- It is time for Shattered Soul Stone, featuring the latest news from Sanctuary and beyond. Each episode, a heroic party of Nephilim Band together to help keep you informed on everything in the Diablo universe. And now your Diablo Community podcast - Coming to you from somewhere in sanctuary. This is episode four 40 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called Beats Bosses and Backgrounds. It is January 5th, 2024. And this is Jen.
I'm gonna start off with the reason that you didn't get a show last week was because we took a week our so off between Christmas and New Year's, so this things happen and it was just easier to deal with with all the Christmas stuff and all that, so that's why you didn't get a show. You're definitely getting one now. So I've got a lot of things to talk about. Some of them are weird, some of them are interesting, some of them are kind of like, okay, sure.
Um, I'm gonna start over here with PC games, and it's an article written by, uh, Laura Bergen roughly nine hours ago, apparently. So this is titled A Viral Diablo four streamer calls for Blizzard to open up Customization. And this is about actually arcane if you know who that is. Um, she seems really nice.
She does play Diablo four, and I remember when a lot of the, I don't know if she's a Diablo partner or not, but many Diablo partners early on got to have access to the game so they could stream it for people. And she found a, uh, druid build that, you know, you could customize all the builds with your characters, as you probably know if you're playing this game, and found a character that looked a lot like her physically. So that's where I'm gonna start with this.
There is a blurb underneath that says, actually arcane fell in love with Diablo four's druid model as soon as she saw it. But she's hoping to see other plus size options added too. It can take but a moment for a clip to go from zero views to millions on the internet as the repost counter starts to were, and the likes begin to flow, the comments start to roll in. For every few positives there's a negative. Then another one and another one.
That's exactly what happened with Diablo four and World of Warcraft streamer Ashlyn Arc, actually arcane whose commentary on the games Druid model went viral for the right and wrong reasons. If you choose to run the Diablo four druid, you are greeted by a broad grizzled figure clad and various different animal furs. The RPGs character models are customizable of course, but their constitution isn't. If you want to play as a druid, you'll be playing as a plus size character for some.
This quote ruined end quote, Diablo four for arcane. This Druid quote looked like her on Friday, March 24th, 2023. The clip of her reacting to the model went live. It pulled 19,000 likes and over 1.5 million views on March 26. Another Diablo streamer made a parody of it. The floodgates opened a two, a tsunami of hate ensued. A genuine positive moment of celebration became mired in controversy, a spark of excitement engulfed in pointless darkness.
There is a video embedded in this PC games article that you can check out, and that's exactly what they're referring to if you missed it on Twitter. And I was happy for her because I think everybody should have representation in the video games that they wanna play. So here's a couple more paragraphs, but that excitement wasn't snuffed out. Indeed Arcane went on to attend BlizzCon as one of the featured Diablo streamers scoring a guest spot from Diablo gm, rod Ferguson on the show floor quote.
I think in the long term, the positives outweigh the negative. She tells me, I quickly realized, okay, this is getting a lot of comments and the more comments I let sit here, the worse it's going to be. So I started blocking people really quickly. My block list grew by 2000 people in a day, and that was on all platforms. I just had to protect my space as best I could. I knew that my experience was not good, Sheila Menz, but I knew that it wasn't uncommon for women who go viral.
My tweet kind of hit the trifecta. It was emotional and it was a bigger woman, and that made people mad. For some reason. I did have that logical understanding, but it was hard to deal with the hate. After reading hundreds of thousands of comments about your appearance, it gets to you a little bit. The other part that has been a little difficult is the fact that the clip is what a lot of people know me for.
I work very, very hard, but sometimes it feels like everyone who knows me, not for what I've done, but for what I look like and the fact that I am fat, she goes on from there, you know, and there's more article in this. I just don't wanna overwhelm you all with everything in it. I think it's a great article. I think it makes a lot of sense.
Uh, I do like when, um, people who seem to be kind to people get highlighted by game, you know, gaming sites that wanna write about gamers and things like that. I think that is a good thing. Another thing, obviously, you know, Christmas was recently ish and I wasn't really expecting anything specific for Christmas. Uh, we have family that my husband goes to, I can't go because I'm allergic to the entire world, so I didn't go.
And, um, one of the things that I got, uh, was, uh, the Diablo Tarot they were selling, and I planned to do something with that fairly soon, maybe like little, I don't know, clips or whatever on YouTube just for fun. But the other thing I got is those key caps that I was making so much fun of when I first saw those, you know, the ones that go on your Xbox controller and you know, at the time I'm like, do I really need this? Does anyone really need this?
But then I got them right Now, some of you know, I have a neurological disease called fibromyalgia, and it can affect any part of my body where there's muscle. And um, it usually makes my hands hurt a lot if I have to go through a really lengthy fight or a big dungeon. And I got these little, you know, these little key caps and they have like the Diablo four logo on them and they're red and you just smush them on the top of your controller and they stay pretty well.
And the interesting thing is it's actually helping me not hurt as much, and I'm not sure why. I think it's because they're kind of like a, they're kind of a plastic, but it's kind of got some give to it. I never expected that I would need these things, but here we are. So I'm gonna be using that every time I play an Xbox game. But the other thing I wanted to say about Xbox was they did offer people who played anything on Xbox in 2023 a year in review.
And so here's a little bit about what they, uh, pointed out for me specifically. They don't do this, like overall gamers, all this stuff, it's just for you, which is kind of exciting. So the 2023 highlights for me came out with a total time, 432 hours I've been playing more Diablo for than I realized, I guess Total Games, 10 total gamer score plus 1,120. I have no idea what this is for or what it does. Total achievements of 35, I'm not sure.
Some of those have to be from Diablo four, but some of them could be from other stuff I played. So I'm not sure which one they're aiming at. 2023 rewards points plus 15, I don't know what you do with those either. Top gameplay month was July, uh, it was July Win D four came out. I'm trying to remember. And then it's got this scrolling thing going at the bottom of this little list that shows me all of the games that I'd played at least a little bit in 2023.
And some of them are, um, games that I didn't play for long. Like I tried Val and I was having a bad pain day and I just went, ah, I can't do this. But there's some other ones in there. So there's like, there's a game called Unpacking, which if you want to just chill and like lose your stress, you can just like play that one and fi figure out where all the pieces of stuff go. So I did play that a while. It's, it was really good for De-stressing.
And obviously I've played a ton of Diablo four, I'm sure, uh, most of you have played a lot of Diablo four as well. They also included Season of Blood as part of like a separate part from Diablo four for some reason. And I tried to play a game called This War of Mine because I saw a streamer I like play it and it was just difficult for me, so I stopped.
I've also got in there, um, blizzard arcade with the, uh, the three dwarves that you try to maneuver through through a series of puzzle type things. And I, I did a little bit with that. And there's also a Fallout shelter, which I played for a little while when I was, um, after I got my Xbox up and running and it's just kind of strange. And Straw Valley, I, I had been doing something wrong or I couldn't figure out how to maneuver my character right or something. And I'll go back to it eventually.
And then there's another one in here. I can't even tell what it is. Oh, it's a game called Viva Pinata that I used to play a long time ago. It is definitely a kid's game and you have like these creatures that are pinatas and other creatures will come and try to eat them and it's just weird and it's slow paced. So if you're, like, if you got a cold or something and you just wanna chill, that's one you can do.
But I figure the majority of the games that I played in 2023 were Diablo four and or the Diablo season of Blood. In Diablo Immortal News Blizzard posted a thing that says Ring in the new Year with feature updates. This is from January 2nd, A new dawn breaks across hallowed ground adventurer. Since our last content update, players explored the Southern Redlands summoned ordinary and de barrant familiars and pursued three new legendary gems among many other spoils.
This content update seized the return of several limited time events, plus a handful of updates to different features across sanctuary. As with previous content updates, there will be a server maintenance starting on January 3rd from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM PST for Oceana, China, east Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe servers. And on January four from 12:00 AM to 2:00 PM PSC for servers in the Americas. So that's done. Today's the fifth. You could probably jump in now if you want to.
After the maintenance has concluded, all items mentioned below will be live specific dates for any content going live afterward are provided below. So we have the returning events, there's the trial of the war trials of the Warrior, and here's what you need to do. Um, a true warrior isn't measured by their title, but by their feats. Add to your accolades from January 4th, 3:00 AM to January, 1220, uh, 2:15 AM server time by completing daily and challenge tasks from the trials of Warrior.
Event players can either complete bounties or slay elite monsters to earn treasures benefiting their val, their valor. Depending on the tier you achieve by the events conclusion, you'll receive a corresponding reward via. In-game mail players will only receive the reward for their highest tier achieved. So the bronze tier is one bounty or five elite monsters to get that. And you get one random legendary item.
The silver tier is 10 bounties of 50 elite monsters or 50 elite monsters, two random legendary items. Gold tier 30 bounties or 100 elite monsters. Two random legendary items and one random set item. Platinum tier 40 bounties or 150 elite monsters. Three random legendary item and one random set item and diamond tier, which seems to be the highest. One 50 bounties or 200 elite monsters. Three random legendary items and two random set items.
Players must log in in the week following the event to receive their rewards from January 12th, uh, 3:00 AM to January 23:00 AM server time there and there's the trial of the hordes. Um, you may be experienced, but emerging victorious from the trial of the hordes is the true mark of a champion from January 5th, 3:00 AM Well that's today. We're past that point to January 12, 2 50 9:00 AM go head to head against another player while earning rewards and climbing your way through the events ranks.
Each player has an enclosed lane in which broods of demons will flood in waves. Your goal is to call the demons from hell with steadfast dedication. And then if you want more information about this event, there's a link to it somewhere that I just noticed now. So, um, you could check it out. Everything I talk about, well, not everything I talk about, I did talk about like Christmas stuff that, you know, I don't have like a readout for and that sort of thing.
And you know how many, how long I played Diablo for in last year, you know, on the Xbox. But all of it'll be put in the show notes@shatteredsoulstone.com and you can just go and click on that and see what you wanna do. There's also the Hungering Moon event. I think a lot of us have done this at some point or another. I haven't had a lot of time for Diablo for lately, but I'll get there.
And so basically this is the one where you feed the moon thing basically, right feeling underfed, the moon demand sustenance, providing you with an upcoming opportunity to say its seemingly endless appetite for blood. The moonlit path you'll take to heed your lunar overlords. Howl for sustenance is ready to be traveled. Players can complete up to three tasks a day between January 6th, 3:00 AM January 13, 2 50 9:00 AM Server time for more information. There's another link with an article in it.
There's also the Wild Brawl and it says, enlist your most trusted companions and outlast enemy teams in the Wild Brawl event. In this unique limited time PVP event from January 12, 3:00 AM to January 19, 2 50 9:00 AM server time players start at level one, work together in teams of six to explore an expansive map and endure to become the last surviving team. Aquip discovered gear gain experience to strengthen your power and slay everything in sight to win the battle.
This arena style game mode ends when one team has oust, outlasted the others and to make their eternal mark un sanctuary. And again, there's uh, a link in this article for the Wild brawl if you wanna do that. The next one says, all clans on deck, the armies of the burning hills are mustering their forces. For a ploy, most assuredly of nefarious intent, you must rally your banner adventurer.
Call upon your clan for aid to be beat back the tide of darkness for January 13, uh, 3:00 AM to January 20, uh, 2:59 AM Server time sanctuary, we'll need all clans on deck for more information linked to an article somewhere else. Then there's feature updates. Here's a few things that they're changing. Um, essence transfer while changing gear. We are introducing a new gear transfer menu where you can preview what is being transferred to your new item.
If you've already unlocked the Essence transfer figure, you'll automatically have access to this preview feature developer's note, we wanted to include this feature to allow players to quickly use a better item after earning it, even if it doesn't have their preferred stats. Our goal is to help you earn better items and reduce the amount of visits made to vendors. Increased stash tabs with a boon of plenty for players that seek the rewards from the boon of plenty.
Basking in the glow of these rewards will now grant an additional stash tab. If you stop using the boon of plenty after accessing it, your items located within will be available in a separate stash that the players can access for 30 days, giving them time to retrieve these items. There's a battleground rank increase improvement going on, uh, based off player feedback. We've decided to change the scoring for matches played at the bronze rank to help you rank up more quickly.
Even if you lose a battleground match while at the bronze rank, you'll still receive some points. And then there's one called, uh, on Mets conation set bonus changes. The items set for T'S conflagration Ignite fire can trigger almost endlessly activated by damage over time effects from gems and other items to avoid the set bonus triggering endlessly, we are changing the set bonus from Ignite Fire to now only trigger from skills and basic attacks.
And then there's some, uh, skills that can, you can do with that. They've got some bug fixes, but that's pretty much what that is right now. You can, you probably can jump into the game. It sounds like these are still live and probably some of them started already a couple days ago, but that shouldn't slow down anybody who really wants to play the game. And of course, as you may know, uh, the Darkening of Tristrum event returned on January 3rd, 2024. And it's, I try to do this every year.
It's in Diablo three of course, and it's just fun. The graphics are a little wonky because they were looking for that like original Diablo when it first launched on like, you know, really old computers compared to now. And I played that so much, like I played the hell out of it literally. And um, it was like, that's just what became my favorite game and my favorite game series and all that for a very long time.
But now they've put it into Diablo three because the graphics way back when are not going to be very kind to your eyes, you know, at this point. So you can kind of see it's a little pixelated and stuff like that when you go in there, but it's still fun and it's worth like bringing people through it if they haven't gone through it. And you can kind of teach them around.
So for those that don't know, uh, the Darkening of Tristrum event is, um, whether you are a serious veteran craving nostalgia or a newcomer hungry for your first taste of the franchise's past this annual loving homage to the earliest days of Diablo is for you. And so one of the things you gotta do is stop the cultist. Your journey begins on the trail of a group of mysterious cultists causing trouble in sanctuary.
As you hunt them down in adventure mode, you'll uncover clues leading to a portal into Tristan's past and then and the terrifying darkness that took cold of the town so many years ago. You also explore the cathedral, follow the clues, and you'll soon find yourself in a realm of glorious retro vision where an all too familiar cathedral looms explore the depths and you'll discover familiar enemies and iconic items all brought to life in the Diablo three engine.
Meanwhile, deep beneath the catacombs, the dark Lord himself awaits any intrepid adventurer who dares to challenge him. And there's actually a screenshot here of a player trying to take down the butcher, uh, discover precious loot. What is a Diablo game without shiny new loot to call your own completing activities in the anniversary event yields unique ification, yeah, effects, achievements, post portraits, pets and more.
While some rewards are easy to find, others may have you scouring every nook or unlocking every achievement before you can get your hands on them. Can you earn them all? There's only one way to find out and your journey begins already. It's, uh, the cultus will appear on December 31st, which sometimes you'll see them in a sanctuary in Diablo three somewhere and there'll be like a letter or something and sometimes they just pop out of the ground. So I think it's fun.
I do it every year if I have time and if I'm healthy enough to do it, um, you know, I get sick a lot, but it's pretty good. I am fairly certain that I have all of the rewards for this because I do this every year and I just like it. I just think it's fun. Uh, but it might hurt your eyes depending on how well you see you. All the little nuances in the, let's make this portion of the game temporarily here for people who probably played it when it was new, you know, that kind of thing.
There's also a season 30 the Lords of Hell preview that just came out today. And, uh, so here's some stuff about that. If you've played through the seasons in Diablo three, you kind of know what you're looking for or what's gonna happen. But here's some information sanctuary needs you to answer. Its call for aid in season 30. The Lords of Hell.
Starting on January 12 at 5:00 PM uh, P-S-T-C-E-T-K-S-T Nephilim can harness the power of the lords of hell season theme, which first debuted with season 25 for an in-depth. Look at the now permanent rights of sanctuary and visions of enmity themes, class balance and more. Take a gander below and here is the, you know, create a seasonal hero with all that stuff in there thing. Um, that's what you'll see when you jump into the game. Okay, season 30, the Lords of Hell.
They have a little bit of story here, though. The black soul stone has been destroyed. Lingering fragments of the lords of hell once contained therein still persist in sanctuary. These soul shards hold immense power, power that once belonged to the prime and lesser evils. Cunning nephilim who find and wield these soul stones must exercise. Caution power can be alluring and the road to the burning hells is paved with good intentions.
So here we go. Season 30 is the first to utilize our new season theme rotation system re reintroducing the lords of hell. The first seen in season 25. Players can embrace evil by infusing themselves with essences of hell's lords and soul shards. Players will embark on their season journey to discover and upgrade demonic soul shards based on the seven Lords of hell. By embodying a prime and lesser evil players will inflict new forms of pain and suffering on the demons of sanctuary.
We can't wait for players to get their hands on soul shards to start unlocking their true power. Nephilim can find seven unique soul shards based on the seven lords of hell, which give players demonic new powers. Hmm, . Wait a minute, don't we have like, sort of vampiric powers now in Dia? Well we did in Diablo four, we might still have that. Hmm. Okay. Uh, one of three prime evil soul shards could be equipped into Helms and one of four lesser evil soul shards could be equipped into weapons.
Each sol shard can be upgraded three times using a new seasonal exclusive consumable. The hell forge ember so shards and hell forge. Embers can drop from anywhere in sanctuary, but sol shards have a higher chance to drop from bosses. So shards cannot be traded but can be salvaged or utilized In caldeans despair, you may only equip one prime evil soul shard and one lesser evil soul shard at a time.
Lastly, soul shards and hell forge embers only drop in seasonal play and will not transfer to your non-seasonal character when the season ends. Look for a look at the capabilities for each of the soul shard powers. Look below and we have some, uh, stats here. There's the sliver of terror, there's the shard of hatred. There's a fragment of destruction. I think I used that one a lot last time around. And then the lesser evil ones is stain of sin, drags of lies, remnant of pain, essence of anguish.
And these are gonna be for some of the lesser evils basically. And then there's cosmetic rewards. So in addition to the chest and gloves, slots of the exclusive conqueror set players will be able to earn a series of portrait frames, bedecked with the mysterious beauty of blood shards. A ghastly All Hallows pendant will also be available, allowing you to proclaim proudly proclaim your love for all things grim and creepy. So we've got like a glowing uh, character, looks like a crusader.
Uh, there's like a, a little sort of portraity kind of thing with some squiggly on the side of it. And then there's this, um, banner that you can stick on the back of your character, which also looks like a crusader and it's got like a spine and some very tattered looking banner and things like that. Okay, so here's the rewards. The season journey rewards.
If you've been diligently slaying demons for the past few seasons and reached conqueror in the season journey, each time you've surely accrued a few extra stash tabs, you'll earn one additional tab each season by finishing the the conqueror tier up to a maximum of five st tabs. So guardian of sanctuary finish a level 70 Nephilim rift on torment 13 within five minutes. Gem of my life, level three legendary gems to level 55. All I do is win complete two conquests this season.
Disarm you kill Racano at level 70 in under 15 seconds on torment 13 difficulty. Money ain't a thing. T-H-A-N-G, that's how they're spelling it. Slay greed on torment 13 difficulty. Take you big letter U there. Reach Greater Rift level 60 solo power amplification. Use Cane's cube to augment an ancient legendary item with a level 50 plus gem and cubic reconfiguration. Use Cane's cube to Reforge, a legendary item. Now I did complete some of these a long, long time ago. I guess it was season 25.
And so I have like, I I do the seasonal stuff as much as I can 'cause it's fun and interesting and whatever. But then when I get back and the season has ended in Diablo three, then I have to play like, you know, stash Tetris to figure out what I wanna keep and what I don't. And I dumped a bunch of stuff before and I think I, I went in and gave my followers a whole ton of stuff that they could use because I was like, I just, I just need more space, you know, .
So I just gave it to them with one of my characters. I think it was the seasonal one. And then there's the seasonal conquest. And this one's kind of interesting. Here's the challenges you'll face. Push your way to Greater Rift level 75 to complete divinity slash lion hearted on a good day. Can't stop guides to get your legendary gem grind on level three legendary gems to 65.
To complete this challenge for the speedy speed demon slash need for speed requires the fastest nephilim to complete a Nephilim rift at level 70 on torment 10 or higher in under two minutes for uh, curses slash stars align. Pick any cursed chest event that requires killing monsters and defeat over 350 or more at level 70 on torment 10 or higher for the fiercest demon.
Slayers Boss Mode slash worlds apart is a speed challenge where you'll need to eliminate the following bosses at level 70 and torment 10 in under 20 minutes. Those bosses are the Skeleton King, the butcher, Zoltan Kool Gosia, or Claudia, probably s Sadia, I'd never get this right. Ana Diablo, Adria Queen Irane, Magda, IL, siege Breaker, assault Beast, Asan, ISAL Al and Malthe. So that's a group you can check for. And of course there's the Hadrick gift.
Uh, class sets are rewarded for completing certain chapters in the season journey courtesy of HDR's gift have rotated once more. Uh, here's what you need to know about that. So these are the gifts that, uh, you're gonna be given to by Hadrick in season 30. So for the barbarian, it is the legacy of Rayor. For crusader it is armor of a con. For the demon hunter, it's embodiment of the Marauder. For the monk, it's iNOS Reach.
Necromancer has pestilence masters Shroud, which doctor has zuna Masa's h and the Wizard has Dell Sears Magnum Opus. So that's what they are, that's what they're for. I kind of dig the uh, the monk one, which is like all in blue and gold. That's pretty neat. Everything else is kind of like, not that , you know, it's a little bit of color in some of them. But anyway, that's, that's what that is. And uh, yeah, I've been playing a monk for a while.
I know I like barbarians a lot, but I decided to shift to a monk for reasons that would take too long to explain. But yeah, um, there's patch notes in here if you wanna look at that. And again, everything will be in the show notes@shatteredsoulstone.com. But I got more to tell you about a while back, one of the shows I did was from um, I think it was Wow Head, or maybe it was just McFarland Toys itself.
And they had made like little statues, not like little, I think they're kind of somewhat large statues of like skeletons that were all decked out and, you know, bones and armor and weapons and stuff like that. And then they also had one for, uh, another character. So we've got a couple of pictures here and it says Diablo four in the corner of that one and available now.
And it's a really cool looking skeleton if you happen to like, figures that are however big this is, they don't seem to be small, but this one's holding like a sthe and like a pickax and has some, he's got some armor on and some chain mail and all this stuff. So there's that one. And then there's also, um, the blood barren blood bishop, the Blood Bishop and I just killed that guy just recently. But the Blood Bishop is an action figure and it looks to be quite big.
If I had to take a guess, I would say that this thing might be the packaging at least has it looking like the size of the Diablo books that you can get. And, uh, it tastes kind of on a pole and doing stuff and it's, it's creepy and cool. I don't know, there should be more of those coming over 'cause I know they showed like a bunch of figures originally. The Diablo account posted a list of numbers for 2023, uh, at, you know, in December. So this is Diablo four by the year in numbers.
Now this has nothing to do with the Xbox stuff that I talked about earlier in this episode. So there's four boxes here and Lilith off to the side looking, you know, as angry as Lilith tends to look. So overall players of Diablo four killed a total of 1 trillion monsters. And there is icons on this. You can go to Twitter and look at it if you want or you can just listen to me tell you what it looks like. There's like a skull with a knife through it, with like a horned helmet.
Deaths by the butcher, 37 million. And uh, I actually did kill the butcher on like the lowest difficulty I did it. I was really happy with myself. I don't know how well it'll do otherwise, but that one definitely has like the butcher's, you know, face and all that in it. Uh, hardcore player deaths. 2.4 billion. I haven't done hardcore yet 'cause I don't have the energy for this anymore. And then the most popular classes apparently were the sorcerer and the necromancer.
So of course there's gonna be, I haven't really looked too much into the comments for this one, but there's gonna be people saying, oh no, those are terrible classes. This is dumb or whatever. But you know, that's, that's how their stats came out. That's what people chose. Okay, there's a hot fix that's started on January 3rd, 2023 in the, uh, blizzard forums by community manager, filthy Rich and there's some bug fixes in here. This one I think is really interesting.
Uh, bug fixes fixed an issue where cashes from the Midnight Blight event were still dropping after the event had concluded , which is something you really need to fix, I assume they did. There's another hot fix from December 20. Uh, game updates, echo of dural drop rates for Uber uniques will not be doubled until January 8th. So you got some time to go in there and get that.
If you're able to, uh, developers know to wear boosting dural Uber unique drop rates until January 8th to help all those looking for that special piece of gear, happy Holidays, vampire Power Update Metamorphosis, unstoppable duration change to a flat rate instead of scaling with Vampiric power level, unstoppable duration change from two to five 2.5 seconds at all levels no longer increases per level damage decrease increased from 80% to 120% to 160% from that to 110%, 180% and 250%.
There's also fixed in issue where Charged vaults would result in stability and performance issues. Developer Node, A cool down has been added when activating the release of charged Bolts on Stunned Enemies. And then there's some Game World stuff, um, increased guaranteed lost Heirlooms dropped from frigid husks. We don't really need this anymore 'cause that event's done and I'm really hoping it's gonna come back every year like they do with the season.
Uh, the seasonal stuff in Diablo three that, you know, we have a new one of coming up, season 30, that kind of thing. I'd like to see it come back again and people could just mess around with that and be like, okay, that was fun, you know, kind of thing. Um, and there's more in here if you wanna read more of that stuff, but that was like the top three or so.
Uh, there's also from Wow Head, I have a few articles here from Wow Head in this one and it is titled Diablo Four Future Updates Calendar, Diablo four Future Updates Calendar, what's next in 2024. We have Lilith wearing a Santa Hat over here up to the side and the Diablo logo next to her that says Happy Holidays , which is kind of funny. So here's um, what's coming in January and this might be an article that I hang onto as different things start popping up.
But I'll read you the January stuff for now 'cause we're still in January. We're barely into January of 2024. So season three, the gauntlet, leaderboards Hall of Ancients. Okay, the gauntlet is a fixed seed, non-linear dungeon, meaning that monsters in their positions, layout and apexes are always the same.
Your mastery skill will be tested to achieve the highest scores within a time limit, which will appear on the leaderboards monsters and chests will drop pickups called proofs of m might to increase your score at the beginning of each week. A new gauntlet will replace the current one and the leaderboards will reset. The leaderboard will feature the top 1000 players in the following brackets. Solo barbarian, solo druid, solo necromancer, solo, rogue solo.
So solo sorcerer two player party three player party and four player party. I always, I tend to play by myself most of the time 'cause I'm recording it and I don't want like somebody to feel like they've been recorded without their permission. So I kind of try not to get into groups and things like that. Also, the Hall of the Ancients is a permanent leaderboard that cements the top 10 players from each week in every season forever.
And the next developer live stream in January, 2024, we'll cover season three in detail. And so there's some pictures here. There's like a Barbarian ladder over here in one of 'em. Seal of the Worth is another one. Um, there's also going to be additional end game content in season three. They're gonna talk about that and probably one of their campfire things. And then the held tide changes coming with season three.
Held Tide will last for 55 minutes every hour with only five minutes of downtime between held hides. Uh, there's also more item power coming in. Uh, blizzard is working on other reliable item power 925 sources besides Uber Durio, which are being added with season three. More specific details will be released before the launch of season three.
And I kind of understand that now because when I've been playing recently ish, there's always somebody in the chat like the, like the World Chat or something, I don't know what they're calling it that's like, Hey, who's, who wants to do, you know, Uber Durio, I've got the mats and I'm like, I'm not even close to this. You know, I'll get there eventually. Uh, there's also a gold input option for trading on consoles, which I didn't think they could do.
The developers are adding a gold input option for trading on consoles, which will be released alongside season three. I don't know that I'm going to do that 'cause I just in general don't trust most people in video games unless I know them well. And we've got two, two things from Wow Head and it's about the background art that the developers made and a lot of it's really cool and really creepy. So they've titled this one All the Gory Details, celebrating the Artists of Diablo four.
This is written by Arc tne and it'll show you like all of the stuff they did. So I'm gonna just kind of skimm it here 'cause I know you can't see it right now. So there's a tree with like the sky burning around it and um, little things look kind of inside the tree that look little red dots, things like that. It's not the Tree of Whispers. I'm not sure who that was by. I think it's a Mar Marine, uh, Fatima senior environment artist I think it says.
But there's also David Tu, uh, d David and then Tu, he's a 3D artist. And if you've ever run into the creatures that need Vampiric blood and they pop up these creepy blood bombs, basically , he's the one that made those. There's also, um, asset creation materials, so like little, um, sets of jars and some of the chest that you open of different sizes, things like that.
That's him as well. You can, um, all of these artists are linked to, so if you want to check out somebody's work specifically, you can get there through the Wow Head article that'll be on the Shattered Soul Stone website. Maureen, uh, fat Fatima or Fatima, I think it's Fatima, is a senior environmental artist. So that's the tree I talked about.
And also there is this little sort of, kind of a little pool or something out there or maybe crossing a river and it's a video, so you'll have to click the video on that to see exactly what's going on there. But it's a daytime shot with a character on a horse going over a little weird bridge and uh, I think she made those areas is what they're trying to say. And there's also Emma Howard, who is the se senior lighting artist.
And this one starts with the picture of the Tree of Whispers and some people standing around it, it's a lot less creepy than the original tree we saw at the beginning up there. Or you'll, you can see if you wanna check it out on Mile Head, you can do that. If you can do it from Saturn, soul Stone notes, that's fine too.
And there's also the, um, the lighting in, uh, this looks like, I can't remember exactly where this is, but this is sort of a makeshift hospital from people that were, uh, they'd gotten infected by flies. And you go around on that quest to go find a potion or something. And it's kind of interesting as well. Uh, Alexander Feder Tok, if I've pronounced that right, is also a senior technical artist. And there is a thing here that is a video. It just says Death Trap next to it.
And I assume if you click on this, if you want to go and see that, it'll probably include a player stuck in the middle that who dies or something like this. It's not, it's kind of huge. It doesn't look like something like a rogue would drop, you know? So that's, that is a thing. And then there's more. So the other one here is also posted by Arcane Bloody and Beautiful more Delightfully Devilish Diablo four artwork. Okay, that's a really good title.
So here's some artists they didn't mention before. So Dan Valvo makes props and inter an interactive artist, he does that. So if you have necklaces or um, stuff like that, he's made some of those, like some of them have bones on them or little carved stones or, you know, different things. One of 'em looks like a bug and all this kind of stuff.
There's also a set here of, uh, what might be bone fragments that have some skulls kind of screaming on the front of some of them and they're growing blue and sort of purple pink, like crystals off of them. It's really interesting. I don't think I've seen one of those in the game. So, Jonathan Roland, uh, R-U-L-A-N-D is a senior environmental artist. And there's one thing here of an interior room with light shining in through what looks like stained glass with um, kind of a saint looking thing.
If you could really stretch your mind around what that looks like, it's kind of a demon looking thing. There's little shards of different colors around it to make up the background of the stained glass. If you, uh, if you go to church a lot or you've been through Catholicism, this kind of rings a bell, I guess , you know, so that's what that is.
And in the middle of this room, there is a light that's highlighting the carvings on the floor, much like what, and I don't, I hope this is not a spoiler for anyone at this point, but like Norell's mom was trying to do, you know, that sort of thing. And then there's like a castle looking thing by the same person and it's got, it looks like it's kind of falling apart a little bit. The windows seem to be kind of broken.
There's red lights coming through it and the background behind it has all yellow and red and scary looking kind of stuff. Gray Rogers is a concept artist and they made like a little, some of those little houses you see that are in disrepair it looks like that. It's got like the little brick thing and the doorway and it looks like the, uh, roof has had some like tree branches land on it, that kind of thing. And then there's also, um, I think these are the, I can't, oh, it's a zombie, okay?
So it's a poison variant concept for the zombies that come out of like the, the, uh, swamp and stuff like that. So that's what, that's what that one does. Um, that that Adam Van Dyke is a character artist. So there is standing here, it's armor, it's high poly armor and it's one of these things you can clearly tell is done in one of those, uh, software things that you can kind of mess around with and get. So this is like a big dude wearing a lot of armor.
It's in black and gray and uh, you know, textured by Adam Van Dyke. And then there's also Textured by Adam Van Dyke, uh, the Progenitor Favor. It looks like some of them look like that's a sword going through them and they're missing the bottom part. These are skulls with horns and they're missing the bottom part of their jaw. So that's, uh, kind of a thing. James Peterson has a video that does not appear to be here anymore. And so that's it.
I have a background in art and so I really dig watching like, oh, who made this and how did they come up with it and why is it, you know, when I see something in game now I'll be like, okay, I think I know which one of these artists made that. And that's just makes everything better. However, if you're not a fan of the Art of the Game for whatever reason, you could do other stuff in Diablo four. And uh, wow Head has an article by Jen Tross titled Top 10 Hardest Bosses in Diablo four.
I'm not gonna read it word for word, but I'll read you a little bit. So number 10 is Campaign and Dariel. For now at least, everyone's favorite maiden of anguish rounds out our list with the number 10 spot. We're going backwards into one while and Dariel is a lesser evil and as such, many have called for her to receive the Uber treatment that Dural received.
She hasn't yet. When that happens, we'll certainly re read readdress her position on the difficulty scale, but as it stands, campaign and Dariel was a bit of a letdown, uh, for many of the fight was over before they could really appreciate her art transitions or mechanics. And the camera angle certainly didn't help, although they did add to the difficulty. We can't wait to see what she has in store for us in the future. I, I'm certain I've killed this one. Number nine is campaign Lilith.
While Mother Dearest has two entries on this list, her first is placing quite low. After all, the real end game is past the end of the campaign campaign. Lilith is just the right level of challenge to end the story on providing a satisfying mechanical fight that gives great satisfaction to players after their journey through sanctuary.
Each of campaign lilith's mechanics are previews of her Uber form, but without the danger in telegraphing issues, she's not meant to be too difficult after all, at least not this iteration of her. So without having to read every word on this page, number eight is campaign dural. Uh, and the person Jen Tross wrote, that is not me by the way. I do not write for Wilded . Um, maybe I should, I don't know. Uh, why is campaign dal harder than the campaign's final boss?
Two words Boss Arena campaign Dal has the single worst boss arena of any boss will encounter, and that's saying a lot 'cause you can simply can't see half of it. If you move too close to the bottom and left of the arena, the walls of Kdm loom upwards in a way that prevents you from actually being seen to see the lesser evil that's trying to chew on your face . And it just goes on from there a little bit. Number seven is echo of Varsha.
I've never seen this one or heard anybody talk about this one. Our favorite blighted boss Echo of Shan is a returning foe from the first Diablo four season. Season of Blight meant as an introduction to end game bosses. Shan is still no slouch, but he's certainly the biggest pushover of them all. So that's good to know. I've never run into that one. Lord Zeer, he's number six. A deadly vampiric foe lowered Dier made his debut in Diablo four's second season, season of blood.
This voracious vampire can drain your blood in the blink of an eye if you are not careful. But thankfully his clear telegraphing makes staying safe easier than with some other bosses. I killed that one recently too. Number five is the Beast in ice. It's definitely getting colder in here and it's the beast in ICE's fault. This challenging bus can only be summoned after grinding, after grinding, summoning materials in nightmare dungeons higher than tier 30.
And this difficulty reflects on that material gatekeeping. Number four is agree Gore, the galvanic saint. I'm not sure I've seen this one. I don't remember if I did or not. Well, Grigore or maybe it's Grigore. A lot of this stuff like okay, I was raised Catholic, it didn't stick, but I was raised Catholic. So now if it's like a saint, you know, my mind's kind of doing all this like wait, , you know what you know.
So I think it's uh, Gregory maybe the way the the letters are, it's technically a boss you're supposed to face earlier in the progression flow of Diablo four. We have to rate his difficulty higher because of his mechanics. The galvanic saint is both wavering in his devotion to the light and also unforgiving in his fury. He's got a lot of gold on him and stuff like that. Okay, number three is the butcher.
Nothing is quite as chilling as fresh meat growling from the shadows of your nightmare dungeon when you're not quite ready for it. While the butcher isn't a traditional boss, he certainly fits the dangerous bill, especially for builds that aren't exactly the best at taking him down or that they're in the leveling process.
Still with his blazing fast attacks, frequent shield generation and health recuperation, the butcher can become an incredibly dangerous foe that can also spawn with dungeon bosses in some cases making him even more deadly. There's more, um, on that right there. Number two is Uber dural. The newest Uber on the block or Uber dural is a challenge for those looking to prove their worth at level cap with a significantly better arena to work in than his campaign counterpart.
And number one is Uber Lilith. We all knew that the mother of sanctuary would be topping this list as the first pinnacle Uber boss released in Diablo four. Uber. Lilith wears the crown for most difficult fight while she can be cheesed and pushed through her phases by certain builds tailored to take her down. Easy, easy as in quotes, still isn't how she can be described, particularly because of her unforgiving mechanics and intuitive hit boxes.
It goes on from there. Alright, there have been not one, but two of these Diablo essentially music things, um, where you can just listen to music from the game that's stuck together in a way that seems thematic and fits. It's on YouTube. You can go right there to the Diablo account and get it. And uh, two weeks ago they put out one called Snowfall in Fractured Peaks. And then there's a line that it says Emanations of Sanctuary.
It is roughly three hours long, so if you want to fall asleep you might be able to get it with this. It seems like it's supposed to be chill, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. But if you're not into that one, there's another one out from the same Diablo account on YouTube and it is titled Diablo Lo-fi Beats to study Ancient Toes too and it has Naral kind of falling asleep on a gigantic book on a podium somewhere, , which is kind of funny.
And she's got a backpack full of all kinds of things in there. And then lastly, we have this ridiculous thing that I just wanted to throw in even though it's got nothing to do with Diablo specifically. This is from toms hardware.com Xbox series s styled toaster turns up at Walmart, toasts the Xbox logo directly onto your bread . This is written by Mark Tyson a day ago. We are waiting for the Series X model for a higher resolution toasting . That's hysterically funny to me too.
Alright, so here's some details. Microsoft has rolled out an Xbox Series s toaster to go with its fridge. I did not know they had a fridge video gaming Twitter stalwart Wario 64. Notice that his Xbox series S style toaster appeared on Walmart's website priced at $39 and 99 cents. The appliances a likeness to an Xbox series S is hard to criticize and beyond the humdrum single slot, uh, slash two small slice toasting functionality.
This device will burn an Xbox sphere logo on your bread achievement unlocked Optimal carb experience reads the jocular introductory product blurb on Walmart. Meet the Xbox Series S toaster other than its uncanny appearance, which might cause double takes among visitors of your kitchen. The Xbox Series S toaster quote imprints the Xbox Sphere logo on your bread while it's heating, it explains the description.
This Xbox them toaster uses the popular single long and wide slot mechanism with a self centering bread guide. The product description says the toaster is 15 inches long and we guesstimate that the extra long toasting slot is for 10 or 11 inches in length. That would make it possible to simultaneously squeeze two rounds into the slot. But you can see from the promotional images that the Xbox sphere Lo sphere logo is centered on a single slice of toast placed in the middle of the slot.
And uh, it says other functions of this $39 and 99 cent toaster that are worth mention mentioning are that users can dial in six browning levels. If it is like a regular toaster, the levels will range from slightly tepid bread to charred remains in decisive. Users can press the cancel button whenever they think the toast is ready. And there are also buttons for a bagel mode and for toasting bread straight from the freezer.
Last and probably least those with a nervous disposition may appreciate the digital LED countdown. Putting a stop to toast, popping up surprises. This is ridiculous. There's a little bit more in here and it's telling you stats at the bottom of it. Um, but it does have the Xbox logo on your toast, which is just like, okay, sure, why not. , that's all I have for you today. I tried to pack a bunch of interesting things in here because I, you know, we took a week off basically.
And, uh, yeah. With that I'm gonna close the show. You have been listening to episode four 40 of the Shattered Soul Stone. Your Diablo Community podcast. Missed an episode. You can find the show blog and listen to the show archives at www.shatteredsoulstone.com. Come join us in game our in-game, community and clan, both named Shattered Soul Stone are open to anyone who would like to join.
You could also join us on Discord for the ultimate team and community-based experience, find the Discord invitation link on our Twitter at shattered stone as well as the Shattered Soul Stone website. Thank you for listening. Power am amplification, , uh, let's try that again.