The next major update will introduce more challenging rifts for adventure mode

Apr 3, 2014 16:16 GMT  ·  By

Diablo 3 will receive some changes to the Nephalem Rifts mechanic introduced by the recent Reaper of Souls expansion, in the form of tiered instances that will slowly unlock more challenging versions as players complete them.

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls introduced a wide range of all-new features including the Adventure mode, which allows players to complete different bounties and then travel through Nephalem Rifts, mid-size dungeons with a clear end boss in mind and great loot.

While the feature is quite popular, veteran gamers are looking for even bigger challenges, beyond the regular difficulty levels inside the RPG.

In order to please them, Blizzard has confirmed on its forums that a special new mechanic is coming in the form of tiered Nephalem Rifts, which should keep players hooked on the experience and try out their skills.

"We're actually looking to expand upon Nephalem Rifts in our upcoming 2.1.0 patch, creating what we're internally calling "Tiered Rifts." In a way, Tiered Rifts are similar to an endless dungeon in that as you complete different tiers of Rifts, you can unlock more tiers. Another goal with Tiered Rifts is to provide a way for players to test and challenge themselves, and also compare their progression against the progress of other players," one of the studio's representatives said.

These tiered rifts will slowly unlock more challenging versions and players will be tasked with completing as many as possible, while their performance is displayed on a global leaderboard.

Blizzard's Wyatt Cheng explained just how the new mechanic works and what players need to do in order to order to unlock harder rifts.

"You do your Bounties and get the tokens, then you do a Nephalem Rift. If you clear it, there's a chance to get a Greater Rift Token. If you successfully do that, you'll get a Greater Rift Key (Rank 2); if you clear that one, you get Rank 3, etc. Much like seasons, we're going to have a leaderboard as well, so you can see who got to the highest tier Rift, and what time were they able to obtain on that."

The whole idea sounds really good and will certainly delight those who are looking for bigger and bigger challenges even on the grueling Torment 6 difficulty setting.

As of yet, however, Blizzard hasn't offered any other details about patch 2.1.0 for Diablo 3 nor when we might expect the update to go live for the dungeon crawling RPG.