Diablo 4 Season 14’s theme zooms by past chaos straight to Pandemonium

Diablo 4 Season 14‘s Pandemonium theme will be live in the game soon, adding your standard seasonal invasion of Sanctuary, featuring throngs of enemies and a new Big Bad to thwart. But while past seasonal themes have had a certain sameness to the player experience, Season 14 veers directly off the usual road road straight into some serious gearing chaos while we (re-)defeat some old familiar faces. It’s Ruptures, Reapers, and Realmwalkers coming straight for you in Diablo 4 Season 14, starting June 30.

The developers describe the new season a little more poetically:

During Season 14, the division between Sanctuary and Pandemonium is ripped asunder by arcane rifts called Pandemonium Ruptures. These rifts call a new family of monsters to slay, the chance to summon a familiar boss, and new opportunities for loot by conquering the Deathtoll Chamber.

But it all comes down to new events to grind, new monsters to kill, and new loot to earn. Here’s what you need to know about Diablo 4 Season 14.

What are Pandemonium Ruptures?

Pandemonium Ruptures are the main activity in Diablo 4 Season 14; the ruptures are literal tears in the boundary separating Sanctuary and Pandemonium, the nexus realm created from scars on the universe when the primordial forces Anu and Tathamet killed each other (according to the Book of Lorath). We’ve been to Pandemonium Fortress before, in both Diablo 2 (Act 4) and Diablo 3 (Reaper of Souls/Act 5), as well as individual battlefields there, but it has remained separate from Sanctuary. Well, it had remained separate — and there lies our seasonal plight.

There are three ruptures you can encounter during the season: Normal, Surging, and Colossal:

• Normal Ruptures are the standard recurring overworld experience — possible everywhere, but “especially prevalent in Helltides.”
• Surging Ruptures are medium-sized rifts forming in any place where you could experience an “event” activity during a Helltide.
• Colossal Ruptures are the largest, and can only be found in the Fields of Desecration World Boss Arena in Hawezar.

Regardless of scope, these Ruptures all have the same goals: kill both monsters and guardians around the Death’s Head Idols to keep the Rupture open and farm more rewards. During the Ruptures, additional tears will open in your vicinity that you can close to help maintain an open Rupture. But expect to battle both some old familiar enemies during these events.

What monsters are we fighting in Season 14?

The denizens of Pandemonium are taking advantage of these Ruptures to assault Sanctuary, giving us the new (to D4) Risen monster family. They will be very familiar to D3 players — Gravehounds that drop orbs on death to empower Exarchs. Whether we’ll see other known horrors, like Executioners and Anarchs, remains to be seen.

Next up is a massive (literally) return to the enemy roster: Realmwalkers. These gigantic enemies appear in the most difficult of Ruptures to take down defenders. You won’t see them at Normal Ruptures, but Surging Ruptures have a chance to spawn a Realmwalker, and one is guaranteed at the completion of a Colossal Rupture. And like the Realmwalkers of old, taking them down opens a portal to a new challenge.

Finally, the biggest fight comes from a new Seasonal Lair Boss: the Corrupted Reaper. This holdover from Mathael’s reaping is accessible only from the Pandemonium Threshold’s entrance in Zarbinzet. While the fight is available with the Seasonal Campaign, its lair boss rewards cache can only be opened with Betrayer’s Husks found in Torment difficulties. On the flip side, it will give players the “best direct drop chances for both Mythic Uniques and Mythic Unique Upgrade currency,” with better drop rates than any other activity. With changes to Uniques in Season 14, this is pretty appealing.

But how can you farm Betrayer’s Husks to open these caches? Enter: the Deathtoll Chamber.

What is the Deathtoll Chamber?

The Deathtoll Chamber is going to be your best source for the Betrayer’s Husks needed to unlock the Corrupted Reaper’s cache. It’s a mini-dungeon (more like the end-of-dungeon boss room than a true dungeon) that you reach by taking down a Realmwalker or by running a Nightmare Dungeon with the Rupture affix. You earn that Rupture affix after closing a number of Tears (yet unknown) during Pandemonium Ruptures.

After entering the Chamber from one of those two methods, you’ll complete a dedicated Rupture activity to net “even more rewards” than earned during the main rupture event, including Betrayer’s Husks to spend opening Corrupted Reaper’s caches.

Why do you need Mythic Unique Upgrade currency? Enter Mythic Uniques 3.0

The Diablo 4 developers said it best: “In Season 14, every Unique can be Mythic. Strap in, folks.”

Instead of being the rarest of item types, the “Mythic” designation is an item property (or Item Quality) in Season 14 that can roll on any Unique item in the game. With this modifier, the Unique Power on a designated item is increased by 30%. And you’re not reliant on getting these special Uniques through drops alone; these are a few methods available during the season to craft or loot Mythic Uniques:

• Earn the seasonal currency, Pandemonium Fragments, as you progress through the Seasonal Rep Board, Resplendent Caches, and by defeating the Corrupted Reaper. The currency is then used as part of a new Horadric Cube recipe.
• Defeating the Corrupted Reaper nets you the upgrade currency (almost a form of bad luck protection) and grants a chance at earning a Mythic Unique drop.
• Progress through the Seasonal Ranks to earn a Mythic Unique specific to your class.
• Finally, there’s a very rare chance to find a Mythic Unique whenever an Ancestral Unique would drop on both Seasonal and Eternal realms.

Sadly, you’re limited to equipping only one crafted Mythic Unique (so you’ll want to make it count), but you can equip however many Mythic Unique drops as you can find. And that brings us back to farming Ruptures for Betrayer’s Husks and killing the Corrupted Reaper to open its cache.

Of course, this information comes from the Diablo 4 patch 3.1. PTR, so things may change following the Developer Update Livestream on Tuesday. For now, get ready. We’re spending Season 14 defending our home from the incursions of Pandemonium for glory, honor, and of course, boundless loot. See you in Sanctuary!