Diablo 3 Season 26 Adding New Endgame Feature

By Tanner Dedmon

Diablo III players have been dabbling in the game's endgame content for a long, long time now seeing how the game has been out for 10 years, but even still, the next season is adding more endgame content for players to pursue. Enter Season 26 and the arrival of "Echoing Nightmares," the challenge which makes up the theme of this next season. Echoing Nightmares present players with endless gauntlets to take on with experience, Legendary gear, and more able to be earned based on performance, and all of this starts on April 15th when the new season will be released.

Season 26 stands out already by containing the "first Seasonal Theme that introduces a new activity to the game," Blizzard said in the notes for the next season. Players head into Echoing Nightmares to fight against fallen Nephalem, but the goal there isn't to win – it's to see how long you can survive.

"Season 26 introduces the Echoing Nightmare, an optional and rewarding end-game challenge where players fight within the memories of Nephalem who fell in a Greater Rift," Blizzard said. "Today's Nephalem must stand their ground until they are inevitably Overwhelmed or defeated. Players must collect a Petrified Scream from defeated Greater Rift Guardians to gain entry to the Echoing Nightmare. Transmuting a Petrified Scream in Kanai's Cube summons a portal that players can enter to face the horrors of the Nephalem's past."

For changes made from the PTR version of Echoing Nightmares to the release version, you can see those in full here. If you're just now learning about Echoing Nightmares, Blizzard shared the highlights, too, which can be found below:

Season 26 Echoing Nightmares

  • Petrified Screams and the Echoing Nightmare can only be accessed with seasonal characters.
  • Only one player is required to transmute a Petrified Scream to open an Echoing Nightmare in a multiplayer game.
  • Similar to a boss encounter, all players in a multiplayer game must accept a prompt to enter.
  • While within an Echoing Nightmare, the difficulty scales as players progress in the encounter. Players can progress faster by defeating monsters quickly.
  • Players receive the following rewards upon completing an Echoing Nightmare: EXP, Legendary Items, Blood Shards, Gems, and a new Legendary Gem, Whisper of Atonement.
  • The Whisper of Atonement is a Legendary Gem used exclusively for Augmenting Ancient Legendary items. It drops pre-ranked based upon the player's performance in the Echoing Nightmare.
  • Rare monsters now spawn within an Echoing Nightmare.
  • Meteors now fall from the sky.
  • Hellish Machinations now appear, which spawn streams of Exploding Lunatics.
  • Rift Guardians now spawn.
  • Increased the frequency of which monsters spawn.
  • Updated the Shadow Clone explosion to better reflect the area of effect.
  • The exit timer has been increased to 60 seconds.
  • Increased the possible rank a Whisper of Atonement can drop to 125 based on the Tier completed.
  • Monsters in Echoing Nightmares can no longer be Frozen, Stunned, Rooted or Knocked Back.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Conduit Shrines to deal less damage than intended.

Diablo 3's Season 26 is scheduled to release on April 15th.

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