Crusader is the second class to reach GR150. Player BadJoke (EU) SSF SC playing AoV with a time of just under 14:06 and 1678 paragon for an adjusted clear of 154.5.
Monk has cleared 27 GR150s overall.
Barbarian No Set is really close with a GR149 in 14:14.
Lunitics (EU), SSF SC, with a No Set Monk, just under 12:41 with 1384 paragon. That works out to an adjusted clear of 155.7. That players’ GR149 clear actually had a slightly higher adjusted clear, being a couple minutes faster.
The worldwide non-SSF leaderboards are still open, and crusaders have a slight lead as I type this.
Season 40 starts on Friday, October 2nd, 2026.
The season starts at 5pm Pacific time for all console players, no matter where you live. For PC (NA/US) the season starts at 5pm Pacific time, for PC (EU) the season starts at 5pm Central European time, and for PC (TW/KR) it starts at 5pm Korea time. You can see a countdown of all these start times here.
This is the last of four guides I am posting for Season 40. The others are:
Here is how to power up solo in Season 40.
Before the season starts
Do one greater rift of any tier on any character. This will unlock challenge rifts, which you will use once the season starts.
Do not complete challenge rift 484 until Friday, October 2nd, after the season starts. Here are guides to this season's starting challenge rift:
Starting out
Create a new seasonal character. Every season you start with a new, level 1, naked character, with nothing: no gear, no gold or mats or patterns or Kanai's Cube. Fortunately there are strategies for getting yourself up and running. Here is this sub's stickied season start megaguide, which has specific guidance for PC and console players, as the leveling up experience for those platforms are different. The Maxroll 1-70 leveling guide is directed primarily towards players on PC.
Once you reach level 70, follow the season journey, as Chapters I through IV (this is not the same thing as the Acts of the campaign) will reward you with a free 6-piece endgame set, known as Haedrig's Gift.
The Season 40 Haedrig's Gifts will be Horde of the Ninety Savages, Aegis of Valor, Gears of Dreadlands, Patterns of Justice, Masquerade of the Burning Carnival, Mundunugu's Regalia, and Typhon's Veil.
Once you get your full free 6-piece set, equip it and then find a build for it. Find the supporting legendaries and crafting patterns enumerated in the guide to make it work. Once you’ve got your starter build together you can easily pivot to another build or class.
You should also work concurrently on the Altar of Rites and the remaining steps of the journey (Slayer, Champion, Destroyer, Conqueror, Guardian). This will push you to ratchet up the difficulty level, which will increase reward quantities.
By the time you finish the Altar and the full journey you will be well-versed in the endgame...
The solo endgame
Put together a speed farming build and run greater rifts at or above level 90 with that build as fast as you can. Going higher will give you a better chance at 12 legendaries (there is always a small chance of the 12th being non-legendary but the risk decreases as you increase the tier) as well as more paragon XP and petrified screams and blood shards to spend at Kadala. You should target a time under 3 minutes if you're capable of it.
When you need a break, run bounties in the open world with a fast T16 build (either bounty or key farming focused) and jump into visions of enmity whenever they spawn. This will get you more legendaries per hour on average than greater rifts, as well as tons of bounty and white/blue/yellow mats.
Be sure to gear up your follower. Focus on getting their main stat to 25,000, to maximize the effects of their chosen abilities. Also look for or craft critical pieces of gear they can wear that emanate the effect to you (Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Sage's and Cain's set, Ring of Royal Grandeur, Oculus Ring, Gloves of Worship, Broken Crown). If your follower has a different main stat than yours, use an alt with the correct main stat to reroll the main stat on each item for your follower at the mystic.
Periodically use your petrified screams to run echoing nightmares to get whispers of atonement so that you can augment every piece of your speed farming gear. Save later whispers to use on upgrades to your gear, or to augment your greater rift push builds. You can level up whispers of atonement just like any legendary gem, which will increase the power gain from your augments.
Use Kanai's Cube to reforge targeted legendaries that you will have a hard time finding on your own. Jewelry (amulets and rings) are usually a good target for reforging.
Use the season theme to get an ancient weapon early on. Angelic crucibles drop often enough to make this an easy task. Later you will probably want to create a primal weapon using your primordial ashes from salvaging junk primal items, and pivot to a sanctified item that is harder to perfect, such as an offhand or jewelry or gloves.
For pushing you may want a stronger build than your farming build. The top 10 adjusted clears on PC from Season 34, which was the previous time we played with the Light's Calling theme in the recycled theme era, were: LoD WoL monk, Megalo AoV pony crusader, Raiment monk, LoD HotA barbarian, Rathma necromancer, Helltooth witch doctor, Firebird wizard, Natalya DH, Mundunugu witch doctor, and Marauder DH.
For more... here is a complete beginners guide to Diablo 3. Also, here are links to guides from Raxxanterax and wudijo and Filthy Casual on powering up your character.
Good luck, Nephalem, and never forget that town is lava!
We don't know when Season 40 will start and Season 39 will end until we get an announcement, but we can expect an announcement on a Friday, two weeks before Season 40 starts. If Season 39 is to last 86 days, then that announcement should happen on Friday, September 11th, with Season 40 starting on Friday, September 25th and Season 39 ending on Sunday, September 20th.
Here is a full overview of Diablo III seasons, including their durations. The most common duration has been 86 days, but it has gone as short as 79 days (1 week shorter) and as long as 121 days (5 weeks longer).
Here are the 10 seasons so far of the recycled theme era, along with their announcement date, start date, and how many days between announcement and the start.
| Season | Announce | Start | Days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 1/5/2024 | 1/12/2024 | 7 |
| 31 | 3/27/2024 | 4/12/2024 | 16 |
| 32 | 6/28/2024 | 7/12/2024 | 14 |
| 33 | 9/27/2024 | 10/25/2024 | 28 |
| 34 | 1/10/2025 | 1/31/2025 | 21 |
| 35 | 5/22/2025 | 6/6/2025 | 14 |
| 36 | 8/29/2025 | 9/12/2025 | 14 |
| 37 | 11/21/2025 | 12/5/2025 | 14 |
| 38 | 3/13/2026 | 3/27/2026 | 14 |
| 39 | 6/19/2026 | 6/26/2026 | 7 |
Seasons always start on a Friday and end on a Sunday. For all but one season (31) in the recycled theme era, the season announcement has come on a Friday. Half of the seasons have had a two-week advance warning. Three provided longer advance notice and two were very short notice (one week).
Here is the space to watch for the announcement:
I'm saving up for 100 money so I can get this by August 28th.
I noticed the haze in the air this morning. It's likely from the fires north of Bend.
This is a good resource to monitor wildfire smoke and air quality readings until the rains come back:
Im putting together a Typhon wizard alt to run Torment XVI (T16) bounties and Visions of Enmity. The maxroll guides put Fragment of Destiny in the 4th cube slot for this season, which makes no sense.
I was thinking of cubing Echoing Fury. Or perhaps cubing a Halo of Karini and wearing an SoJ. Anyone have any better ideas?
It’s called a RecycleOn center, and appears to be a shipping container located near the bins for glass, cardboard, and e-waste on Bellvue in NE Corvallis.
Photos are from a social media post. In particular the sign shows the items you can now take to the RecycleOn shipping container thing.
From Tripcheck:
>Alert: OR99W NB off-ramp to OR34/US20 EB (Corvallis) Effective July 13, 2026, the OR99W northbound off-ramp to OR34/US20 eastbound will be closed Monday through Thursday nights between the hours of 7:00 PM to 6:00 AM. The estimated completion date for this work is July 30, 2026.
We are over a week into Season 39, and here are the builds that nobody wants to play.
I went through the worldwide PC non-SSF leaderboards combining both normal and hardcore modes.
These are the 10 least popular class / set combinations, with the number of players that finished a greater rift of any rank, of that class and set:
A remarkably balanced list with 5 classes having two sets on the list, and the remaining two (demon hunter and necromancer) having none. Those two classes also avoided being on the list last season, as well as Season 33 which was the last time we had this theme. Demon hunters continue their streak of never making this list since I started back in Season 30.
The list is similar to the rankings from the last time we had this Haedrig's Gift rotation, which was back in Season 35. This season the MotE barbarian has pushed out the Masquerade necromancer.
No builds on the list have yet cleared GR150. The closest is the MotE barbarian which has reached GR145.
Here are the least popular builds for each class:
The least popular Haedrig's Gift this season was the Helltooth witch doctor. Witch doctor was also the least popular no-set class.
Builds that have always made these lists (other than when they are Haedrig's Gift which will push them out of the running) are: Uliana Monk, Jade Witch Doctor, Zuni Witch Doctor, Vyr Wizard. Of those 4 builds, Jade, Vyr's, and Zuni have also been the least-popular Haedrig's Gift.
Any idea what these berries are?
For context: our home was built in 2002. The plant producing these berries was part of the original landscaping. Over 2 decades ago, my wife transplanted it to our backyard so that the deer would stop attacking it. This year it started flowering for the first time ever, and then produced these berries.
Here is a tabulation of Season 39 greater rift progress for PC players, as of about 2pm Pacific on Friday, July 3rd. Roughly 1 week into the season.
This table groups together all the clears for each class, worldwide (EU, NA/US, TW/KR), on PC servers only, across SC/HC and both SSF and non-SSF. For each class I tallied the highest adjusted clear across all sets (and no set), number of GR150 clears, the time of the fastest GR150 clear, the lowest paragon GR150 clear, and the GR tier of the Rank 1000 clear (for this one I picked the higher tier between SSF and non-SSF). If nobody has cleared GR150 for a class then that column denotes the highest cleared GR tier in parentheses.
| Class | Highest adjusted clear | # of GR150 clears | Fastest GR150 | Lowest Paragon GR150 | Rank 1000 GR tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barbarian | 150.4 | (146) | – | – | 101 |
| Crusader | 155.8 | 3 | 12:29 | 1402 | 110 |
| Demon Hunter | 156 | 7 | 11:17 | 1179 | 121 |
| Monk | 147 | (144) | – | – | 99 |
| Necromancer | 159.2 | 190 | 6:15 | 1035 | 133 |
| Witch Doctor | 146.2 | (140) | – | – | 75 |
| Wizard | 157.6 | 16 | 9:54 | 1208 | 115 |
Necromancers have swept the board clean, just like in Season 37, but a little off the pace of the open cube, as we have not yet seen a 160+ adjusted clear this season and have only gotten about half as many GR150 necromancers in the first week. The GR150 clear count, fastest GR150, and rank 1000 tier for necromancers are close to, but not quite as strong as, the start of Season 33.
Wizards have a decent lead in 2nd over a near-tie between demon hunters and crusaders. Back in Season 33 the demon hunters were a lot closer to the wizards, but this time around have faded back enough to make crusaders seem close.
Barbarian, monk and witch doctor have failed to clear GR150 yet, and witch doctors are coming in worst overall with the lowest GR tier reached, lowest adjusted clear, and lowest rank 1000 tier.
Enjoy your weekend, fellow Nephalem!
Saw some writing on brown paper in the windows of the old bike repair side of the old Peak Sports bike shop location. Between Sibling Revelry and Plant Posse (which is in the old bike sales side of the old bike shop location). It says that "Sow Good bike shop" will be coming soon, and mentions bike sales and repairs.
We have dropped down to moderate as of today. Our grass season started in early May and ramped up to very high over only a couple weeks, with a peak count of 1005 particles per cubic meter in a 24-hr period at the end of May.
Has anyone tried the new Killer Burger in the old Cascade BBQ location, just below the corner of Kings and Walnut? What did you think?
Season 39 starts this coming Friday, June 26th, 2026. The season starts at 5pm PDT for all console players, no matter where you live. For PC (NA/US) the season starts at 5pm PDT, for PC (EU) the season starts at 5pm CEST, and for PC (TW/KR) it starts at 5pm KST.
This is the first of four guides I am posting for Season 39. The others are:
For most players, after leveling to 70, the main focus will be finishing Chapters I through IV of the season journey in order to obtain a full 6-piece armor set known as Haedrig's Gift.
The Haedrig's Gifts for Season 39 are as follows:
From a casual perspective, and looking at the GR20 / Torment IV requirements to finish out the 6-piece set, this is a very easy list for everyone except the necromancer.
The necromancer will probably be better off equipping any random legendaries and leveling up the LoD gem to beat GR20. Necromancers can boost this by upgrading scythes or two-handed scythes and filling their weapon and bonus cube slots with generic multipliers and dominate that way. So, don't feel bad at all for them.
In terms of top adjusted clear ranking from Season 33 (see the "Extra Cube" column), the necromancer has the strongest endgame build for its Haedrig's Gift. Wizard is still in the top 10, followed closely by witch doctor and monk. The only gifts that fall outside the upper half of rankings are barbarian and crusader, but can easily pivot to a different build to push with. Here is a full list of their rankings: Necro Rathma (1), Wizard Tal Rasha (10), WD Helltooth (14), Monk Raiment (16), DH Unhallowed (21), Barb Wastes (24), Crusader Roland (33).
Top-ten push builds (again, in terms of you adjusted clear rank) from Season 33 that aren't on the list of usual suspects are: Barb MotE, Necro Masquerade, Necro Inarius. The necromancers get the gains of the generic multipliers I mentioned previously. I am actually not certain why Might of the Earth is so strong.
Note that the casual leaderboard and in-game leaderboards were contaminated by the busted end of Season 33, and shouldn't be relied upon. Here is the disclaimer on the casual board:
>The leaderboard data for season 33 is heavily skewed: After the season accidentally ended early and the following rollback, some people ended up with their non-seasonal paragon points on their seasonal character, while the character would still show their seasonal paragon. Consequently, many adjusted clear values are inflated.
The barbarian (Wastes) and demon hunter (Unhallowed) both start with very good solo speed farming sets. Tal Rasha is also decent for the wizard with the in-geom or aether walker variant. The other classes will want to look to a different set (or no set) to farm with.
For a beginner/casual overall I would recommend the barbarian. The Wastes set gives you a great start, and is an excellent speed farmer. It only needs the Ambo's Pride mighty weapon and the Lamentation belt to really get going, and both can be cubed.
Good luck with your season start, fellow Nephalem, and never forget that town is lava!
EDIT - holy crap 1 week notice, Season 39 starts in a week, season 38 ends in 2 days!
For the past four seasons in a row we have gotten an announcement precisely 14 days in advance. Furthermore, of all the seasons in the recycled theme era, only one (S31) did not get announced on a Friday:
| Season | Announce | Start | Days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 1/5/2024 | 1/12/2024 | 7 |
| 31 | 3/27/2024 | 4/12/2024 | 16 |
| 32 | 6/28/2024 | 7/12/2024 | 14 |
| 33 | 9/27/2024 | 10/25/2024 | 28 |
| 34 | 1/10/2025 | 1/31/2025 | 21 |
| 35 | 5/22/2025 | 6/6/2025 | 14 |
| 36 | 8/29/2025 | 9/12/2025 | 14 |
| 37 | 11/21/2025 | 12/5/2025 | 14 |
| 38 | 3/13/2026 | 3/27/2026 | 14 |
A slim majority (5 of 9) of seasons have gotten announcements 14 days in advance, with most of the others going longer and Season 30 with an absurdly short notice.
Here is the space to watch for that expected Friday announcement:
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/feed/diablo-3
Here is an overview at D3resource of all the seasons of Diablo III:
In this discussion there was some debate about which power takes priority when you have an equipped item and the same item chosen in the cube. Intuition would suggest that the cube (having the best possible value) takes priority. Posts I linked in that discussion state otherwise.
I checked this with a cubed Dawn (at 65% vengeance cooldown reduction) and an equipped Dawn (with only 51%). My seasonal DH's base CDR is 38.06% on the sheet. I calculate it at 38.05525% from 10% enchantress, 10% paragon, 12.5% flawless royal diamond, 5% shoulders, and 8% gloves. 0.9x0.9x0.875x0.95x0.92=0.61944475 and subtracting that from one gives 0.3805525. So that matches the sheet.
Base cooldown is 90s. A 51% reduction of that makes it 44.1s. Reducing that further by 38.06% makes it about 27s. Vengeance lasts 20s so that's an expected downtime of 7s. I counted (in my head) about 6s of vengeance downtime in-game with the 51% Dawn equipped.
With the cubed item and my ethereal (with a Fortress Ballista power) or a primal Dawn (at 65%) I get no downtime.
This experiment makes it clear to me that the item you wear takes priority if you also have that item active in the cube, even if the item you wear is (much) worse.
We never know when Diablo III seasons will end until Blizzard makes an announcement. Seasons always start on a Friday and end on a Sunday. In the recycled theme era, less than half of the seasons have lasted 86 days. You could guess that Season 38 would end 86 days after it began, on Sunday, June 21st, with Season 39 starting on Friday, June 26th.
However, Diablo IV Season 13 ends on Tuesday, June 30th, with Season 14 starting as soon as Season 13 ends. This makes it highly unlikely we will see a Season 39 launch just 4 days prior.
My guess is that Season 39 will be pushed into mid-July, and we should see a two-week warning of that in early July.