The next major Diablo 3 season is happening next week, meaning new rewards and challenges for action RPG veterans.

Season 26 will start on 15 April at 4pm GMT+8 (Malaysia, Singapore, The Phillippines) and comes with the theme Echoing Nightmare. This will be the first Seasonal Theme that comes with a new activity called Echoing Nightmare, where players will experience an intense and densely packed event that stretches a player’s ability to stay in the fight as long as possible.

To access an Echoing Nightmare challenge, you need to collect a Petrified Scream from defeated Greater Rift Guardians to gain entry. To get the portal to the challenge out, just transmute the Petrified Scream in Kanai’s Cube.

Here are additional details & notes about the challenge:

• Petrified Screams and the Echoing Nightmare can only be accessed with seasonal characters.
• Only one player is required to transmute a Petrified Scream to open an Echoing Nightmare in a multiplayer game.
• Similar to a boss encounter, all players in a multiplayer game must accept a prompt to enter.
• While within an Echoing Nightmare, the difficulty scales as players progress in the encounter. Players can progress faster by defeating monsters quickly.
• Players receive the following rewards upon completing an Echoing Nightmare: EXP, Legendary Items, Blood Shards, Gems, and a new Legendary Gem, Whisper of Atonement.
• The Whisper of Atonement is a Legendary Gem used exclusively for Augmenting Ancient Legendary items. It drops pre-ranked based upon the player’s performance in the Echoing Nightmare.
• Rare monsters now spawn within an Echoing Nightmare.
• Meteors now fall from the sky.
• Hellish Machinations now appear, which spawn streams of Exploding Lunatics.
• Rift Guardians now spawn.
• Increased the frequency of which monsters spawn.
• Updated the Shadow Clone explosion to better reflect the area of effect.
• The exit timer has been increased to 60 seconds.
• Increased the possible rank a Whisper of Atonement can drop to 125 based on the Tier completed.
• Monsters in Echoing Nightmares can no longer be Frozen, Stunned, Rooted or Knocked Back.
• Fixed a bug that caused Conduit Shrines to deal less damage than intended.

The Season’s Cosmetic Rewards include a series of portrait frames themed around Tal Rasha, the Rakkis’ Remembrance portrait, and the Toothsome Trooper pet.

Completing Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of the Season Journey will reward you with three Haedrig’s Gifts, with each of them containing a few pieces from a Class Set. Here are the Class Sets from the gifts:

• Barbarian – The Legacy of Raekor
• Crusader – Armor of Akkhan
• Demon Hunter – Embodiment of the Marauder
• Monk – Inna’s Reach
• Necromancer – Pestilence Master’s Shroud
• Witch Doctor – Zunimassa’s Haunt
• Wizard – Delsere’s Magnum Opus

A new Season means new changes, buffs, and nerfs to classes and Class Sets. Long story short: the Barbarian’s Raekor set gets an overhaul while the Crusader’s Thorns of the Invoker and Norvald’s Fervor get nerfed. No more horsing around, basically.

Here is the full list:

Barbarian

• Legacy of Raekor (4-piece Bonus): Furious Charge gains the effect of every rune and deals 1000% increased damage. For every 1% Life you are missing, the damage of your Ancient Spear is increased by 2%.
• Legacy of Raekor (6-piece Bonus): Hitting enemies with Furious Charge or Weapon Throw increases the damage of your next Ancient Spear by 5500% and causes it to release multiple spears from its target. This effect stacks and each spear throw consumes a maximum of 5 stacks.
• Arreat’s Law: Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear deal 150-200% increased damage.
  • Weapon Throw generates up to 25 50 additional Fury based on the distance of the enemy hit. The generated Fury can go above the maximum cap by 200 Fury.
  • Ancient Spear refunds up to 25 50 Fury based on the distance of the enemy hit and resets your Fury cap to its base maximum.
• The Three Hundredth Spear: Increase the damage of Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear by 150-200%. The attack speed of Weapon Throw is increased by 200%.
• Skular’s Salvation: Increase the damage of Ancient Spear by 150-200%. If your Ancient Spear – Boulder Toss hits 5 or fewer enemies, the damage is increased by 100%.

Crusader

• Thorns of the Invoker: The attack speed of Punish and Slash are increased by 100% and deal 67,500% of your Thorns damage.
• Norvald’s Fervor: Gain 200% increased damage while using Steed Charge and for 5 seconds after it ends.

Monk

• All Mystic Allies spawned by Inna’s Mantra 6-piece bonus now have their duration refreshed with each attack.
• Mystic Ally – Fire Ally: Mini allies now have Passability.
• Mystic Ally – Earth Ally:
  • Earth Ally boulders speed has been increased. Boulders always leash to the player regardless of how many monsters are on screen.
  • Prevented Earth Ally boulders from being slowed by missile dampening.
• Bindings of the Lesser Gods: Enemies hit by your Cyclone Strike take 150%-200% more damage from your Mystic Ally for 5 seconds.