We'll Take Astaroth Diablo 4's Season 9 finally lets us fight Astaroth in the endgame, but the rest of what it brings feels like a re-skin of old systems Diablo 4's Season 9 may not be the one that saves the game, but at least it's bringing back that Astaroth boss fight. Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment. News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor Published on May 23, 2025 Right on schedule, Blizzard delivered a long and detailed livestream covering Diablo 4’s upcoming patch 2.3.0 PTR (Public Test Realm). The developer revealed when the PTR will be going online, and what it’s actually going to include. The PTR will, as previously revealed, only be available on PC through Battlenet. It will go live next week, on Tuesday, May 27, ending one week later on June 3. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. As you may recall from the Diablo 4 roadmap, Season 9 is titled Sins of the Horadrim. The structure of the next season will be similar to recent ones: there’s going to be a new activity or two, with the new gameplay revolving mainly around powers you can acquire as you play said activities. For Sins of the Horadrim, the new endgame activity is called Escalating Nightmares (previously Dungeon Escalation), and the powers will be Horadric Spellcraft. Astaroth will also return as part of the season. The highlight of the new season is the ability to create Horadric Spells, a new system that relies on three elements to function: Catalysts, Infusions, and Arcana. Catalysts are the base, unmodified powers, which you can then alter with Infusions. This changes the elemental damage type of the spell, but you can also change the baseline power of it using Arcana. The system, in essence, is a refresh of Season 7's Witchcraft Powers, and is similar to Season 8's Boss Powers in the way it works, too. Look familiar? | Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment. Something else being introduced with Sins of the Horadrim is Horadric Strongrooms. These are micro-dungeons that can be found within larger Nightmare Dungeons. Your goal is to claim some lost Horadric knowledge within, and fight your way out in time, as a timer kicks in after you trigger a Strongroom. Doing so will earn you Horadric Attunement, which can later be exchanged for rewards. The chances of Horadric Strongrooms spawning increase the higher your Torment level, but you can also use Horadric Phials (a new seasonal currency) to increase your chance of finding them further. Some Nightmare Dungeon Sigils will also guarantee a Horadric Strongroom can be found within. Horadric Strongrooms follow a similar dungeon design where you get to choose what sort of challenge you want to take on by interacting with one of the different Horadric Pillars. Once the ritual is performed and the pillar is satiated, you’ll get Horadric Attunement. At the end of it, there’s a boss you’ll need to fight to complete the run. Before you leave, you’ll get to use your Horadric Attunement to acquire a Horadric cache. He's back! | Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment. The big new activity in Season 9 is Escalating Nightmares, which is a fancy name for a new chain of three Nightmare Dungeons, with nightmares escalating as you go through each. The main hook here is that each dungeon’s affixes stack with the next one, meaning the third in the chain will have affixes from all three. If you manage to go through all three, you’ll get to fight an Exalted version of Astaroth. Triggering an instance of Escalating Nightmare requires an Escalation Sigil, which can be found in Horadric caches from the aforementioned Strongrooms (starting from Torment 1). The Astaroth fight itself is one of the most impressive and memorable fights from Diablo 4’s campaign, and players have been asking Blizzard since launch to bring it into the endgame. This version has something of a mechanical twist, too. Astaroth will jump off his mount, essentially forcing you to fight both him and Amalgam. This isn’t just a visual trick, either, because slaying Amalgam before Astaroth sends the hound into a resurrection state that will put it back in the fight after some time. Watch on YouTube As you might have guessed, there’s a major focus on dungeons in Season 9. Blizzard is turning its gaze to dungeons across both the Seasonal, and Eternal Realms. This will encompass a few tweaks, as well as some new quality of life changes. You’ll soon be able to activate a Nightmare Sigil from within the Nightmare Dungeon itself once it’s complete, meaning you’ll be able to re-run the same one without having to leave and re-enter to create a new instance. The pool of Nightmare Dungeon affixes is also being bolstered with a set of new ones, available across both realms. Then there’s Horadric Jewels, which will be available in Torment 1 and beyond. Completing a Strongroom has a chance to spawn Horadric Tomes, which, when consumed, let you craft Horadric Jewels. These are effectively gems, just with some powerful effects that play nicely with your Horadric Spells. You’ll also need Horadric Phials and Gem Fragments to craft them, and they can only be socketed into Amulets and Rings. Catch up on the full change log on the Diablo 4 blog, which also includes PTR-specific boosts those taking part will need to rely on if they want to get into endgame content quickly.

New Research By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption Archaeologists are learning new details about the four individuals’ futile attempt to hide inside an ancient residence called the House of Helle and Phrixus A bed frame shoved against the door served as a makeshift barricade. Pompeii Archaeological Park In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, spewing ash and small volcanic pellets known as lapilli over the city of Pompeii. Nearly 1,950 years later, archaeologists are still sifting through the layers of debris and making remarkable discoveries about life—and death—in the ancient city. Researchers recently discovered four members of a family, including a child, who attempted to escape the eruption by barricading themselves inside a bedroom, according to a statement from the Pompeii Archaeological Park. Though their efforts were futile, their remains provide remarkable insight into the doomed city’s final moments. When the eruption began, most residents of Pompeii “had no clue what was happening,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the park and co-author of a new study published in the journal Scavi di Pompei, tells the New York Times’ Sara Novak. “Many thought the end of the world had come.” A majority of the 15,000 to 20,000 residents of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum fled and survived the eruption. The four family members were among the roughly 2,000 Pompeians who remained when the city was destroyed. As Helle struggles in the sea, Phrixus reaches out to his sister from atop a flying ram. Pompeii Archaeological Park Archaeologists found the family’s remains in a small but stately residence known as the House of Helle and Phrixus, named after a fresco of the mythological siblings discovered on the dining room wall. In Greek myth, the siblings survive their stepmother’s attempt to sacrifice them to the gods by flying away on a ram with a golden fleece. While Phrixus escapes, Helle falls off the ram into the sea. The fresco captures the siblings reaching out to each other—Helle in the sea, Phrixus on the ram—in a fittingly futile attempt at rescue. The architectural features of the house may have accelerated the family’s demise. Like many Roman houses, the House of Helle and Phrixus featured an open-roofed atrium, intended to aid rainwater collection. But as lapilli fell from the sky during the first phase of the eruption, the rock debris, which reached up to nine feet in some locations, quickly flooded the house through the atrium. At first, the archaeological evidence shows, the four individuals tried to protect themselves by packing into a small room. They even pushed a wooden bed frame against the door, hoping that it would prevent the lapilli from entering.When that failed, the researchers think they pulled back the barricade and attempted to escape. Based on the location of the remains, they only got as far as the triclinium, or dining room. “This house, with its decorations and its objects, shows us people who tried to save themselves,” says Zuchtriegel in the statement, per a translation by La Brújula Verde’s Guillermo Carvajal. “They didn’t succeed, but their story is still here, beneath the ashes.” Over the centuries, the ash preserved the remains of the family, the wooden bed frame and other items, including a bronze amulet known as a bulla and a stash of amphorae filled with garum, a popular Roman fish sauce. Ash and lapilli flooded into through the open-roofed atrium, burying the house in up to nine feet of debris. Pompeii Archaeological Park Researchers don’t know that this particular family owned the House of Helle and Phrixus. The group may have taken refuge there after the owners fled, as Marcello Mogetta, an archaeologist and Roman art historian at the University of Missouri who wasn’t involved in the study, tells the Times. Still, the recovered objects offer a glimpse into Pompeian family life. For instance, the child was likely the one wearing the bronze bulla, as tradition dictated that boys wear such amulets for protection until adulthood. Additionally, traces of masonry materials suggest that the house was under renovation. As Zuchtriegel says in the statement, “Excavating Pompeii means confronting the beauty of art, but also the fragility of life.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.