The portals to hell have legs and health bars in Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred's Season of Hatred Rising

Demons can be anything they want, apparently. In Diablo 4's next season, which starts on October 7, a massive creature called the Realmwalker will stomp around Sanctuary with a portal to hell on its back. Defeating it will send you into a dungeon with more portals and new seasonal potions to help fill your inventory with loot.

The Season of Hatred Rising, Diablo 4's sixth season that will launch alongside its Vessel of Hatred expansion, has a fairly simple premise: Hunt the big portal demons, step into the portal, kill monsters, and get loot. The big guys will show up in the open world every 15 minutes for everyone, but they'll also show up every hour in the expansion-exclusive jungle region Nahantu.

On the other side of the portal you'll enter a Seething Realm dungeon with a realm gate (read: a differently shaped portal) and can spend materials to choose which kind of seasonal potion you want to find at the end. The potions are called Seething Opals and they increase the chance for monsters to drop certain types of items, like boss summoning materials, crafting materials, and gold, for 30 minutes. They also give you a 15% XP boost, so you'll probably want to keep one of them active every time you sit down to play.

Like every other Diablo 4 season, there will be a series of quests to teach you how everything works, as well as a bunch of rewards for earning reputation with the associated faction, the Zakarum Remnants. The catch is that it seems like you have to have a potion buff active to receive reputation as you kill monsters, so everyone will have to hunt down that portal demon.

Although it's a rather simple season, there are sweeping changes to the structure of Diablo 4 that fundamentally alter how you play coming alongside it. Those include: 

• A new max level of 60 to shorten the journey to the endgame (XP will earn you paragon points afterward)
• New difficulty levels that gradually increase your chances to find rare loot
• A global squish to all stats in the game so numbers are more legible
• New items and legendary powers
• Loads of class balance changes 

All of this will be available whether you own Vessel of Hatred or not. But expansion owners will also have a new campaign, the new spiritborn class, runes and runewords, mercenary companions, and the Kurast undercity dungeon too.

The Season of Hatred Rising will drop at the same time as the global launch of the Vessel of Hatred expansion on October 7 for North and South America and October 8 for everyone else.