- 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, 3 7 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called Mid-Winter is coming. It is December 8th, 2023. And this is Jed.
I'm gonna start you off with some Microsoft stuff that I thought was done, but the FTC doesn't think so. So here's what we have. This is a post on the Microsoft blogs.com website, um, or blogs.microsoft.com. This, um, it's a, a piece here written by someone named John Palmer, who is a general counsel, makes me think he's a lawyer of some sort. It was written on December 5th. This year, 37 VC firms and investors advocate for a thriving innovation ecosystem.
Here we go. On September 13, seven, venture capital firms filed a friend of the court brief in support of the Microsoft Dash Activision deal, highlighting the crucial role of mergers and acquisitions in the innovation and investment ecosystem. These seven firms filed the brief before the ninth Circuit Court of appeals in opposition to the US Federal Trade Commission's. FTCs appeal of the district court decision that cleared the deal.
Today, an additional group of 30 venture capital firms and investors who collectively manage assets exceeding $130 billion sent a clear message that the FTCs continued opposition to the Microsoft Activision deal threatens the cycle of investment and entrepreneurship that drives America's innovation economy. In their statement, there is a link to that statement somewhere, but it's not specifically posted very much about.
In in this article, the 30 venture capital firms fully endorsed the position stated in the original friend of the court brief. In that brief, venture capital firms argued that the ninth Circuit could reject the FTCs proposed watered down legal standard that would give it extraordinary powers to block transactions. Venture capital investments create a ripple effect. They create jobs and shape the economy of the future.
Exits through mergers and acquisitions, fuel the cycle of innovation, a cycle of risk and reward. These transactions provide a return on the critical investment in needed to support innovation, which is in turn what incentivizes venture capital firms and entrepreneurs to invest in the first place. Every dynamic startup founder takes a risk to launch a company and bring something new to the market. This drives innovation and increases competition.
While many startups fail to make it beyond their first year, those that succeed have a choice to make, keep their company independent, or sell their innovation without the option of an exit. Through a merger or acquisition, both startups and the firms that support them are less able to take that initial risk. The venture capital firm's statement contains a dire warning that the FTCs efforts to change the legal standards would chill investment in startups and ultimately harm competition.
Here is a quote from probably the venture capital firms. If the FTC approach were adopted, many more acquisitions would be subject to lengthy and expensive regulatory review and litigation. That few, if any transactions would be able to withstand. As a result, many transactions would be abandoned upon challenge or never pursued grinding American innovation to a halt.
This will be particularly harmful to the current generation of entrepreneurs who are more diverse and reflective of America as a whole, who will not have the same opportunities as those who came before them. It goes on from there with a few more paragraphs, but I think you get the idea. And then over on X, formerly known as Twitter, we have a post from Tom Warren who is the senior editor at The Verge.
And this is what he wrote on X. Microsoft is still fighting the FTC over its Activision Blizzard deal. The FTCs Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing starts tomorrow. This was written on December 5th. Now 37 venture capital firms and investors are opposing the FTCs appeal details here. There's a little bit here in this. So this is from Venture Capital Community Statement of Support for Amicus Brief filed in FTC versus Microsoft Core and Activision Blizzard Inc. It's got three paragraphs.
As investors and venture capital firms, we enable innovative entrepreneurs to develop groundbreaking technologies, products and services. Specifically, we provide seed capital and support to ENT entrepreneurs to help them transform their visions into viable products that can be scaled and shared broadly with consumers, typically through an acquisition of a larger company. I'm gonna stop here for a minute. And this is the most jargon related, uh, strange capital venture firm thing I've ever read.
I think out loud, you know, , it just doesn't work for me. But anyway, uh, exits through acquisition provide venture capital firms and entrepreneurs an opportunity to realize a gain on the substantial investments of capital time and effort needed to support innovation exits, thus enable venture capital firms to raise and redeploy capital in support of innovation and enable and incentivize startup founders and employer employers to become serial entrepreneurs.
Exits likewise provide established firms an opportunity to acquire new technologies and products that they may not have the capacity or incentive to develop themselves and to scale and share those innovations. And with their benefits with consumers, broadly exits through acquisition are critical to creating and maintaining a self-sustaining cycle of innovation. Anyone fall asleep through this because I'm not really following it honestly, .
Um, but I will read you one more paragraph regarding the FTC. We are concerned that recent enforcement actions and policy initiatives by the Federal Trade Commission pose a serious threat to American innovation. We are particularly troubled by the FTCs continued and unprecedented efforts to challenge Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Mind you, this was posted on December 5th that acquisition's done despite having lost its case at the district court.
The FTC now argues on appeal that the legal standards it must meet to win a preliminary injunction blocking a merger should be lessened and that district courts should be limited in their ability to consider the full market reality of the transactions before them. If the FTCs approach were adopted, many more acquisitions would be subject to lengthy and expensive regulatory review and a litigation that few, if any transactions would be able to withstand.
As a result, many transactions will be abandoned upon challenge or never pursued grinding American innovation to a halt. This will be particularly harmful to the current generation of entrepreneurs who are more diverse and reflective of America as a whole, who will not have the same opportunities as those that came before them. There's a little bit more in there, but you get the idea.
Basically, the venture capitalists are not happy about the FTC and that's probably what I should have just started with, but at least this gives you some information about why I would say something like that. In a previous Shattered Soul Stone episode, I started talking about Diablo Immortal and this decking the halls with hell thing.
And this was also posted on December 1st on X, formerly known as Twitter and the Diablo Im Mortal account wrote, happy horrifying holidays, mortals, we are decking the hells. And December is sure to be full of festive fright. What events are you anticipating the most? So it started on yesterday, Thursday the seventh, and it's got three little boxes, 7, 8, 9 with nothing else in them except for they are highlighted with the dark red.
The next week is, uh, grim preparation and that's the 10th through the 12th I think. And then it goes into very dark, uh, colors over the next two boxes with a green box that says Splintered Souls launch. I'll get to that in a little bit. Uh, after that there is the Splintering Dark and Darkling plane. And then under that one is Broom Laine, broom Laine, survivor's B and Phantom Market plus the monthly events, you know, and love returning to make it a very Diablo December.
So I think that's kind of interesting overall. Uh, there is an interesting little picture with this. You can see it if you are on X, um, I, the Shattered Soul Stone account is still being used infrequently on x my other account, I'm just letting it sit there for a while. Anyway, so there's that, that's all kinds of stuff you can do. Today's the eighth, you could jump into this and there should be something going on in Diablo Immortal for that.
There's also these like brand new little sort of animal-like things going on in Diablo Immortal. And this one was posted on December 6th also on X, formerly known as Twitter. And this one is a creature called the rag watcher of the forest. It's calling is to reignite the spark of life. It kind of almost like it, it sort of looks like, I mean, okay, imagine like one of the horses in Diablo four, but more of a gazelle and a goat head with horns and some stripes on it.
This is the description Diablo Mortal used for this creature. Introducing the ro tree. Dwelling spirits said to watch over travelers who pass through their forests. Some say they require the souls of wayward folk that have lost the will to live in return, feeding these souls to their young and renewing life that has lost its spark. So that's what was written. And someone writes, there's some comments here that are reasonably good.
Um, someone says, hope I don't have to pay for that question mark. Um, another person says, ah, I was hoping this was amount for Diablo four. Um, someone else, uh, asked about things that were um, unrelated, although the first guy that says, hope I don't have to pay for that, also wrote how to get it. They must like that particular creature. And then there's someone named Boss who says, that's the most contradictory thing I've ever read.
So they watch over travelers, but they require the souls of wayward folk who have lost the will to live. So they just keep travelers on a loop so they can eat their souls. What the hell did you just write Blizzard ? And, um, I thought that was kind of funny and probably inaccurate. There's also another one that was posted today on the Diablo Immortal account on X, formerly known as Twitter. I'm gonna be saying that forever because I just want to, and so do many news sites.
So this one is called the Gin Tide. Weaver calling is to comprehend and entertain themselves. It's a little blue character with like flappy wings. Like imagine one of those like, I can't remember the name of the thing, but there's like a sort of a flappy thing underwater. I can't remember the name of it, but it, it has these kind of flaps. This thing has also got a tail like that one does. Oh, stingray, that's what I'm thinking of. A stingray.
It's got, you know, little nubby legs and little nubby arms and the uh, it looks like a cloak, but it's making wings. It's, it's, it's that, that's what this kind of is and it's kind of interesting. And um, someone in the post here, there's only one post I can see and it says, too bad they'll cost real money. Now I have no idea why they think so, because this thing was just announced today. So I don't know why they think it's gonna be costing real money, but whatever.
People gotta complain I guess. And then there is a very, very short dev update for Diablo Mortal about the Splinters Souls event. Um, and I'll leave this into, uh, everything I post is gonna go into the Shattered Soul Stone website. So you can find whatever you want and you can check it out, ignore the stuff you don't like, whatever. Uh, it's like two people on here. It's uh, okay, so here's a little description. Splintered Souls is a new major update with a treacherous new zone.
Five new bosses, new events, a new PVE mode and new Familiars that are loyal allies supporting players in battle to help combat the minions of hell. It's a minute, it's five minutes and 57 seconds long. It shouldn't take too long if you wanna watch that. And moving over to Diablo four, we have some patch notes that were, uh, brought up here on December 6th, 2023, so just a couple of days ago. And here is, um, a little bit from this.
The Diablo four team has been diligently monitoring your feedback. As we introduce patches to keep your experience in sanctuary smooth, we will update the below list and denote whether the fixes are intended for pc, Xbox, PlayStation, or all platforms. So here are some bug fixes. This is for console. I think it's uh, 1.2 0.3 a build, and there's uh, hashtag 4 7 9 5 4 for a PC and hashtag 4 7 9 5 6 for console. This is written on December 5th.
Okay, here's some bug Fixes fixed an issue where the resource draining effect from melted heart of Selig could cause performance issues in PVP developer note, the effect will no longer count as spending resource in PVP context To alleviate these performance issues fixed an issue where the tool tip for the tears of blood glyph indicated that the damage bonus was additive when it was instead, multiplicative fixed an issue where Paragon glyph experience increased,
which results in resulted in active glyphs to lose levels fixed an issue where tier seven and tier eight blood forged sigils had incorrect sigil dust rewards when being salvaged. I didn't even know you could salvage those. There's also the 1.2 0.3 build, uh, hashtag 4 7 6 9 3 for all platforms. That was on December 5th that they were doing this. So here's what we've got. Gameplay updates starting on December 5th, so it's already in there.
Battle legions of Zers minions and race across time in a new end game. Pinnacle Dungeon Abattoir of zeer. For more information visit this article. Okay, let's see what this article is 'cause I sure didn't see that before. Uh, that's from November 30, so I think we've already got some idea of what that might be. Um, a few list of a, a full list of possible apexes can now be previewed in the Enchantment menu using the new view possible apexes button.
The earned glyph experience from most nightmare tiers was increased tiers one to 17, no change tiers, uh, by tier 30 from 66 to 79 from tier 50, uh, 1 0 6 to 1 39, tier 75, 1 56 to 2 39, tier 100, 2 0 6 to 3 39. And there's a developer's note.
After reviewing gameplay data and player feedback, we recognized that completing higher nightmare tiers was not as rewarding as we initially hoped for with many players stopping their journey After reaching tier 50, the experience increases to glyphs at higher tiers. It was made with the intent of incentivizing players to push their builds, making their arrival at tier 100 field that much more fulfilling.
We will monitor how this change and experience pans out for players and encourage you to provide us with any feedback you have around this system. There's also some accessibility stuff. Some of it's always kind of funny in fact, but, uh, yeah, the biggest one here is fix an issue where the screen reader didn't announce the required PACS for vampiric powers and fixed an issue that made the screen reader malfunction on the steam deck.
So it's good that they're fixing those things and there's a whole bunch of stuff with Dungeons and gameplay and stuff like that. Um, I'm gonna go scroll down here to the season of blood thing filled an issue where blood harvesters could quickly disappear after spawning. Okay, fixed an issue where the novik enemy could spawn repeatedly In certain co-op situations fixed an issue where seeds of hatred extracted by being hatreds chosen did not count.
Tortoise season journey objectives progress fixed an issue that made potent blood dropped from a well inaccessible developers know to a previous hot fix allowed players to walk through blood wells to access potent blood. This change reverts the ability to walk through the blood wells, but in exchange potent blood will no longer spawn in the middle of blood wells.
So it can be easily picked up and fixed an issue where dural wouldn't spawn when the player reentered the boss arena after res spawning. There's more from this and you can check it out in the show notes later. All right, so we have from Wow Head Midwinter Blight event is seasonal only Eternal realms won't participate. That was posted actually seven days ago.
But just to, you know, if you're not playing the season, you're not gonna get into the mid-winter blight thing, I think is what the thing is. This was written seven days ago by Jez Tross, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Um, there's uh, a question from screen rant to some of the devs and I'll just read you a little bit of this article.
BlizzCon was a treasure trove of interviews for Diablo four with many different news outlets and content creators taking part in exclusive one-on-ones and group panels. It makes sense then that some of these interviews left us with juicy revelations and one such interview was conducted by Screen Rant with Joe, uh, prera and Tiffany Watt in their interview screen.
Rant reported that unlike other content added to the game, which has traditionally been added to both seasonal and eternal realms, the first holiday event to hit sanctuary would be seasonal only. Screen rant said, is midwinter blight going to be only the seasonal on the seasonal realm, or is that going to be in the eternal realm as well? And Joe Pri uh, prera said that is on the seasonal realm.
So if you want to participate in the midwinter blight, you'll have to go to the seasonal realm for that midwinter blight. A snowy invasion of the fractured peaks, you know where that is. That's like, um, Kiva shot. I dunno if that, uh, will only take place on seasonal realms according to pre Peoria. This event comes with several cosmetics to earn and potentially new Lord to discover as well as new enemies and a new boss.
The red cloaked horror beginning on December 12, players will have a limited time to earn all the rewards they can as the end of the season is just around the corner. Um, so that's pretty interesting. So just, you know, if you're not playing the season, you're gonna miss out on this. So make a character now. Get in there, see what you can do if you care about this today. December eight, the Diablo account posted about the midwinter blade event.
It says, I see horrors and frigid rewards await mid-winter blight is almost here. And they put a little snowflake and a little purple demon head. So there's some, um, pictures here. So the first one says, mid-winter blight play December 12th through January 2nd. And it has depictions of, uh, you've probably seen some of these like pieces of body parts that different kasra and stuff kind of put together.
So there's two of those on either side of a character that has a goat head with very long curled horns on it and is carrying like a sight or something. Um, so there's that. And then there's midwinter blight will sweep across fractured peaks. Unleashing new horrors. So there's a new character and he seems to be a bard. So this is a new character with sort of a leather jacket. And, um, he's got dark, darker skin. I think he's depicted as, um, possibly African-American or just darker skin.
I mean, I don't know what sanctuary calls people in there. I think they're all just people in sanctuary, but this is what the character looks like. He's got a guitar of some kind or something like that. Um, this is the best description I can give you without you like going to look this up on X. So this one says, work with your new ally, Gillian, the bard to protect Ki Rashad.
And then there's the red cloaked demon, uh, whatever with the horns followed by two others of his kind that are probably less harder to fight. And under that it says challenge the red cloaked horror and it's blight fiends. Oh, they're blight fiends are they? And then there's a section here and it says, defeat horror horrors, gather their remains and upgrade the midwinter square. So the midwinter square here has goat skulls, including the red one on a pike or on a big thing.
And there's like bodies or body parts within it, with a flame around it. It's really kind of strange and it's got a character just like staring at this. Also, it says become a beacon of light for those in need. Earn 18 free mid-winter rewards. And these include like, um, festive looking, uh, skulls, like goat skulls maybe, you know, um, I don't know, like there's a crossbow, there's a knife, there's some kind of axe with, uh, glyphs or something on it.
There's some other little thing. I don't know what that is. So we'll find out soon. I guess. I think it started, did it start already? I don't know. Uh, December 12th. It's not started yet, but it's least, at least getting people interested in it. There is also a really good, uh, video here, um, on YouTube about a limited time event with the midwinter blight. And it's got, uh, let's see, um, it's going to be playable through the new year and here's some stuff.
The people on this are, uh, Ruben Marquez, community manager Marcus Kretz, and to leave live events designer Derek Nunez. And then it starts talking about all the stuff in the, in the midwinter blight thing. And they do this in about seven minutes. So that's pretty good. If you wanna just see what's going on with that. We have from Maxwell, written by Dred Sy, who is a wonderful writer about all things Diablo, in my opinion.
Um, and especially in terms of like teaching you like which builds are good and tearless and, and all of these kinds of things. He's written on December 4th about the season of blood, uh, season two abattoir of zu of Zu update variance tier list, new writers and more. And here's, you know, Lord Zeer, uh, just in time for the new seasonal event, we have implemented our abattoir of Zu update. Abattoir of Zu variants have been placed into most of our end game build guides.
These focus on helping you blast your way through as many tiers as possible when the event comes out on Thursday, Tuesday, December 5th. So that one's already out. We have a bunch of updates to go through, so keep on reading. So the abattoir observe variants and more includes the following in the lead up to the A OZ events, uh, ABA or, uh, seasonal events. Our end game build guides have been getting fixed up with the latest information from the continually evolving season two meta.
In addition, we have added a new A OZ variance to most builds in time for the event. Just go to any end game build guide, go to its end game progression section and see the variant and start climbing those tiers. A quick note on leveling and end game build guides. Since the release of Diablo four, we haven't been going through an ever evolving process of delivering the critical need to know information to better serve you.
It hasn't always been easy on either end, but we feel the latest updates are the way we present information better serve to the way we present information better, serves you while making it easier for us to maintain the guides. At the same time, the conversion of guides is already happening and hope to complete all guides in time for season three. Then we have the Abattoir Zers Seasonal Event Guide, which they've made.
The A OZ seasonal event is the hardest test of your character's power and abilities. There are many things to know before going in with that. We have created a brand new guide in it. We go over how to unlock the abattoir of Xer, the process of opening the event, mechanics of the event, important things to be aware of, further advice with tips and tricks, and discuss rewards like Nu Glyphs, tears of Blood, and how powerful it is for use for you to use right away.
Remember, this event is for season two only. The event may come back in the future based on feedback from the community in a different form. They also have some new writers in here. I'm just gonna go over their names. One of them is Chronics, C-H-R-O-N-I-K-Z, and we have Moxie. Um, and there's some tier list updates that they've done specifically for the avatar of zero end game build tier, uh, list. There's more than one apparently if it's a list.
There's also Nightmare Dungeon Solo XP Tier List and Nightmare Dungeon Glyph XP tier list. And then there's uh, little pictures of each of these things. If you want to go and figure out which one might benefit you the most, it's all in there. And there's also this video from Max Roll that started with, uh, Rex Antax and then included some other people. And basically this is the best builds for abattoir of Zir for Diablo four, season two.
And it's really interesting to watch pretty much no matter what class you're using, there's a couple of Barb builds in there, which I think are amazing, even though I'm not playing a bar right now. There were some, um, rogue ones. There's a Druid one with like a, a werewolf kind of thing going on and some other stuff and it's just, it's really interesting to watch. So if you're gonna go into the ATO avatar of Zero, I recommend looking at that video.
It's on YouTube and like I said, everything that I talked about will be in the show notes, um, [email protected]. And with that, I think I'm going to end the show. You have been listening to episode 4 37 of the Shattered Soul Stone. Your Diablo community podcast missed an episode. You could 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.