Exactly 10 years ago today, brave Nephalem arrived in the town of New Tristram to investigate a falling star. This discovery would give way to a divine ally and a quest to stop a sinister plot to destroy Sanctuary and the High Heavens. Even after the final blow was struck, and Diablo defeated, these same valiant Nephalem continued to protect those in need.
Read more on the official news post here.
We—and Sanctuary—thank you for your decade-worth of valor, dedication, and your vanquishing of endless nightmarish threats to have been birthed by the Burning Hells.
Remember, this 10-year milestone for Diablo III was made possible by YOU, Nephalem, many of whom have spent countless hours demon-slaying, looting, and creating memorable moments to look back on. To show our undying appreciation for the support of more than 65 million Nephalem worldwide over the past 10 years, we have an exciting announcement for the Echoing Nightmare and will be providing a mid-season buff. But first, we want to thank you once more for celebrating the 10th anniversary of Diablo III with us!
Echoing Nightmare Update
Since Season 26 began, many Nephalem have sought to avenge their fallen allies in the Echoing Nightmares are a new rewarding endgame activity set within the memories of fallen Nephalem. You must first acquire a Petrified Scream from a Greater Rift Guardian, and then cube it to enter. Once inside you'll be challenged with an endless wave of enemies until you are either overwhelmed or killed!
Therefore, the Echoing Nightmare will become a permanent feature in Diablo III. Creating challenging, new, and exciting end-game experiences is always top of mind for us, so we’re excited to be keeping this experience around for good. This experience will be available for year-round play. If you have not had the opportunity to try the Echoing Nightmare out yet, get a taste of what it entails from our Season 26 blog.
Here are the key features:
- An endless wave of monsters is spawning once the Echoing Nightmare has started. There is a sort of progress bar on your UI that fills depending on how many monsters there are in the area. If the bar is filled, you are considered overwhelmed and the encounter ends.
- Each Echoing Nightmare has a randomly chosen monster type. Hence some monster types might favor the player more depending on the aggressiveness of some monster types or how many ranged monsters they have.
- The difficulty scales similarly to Greater Rift Levels as players progress throughout the encounter.
- Players can progress faster by defeating monsters quickly. It is possible to jump up to 12 Levels in one go if you defeat all the monsters spawned.
- 4 Pylons are located in the area, one in each corner: Conduit Pylon, Power Pylon, Channeling Pylon and Speed Pylon. Using them strategically for the final waves can be the key to lead you to the victory!
- Monsters cannot be affected by any kind of Hard Crowd Control. This means pulling abilities are useless and it also heavily nerfs builds relying on Hard CC to deal damage (Necromancers with Krysbin's Sentence for instance). However the monsters can still be slowed.
- Rewards and monsters' HP and damage stop scaling after Wave 150 even if the Echoing Nightmare goes on until you are overwhelmed or die. Unfortunately there is no leaderboard so there is pretty much no incentive to try to reach the highest wave.
- Players receive the following rewards upon completing an Echoing Nightmare: Experience, Legendary Items, Blood Shards, Gems and a new Legendary Gem, Whisper of Atonement.
In order to spice up Echoing Nightmares, there are special enemies as well as some random events that can occur:
- Rare Monsters can spawn but not Champion Packs.
- Hellish Machinations appear and spawn streams of Exploding Lunatics, which run towards the player to explode and proc a Molten Explosion afterwards.
- A Fallen Nephalem can spawn randomly. Killing him triggers an AoE that one shots every monster within ~25 yards when it detonates after a few seconds.
- A random Rift Guardian spawns every 30 Waves.
- A Bandit Shrine can randomly spawn anywhere in the area as you progress.
- Green Meteors fall from the sky after Wave 100.
Mid-Season Double Bounties Event
The reward for hunting down some of Sanctuary’s most wanted just got a little sweeter! All bounties will be doubled from now until Season 26 ends! Here’s a breakdown of how you’ll have the chance to score more Legendary loot, such as the coveted Ring of Royal Grandeur.
After completing all five bounties in an act, you will be rewarded with twice the Horadric Caches you would normally receive, as dictated by the difficulty level you’re playing on. Reward drop rates will remain unchanged during this event. But more caches mean more opportunities to obtain that essential piece of gear that will bolster your Nephalem’s build.
Large Horadric Chests contain an assortment of loot, which depends on the game difficulty and on the Act in which the bounties were completed. Apart from normal items and materials, you can find unique bounty-only Legendaries, that can not be obtained in any other way. You also receive a number of Bounty Materials which are necessary to craft Legendary and Set items, and use some of the Kanai's Cube recipes.
On Torment 16, a Large Horadric Chests contains:
- 1,640,000 Gold
- 135 Blood Shards
- 90 Reusable Parts
- 92 Arcane Dust
- 35 Veiled Crystals
- 6 Death's Breaths
- 22 Bounty Materials
- 1-4 Marquise Gems
- 1-2 random items of Rare and above quality
- 2 bounty-only Legendary items
There are many hardy foes peppered throughout Sanctuary for you to collect the bounty on—venture forth and dare to lay claim to the spoils. Read on in our bounty guide for more information!