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 4 2 6 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called Ladders and Lists. It is September 15th, 2023. And this is Jen.
I got a whole bunch of Diablo stuff packed into this episode. Some of this you might be already playing depending on when these things got released or whether or not they have been released yet. So to start off, I have a, I'm gonna say a tweet on X because yeah. Uh, from the Diablo immortal account and they wrote this, are you ready?
Big things are coming to sanctuary and now's your chance to prepare, play our limited time founding Discord event from September 14 to September 25 and get excited for what's to come. And there's a little video in here of somebody, uh, being hoisted onto what looks like a barbarian shoulders and holding up a flag of some kind and like sort of a, I don't know if this is a rebellion or if it's a, you know, I don't know if it's a parade. I'm not sure. But that's what it says.
And I looked at this, I'm like, founding Discord. Did you literally, you know, like Blizzard, did you literally make a discord for Diablo? Immortal? But no, that's not what it is. It just sounds like that. So it kind of threw me off a little bit. If I have time I might check into it. 'cause I did play Diablo Immortal for a while and then kind of got distracted by all the other Diablo stuff. So, um, maybe that's you as well.
I might give it a shot to see what happens. And if I do, I'll let you know in the next episode. Then we have stuff from Diablo two and this is about ladder season five. And uh, so here's what the official blizzard uh, account website. Yeah. Said, uh, Diablo two resurrected ladder season five coming soon. This was posted um, yesterday. You knew we would, we knew you would return traveler and so did Hell's Minions.
Countless demons have met their timely demise at the end of your weapon, yet their onslaught doesn't relent sanctuary needs its savior return on September 28 to wreak havoc among the burning hells ranks in ladder season five. So here we are. Uh,
this is what this is gonna be. Uh, they wrote our previous ladder seasons for Diablo two resurrected have showed just how adept adventures were at saving sanctuary racing to be the first to cement their names on the leaderboard while striking fear into the tormented hearts of their demonic adversaries in the process ladder. Season five will begin on September 28, ushering in a new opportunity for Brave Adventurers to race to level 99 and amass powerful loot along the way.
We cannot wait to see which determined souls carve their name into the leaderboards this time. Here's how it's gonna roll out. North America, September 28, 2:00 PM P D T Europe, September 28, 11:00 PM C E S T Asia, September 29, 6:00 AM K S t. As with previous seasons, ladder season five will feature different modes. So here's what we have. Uh, the pre-expansion ladder, the standard version of ladder play that encompasses only the original four
acts. Pre-expansion hardcore ladder, the hardcore only one life version of ladder play that encompasses only the original four acts ladder. The standard version of ladder play that encompasses five acts as it includes the Lord of destruction, expansion content and hardcore ladder. The hardcore only one life version of ladder play that encompasses five acts as it includes the Lord of destruction expansion content for those new to ladder seasons.
You might be wondering what happens to your shared stash ute once the current season ends. Once a ladder season four, once ladder season four ends, all ladder characters will be transferred to their respective non-linear group. All items in the characters group shared stash go into a new withdraw only set of shared st tabs denoted by a check marked past box as in past like this is in the past. Now, uh, any items from ladder season three stored in the withdraw only tabs will be lost at this time.
You will have all of ladder season five to withdraw any items you would like to keep from season four when ladder season five ends. This with withdrawal will only set of this withdraw only set of stash tabs. I feel like this was written wonky will be overridden with any items in the latter season five shared stash. Be sure to get any items out before then or they will be forever lost. May your ladder race be filled with fiends to eviscerate and bountiful loot the Diablo two resurrection Team.
Over on Blizzard watch we have a little bit more about the Diablo two resurrected ladder season five. Uh, it's uh, written by Renee Ren Lopez. Here's a little piece from that. What are ladder seasons in Diablo two. If you haven't participated in a ladder season, you might have some questions as to how the ladder season works. A ladder season is a competitive game mode in which players race to level 99 with an online leaderboard that tracks player progress and experience earned.
To participate in the ladder season, you must make a new ladder only character that starts at level one and you work your way up. There are some perks in having a ladder character such as access to stronger weapons and armor and additional ruins that you can socket into your weapons. There are different ladder modes you can play during each season. And I read those to you from the Blizzard thing. When is ladder season five? The start date for ladder season five is September 28th, 2023.
And I've already read you the times that that's gonna go up on September 29 for um, C E S T I think. Yeah, I read it so it's there, you can check it out. Everything I talk about in the show is gonna be on the shattered soul stone.com website. So you can check it out then at your leisure whenever you want to or ignore it up to you.
Blizzard has been releasing more events like this globally in recent years, which both levels the playing field for all regions in the race to the top and makes it a little simpler to puzzle out the exact timing provided you know, at least one time zone. This also gives you a reminder for the shared stash items from ladder season three. You may have had languishing in the withdraw only tab when ladder season four ends and season five begins.
Those items will be overwritten in order to make way for the junk you hearted in ladder season four. So consider this your reminder to clear out your stash before the new ladder season. Next of course is Diablo three, which has season 29 that just came out. Um, I've been playing it a little bit. I'm gonna go over the stuff that connects to that that I've found from really good sources. I try to pick the best sources. So what we have here is a thing on Maxwell titled Season 29 Maxwell Updates and
New Tier Lists. This is written by Face Foot on September 15th, which is today. It was updated on that day, let me say. It's probably has been added on to. And they do a really good job of updating articles as needed. So I think that's really cool of them because what you don't wanna have happen if you're a site full of guys that know what they're doing with seems like so many games would, especially the Diablo ones. I mean that's the only thing I look at there 'cause that's just me.
But to update that is a really, really good idea because things do change and change rather quickly with some of the Diablo games. Like what tiers, you know, what kind of armor do I need? Which class should I play? You know, this kind of thing. So I'm glad they do that. It shows they really do love what they're doing and they're actually like really knowledgeable about it. So to uh, tell you some of this Diablo three season 29 visions of Enmity begins on
September 15th, which um, is today. Uh, we have updated all of our guides, tier lists, meta and resources according to Patch 2.7 0.6 and the vision visions of Emity seasonal theme. Here's what they've got. Alright. Season 29 brings us the visions of Emity. A seasonal theme that introduces a brand new activity to the game like season 26 with echoing nightmares. Oh I forgot 26 had that.
As you kill monsters in the open world, a diabolical fissure can spawn with a portal leading to a visions of enmity. As you step inside slay enemies further, portals keep spawning, leading you through up to 10 levels of terror. The rewards inside these visions are quite robust and farming them is expected to be a great way to obtain bounty materials, greater rift keys as well as the other goodies you'd expect. And there's another post connected to that to um,
tell you more about just season 29. And then they talk about solo self found. So they wrote, uh, face Foot wrote this demon slayers seeking to up the intensity of their journey through sanctuary can try out the new solo self found mode. In this mode you'll only have yourself to rely on to overcome the hordes from hell. That's right. It is a single player experience if you'd like to up the ante even more.
A hardcore version of this mode is available without the experience bonus from being in a party or other players to protect your back. As you carve through demonic legions, this mode will temper you to celebrate the accomplishments of those brave enough to roll a character. In this mode, they have also created specific leaderboards for solo self found these leaderboards function like those for other models. There is a paragon ceiling of 800 in season 29 of Diablo.
Three changes to paragon points were introduced in tandem with solo self found. And the season 29 theme, you can only assign a total of 800 paragon points to your character. Previously you were only able to assign a total of 50 paragon points to each attribute within the core defense offense and utility category. But now you can assign up to 200 in each attribute and then they have some leveling guides that you wanna do. Um, reaching level 70 is the first milestone stone of a season start.
And optimizing your leveling process can save you a lot of time acquiring your first set, full set, jumping into greater rifts, et cetera, et cetera. I think a lot of us know this, but I'm glad they're pointing this out 'cause someone is always new to a video game and I've always believed that. So that's why I sometimes try to overexplain a little in case somebody brand new to this has no idea what they're doing or where to find information.
So that's kind of why I do some of this stuff. Um, there's also some updated tier lists in here and I think that's on another page. Yeah, so there's an overall, um, Diablo three page and there's a section in the middle called Builds.
You can view all the builds, they've got it for every class and they've got six of them highlighted on the main page of Max Roll, which you should be able to, should be able to get you pretty easily if you just, you know, click the Diablo three thing or whatever at the top of the, uh, site when you first land there. And it's all the builds that you could possibly want. So I'm playing a monk, so I'm gonna look at those real quick. And some of these,
like I have some of these sets already. Um, many of you probably have some of these sets already with any of these classes if you've been playing. I mean Diablo three's been around for a pretty long time, right? And so they're talking about talking about, uh, sun kus lashing Tail Kick Monk Guide, which is actually, um, they're non-seasonal ones, but they're also for season 29. So I guess there's two different types in the descriptions behind these pieces
here. Uh, the Sun Wilcos, I think that one is the seasonal gear you get when you like go through the season journey. And then there's another one, sun Waco wave of Light Monk Guide. And both of those sound interesting. There's also Juliana's exploding Palm Monk, uh, l o d wave of light, w o l Monk, a couple others. And it goes like this throughout all the characters. Um, but basically I've been, um, I've been playing a monk and I'll get into that in just a little bit.
But if you want to know what to do, go to Maxwell. They're amazing. There's also an official thing from September eight, which I think I read off in the last show calling, talking about season 29 Visions of Enmity. And it's actually live now. So yeah, September 15 at 5:00 PM um, p d t Cce,
C E T A K Ss t and that's, that's today. So I guess this is where, um, since I've already read this other stuff to you, probably in the last show, I can tell you about what it's like to play solo self found in this particular way. Now to start off, I typically play solo because I like to record my gameplay and then stick it on my YouTube, which I'm kind of revamping to make it easier for people to find stuff.
You know, I'll be working on that for a little while. It's, I started it and so I, I almost always play solo because I wanna record and I don't feel comfortable recording other people in the game with me, whichever Diablo game or whatever game it is, I'm not real comfortable with that because I don't know, I just, this is what I do, this is how I work. So I'm playing a monk, I've been playing a monk for a while for reasons doesn't matter.
I've been doing solo cell found the whole time. So I figured, okay, they made a solo cell, found official, I'm gonna try this thing and see what this is like. So I got in with my monk and you start off, um, as you would in any new season with like, you know, very little anything and no gold at all for solo self found. At least that was my case with it . And, um, you just kind of go from there.
Obviously you can choose any of the followers you want and I've been giving them stuff because right before the season 29 launched, I actually went through my stash. That was like packed with so much things and I didn't really need them. And it occurred to me that I could just, you know, the followers that I was using at that time, I could just give them stuff and then I'd have more room and things like that. So I did that before I jumped into the game for solo Self found.
And it's, um, it's interesting paired up with the portals and the emity stuff, those portals, it was surprisingly easy to find death's, breaths, tons of gold in there, lot of other useful things, uh, veiled crystals and all, all that kind of stuff in there. I wasn't expecting that. And when the first one popped up, I'm like, oh cool, let's try this. And I got like, I think I got killed twice in maybe three times.
I'd have to look at the video again, uh, to get through, you know, one portal to another. 'cause it one opens up and then another one will open up and another one will open up and you just keep kind of rolling through it until you can't anymore. Your gear does take damage in there and sometimes you are slowed compared to the monsters. Um, basically, and it's, it's kind of a rush if you can scoot around the monsters well enough. And it was,
it was difficult at first when I was like level two or something like that. And, um, if that's the right number, like really early on it was really tough. But then I got better gear, I got used to how those things work and then I was able to do more. So I think that's pretty cool. Don't know how well that's gonna fit with the season journey exactly, because you can either, like there's like so many ways to level up in Diablo three.
And one of them apparently for me was those, you know, rift portals or whatever they were, uh, maybe that's the wrong word, but you know, they pop up and you go in and fight a bunch of demons. And if you play it long enough, even if you die a few times, there's like a limit of how many times you're allowed to die before those portals disappear. And you gotta try it again or make one appear again, you know, later. It's not like you get one shot and that's it.
So that's good to know if you haven't started this yet and want to play this mode. Also sometimes like it, it's like it's structured harder, it's not structured like a Rift ex exactly. Where there's like a time limit, but it's structured in a way where the farther you go through the portals, the bigger the monsters become and the tougher they become. And there was a point where I had three bosses in there to fight and all of them
had ice. Uh, it was cold snap and it was, uh, a couple of the other ones and I can't remember if they're all like cold and you get frozen and things like that. And it was just kind of, kind of, uh, a thing. But it was interesting and it was fun and I will very likely do that again maybe later tonight after I finish recording the show. So it's different though, like I'm used to just jumping in and playing, you know, Diablo three,
especially by myself. 'cause like I said, I, I like to record it and I'm not comfortable recording other people. So getting in there and starting off with absolutely nothing is an interesting way to go. It's, it, it sounds like it's the same as every other season when you do that, but with solo self found, like you really, really start with nothing.
And I don't know if you can do, you know, stuff to alter that or if you just have to do this on your own and the whole, I mean, you do have to do it all your own, but like a lot of people wanna start off with the, um, oh, what is it called? I'm blanking on it. But like, you go to that one area and you get into a portal and then you get all this good loot and, and gold immediately upon starting that if you complete the dungeon. I haven't seen that be an option yet with Solo Cell found.
I don't know, I'll have to look into it, but it's, it's interesting. It's a really different take on what Diablo three is, especially in a season. So if you're, if you're looking for that, I highly recommend it. If that sounds like something that's gonna just drain your energy then, you know, go with a group of people instead and don't do Solar Cell Found. It's whatever you want to do. But I'm glad they did it 'cause I really wanted to give it a try and I'll keep
going. All right, I've got a weird article from four days ago from Wow Head, let's see who wrote this one? Popular Art Top, I think is the name of the writer. And the title says Rumor Lilith and the Butcher to Be Playable Operators in Upcoming Call of Duty season. What? Right? And they've got a picture of Lilith here and then one of these Call of Duty people, an image from like three people that are about to jump out of an aircraft or
something like that. So yeah, um, the original, uh, thing was, it's a rumor by the way, and there's a tweet here, I keep saying tweet it's ex whatever that from an account called Charlie Intel who wrote this rumor Call of Duty, modern Warfare two and Diablo four collaboration is happening with season six and the Haunting Data Miners have found references to Lilith and Butcher
icons in War Zone after the latest game update. So, uh, the writer for Wow Head says, based on these findings, gaming news website, gamer official went on to speculate that these icons could indicate that Lilith and the Butcher might be coming to Call of Duty Modern Warfare two in season six as playable operatives. Modern Warfare two, season six is scheduled to go live on September 27th. So players should expect to receive official word soon enough. This is weird. This is really, really weird.
Now I get that Diablo is made by Blizzard and Call of Duty War Zone is made by Activision. They're kind of, you know, merged companies, I feel, and I could see where they'd wanna like put Lilith into everything because they sure did when, um, it was leading up to the launch of Diablo four.
And, you know, there was like shakes and stuff and just all kinds of things and you know, all those people wearing the red robes and stuff like that, that I think a lot of them were content creators on like Twitter or YouTube or something like that. And then to have, you know, call of Duty War Zone also have this in there. And I'm just like wondering like, okay, so is this actually gonna be, now let's just pretend for a minute that this could be happening. It's a rumor.
I can't confirm it. No one else can either, just yet. But will the character named Lilith actually look like the Diablo four Lilith is what I wanna know. And like the Butcher,
is he gonna look like that too? Or are they just using a name, you know, like is it possible to actually sort of import those two characters when I don't know what platform they're making games on, or if it's the same platform or what, but I don't know, I I, I'm gonna wait and see what happens when this launches and somebody finally finds Lilith or the Butcher in there and puts a screenshot somewhere on social media. I just think it's funny. I just think it's really funny.
Icy Veins has an article written by staff titled Diablo four, season two may require two deep dive streams. There's a typo in there where it's written as de Dive and I'm like, wait, Johnny Depp's gonna voice something. No, no, that's not what it is. So, uh, this is what they wrote. Diablo general Manager, rod Ferguson talked a little about Season of Blood coming on October 17th to Diablo four. He mentioned how many features the season has and that it may require two deep
dive streams to cover it. And here's a tweet from Rod Ferguson. So much stuff in hashtag Diablo four, season two that at Pez radar will need to host two deep dive streams to cover it all. Hashtag seasons of season of blood. And, uh, there's a little paragraph here, we've already gotten a taste of what's coming in season two, but apparently that's not even close to everything. It will be bringing,
you could check out the first preview of it. There's a link in there and um, there's, uh, we also know we'll get the first of potentially two campfire streams for the season at the beginning of October. So that's interesting. Now speaking of Diablo Four Seasons, I did not get into the first season. I don't know if it's still alive. I don't know if I wanna do that instead of Diablo four three because I had a really hard time getting through the game at first, as we all did with,
you know, the patch from hell. Basically, you know what I'm talking about. If you played the game during that timeframe and I then had a computer issue with, uh, external drive and I had to like not play for a while. And yeah, so if I can get into this season two one, which uh, seems to be about hunting vampires, which might be interesting, maybe I'll try that if I can get in. I did get a horse, I think I talked about this on another show, but yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying.
But I did have a lot of, uh, things that got in the way of playing that game. There's another article here from Wow Head written by Oxide who wrote this title. Lucky Luciano's, immortal Rogue Tanks, Uber Lilith with Ease. And here's a little bit about that. Much of the fun in an ar pg is playing the Game your way. And while there will always be a meta, there will also be people who insist on going against the meta and making things work through innovation and just trying new things out. Wow.
Head has a plethora of builds some meta and some that are off meta. We, while we definitely have our favorites, we do try to keep an eye out for cool new builds that content creators cook up from time to time. Various members of the community, content creators or not have been racking their brains to find cool new things to try out to keep Diablo. Four Seasons, four season one fresh and interesting.
One build that particularly stood out was Lucky Luciano's, immortal Rogue Build where he faces, uh, where he faced tanks, Uber, Lilith, and cranks out damage. Not only that, it excels in all forms of content including P V P, lucky Luciano's, IMM Mortal Rogue is definitely worth looking at as it's his planned league start for season two. And there's some links to those things, but there's also a YouTube video that you can watch with that.
And he's combined, um, twisting blades with Poison Eant, um, which is a nice spin on the twisting blades that have been floating around for a few months now. And I think that's kind of interesting. I haven't watched the video yet, but I'm gonna take their word for it and I'll, I'll get to it later. But I did make sometime after the Bad patch as what I'm gonna call them, um, another rogue, and I gave that one Knives with poison on them and,
uh, traps that are also poisoned. And so that was kind of interesting to do. I figure maybe everybody else is doing that too. It was just something that felt good, you know, like, let's try this because my other rogue I was struggling with probably because of the Bad Patch and I just decided, all right, I'll making a new one and got a little far with that. Um, been making videos,
you know, stuff like that. So we also have another thing from Wow Head here, season of Blood Developer Live Stream coming in early October Diablo four, season two, and um, someone's got a tweet here from someone asking about, you know, when is this going to come up? And Rod Ferguson responds, yes, season two Deep Dive at the start of October. Um, we've got a little image here, um, who wrote this one? Popular, popular , um, season four, uh, Diablo four Season of Blood is set to begin October 17.
And the team has previously stated they will communicate major upcoming changes at least a week in advance. So we're expecting this developer live stream to take place sometime on or before October 10. Uh, there's a note from Blizzard in the first week of OC October. We'll have a really big deep dive into the season and what the story means, what are all the mechanics, what are your vampiric powers?
If this is accurate and the developer live stream is scheduled to take place during the first week of October, then this will give players a two week window in order to voice their opinions about the various features coming to Season of Blood. You can read, um, an interview with the developers on this from this site. There's a link to that and things like that. There's other stuff in here as well. And then I've got two news article thingies that, you know,
write video game stuff every once in a while. So this is from Games Radar Plus, and it's titled, this one's a little weird, but it's, you know, stick with it. Um, Diablo four Grinders Get a Win as a Blizzard U-Turns on XP Nerfs for Worlds World Tier three and four written by Ali Jones. A l i. You'd think players might be happy, but you'd be wrong. And there's this picture here of Lilith and Denarius holding hands like they're, you know, they're happy now or something.
having nerfed to Diablo for XP rates at the start of season one. Blizzard is now dialing them right back up for the RPGs, upper world tiers. Diablo four Hot Fix, 1.1 0.4, rolled out late last night featuring one minor bug fix and one substantial gameplay adjustment under game updates. Blizzard says that it's increasing quote, experience gains for killing monsters across world tiers three and four. In world tier three, you're getting 5% more XP than before.
While in world tier four, that's all the way up to 15%. It's the kind of change that you might think would be proving popular. It's potentially having the opposite effect.
While players seem pleased to see XP rates going up, they're less impressed by the fact that Blizzard is merely reversing changes it made at the start of the season back in July, the reward for killing monsters that are a higher level than the player was nerfed significantly pre-season one killing a monster, even one level higher than you offered 15% more XP than killing one at the same or lower levels. At two levels the bonus was 20%,
and at three or more it was a 25% boost. After season one dropped, that dropped to 1.5% and 3% for one or two level discrepancies, and you'd have to be 10 levels below a monster to get the 15% bonus initially available at a three level gap. World tier level offsets were also hit compounding. The issue for many players goes on from here, but that's kind of the main idea. And I've got one last little, uh, article about it from Forbes written by Paul Tassie senior contributor.
His article is Diablo four has hot fixed in huge changes for make, it says for make leveling to 100 less of a slog. He's got a picture here of a barbarian from D four. He wrote this. I've set down Diablo four pretty much since two weeks after season one launched. Given that there's not a whole lot of reason to go back to it other than leveling my seasonal character to 100, but I got to the mid seventies and stopped due to a common problem. It's a huge slog to get from 70 or 80 to 100.
Now Blizzard is doing its best to change that. A new hot fix that's just gone live has dramatically buffed XP gains across the game. Namely, world tier three Monster Kill XP has been buffed by 5%. World Tier four monsters Kill XP has been buffed by 15%. Also, keep in mind this joins a bunch of other XP boosting patches in the past last week.
Blizzard also buffed the XP gain earn in season of the malignant to go from an 8% XP buff to a 20% XP buff making seasonal play by far the fastest way to get your characters to the highest levels in the game. Before that, we previously saw buffs to Monster XP in Inside Nightmare Dungeons and Buffs to activity completion for essentially all the end game activities like Dungeons and Tree caches. That's, you know,
where you pick a skill or whatever and put little dots on the thing. Uh, so it now it takes less time to get to rank 100 and max out your paragon points. Is this fixing Diablo four's current playability issues? Um, I would say not really. I mean, it, it certainly explain helps this specific part of the game, given that high level XP progression has not felt good. But I mean, maintain that the biggest problem with Diablo four remains itemization this deeply strange system.
That means rare drops with good stats and rolls are more valuable than legendary gear, given how common they are. And that legendary gear is just rare gear with a random afix that usually doesn't matter and can be replaced. And besides that, there are only a few set unique drops that create good builds on each class. And most of the time those are two, those two are outpaced by Apex infused rares. It's very weird and it makes loot farming not very fun.
And it goes on from there just a tiny little bit more. So there's that, that's what I've got for this week's show. Um, I'm thrilled that there's a lot of Diablo stuff in here and I'm not having to talk about, you know, whether or not Microsoft can buy Activision Blizzard and stuff like that. I'm hoping that'll work itself out. It seems like it probably will and a whole lot of countries are for it, so that's good. But as of now, uh, this is all that I have.
So I'm gonna close out the show and probably go back to playing some D three. You have been listening to episode 4, 2 6 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 can 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.