Blizzard unceremoniously revealed Diablo IV's third season will start on the 23rd of January last week before telling us a lot more information was going to be shared in a stream on Thursday. Turns out, we didn't have to wait that long for most of the details.
The developers have given us a trailer and published an extensive blog announcing that Diablo IV season 3 is rather fittingly called Season of the Construct. I say fittingly because we won't be fighting vampires or corrupted monsters this time around, but machines.
Malphas has gotten his hands on an ancient device called The Loom that can create mechanical constructs that the demon obviously has bad intentions with beneath the sands of Kehjistan. Then it's a good thing we'll also get a mechanical companion called Seneschal that help out in combat by attacking enemies and healing us. It can even be customised with the 12 Governing stones and 27 Tuning stones available in the season to become more powerful and suited for different playstyles.
These are most commonly found in Vaults, a new dungeons type where we'll come across new kinds of traps called Hazards. Entering a Vault will give us a stackable buff called Zoltun's Warding that diminishes each time we take damage from Hazards. "No problem, my character can take a lot of damage". Okay, but a special chest awaits at the end of each Vault, and the quality of the reward is based on how high our Zoltun's Warding is when reaching it, so you might want to be a bit careful anyway.
There's also a new hub area called The Gatehall, an additional stash tab, Helltide being active pretty much all the time, a new battle pass and more coming on the 23rd of January, but something is being saved for later. That includes The Gauntlet, a weekly rotating fixed dungeon where we'll compete for the top spot on leaderboards. All players will get the same structural layout and enemy placement, so no one can complain about someone else getting an easier version. The top 100 players will be showcased (top 10 permanently) in the Hall of the Ancients, while "High-ranking players" also earn medals to display on redesigned profiles. Expect to learn more about this and everything else in Thursday's stream.