Diablo 4’s Season of Blood lets players become vampires just ahead of Halloween

Diablo 4’s second season, Season of Blood, is all about vampires. Players will be able to jump in on Oct. 17, gather up their own vampiric powers, and use them to decimate hordes of blood-sucking undead.

Blizzard spoke about the new season in its livestream on Oct. 4, showcasing the season’s story and mechanics, as well as some extremely desirable quality of life changes coming with the new patch. Most hardcore Diablo 4 fans will likely be even more excited by the updates to the game’s Renown system, Nightmare Dungeons, stashes, and other quality of life changes than Season of Blood itself. However, this season’s themes and mechanics are already more interesting than the game’s first season, Season of the Malignant.

In Season of Blood, players will work through a new storyline with a vampire hunter voiced by Gemma Chan (Eternals). But the real meat is in the new Potent Blood currency. As players gather Potent Blood by killing enemies, they’ll be able to unlock vampiric powers for themselves. Each purchase will either unlock a new power or upgrade an existing one, with each power having three total levels. Once unlocked, players can slot up to five powers onto their character at once.

These powers, however, aren’t automatically active once players equip them. Players will need to power their abilities by equipping special armor pieces in their chest, pants, glove, boot, and helm slots, all of which come with their own vampiric Pacts. There are three kinds of Pacts, and players will need to match these with the specific powers they want in order to enable them.

Players can only support as many powers as they have total Pact points in their currently equipped armor pieces. If they want to use powers that require a different spread of Pact points, or require even more Pact points, they’ll need to find different armor pieces. For example, if a player is wearing armor pieces that give them five Ferocity Pacts, five Divinity Pacts, and five Eternity Pacts, they’ll be able to support several different powers. That player could wield one power that requires one of each Pact, then equip another power that requires three Ferocity and one Eternity, bringing their remaining total to one Ferocity, four Divinity, and three Eternity.

Thankfully, Blizzard will allow players to collect Standalone Pacts to add to items (there is a limit to how many points an individual item can have, however) as well as Cleansing Acids to remove Pacts. This should allow players to find a “god-rolled” piece of Pact armor much easier, assuming they have the necessary materials to mold it into what they need.

The powers themselves range from major damage increases — like a straight increase to Ultimate ability damage and cooldown — to straight-up wild — like the ability to turn into bats when you dodge. Unlike Season of the Malignant, however, all of these vampiric powers are class agnostic (although some will obviously pair with certain classes better than others).

Players will of course be able to take these newfound powers into all manner of activities currently in the game. However, Blizzard is also adding some new content — like the Blood Harvest open-world events — to spice up the game and allow players to quickly pick up new powers to enhance their builds.

All of these new abilities, as well as the major quality of life patch, will enter Diablo 4 at the start of season 2 on Oct. 17.