Season 25 begins on December 10th
Season 25 Updates
Season 25 “Soul Shards” will begin on December 10 at 5PM (PDT/CEST/KST) shortly after the next Diablo 3 update. This update is expected to be released on December 7.
With the upcoming 25th Anniversary of the Diablo Franchise, Diablo III is allowing players to fully embrace evil by infusing themselves with the essences of the Lords of Hell, iconic figures of the franchise.
Read more on the official news post here.
Season 25 introduces Soul Shards. There are 7 unique Soul Shards, based on the Lords of Hell, which give players demonic new powers. One of the 3 Prime Evil Soul Shards can be socketed into Helms while one of the 4 Lesser Evil Soul Shards can be socketed into Weapons. Each Soul Shard can be upgraded 3 times using a new seasonal-exclusive consumable, the Hellforge Ember.
Lesser Evil Soul Shards
Socketed into Weapons
Dregs of Lies
Essence of Anguish
Remnant of Pain
Stain of Sin
Prime Evil Soul Shards
Socketed into Helms
Fragment of Destruction
Shard of Hatred
Sliver of Terror
Soul Shards can drop everywhere but are more likely to drop from Act Bosses and Rift Guardians. They do not require you to be level 70 to drop meaning you can find them while leveling. You can even force drop specific Soul Shards since every Act Boss drops a guaranteed (or 50% chance in some cases) specific Soul Shard. They cannot be acquired through Kanai's Cube or from Kadala however they are not so rare, so you should not have trouble finding a proper one for your build. Salvaging them grant you some Imperial Gems and more rarely a Flawless Royal Gem.
Soul Shards drops at Rank 0 and can be upgraded up to 3 times to unlock new powers using a new consumable, the Hellforge Ember. These can be found anywhere with a droprate similar to Ramaladni's Gift.
Additionally, Soul Shards can be used as Caldesann's Despair (Augments) on your gear. A Rank 0 Soul Shard will create a Rank 50 Augment and every additional Rank increases the power of the Augment by 25 levels, meaning Soul Shards are a great way to fuel you with Rank 125 Augments!
Some builds obviously benefit more than others from Soul Shards. Regardless, Soul Shards completely blow Ethereals out of the water in terms of power creep and all builds will gain a great power boost from them.
Finally, as they are a seasonal theme, Soul Shards will disappear when Season 25 ends, with no chance for non-seasonal players to get their hands on them as Soul Shards can only drop in Seasonal play.
Overall, this Season Theme has a very big impact on the game and the META. We will have a dedicated Soul Shards Guide soon for the full details on how each of them works!
Maxroll Updates
Our team is working hard to update Maxroll and all our content (Guides, Tier Lists, META) for Season 25 during the course of the next days! We expected to be finish the update process by Wednesday, December 8th. D3Planner will be updated completely once Patch 2.7.2 hits the live servers. The PTR version is already available here. Meanwhile, we wish you the best of luck in the final days of Season 24. Stay tuned :)
The Maxroll Team.