The new Diablo-centric in-game event for Heroes of the Storm, the Eternal Conflict, is now live, adding a new playable character and map, with more new content still to come.
As previously announced, the Eternal Conflict brings with it the Battlefield of Eternity map. It’s a two-lane, Diablo III-inspired map where each team fights to protect their Immortal, a giant NPC who attacks the enemy base once the opposing Immortal has been slain. It first became available on the Public Test Realm last week, and is now playable by all.
The other major addition today is the Butcher, a boss character from Diablo III. He’s a melee assassin with some unique mechanics, like being able to gather meat from defeated minions and heroes that offer him a damage boost for as long as he’s alive. This means the patch notes contain the line, “All meat is lost upon death,” making these the best patch notes in recent memory.
At least two more Diablo III characters are also on the way as part of the Eternal Conflict: The Skeleton King and the Monk. We learned about them earlier this month following the release of another Diablo character, the Crusader.
There’s a good deal of other new stuff in today’s patch. Some of it ties directly into this event, like the addition of Treasure Goblins who reward you with gold to buy new characters, while other aspects are more run-of-the-mill HotS patch changes. These include various visual and audio tweaks, balance adjustments, and shop fixes. The amount of gold earned for reaching certain hero levels has been changed as well; you’ll still ultimately earn the same amount, but you’ll now get 750 gold earlier than you otherwise would.
Full patch notes can be seen on Blizzard’s website.
Blizzard has been coy about nailing down exactly how long the Eternal Conflict will last or how much new content it will bring. A press release today describes it as a “multiweek” event and refers to “three new characters,” so the three we know about may be all it has planned for the time being.