Diablo 3 Season 12 starts today! Here’s how to participate

If you’re looking for some way to kill time this week, Diablo 3 Season 12 starts tonight. The season kicks off at 5:00 p.m. PDT in North America, 5:00 p.m. CEST in Europe, and 5:00 p.m. KST in Asia, after which you can create a new Seasonal Hero.

But what does creating one entail? What is a Seasonal Hero and what happens after the Season is over? We talked about it for Season 11, and now that Season 12 is at hand, we’re going to cover how to get started with Diablo 3 Season play for those of you who haven’t tried it (or just need a refresher).  Diablo 3 Seasons are some of the most fun you can have while playing the game, and they’re not hard at all — in some ways the Seasonal restrictions make the game far more streamlined in its earlier levels.

What is a Seasonal Hero?

Seasonal Heroes are created through the same means as regular Diablo 3 heroes. On the character creation pane, you’ll find a box underneath the classes you can check off with the leaf icon and the words “Seasonal Hero” — check that box (you can only do so during an actual Season) and your character will be created as a Seasonal one.

Seasonal Heroes do not have access to Paragon levels earned by non-Seasonal ones, to the stash of items you’ve collected, or any of the gold you have on your non-Seasonal Heroes. They are kept wholly separate and isolated from each other. A Seasonal Hero is essentially starting over from scratch. A new Seasonal Hero is level 1.

What happens to a Seasonal Hero after the Season?

All of a Seasonal Hero’s gear, gold, and other items are converted when they become a normal Hero at the end of a Season. Gear in your bags remains in your inventory, gold is added to your current total, and Paragon XP earned during the Season is added to your normal Paragon levels if you have any.

So if you never played Diablo 3 before the Season, your Paragon levels will remain unchanged, but if you were at Paragon level 217 and you earned Paragon 312 during your Season, the XP amounts for both levels will be added together. Since it takes more and more XP to earn each level, you won’t be at Paragon level 529, but you will be higher. Gear you had in your Seasonal stash will be in the mail waiting for you to claim it and add it to your normal stash. Nothing is lost.

The Rebirth System

If you really enjoyed leveling your Seasonal Hero in previous seasons and don’t want to roll a new one, you don’t have to. The Rebirth system allows you to play the exact same character again by converting them back to a Seasonal Hero. In fact, it can be used on any normal hero, stripping them down to a level 1 of their current class, removing all gear, Paragon levels, gold, and equipment and giving you a new empty Seasonal stash.

Resources to help

Diablo 3 has been around for a while and the Seasons have really been defined by play at this point, so there are resources to help you out.

• We also covered Season 12’s rewards and Diablo’s latest patch: 2.6.1.
• Blizzard has a Game Guide and a first look at Season 12.
• Reddit has a powerleveling guide for people who want to get to 70 and start earning Paragon levels/running Greater Rifts. There’s also a general resources for Season 12 post here. In general there’s usually good community on the Diablo 3 Subreddit.

So if you’re interested in trying the Season out for yourself, it launches tonight. Best of luck and happy Demon Christmas on Sanctuary.