus. In short, reaching Level 100 will be 40% faster than in Season 1.
• Ten unlocked waypoints added to Skip Campaign, 2 in each zone.
• Renown rewards now persist between seasons and new characters.
• Overworld Monsters in World Tier 3 and 4 no longer trail the player's level after levels 55 and 75 respectively.
• Two additional character slots.

As part of the questline, there will be new season dungeons available only in Season 2 where we venture into Crypts and other locations as part of the questline. We will also revisit old locations in Estuar that have been overrun by vampires.

Along with providing new questlines, new powers and new events each Season, the developers continue to make Eternal Realm established system changes based on player feedback.

In Season 2, you will find a variety of new enemy families with new abilities and animations. You will find them outdoor areas and in dungeons overrun by vampires. Some of them are Shadow Vampires, Blood Seekers (Lieutenants), and Blood Skeletons -- to name few mentioned in the livestream.

However, same as the player succumbed partially to the vampiric curse, there are other humans and powered humans that have succumbed to the vampiric curse but weren't able to reject the control of Lord Zir. We are going to find Barbarian vampires, Druid vampires, Rogue vampires, Necromancer vampires and Sorcerer vampires as enemies.

The Sorcerer vampires in particular will drop Potent Blood -- the currency you will be able to loot in Season 2 that allows you to purchase upgrades for your Vampiric Powers and to unlock new ones. Whenever you find Blood Seeker enemies, they will drop Potent Blood. These are lieutenants of the Lord Zir. You can find them in the Blood Harvest event and in Dungeons, as well as where you least expect it in the outdoor world.

• Occultist has set up shop by the Tree of Whispers.
• Stashes have been added to all small towns with waypoints.
• Additional stashes have been added to capital cities near important vendors.
• Purveyors of Curiosities have set up shop closer to the waypoints in Kyovashad, Zarbinzet, Ked Bardu, and Gea Kul.

Responsiveness: Mounts are now less likely to get stuck or slow down unexpectedly. Improved mounts automatically jumping over traversals.

Speed: Base mount movement speed increased by 14%. Top speed remains unchanged. Achieving full speed when using mouse and keyboard has been improved. The speed boost from Spur duration increased by 50%. Using Spur now breaks through barricades.

Cooldowns:

• Manual dismount: Reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Forced dismount: Reduced from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Dismount combat skill: Reduced from 10 seconds to 3 seconds.

Teleporting to a Nightmare Dungeon - now takes the player inside the dungeon, instead of teleporting the player outdoors to the Dungeon entrance. This avoids double loading screens.

Events - Dungeon events monster density increased. NPCs no longer get one shot in later world tiers.

Traps - Overall readability has been improved.

Elites - enemy's Crowd Control skills overall has been greatly reduced.

Paragon Glyph Experience has been increased.

Backstabbers - Close monster attacks from behind cause you to become Vulnerable. Vulnerable damage taken is increased by X%.

Monster Critical Resist - Monster attacks reduce the damage of your Critical Strikes for 3 seconds by X% stacking up to Y%.

Death Pulse - Prevent death pulses on monsters that have on death explosions. Prevent death pulses from spawning on top of each other.

Lightning Storm - Being shocked while in the bubble grants 35% bonus Movement Speed for 5 seconds. Lighting Storm will only start when players are in combat. Lightning Storm will only start when the player has a direct path to the bubble.

Drifting Shade - Persistent duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. Respawn time increased by 2 seconds.

Objectives - Completely removed objectives from a handful of dungeons, just find the boss. Placed objectives on the critical path through the dungeon.

Layouts - We redesigned many dungeon layouts. Additional changes were made to dungeon layouts to limit backtracking while preventing the dungeons from feeling too linear.

Legion Events time between events reduced from 30 minutes to 25 minutes. Warning timer increased from 5 minutes to 10 minutes. Fixed an issue where the Legion Event pin would not display at the edge of player's minimaps if a Whisper was active for the Legion Event.

World Boss spawns have been reduced from 6 hours to 3.5 hours. Warning timer increased from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. Fixed an issue where the World Boss pin would not display at the edge of player's minimaps if a Whisper was active for the World Boss. A message is broadcasted to all players when the Wrold Boss is 15 minutes from spawning.

Nightmare Sigils rewarded from Whisper Caches will now always be within 5 levels of the highest level Nightmare Dungeon the player has completed.

Gold Reward from whisper caches has been greatly increased.

Experience from Whispers/Helltide has been increased substantially.

Whisper Caches adhere to the item slot of the cache. If it is a Boots cache, it will only drop Boots.

Helltide Chests now have specific icons on the map to indicate their type.

Items can now be marked as "Favorite" or "Junk" in your stash or inventory. Favorited items cannot be sold or salvaged.

Extracted Aspects with the same Legendary Power will now be grouped together when sorted in the Inventory and Stash.

Sorting of normal affixes on items has been improved to be more consistent.

Dungeon Map Tooltips that have active Whispers associated with them will now display the Aspect Name and Description earned when completing that dungeon as well.

Stash can now be searched and filtered to more quickly find items.

Streamer mode has been implemented. Players that wish to hide identifying information, such as character name or Battle.net tag, can now find these new settings in the Social Options menu.

Combat text has an added option for hiding text (i.e. Vulnerable, Dodge, Fortified).

Auto-run has been added. When pressing the bound key, button, the player character will continuously move in the direction currently faced or of the mouse cursor until another movement action or skill is initiated.

Minimap has been zoomed out farther to capture a wider area.

Gems no longer drop directly as rewards. Now players will earn Gem Shard materails they can use at the Jeweler to craft gems.

Enchanted costs have been updated. Costs are reduced for those who wish to reroll multiple times trying to find their goal.

Crafting materials will drop in place of lower Item Power Normal, Magic, and Rare equipment in World Tiers III and IV. This reduces the amount of items in your inventory, and instead go straight to the Materials tab. This helps our inventory management. Great quality of life change.

Higher level monsters in World Tiers III and IV drop Sacred and Ancestral items of greater item Power potential.

Normal Whisper cache rewards now provide +10 Item Power. Upgraded caches now provide +20 Item Power rewards.

Helltide cache rewards now provide of +20 Item Power value.

The item Power cap is 920.

In World Tier 4, Duriel sometimes drops the highest Item Power possible and roles the highest stats possible.