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With Diablo 4 Season 3 (“Season of the Construct”) right around the corner, Blizzard has recently dropped some news on what to expect in the upcoming season, which is revealed to be the Season of the Construct, coming to us on January 23 at 10 am PST.
Instead of slogging through the reveal, we’ll help highlight some of the new upcoming mechanics you can expect in the Season of the Construct.
If the name of the season hadn’t given it away, the focus this season will be on Constructs, which means a new host of construct enemies to battle; alongside that is a new questline that will take the player to Gatehall, a town underneath Kehjistana, which will serve as the players base of operations in the fight against the Constructs.
The Gatehall will have its own vendors and portal, which will function similarly to any other town.
The town will be the player’s conduit to access deadly dungeons known as vaults, which are riddled with elemental hazards and Constructions.
Remember to play this new quest line. You must create a character in the Seasonal Realm and have completed the main campaign at least once (in previous seasons). Take advantage of the “Skip Main Campaign” feature once you’ve completed the prologue to get into the action.
For a closer look at this mechanic, check out our Seneschal Companion guide.
During the Seasonal questline, you’ll gain access to a new companion known as the Seneschal, which will complement your adventures by engaging directly in fights.
You can customize your Seneschal to fit your particular build using magical Governing and Turning Stones recovered from Vaults and elsewhere in Sanctuary. Governing Stones allows you to customize the type of attacks your Seneschal will use while Turning Stones will augment those attacks and provide utility.
You can equip the Seneschal with 2 Governing Stones and 6 Tuning Stones, one Governing Stone for each attack, and three Tuning Stones to augment those attacks.
There will be 12 Governing Stones and 27 different Tuning Stones that you can acquire from the Dungeon Vaults.
Laying dormant below Khejistan, alongside Gatehall, will be new Dungeons known as Vaults. These specialized dungeons house elemental hazards and constructs, and several elemental variants of these monsters will exist within the vaults.
Once you’re within a fault and you’ve converted the required number of Pearls of Warding, you’ll receive Zoltun’s Warding, a special layered blessing that grants access to riches within the Vaults. This blessing diminishes stack by stack if you fall prey to the various hazards within a Vault.
If you keep Zoltun’s Warding intact after defeating the Vault Boss, you’ll unlock a Wardwoven Chest with a high Legendary item drop chance.
Nightmare Vaults unlock on World Tier III, and Vault Sigils will start dropping alongside Nightmare Sigils; these Vault Sigils can also be crafted with Pearls of Warding.
Later on in Diablo 4’s Season 3, there will be a new type of dungeon-delving mechanic known as The Gauntlet, where you can compete for top spots on the Gauntlet leaderboard against other players.
The leaderboards will rotate weekly, and the top weekly scores will earn a permanent place in the Hall of the Ancients.
Season of the Construct will also bring much-needed quality-of-life improvements, such as enhanced movement with W-A-S-D, an extra stash tab, Helltide Improvements, and various other features.
If you’re a Diablo 4 PC player, you’ll soon be able to take advantage of W-A-S-D to move your character around Sanctuary. You’ll likely have to change this through the options menu.
Like previous seasons, this season will also bring another Stash Tab. You can purchase this Stash tab in any capital city; just head to your Stash to purchase it.
There have also been some much-needed improvements to the UI, such as reallocating points in the skill tree, improvements to the UI when trading gold, increased loot rates for the item needed to summon the Beast in Ice, and much more.
Diablo 4’s Season 3 is shaping up to be rather exciting. The Seneschal Companion specifically appears to have some great depth and the amount of potential there for customization and build-enabling potential with 12 abilities with 27 augments, we could see some impressive stuff.
With the Gauntlet appearing later in the Season we’ll have something to push those mechanics to their limits. The fact that the Gauntlet releases later in the Season is something I personally prefer, giving everyone a bit of time to get used to the Season before competing for spots on the leaderboards.
