Diablo 4 Season 3 got off to a rough start but has been on the mend since Blizzard rushed out an emergency patch that buffed the pants off the season's big draws, like the Seneschal buddy and Echo of Malphas. As the vibe in the room improves, the devs have unveiled a two-week Lunar New Year event which will, among other things, give Diablo 4 players a hefty 50% XP boost and 30% movement speed boost from February 6 through February 20.
Blizzard laid out the Lunar Awakening event in a new blog post. The gist is that, beginning 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT next Tuesday, Lunar Shrines will appear throughout the entire game. Activating any shrine will grant you the multiplicative XP boost plus the movement speed bonus, and you can also get a range of other buffs from specific shrines replacing normal shrines. You'll know the event shrines from their dragon marker, a tribute to this being the year of the dragon. Other Lunar Shrine buffs include:
- Artillery Shrine – Casts have a chance to summon a holy bomb.
- Blast Wave Shrine – Each explosion summons a cluster bombardment.
- Channeling Shrine- Increased attack speed and chance to reset cooldowns.
- Conduit Shrine – Summon frequent, powerful, shocking strikes.
- Greed Shrine – Chance to summon a Treasure Goblin. While the Shrine is active, 25 kills summons a Treasure Goblin, and 50 kills summons a second.
- Lethal Shrine – Chance to instantly execute a struck monster, causing Fear on surrounding monsters. Note: this includes Elites, but excludes Bosses and other Players.
- Protection Shrine – You reflect all incoming damage. Damage reflected scales with Level and World Tier.
Lunar Awakening comes with some tangible rewards, too – wearable ones, even. On the north side of Ked Bardu, you'll find Lunar Night Market leader Ying-Yue. The market acts as the hub of the event, as it's where you'll be able to redeem Ancestor's Favor, earned by completing seemingly any and all activities with Lunar Shrine effects as well as lunar-themed Whisper Bounties, in exchange for lunar-themed rewards.
The blog post seems to indicate that six cosmetics will be available for free by hitting rank 10 with event reputation, with several more items available via Tejal's premium cosmetic shop. Ahead of the event, I've asked Blizzard what's free and what's paid.
Update: a Blizzard representative affirmed that "all of the cosmetics, mount, etc., that are in the reward tiers for the reputation are what can be earned in the game for free. All of the other cosmetics are what will appear in the shop."
There's another big lunar bonus as well. Nightmare Dungeon sigils will have a chance of coming with an Ancestor's Favor affix that guarantees a dungeon exclusively filled with Lunar Shrines. These dungeons will grant 10% bonus Glyph XP, but the best part is that you can stockpile these special sigils and use them after the event ends.
Frankly, the XP and movement speed boosts are probably going to be the best part of the event. Faster leveling is one thing, but faster movement? That's basically going to increase the speed of every other part of the game, on top of being fun purely in a capital-z Zoomy way. I can already see the folks posting on February 21 about how much they miss the movement speed buff. Savor it while it lasts.
The original Diablo and the first two Warcraft games are now on Blizzard's Battle.net store.
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