For the first time in three years, we’re not getting advance notice on absolutely everything coming in the next Diablo 4 season. Usually, Blizzard spells it all out in the patch notes, but this time it’s keeping its lips sealed until BlizzCon in September.
There’s still a good amount of stuff to see in the season 15 blog post, including new seasonal items, returning items from past games, and further changes to the controversial Mythic Unique item changes from last season. But there are two sections that look suspiciously empty, suggesting that the full reveals will happen on stage at BlizzCon.
The first of these are called “Challenge Dungeons”, which seem to be boss encounters that randomly appear while you’re exploring the open world. Blizzard specifically says you’ll enter these new portals to “fight against a fearsome boss” and that the difficulty level will be customizable once you’re well into the endgame.
My first thought after reading about the Challenge Dungeons is that they might be a permanent version of the current season’s Deathtoll Chambers. When you kill the seasonal world boss, you can jump into a portal and participate in a mini event that ends in a big loot explosion. Swap that out with a boss—maybe even one of the game’s tougher lair bosses—and I can kind of see this being a fun way to make open-world exploration more unpredictable than it is now.