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During Diablo 4’s Season of Blood developer update, the team at Blizzard Entertainment revealed some new powers, systems, and quality-of-life changes for players in the upcoming season. Featuring a distinctly vampiric theme, there are going to be many positive changes from the previous season’s gameplay. The developers went over quite a few new gameplay mechanics coming in Season 2.
Among these were a few of the new vampiric powers players will have in the Season of Blood, the Pacts that will fuel them, and how they work. In this article, we detail what was revealed by the Diablo 4 developers so you know what to expect later this year.
Diablo 4 developers reveal a few new powers during Season of Blood preview
The idea behind the powers in Diablo 4’s Season of Blood is that they will be more gnostic instead of focusing on specific classes/powers. This will hopefully make more abilities viable across several builds instead of limiting players to focusing on certain powers aligned to specific builds. You can view further details about the abilities and gameplay mechanics in the live stream above.
A few of these abilities were either shown off directly or the tooltips were revealed, so players know what they do and, perhaps most importantly, where they come from. These abilities get slotted into what’s known as the Sanguine Circle, so you will have a set of abilities active as you play the upcoming update.
Revealed powers so far
- Terror: When struck, you have a 10% chance to Fear nearby enemies and slow them by 80% for 2s. You are guaranteed to Overpower enemies who are Feared (Acquired with Potent Blood).
- Blood Boil: When you Overpower an enemy, you spawn 3 Volatile Blood Drops. Collecting a Volatile Blood Drop causes it to explode, dealing 411-616 [80%] Physical damage around you. Every 45s, your next Skill is guaranteed to Overpower (Acquired with Potent Blood).
- Accursed Touch: Lucky Hit: Up to a 50% chance to inflict Vampiric Curse on enemies. Afflicted enemies have a 15% chance to spread it to other enemies. Vampiric Curse’s stored souls deal 200% increased damage (Acquired from the Blood Harvest).
- Metamorphosis: When you evade, you turn into a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 3.0s. Enemies along your path take 66-98 (10%) Physical damage and are afflicted with the Vampiric Curse (Acquired from “A Serpent Cornered” (Quest)).
Some of these powers have been shown off and, frankly, look amazing visually. You could probably also see how some of these Diablo 4 powers synergize together and make certain abilities, like Overpower, a guaranteed thing. However, to activate them, you need to meet certain requirements during Season of Blood.
Diablo 4’s vampiric powers require certain Pact Costs
Each of the abilities above displays an “Activation Cost” under it for Diablo 4’s Season of Blood. At least one gear you find throughout this season will have little symbols on it. These are known as Pacts.
You will be able to easily see how many Pacts you require for your powers and how many you have available in the character’s UI. These Pacts fuel your vampiric powers, so they’re incredibly important.
During the developer stream, they also showed off some crafting items that add specific Pacts to gear you collect throughout your Diablo 4 adventure, which appears to depend on the level of the gear (e.g. Sacred and Ancestral). The tooltip also says that if that piece of gear is capped on Pacts, it will have no further effect.
Thankfully, every piece of gear that drops this season has Pacts other than jewelry.
You can also use those crafting items to remove certain Pacts from gear in Diablo 4’s Season of Blood if you want a particular piece of gear. But it doesn’t really fit whatever requirements you’re trying to fulfill. These items drop from Blood Harvest, killing Blood Seekers, among other ways.
Hunters Acclaim Board is a new Diablo 4 feature in Season of Blood to unlock rewards
As you play through the content of Diablo 4’s Season of Blood, you’ll also have a new way to unlock vampiric powers and gear called the Hunters Acclaim Board. This bounty board has a huge assortment of rewards to collect.
You can claim them as you complete Blood Harvest-themed Whispers, killing Blood Seekers. In general, by putting work in the Blood Harvest area, you’ll be building Hunters’ Acclaim.
Gear, Potent Blood, and Vampiric Powers are available in this system, making it something worth looking into and building up Hunters’ Acclaim. You probably saw a few items in the UI for this system, but since they could change, we won't go over them.
There’s so much more to be excited about in Diablo 4’s Season of Blood. We’re covering all the content worth knowing about in this upcoming update right here on Sportskeeda. This next season of content is, as of this writing, launching on October 17, 2023.
