Diablo 4 Rebirth & War Plans: Season 15 Rules and the Season 16 PTR

Diablo 4’s Rebirth system, per Blizzard’s official Season of Hell’s Legacy overview, lets you convert an existing Eternal character into a fresh Seasonal one instead of rolling a new hero every three months, and Shared War Plans lets that character’s reputation grind help your other saves instead of starting from zero each time, per the same overview. Both features shipped as permanent account systems in patch 3.2.1 alongside Season 15, Season of Hell’s Legacy, which went live on September 15, 2026. Each part gets its own section below: what Rebirth keeps and destroys, how the War Plans partitions work, and the one Hardcore rule that decides whether a dead character’s reputation survives into Eternal.

Update, 23 October 2026: Blizzard has announced the 3.3.0 PTR for Season 16, which adds three new layers on top of War Plans. They have their own section further down and stay test content until Season 16 goes live.

Rebirth converts a character from the Eternal realm into the Seasonal realm, transferring it to Season 15 and resetting its level back to 1 . Instead of creating a brand-new Seasonal character from scratch, you pick an existing Eternal character to continue its story for the season . Blizzard also tracks a running tally of hours played across every Rebirth that character goes through, so the time cost of repeated Rebirths is at least visible on the character sheet even without a published average .

The Rebirth conversion sits alongside the rest of Season 15’s launch package — the Prime Evil Soul Splinters, the returning Legacy Uniques, and the new Horadric Cube reroll recipes all shipped in the same 3.2.1 build. If you’re still deciding which of the season’s systems to touch first, the Season 15 Splinters of Evil guide covers the reputation-and-power layer Rebirth doesn’t touch.

If the character isn’t empty, the game simply won’t let the conversion happen — this is a hard block, not a suggestion . Readers coming from an older character who also want the broader pre-season housekeeping — stash space, Season Journey resets, and so on — can check the Season 15 prep checklist for the rest of that list.

Shared War Plans is the other permanent system arriving with Season of Hell’s Legacy. Reputation points earned by one character now carry over to any alt on the same account that matches that character across three separate categories . Each character still keeps its own planner for spending those shared points, similar to how shared skill points or Paragon points already work, so sharing progress doesn’t force every alt into the same build .

Blizzard’s own example makes the boundary concrete: a Seasonal Non-Hardcore Non-SSF character shares War Plans progress with another Seasonal Non-Hardcore Non-SSF character, but does not share with a Seasonal Non-Hardcore SSF character, because the ruleset partition doesn’t match .

For anyone returning to characters that were active before the season changeover, War Plans progress from Season 14 characters carried over to Eternal when the season changed on September 15 . All accumulated reputation points earned on characters within the same partition add together into the corresponding Eternal characters, rather than replacing one another .

Hardcore introduces one condition that changes the plan above. Only the War Plans progress of characters that are living at the end of a season transfers — a dead Hardcore character’s accumulated points are not picked up at the changeover .

If your Hardcore character survives the season

Nothing extra to do. A living Hardcore character’s War Plans points transfer to Eternal on their own at season end, the same way Season 14’s did on September 15 .

If your Hardcore character is already dead

From Season 15 onward, moving a dead Hardcore character’s War Plans progress into Eternal requires one other living Hardcore character in that same partition to go through the seasonal changeover — Blizzard states plainly, “It can even be a level 1 ‘storage’ Hardcore character” . Once that living character moves to Eternal, it deposits the accumulated points into the account’s Eternal Hardcore War Plans progress .

Blizzard’s 3.3.0 PTR overview opens a Public Test Realm for Season 16 from 27 October, 10:00 PDT, to 3 November, 10:00 PST. The build is PC only and installs from the game version menu in Battle.net; PC Game Pass players reach it through Battle.net from the Xbox app. Seasonal features need a new Seasonal test character. On the test realm the vendor Mrak, who stands by the main Waypoint of each major city, can unlock and max War Plans (with 20 Marks of Wisdom and 3 Marks of El’druin) and max Tyrael’s Boons, so the new trees can be tried at once.

Everything in this section is test content. Blizzard will adjust it from PTR feedback, and the post does not give a Season 16 start date. It also says some Season of Hell’s Legacy features will continue into Season 16 but are left off the PTR; which ones is due to be announced the week after the post. The PTR post does not mention Rebirth or Shared War Plans.

War Plans Tactics

Tactics is a new meta-progression tree for War Plans, on both Seasonal and Eternal. Finishing War Plans activities earns points, and you put them into nodes that raise the odds of the activities and rewards you want:

• Activity nodes: up to 3 points each make that activity more likely to show up in the War Plans you are offered. One point in Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons unlocks an extra choice that favours Greater Helltides or Escalation Dungeons.
• Reward nodes: up to 3 points each improve the odds of one reward type: gear (armor, weapons, jewelry), crafting materials (Obducite, salvage, gems, Horadric Cube materials), gold, activity keys and Talisman items.

How many Tactics points you can earn in total is not stated.

Marks of Wisdom

Turning in a finished War Plan now also pays a new currency, Marks of Wisdom. Respeccing nodes, both in the Tactics tree and in each activity’s own tree, costs Marks of Wisdom rather than gold. On the PTR you can hold at most 20; a cap for the live game is not stated.

Tyrael’s Boons: the seasonal War Plans tree

From Season 16, each season gets its own themed War Plans tree, and this one is called Tyrael’s Boons. It mixes seasonal perks, such as extra Seasonal reputation or currency, with general ones, such as cheaper Obols at the Purveyor of Curiosities. Every Seasonal player gets it, with or without the Lord of Hatred expansion. The tree holds up to 132 points, which Blizzard says buys up to 4 of the 6 selections spread over its four paths:

The last step of Trash for Treasure adds a Horadric Cube recipe, Greater Temper: for 30 Scrolls of Restoration and 1,000 Obducite it turns an item’s Tempered Affix into a Greater Affix. Taking points back out of Tyrael’s Boons costs 5,000,000 gold per point. Seasonal Blessings stay next to the tree but become fixed, with the same five Blessings every season.

Horadric Items and Talisman sets

Horadric Items are new Legendaries that arrive with the Death Cult of Ullo Sar, and the PTR vendor lists them as Seasonal items. Each Horadric affix belongs to one Talisman set and works differently by slot:

• Jewelry: counts as one extra piece of that set. One charm plus matching Horadric jewelry already gives the 2-piece bonus, which leaves charm slots free for more sets or other combinations. Blizzard notes this differs from Seal of the Diamond Mind.
• Armor and weapons: add new effects that switch on once you have at least the 2-piece bonus of the named set, for example extra skill ranks, more damage or better defenses.

Lair Boss, Infernal Hordes, Pit and Helltides

The Corrupted Reaper from Season of Death Awakening comes back with a partner: the Fractured Reaper merges her abilities with the Corrupted Reaper’s for a two-boss Lair fight. Its loot is teased but not listed. The post also names reworked Infernal Hordes and Pit activities; details are not given. The patch notes move Helltides to a fixed schedule, starting on the hour in base-game zones and on the half hour in expansion zones, and Aberrant Cinders no longer reset between Helltides.

A few practical questions aren’t answered in the official overview or the 3.2.1 patch notes: how many times a single character can use Rebirth per season, whether Paragon points, Paragon boards, or Renown carry over with the conversion, whether a Rebirthed character can be converted back to Eternal before the season ends, and whether the level 1 restart comes with any catch-up XP mechanic . A couple of community guides have filled in guesses here — one speculates Blizzard may cap Rebirths per season, and another states outright that Paragon points do not carry over — but neither claim comes from Blizzard’s own text, so treat them as unconfirmed rather than settled . Whatever the answer turns out to be, the level 1 restart means walking back through the leveling arc that gets a character to endgame Paragon progression, the same climb covered in the guide to where power comes from after level 70.

Sources and Confidence

This table separates what the studio has confirmed from what comes out of press previews, and what is still just circulating. Each claim below is tied to the post and the game version it describes.