Diablo 4 Lunar Awakening event: Start date, Shrine Buffs, more

❘ Published: 2024-01-31T02:46:19

Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 4 is bringing the Lunar New Year celebrations to Sanctuary with a limited-time event. Here’s everything you need to know about Diablo 4’s Lunar Awakening event including the release date, rewards, and more.

Diablo 4 is in the early stages of its third major content update, the Season of the Construct. While reception to Season 3 was initially plagued with complaints about the new seasonal mechanics from fans and content creators alike, course correction was pretty swift.

Players of Diablo 4 Season 3 have quickly changed their tune following a patch and praised the abundant loot from the new Vault dungeons and requested certain features become permanent additions to the game. To capitalize on the momentum, Blizzard has announced the Diablo 4 Lunar Awakening event to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

A recent blog post from the team at Blizzard went over all the details for the Lunar Awakening event. We’ve taken note of everything coming in the event including new resources to grind, event-exclusive cosmetic rewards, and powerful buffs to Diablo 4’s Shrines.

Diablo 4 Lunar Awakening start date and end date

Diablo 4’s Lunar Awakening event kicks off at 10 AM (PST) on February 6, 2024, and runs until 10 AM (PST) on February 20, 2024. This gives players two weeks to grind for all the exclusive rewards available.

In order to grind for those rewards, you’ll need to know exactly what the Lunar Awakening event entails. Read on for more details.

How to start Diablo 4’s Lunar Awakening event

To begin the Lunar Awakening event, players should travel to Ked Bardu and head to the northern part of town. Here you’ll find an NPC called Ying-Yue who is in charge of the Lunar Night Market and speaking to her will kick off the event.

“This market is your central hub for Lunar Awakening, where you’ll redeem your Ancestor’s Favor reputation for extravagant Lunar Renewal-themed rewards,” Blizzard explained in their blog post. Ancestor’s Favor is an event-exclusive resource that you’ll farm over the two weeks that the event is active.

Diablo 4’s Lunar Awakening event will offer players new powers.

Diablo 4 Lunar Awakening Shrine buffs

During the Lunar Awakening event, Shrines across Sanctuary will become special Lunar Shrines. Activating these shrines and dispatching enemies while their effects are active will reward players with the coveted Ancestor’s Favor.

On top of Ancestors Favor, Lunar Shrines offer improved buffs to their regular counterparts. Every Lunar Shrine offers a 50% increase in XP earned and a 30% increase in movement speed while active.

Each Lunar Shrine also functions as an improved version of the regular Shrines dotted throughout Sanctuary. Changes to the Shrine buffs are as follows:

Artillery Shrine – Casts have a chance to summon a holy bomb.
Blast Wave Shrine – Each explosion summons a cluster bombardment.
Channeling Shrine– Increased attack speed and chance to reset cooldowns.
Conduit Shrine – Summon frequent, powerful, shocking strikes.
Greed Shrine – Chance to summon a Treasure Goblin. While the Shrine is active, 25 kills summons a Treasure Goblin, and 50 kills summons a second.
Lethal Shrine – Chance to instantly execute a struck monster, causing Fear on surrounding monsters. Note: this includes Elites, but excludes Bosses and other Players.
Protection Shrine – You reflect all incoming damage. Damage reflected scales with Level and World Tier.

Lunar Shrines will be easy to tell apart from regular Shrines as they’ll have a thematically appropriate dragon encircling them. They’ll also have a unique icon on the map to make locating them more simple.

Diablo 4 Lunar Awakening rewards

Diablo 4’s Lunar Awakening event offers a host of cosmetic rewards to trade in your Ancestor’s Favor for, all of which are themed around the lunar new year. These include an exclusive mount, barding, and mount trophies to unlock as you grind through the 10 levels of Ancestor’s Favor reputation.

Blizzard has stated that certain Tree of Whispers bounties and Nightmare Dungeon Affixes will also reward Ancestor’s Favor to help access these rewards faster. The in-game shop will also feature Lunar New Year-themed weapon and armor transmogs that can be purchased with Platinum.

That’s everything we know so far about the Diablo 4 Lunar Awakening Event. We’ll be sure to keep you updated as more info emerges.

In the meantime, you might want to optimize your build and playstyle to make farming Ancestor’s Favor easier. We’ve got plenty of Diablo 4 guides to help with that.