Diablo 3 Season 30 kicks off next week with The Lords of Hell

Blizzard revealed in blog post that Diablo 3 Season 3, titled The Lords of Hell, will officially release next week on January 12 at 8 p.m. ET. Unfortunately, this season will be somewhat of a repeat, taking its roots from Season 25 which also had the Lords of Hell seasonal theme. Season 29 marked the last season that would receive completely new content.

All about Soul Shards

The big feature in Diablo 3 Season 30: The Lords of Hell is Soul Shards. Players can use these shards to infuse the demonic essences into themselves to embody new Prime and Lesser Evil powers. In total, there are seven unique Soul Shards—based on the seven Lords of Hell—each with a new power. One of the three Prime Evil Soul Shards are able to be equipped into your helmet, and one of the four Lesser Evil Shards can be equipped into your weapon.

You’ll also obtain Hellforge Embers which drop primarily off Bosses but can drop from anywhere across Sanctuary. You can then use the Hellforge Embers to upgrade your Soul Shards up to three times.

Of course, Soul Shards and Hellforge Embers—and their powers—are only available on seasonal characters and will not pass onto your character on the Eternal Realm.

A patch as well

Before Season 30 drops on January 12, a new update, patch 2.7.7 will go live on January 9 on all platforms. The patch adds Rites of Sanctuary and Visions of Enmity as permanent features to Diablo 3. The popular features were previously temporary seasonal themes, but moving forward will be permanent systems.

Those interested in checking out Season 30 can earn the cosmetic Chest and Gloves from the Conqueror set as well as the All Hallow’s pennant. There’s also a set of portrait frames players can earn that are embedded with Blood Shards.

Obviously, this isn’t as big of a deal as the most recent season, which actually added a handful of new systems and new content. But it’s great to see D3 still getting some love. Diablo 4‘s gameplay is a bit different than that of Diablo 3, so those who prefer to progress through Greater Rifts can still do so with a new season if they’d like.

Diablo 3 Season 30: The Lords of Hell starts on all platforms on January 12.