I briefly contemplated starting a Hardcore seasonal character, because I have never done such a thing… but that is a doubtful proposition. The Echoing Nightmares are a really fun game mode, and I could see people doing these if the petrified screams continued to drop. The only thing that I wish is that all of the things they add in for seasons… stuck around during non-seasonal play essentially slowly adding more content to the game. Diablo III really is getting more creative in the sorts of things they are attempting during seasonal play, which reminds me quite a bit of the broad changes that take place during a Path of Exile league. In theory, there should be a new season starting before too much longer given that this current one started in April. I had a blast working my way through this season, and while I will likely never use the ugly Lollipop pet, there is a sense of accomplishment in checking all of the boxes. We also tried for a speed demon run and nailed it on the first attempt, and as such… while Grace only started Saturday night, they managed to wrap up their seasonal journey Sunday afternoon as well. By this point, I had already finished leveling my gems to 75 but when we ran down all of the Petrified Screams that each of us had gathered up on Sunday… it instantly completed a large number of seasonal achievements including a few conquests for Grace and Thalen. What I did not expect however is for these to count towards seasonal achievements. In practice, these are a way of cheating your way through attunements, but you would also need a great source of raw gems in order to fuel them.
This effectively is a horde mode wave clear sort of encounter and the number of waves you successfully clear gives you a gem with a matching level. The other part of the season that was interesting was the inclusion of Petrified Screams which open a special kind of Rift called an Echoing Nightmare. Granted I managed to clear a solo GR90 with this build and probably could have easily cleared higher, but it is maybe the worst pulling experience I have ever had, and eventually rotated out to a more standard Invoker build. Every four seconds I rained death down from above, but the other three seconds… I was mostly just trying to stay alive which meant I spent an exceptional amount of time in horse form trying not to stand still. See the other side effect of this specific build is the fact that it is fairly squishy.
Granted Grace knew what they were getting themselves in for, but it was still hilarious the number of times we both died. At low-level rifts, the Thorn’s damage from the partial Invoker set was enough to have some “on demand” killing power, but there really is no way to really quickly clear stragglers which meant I left a minefield of death for anyone getting drug along. Essentially my gameplay pattern was to run around with horsey until I found a champ/elite pack and wait for the bombardment to clear everything before moving to the next pack. The problem with this is the fact that Akkhan Invoker Bombardment is a weird build and is highly unpredictable. The funniest part of the journey however has to have been Saturday night while we were recording the podcast… I was trying to carry Grace to 70 and knock out a good chunk of the seasonal boss kills. The pied piper song I sing… managed to ensnare a handful of other people into this madness including Thalen and Grace, and Sunday we had a blast running around together and doing “Diabble” nonsense. What I would have talked about yesterday had I posted though is the end of my Diablo III Seasonal Journey. My “bladder alarm clock” wakes me up around 5, but actually getting up at that time is a whole other story. Five days was plenty of time for me to get my sleep schedule completely mixed up. Good Morning Folks! This morning I am coming back from five days off and it is going to be weird as hell to actually “punch the clock” again.