Diablo III Season 26 has Finally Arrived

Season 26 of Diablo III has begun and is now available; the seasonal update was released on April 15. The season is said to be very spooky, so turn on your lights while playing to calm yourself down.

Season 26's theme is 'Echoing Nightmares,' which is a pretty scary name for a theme, isn't it? The update adds a new activity that requires players to fight their way through a 'densely packed, increasingly challenging event' if they fail their mission as a Nephalem.

Cosmetic rewards are also making their return as it was originally showcased in Season 14. With all these spooky content coming, here are the full patch notes of the update.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

• 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%.