Considering that the story of Diablo series was originally set up with a very large world view and complex character relationships, the game has not been in a hurry to expand more content or characters through the latest work Diablo 4 for a long time, but continued to tell the story on the original basis to ensure that the main storyline of the game can be effectively extended.

In the first Diablo 4 DLC Vessel of Hatred launched in 2024, even if the basic story is expanded, it is only presented through the return of the classic villain Mephisto. According to the 2.2.0 PTR that ended not long ago and other news about Diablo 4 Season 8, you will know that the boss Belial who appeared in Diablo 3 will also return, and will also bring more new playable content, thereby increasing your way to get Diablo 4 Gold and the fun of the game.

The time span of Diablo series from the original game to the present is very large, so it is necessary to let more popular characters or important characters in the past return again. If successful, Diablo 4 will surely attract some old players to “return” together, especially after Mephisto and Belial return. Based on this, we will speculate and introduce 5 characters that are likely to return in subsequent seasons gradually.

1. Leah

Leah appeared in Diablo 3 as the daughter of Adria the Witch and Prince Aiden of Tristram, but fate was cruel to her. Her father Aiden was possessed by Diablo as a Dark Wanderer, and her mother Adria made a secret plan after she became pregnant with her, intending to use her as a backup container needed after Diablo was defeated and become a channel for the demon to resurrect in Sanctuary. Therefore, after she was born, Leah was raised by her uncle Deckard Cain. Later, she was not only the heir to the throne of Westmarch but also an important ally of Nephalem, until she was finally killed and possessed by Diablo.

After Diablo was destroyed, Covetus Shen believed that Leah’s soul was “gone forever”, and this ending became one of the dark symbols of Diablo 3. However, considering that the world of Diablo is a surreal world, it is difficult to say whether Leah’s death is really irreversible (after all, many characters have been resurrected), and she may return through some supernatural means.

2. Deckard Cain

As Leah’s uncle, Deckard Cain not only raised and taught Leah, but in fact he has always played such a role in Diablo 1 and 2 and is a very important human mentor. Unfortunately, he also died in Diablo 3 due to the evil forces, and then in the story of Diablo 4, he has become a character who only exists in everyone’s nostalgia.

To be honest, the death of such a respected spiritual mentor may make many positive characters in Diablo feel sad and confused, but as guessed when introducing Leah, it is not impossible to resurrect a person in Diablo series. Or another way is to let Deckard Cain bring some guidance to your character in the form of a ghost in the new season or new DLC of Diablo 4, helping you defeat those evil bosses.

3. Tyrael

At the end of Diablo 3, Malthael, The Angel of Death was defeated, and High Heavens also needed to be rebuilt after being destroyed. In order to improve this situation as soon as possible, Tyrael was promoted to Aspect of Wisdom. However, this selfless angel chose to stay in Sanctuary and help Nephalem and fight against future evil threats in human form. Unfortunately, he almost never appeared in Diablo 4.

Since Tyrael is related to another fallen angel, Inarius, who plays a key role in Diablo 4, it is very likely that Tyrael will continue to appear again as humanity’s greatest ally in the future, helping your character and Sanctuary fight against the forces of darkness.

4. Mephisto & Baal

Okay, these are actually two characters, but considering how closely they are connected, we think they are likely to return at the same time, so we will introduce them together. Diablo and his brothers, the Prime Evils, were defeated in Diablo 2 and their souls were trapped in Soulstones, but then Soulstones were destroyed in Hellforge, causing all the demons to turn Diablo into the ultimate Prime Evil together in Diablo 3 eventually until they were defeated.

But neither Diablo, Baal, or Mephisto can be truly killed, and they may return at any time and cause chaos again. Since Mephisto didn’t shine in the games before Diablo 4, and Lilith, one of the villains in Diablo 4, is his daughter, Mephisto finally started to move in Vessel of Hatred, so he is likely to continue to cause chaos in Sanctuary with his companion Baal.

5. Imperius

Imperius is an Archangel of Valor who lives in High Heavens. Unlike Tyrael, this angel has a very typical “aristocratic arrogance” and looks down on most non-angelic races. It is precisely because of this arrogance that he is easily deceived by Diablo, which eventually leads to the killing of many of his angel friends. He also mistakenly believes that humans and Nephalem are the key to defeating demons.

However, after High Heavens experienced a disaster, I believe that Imperius’s views should have changed to a great extent - a more punished Imperius may return in Diablo 4, put aside his prejudice and cooperate with humans to save and protect Sanctuary and High Heavens.

In fact, in addition to the above characters, there are many characters worth returning or resurrecting in Diablo 4. I believe that their joining will definitely make the story of Diablo 4 more exciting. Let us wait and see!

As shown in the 2.2.0 PTR, Season 8 will be a world of “bosses” - not only will Belial return, but there will also be many new mechanisms related to bosses. This not only means that you may face more difficult battles in Diablo 4, but also means that the boss and endgame systems of the game will enter a new era.

However, if you are familiar with the entire Diablo series, you should find that most of the bosses with names are related to the game plot. Even some small bosses, such as the enemies that will appear in Apparition Incursion event in Season 8, are actually Belial’s minions.

In other words, when you encounter them, although you know that some of them are very powerful, at least they are not “unknown” to you, and you have many ways to prepare for the relevant battles. However, if you are doing regular exploration in a very relaxed state, and suddenly encounter a terrifying monster, it may scare you more than Lilith! The Butcher is such a Diablo 4 enemy.

Introduction To The Butcher

As a very strange enemy in Diablo 4, The Butcher usually appears randomly in cellars or dungeons, which means that as long as you plan to earn Diablo 4 Gold by clearing enemies in these places, you may encounter him. However, Diablo 4 is not his first appearance, he appeared in the original Diablo and returned as a boss in D3.

Although the probability of this powerful and brutal demon appearing is very small, once he finds you, The Butcher theme song will start playing in the scene, and then he will say his iconic “Fresh meat.” line and start chasing you until you fight to the death. It has to be said that even if you know that you may encounter The Butcher, there is a high probability that you will be startled by the sudden encounter, not to mention that his lines and appearance are combined, just like a monster version of crazy Hannibal.

The generation of this boss is not limited by your character level, and the specific location where it appears is also very random. That is to say, The Butcher may not only appear when you are at any level but also become a random target in certain cellars, and even appear when you are in a party or exploring a nightmare dungeon. In short, when you explore these areas, The Butcher is more like a ghost and you don’t know when he will suddenly pop up and start attacking you.

Fortunately, The Butcher will never spawn in dungeons or open world areas related to the campaign, and will only spawn once in the same dungeon. In the specific battle, if The Butcher defeats you, he will collide with his weapon and teleport away, leaving a pool of blood on the ground, even if you manage to climb the ladder and leave his attack range within a few seconds, he will also do this; but if you kill him, in addition to Diablo 4 Gold, you will also get The Butcher’s Cleaver.

The Butcher Seems To Have Been Forgotten

Although The Butcher is difficult to classify into the plot villain system of Diablo series in a strict sense, the thrill and excitement it has provided to players since its appearance is indeed difficult to match by many powerful bosses-the latter is more of a crushing in terms of combat power, while The Butcher’s characteristic lies in sensory stimulation. Although he was stronger as a regular boss in Diablo 3 in the past, it was not as scary as usual.

From the above perspectives, The Butcher is completely worthy of being strengthened. Imagine that such an enemy that will appear unexpectedly, wandering in all the rooms of the dungeon like a ghost, has a stronger lethality than before, which not only makes the horror atmosphere of Diablo 4 a step higher but also makes the game more challenging.

However, from Diablo 4 Season 1 to now, with the addition of more and more main bosses and the dedicated research on various seasonal powers, random bosses like The Butcher that have nothing to do with the main storyline seem to be gradually forgotten by the development team. It has to be said that this is very regrettable, because The Butcher has brought benefits to Diablo series after all, even if it may have been designed as an embellished Easter egg at the beginning, but it ultimately plays a role far beyond what an Easter egg should do.

The Butcher Should Be Upgraded In D4S8

As we mentioned before, the theme and most of the new content of Diablo 4 Season 8 are related to “boss”, so in the face of the long-standing comments from players, “Is The Butcher on vacation somewhere?”, which is dissatisfied with The Butcher being forgotten or neglected, the development team should seize the new opportunity of Season 8 to make The Butcher return to your vision with a stronger attitude.

In the past few seasons, The Butcher’s performance was very ordinary, almost making you forget the threat he brought in the past, which actually made Diablo 4 lose the rich horror and bloody atmosphere like the previous works, which should be the biggest feature of all Diablo games, right?

So before D4S8 is really launched, the development team should change the past The Butcher strategy and make it more deadly by increasing the frequency of The Butcher’s attacks, and apply it to all world levels. In this way, although you will always be in a state of fear caused by The Butcher, this is the experience that the real Diablo series of games should provide!

For all the seasons that have appeared in Diablo 4 so far, you will find that if you want to sort out all the differences between each season, it is a bit like playing a spot-the-difference game - at first glance, there is no big difference between each season except for the exclusive seasonal power, but in fact there are various changes in the details.

Take Tree of Whispers as an example. In terms of location, it is a special tree located in Hawezar Swamp. As one of the most important components of Diablo 4 series endgame system, it not only has its own story origin and background but also plays the role of providing you with achievable goals and tasks, ensuring that you can continue to carry out the necessary Diablo 4 Gold farming in the endgame stage of it.

Before Season 7, Tree of Whispers has always played such a role, but in Season 7, because of the addition of witchcraft power, the development team has tied this seasonal power to Tree of Whispers in some aspects, making the role of Tree of Whispers more prominent in this season. To ensure you get the most out of this giant tree, we’re here to tell you how it works in Season 7.

Tree Of Whispers In S7

In keeping with the theme of the season, Season of Witchcraft introduces several new features to Tree of Whispers, such as opening Headhunt zones, crafting Occult gems, and allowing you to learn witch powers by interacting with NPCs. These features are somewhat systematically linked, so their addition not only makes Tree of Whispers more useful but also gives the area itself a comprehensive overhaul and upgrade.

How Does It Work?

In fact, you can think of Diablo 4’s Tree of Whispers as a bounty system. After completing the campaign to unlock Tree of Whispers, you can earn Grim Favors by participating in various activities located throughout Sanctuary. It is worth noting that different activities reward different amounts of Favors.

Once you have completed the objective combination and received 10 Grim Favors, you can return to Tree of Whispers in Hawezar and turn in your Grim Favors to Raven of the Tree to speed up your game rewards collection significantly and select collectibles for specific inventory slots.

Whispers Of The Dead Objectives

These objectives that Tree of Whispers requires you to complete are usually called Whispers of the Dead. These special Whispers will be displayed on the map as light pink to dark red icons, depending on the number of Grim Favors that Whispers can reward, and these objectives usually rotate every hour and a half.

Depending on the type of objective, the number of Grim Favors awarded ranges from 1 to 5. There are usually 5 to 7 different Whispers of the Dead in each area, and if you complete all objectives, you can generally get 12 to 15 Grim Favors.

It is worth noting that once you get 10 or more Grim Favors, you must return to Tree of Whispers in time to hand them in before you can continue farming - you can think of this as your “Favors inventory”, and it is capped at 10. Before handing them in, your excess Favors over 10 can only be rolled to the next column for temporary storage.

What Are Grim Favors?

After learning about Whispers of the Dead and Tree of Whispers, I believe it should not be difficult for you to guess that Grim Favor is actually a special currency or points obtained by completing Whispers of the Dead goals around the world. Only when you get enough Grim Favors and hand them in for redemption can you get special season rewards.

Objectives With Different Amounts Of Grim Favors

Each Whispers of the Dead objective can provide 1/3/5 Grim Favors. In Season 7, these objectives include:

Grim Favors 1:

• Dispel - Dispel Shrouding Charms.
• Seek - Seek Hidden Headrotten.
• Cellar - Tree of Whispers will mark a cellar on the map to complete.
• Event - Complete a world event in a certain location.
• “Find the Corpse” - Search the area and defeat a specific enemy.
• Slay - Kill specific enemies within a certain area.

Grim Favors 3:

• Patrol - Slay monsters with the guard.
• Purge the Rot - Slay Headrotten.
• Scour - Search for Cleansing Herbs.
• Shepherd - Guide wildlife to safety.
• Wisps - Destroy an Exposed Root to free Lost Wisps. Slay Headrotten to gather Wisps until they are laid to rest.
• Harvest - Gather Motes from certain types of enemies within the area.
• Legion Events - Legion Event will always coincide with a Whisper.
• PVP: Purify Seeds of Hatred - Complete an Altar of Extraction Ritual in a PVP zone.
• Ritual - Perform a series of Rituals within a certain area.

Grim Favors 5:

• Fugitive - Recover head or slay Husk.
• Dungeon - Tree of Whispers will mark a dungeon on the map to complete.
• PVP: Seething Abomination - Defeat Seething Abomination within a PVP zone.
• World Boss - Occasionally a World Boss will also coincide with a Whisper.
• Blood Maiden - One Helltide will have Tree of Whispers objectives every hour.

What Can Grim Favors Be Exchanged For?

After you have 10 Grim Favors, you can return to Tree of Whispers and choose between three collection options. All collections are ranked normal, greater, or ancestral based on their rarity, and it is recommended that you always choose the ancestral option if possible. In addition to the redeemable collections, you can also get rewards including gold, gem fragments, sigils, glyphs, and runes while collecting Grim Favors.

Best S7 Grim Favors Farming Strategy

If you want to farm Grim Favors more efficiently so that you can redeem more rewards faster, the best way to do it right now is to combine Whispers of the Dead objectives with other activities, such as Headhunts or Helltides. This is because when you complete objectives in an active Headhunt or Helltides. Not only do you get more XP, you are also more likely to get more gear.

Helltides occur every hour, during which specific Tree of Whispers objectives will appear, or standard Tree of Whispers objectives can also occur at the same time as Helltides. You can even complete side quests that may appear in the surrounding area when combining events such as Whispers of the Dead and Helltides to achieve the highest farming efficiency.

After our introduction, you should have a deeper and more specific understanding of the game’s Tree of Whispers. I hope this will continue to help your Diablo 4 experience. Thank you for reading.

In order to ensure that you always have the desire to play the game, in addition to launching new content and new seasons on time, Diablo 4 is also equipped with a corresponding exclusive reward system at the beginning of each new season, namely battle pass, the season journey, and the season blessings.

These three reward mechanisms are unlocked in different ways, but what they have in common is that, first, they can all bring you Diablo 4 Gold, decorative items, special buffs, and powerful resources as rewards; second, they can only play a role in the corresponding current season: for example, the season journey rewards of Season 6 will end after the arrival of Season 7 and cannot be claimed. And characters in Eternal/Regular realms cannot enjoy them.

However, considering that you should be accustomed to playing seasonal content, it is necessary to understand how to use them. Based on this, we will focus on season blessings this time to lead you to understand its role and the synergy with the other two reward mechanisms.

What Is Season Blessing?

Think of season blessings as a kind of bound buffs that are exclusive to your season realm character, and are more focused on improving quality of life than battle passes or season journeys, such as allowing you to earn more XP by farming dungeons, or increasing the drop rate of some seasonal items.

Once the season starts, the mechanic is accessible through the corresponding UI in the “Season” tab of the menu, where you will see all the blessings available for that season, the specific buffs they bring, and what can be used to upgrade each blessing - in fact, season blessings can only be activated by consuming Smoldering Ash.

Smoldering Ash is a special Diablo 4 currency that can be earned by unlocking the battle pass. After you have enough Smoldering Ash, you will need to use one Smoldering Ash each time you activate or upgrade a season blessing. You can upgrade up to four times, but the benefits of upgrading will decrease with each upgrade.

Battle Pass & Season Journey

Both the battle pass and the season journey are closely related to the season blessings, so it is necessary to understand them. First of all, the battle pass includes free, premium and accelerated. The specific rewards are different, but basically they will be gradually unlocked as you progress in the game.

As for the season journey, it will set some corresponding tasks according to the main storyline of the current season. Usually, you only need to advance the story step by step and complete the relevant tasks to complete the journey’s goal. Fortunately, the season journey will not require you to complete all the goals in each chapter, and generally leave you 2-3 tasks that can be ignored.

How To Utilize Season Blessings?

For Season 7, after you enter the current season area and complete the season character creation, you can open your season user interface by pressing “U”, which will allow you to view and access your season journey, season blessings and battle pass status. The season blessings box allows you to see which of your blessings are active and how many Ashes you have quickly. Click the box to view:

• The amount of Smoldering Ash you have
• What you need to get more Smoldering Ash
• The specific entry for each Blessing, its description, level, and the value of the next level

It is worth noting that when your Season 7 journey officially begins, the season journey, battle pass, and season blessings systems will work together as you play the game. The main connection between them can be summarized as follows:

• Complete the season journey goals by playing the game
• The season journey goals will reward you with Favor
• Favor can be used to unlock and advance the battle pass
• The battle pass will reward you with Smoldering Ash
• Smoldering Ash allows you to get powerful gains by unlocking season blessings
• The powerful gains of season blessings can help you play the game

Obviously, this is a cyclical process. These 3 reward mechanisms are closely linked and cooperated to ensure that your Diablo 4 Season 7 can run normally. The lack of any one of them may cause damage to your gaming experience.

Season Blessings Currency-Smoldering Ash

As the main driver of season blessings, Smoldering Ash can only be earned in the battle pass through Favor earned by playing games or completing objectives in the season journey, and cannot be earned directly by unlocking the battle pass - this would disrupt the order and balance of the game.

Expect to earn about 20 Smoldering Ash throughout the season, which is enough to unlock all season blessings. After claiming your first battle pass Smoldering Ash reward, you can start activating Blessings. Which one you activate first and the order in which you unlock them will depend entirely on what you want to prioritize and your play style. The current list of available Blessings includes:

• Urn of Aggression: Allows you to gain more XP after killing enemies.
• Urn of Curiosities: Increases your chance of receiving a second item at Purveyor of Curiosities.
• Urn of Whispers: Increases your chance of receiving a Greater Collection from Whisper rewards.
• Urn of Masterworking: Allows existing resource farming methods to drop more Obducite.
• Urn of Rot: Increases the amount of Restless Rot you get after killing a Headrotten, allowing you to upgrade your equipped witch powers faster.

Although the unlocking order is arbitrary, on the one hand, more XP means your character will become powerful enough as soon as possible, and on the other hand, the upgrade and use of witch powers are very important for Season 7. We recommend that you unlock Season 7’s season blessings in the following order:

• Urn of Aggression
• Urn of Rot
• Urn of Whispers
• Urn of Curiosities
• Urn of Masterworking

The above are all the precautions for unlocking and using season blessings in Season 7. I hope it will help you experience Season 7! And I also hope you can welcome Season 8 in the best condition!