Diablo 4 Lunar Awakening event is back with more bonus XP, more powerful shrines, and new rewards

From February 4 to February 18, Diablo 4 players can enjoy the Lunar Awakening event, which rewards you with cosmetics, piles of bonus XP, and plenty of fun. (Well, as long as you enjoy slaughtering demons. And if you’re playing Diablo I assume that you do.)

If you participated in the Lunar Awakening last year, this year’s event will feel very familiar, but it’s been buffed from its previous incarnation. This event is all about using shrines throughout Sanctuary: when you activate these special Lunar Shrines, you’ll get a +100% experience buff for the duration (up from +50% last year) and earn Ancestor’s Favor for anything you kill. These Lunar Shrines will replace every shrine in Sanctuary until the event ends (last year only some shrines were Lunar Shrines), and their buffs are more powerful.

These improvements come together to make an event that’s easier to participate in and more rewarding, during a season that already features super speedy leveling and mountains of loot. While the event is available on both seasonal and eternal realms, seasonal players will find Lunar Awakening amps up an already supercharged leveling experience.

Here’s how to participate in Lunar Awakening and get the most out of the event.

How to participate in the Lunar Awakening event

To get started, pick up the quest in Ked Bardu and look for Ying-Yue, who runs the Lunar Night Market (marked with a purple event icon on your map). She’ll set you on the path to hunt for shrines and you’ll want to go back to her to collect rewards as you go.

Once you’ve talked to Ying-Yue, head out into the world and look for shrines, which will be marked with a unique purple shrine icon on your map. These shrines can spawn anywhere normal shrines will spawn, but if you’re playing on seasonal realms I recommend looking for shrines in Headhunt zones. That means you can earn rep with the coven, collect seasonal currency, and complete Whispers while also earning Ancestor’s Favor rep.

When you see a shrine, activate it and slaughter everything around you. The shrine buffs last for two minutes and while it’s up you’ll be earning reputation and bonus experience. If you are doing these in Headhunt zones, you should clear the zone of shrines and complete any easy Whispers, then move on to the next to maximize your shrine time.

If you aren’t interested in Headhunts, you’ll have probably better shrine-to-time ratio in Nightmare Dungeons, but because shrines can show up in many types of content you can pick what you want to do (or what you need to do to advance) and do that. So do Headhunts, do dungeons, do Helltides — anywhere shrines can spawn is a place you can participate in the Lunar Awakening event.

With one caveat: while shrines do spawn in the Pit, they remain ordinary shrines — not Lunar Shrines. I imagine this is so no one has a power advantage in the Pit, but it was a little disappointing to go in and see all of the shrines were just ordinary shrines.

Lunar Awakening Shrines

The event has the standard shrines, but they’re all supercharged with extra effects. In addition to their usual effects and the +100% experience buff, here’s what each shrine does:

• 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, kills summon a Treasure Goblin.
• 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 Difficulty.

Of these, the Greed Shrine sounds like the most fun, with the chance of infinite Treasure Goblins. However, all of these shrines are powerful and you should click on any shrine you see during the event.

Lunar Awakening Rewards

There are 10 levels of Ancestral Favor reputation, which will reward you Resplendent Sparks and cosmetics, including the Trag’Oul’s Consort mount, a white horse with gold details. After you complete all 10 levels, you’ll continue to earn reward caches.

There are also some new lunar-themed looks in the shop, but they’re as pricey as any other Diablo 4 cosmetic. Though they’re neat, I would recommend focusing on the free rewards (it’s a really cool horse).

So jump into Diablo 4 to grab you prizes and rack up a bit of extra XP through February 18 — time is already running out!