Diablo 4's Lunar New Year event is back, so let's hope Blizzard doesn't piss everyone off this time, too

The new Lunar New Year is here, and it's bringing back Diablo 4's themed event for one more go next month.

Blizzard is keeping the Diablo 4 events train a-rollin’ with the return of Lunar Awakening, the game’s limited-time, Lunar New Year event. Lunar Awakening comes hot on the heels of the start of Season of Witchcraft, which kicked off last week.

The premise of Lunar Awakening primed it to be one of the game’s most fun events yet, but Blizzard fumbled the bag pretty hard last year when it actually went live. The Blizzard of the second half of 2024 onwards, however, is more confident and in-tune with the Diablo 4 community, so here’s hoping it doesn’t repeat the same mistakes.

This year’s iteration of Lunar Awakening will be available to all Diablo 4 players in game from Tuesday, February 4 until Tuesday, February 18 - a two-week runtime. Just like last year, this year’s version also revolves entirely around the many Shrines scattered across the game’s world and dungeons.

Activating a Lunar Shrine grants you 100% bonus experience (multiplicative) for two minutes, and boosts your power. Fighting enemies while the effects are active earns you Ancestral Favor. This is the event’s Reputation grind, essentially. Even if you don’t immediately find enemies to kill, activating a Shrine will spawn some spirits to let you take advantage of its bonus.

All of that is on top of the Shrine’s original effect. These Shrines can be easily spotted, too, thanks to their unique map icon. Here’s what you can expect from each type of Lunar Shrine:

• 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, kills summon a Treasure Goblin.
• 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 Difficulty.

Faction rep! | Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment.

The event's handler is Ying-Yue, whom you’ll find in the Northern part of Ked Bardu. You’ll be travelling there often to redeem your Ancestral Favor for Unceasing Gifts, as well as all the Lunar-themed cosmetics.

Speaking of which, there are six Lunar-themed cosmetics to unlock as part of the event’s progression, and ten Ancestral Favor rewards in total. You’ll continue earring more rewards, however, even after you’re done with the main progression.The in-game store will also be refreshed with a host of Lunar-themed armour and mount cosmetics, if you’re looking to spend some real money.

Last year’s version worked similarly to this, but the pre-event art showed certain cosmetics as items you could earn as part of it, and they ended up being exclusive to the shop. It also had a brief progression that caused players to be done with it in a day. It’ll be interesting to see how the community responds this time around.