Diablo 3 Season 39 starts this week, bringing back the Shades of the Nephalem theme

Diablo 3 Season 38 is the second time we’d seen the Ethereal Memory theme since the game started recycling themes, and returned us to our rose-tinted memories of Diablo 2 — ironically, falling right after the release of the Diablo 2 Resurrected Warlock. But Season 38 ended unannounced last week, on June 21, and we’re already rolling into Season 39: Shades of the Nephalem, which we originally saw in Season 22. Diablo 3 Season 39 begins Friday, June 26 at 5pm PDT/CEST/KST.

Shades of the Nephalem will spawn a shadow clone of your class whenever you activate a shrine. These clones won’t be a perfect mirror of your character, but have one of three pre-determined builds, and will fight alongside you for one minute. The shadow clones come with an additional seasonal bonus: Kanai’s Cube will have an extra slot, which can contain any power (though you can’t stack duplicate powers). This is reminiscent of the Forbidden Archives theme, which allowed you to slot any type of power into any slot, which let you create some unique builds. In Season 39, you simply get one bonus power from any type, offering extra build variety that will help keep the season interesting.

Diablo 3’s maintenance mode continues to be unpredictable, with varied season lengths and repetitive themes. With Season 38’s unexpected ending, it was it ran exactly 12 weeks — right in line with the three month rotation we expected. But even these “maintenance seasons” have upheld the grand D3 tradition of varying widely in length, from the 11 week flash in the pan of Season 36 to the 17 week slog of Season 34.

But it’s not just the length of the maintenance mode cycle that’s thrown us for a collective loop; there are only six themes Blizzard is using in the repeating seasonal cycle. Maintenance mode began with Season 30’s Lords of Hell (Soul Shard gems), which returned for a repeat in Season 36, followed by Forbidden Archives (Kanai’s Cube-o-Rama in Seasons 31 and 37), Ethereal Memory (Ethereal weapons in Seasons 32 and 38), and now Shades of the Nephalem (shadow clones/fourth cube slot, Seasons 22 and 33). We’re pretty confident the order of the next two will be Light’s Calling (Angelic Crucibles, last seen Season 34 and 39), and the Eternal Conflict (Pandemonium buffs, last seen Season 35). That’s pretty small for a recurring cycle and results in a continually shrinking (but easy to guess) pool.

When maintenance mode began, four themes were integrated into the base game: Season 23’s Follower system revamp, Season 26’s Echoing Nightmares, Season 28’s Altar of Rites, and Season 29’s Visions of Enmity. But where are Season 21’s Trial of the Tempests, 18’s Season of the Triune, 17’s Season of Nightmares, 16’s Season of Grandeur, 15’s Boon of the Horadrim, or 14’s Season of Greed? They may not be “strong” themes as far as encouraging player engagement, but Blizzard has shown in the past that they can combine these — for example, activating extra goblins or double Horadric caches during other seasons. Hopefully in the future Blizzard will shake seasons up a little more by bringing in additional themes or stacking additional themes.

Regardless of our desire for variety, the shadow clones are coming soon. Season 39 will bring on both clones and the ever enticing fourth cube slot starting June 26. See you in Sanctuary!