Absolutely—but with a few caveats. Season 9 introduces a lot of new systems that are fun, experimental, and grind-worthy… but also a little rough around the edges. Let’s break it down one system at a time.
Strong Rooms – What Are They and Are They Worth It?
Strong Rooms are the new dungeon side activity, found inside Nightmare Dungeons. To access one, you'll want a sigil that mentions “Strong Room” in the description. That guarantees you'll get one of these special rooms inside the dungeon.
While progressing normally through your Nightmare Dungeon, a hidden portal will eventually spawn on the main path. It’s obvious and unmissable. After killing a pack of mobs that spawn with it, you activate the portal and get sucked into a new chamber—this is the Strong Room.
Once inside, you’re tasked with completing ritual-style events using “Attunement.” You kill monsters, interact with pillars, and do mini-objectives that reward Attunement. There’s a short ritual intro room that feels a little unnecessary, but the actual activity has decent pacing and variety.
You select three modifiers before you begin—things like bonus attunement from shrines, a special demon spawning, or enemies dropping movement buffs. Then it’s time to fight through various rooms to complete each ritual and fill up your attunement.
Problem? There’s no progress bar. You’re told “gain attunement,” but there’s zero feedback on how much you’ve earned compared to what’s possible. That lack of clarity hurts the gameplay loop. It’s fun, but unclear. You could finish with 2,000 attunement and wonder, "Was that good?" or hit 4,000 (which seems to be the max) and still not know what that means.
Once you’re done, a boss spawns. Kill it, and you're rewarded with vials and loot. You also earn a Nightmare Dungeon Escalation Sigil, which ties into the Asteros boss fight later. Unfortunately, no opticide drops, which makes Strong Rooms inefficient for endgame currency farming. This feels like a missed opportunity, and if Blizzard wants Strong Rooms to remain relevant beyond the novelty phase, that needs to change.
Horadri Spells – What Are They and Are They Good?
These new “spells” are more like customizable, modular skill effects. You bind them to your regular skills and they trigger powerful effects either passively or actively. Think of them as skill augments.
For example, one spell—Propulsion—creates a massive mana blast that deals millions of damage. You can bind this to something like Corpse Explosion, and it triggers every time you use it, even if there’s no corpse. You can then modify Propulsion with reactive ooze to gain barrier or shadow conversion for synergy with your build.
The cooldown is reduced if you equip Horadri Jewels with specific modifiers, such as 25% Catalyst Cooldown Reduction. These jewels are also new to the season, earned mainly through Strong Rooms.
The spells feel powerful and fun, especially when you line up all the modifiers. Some options, like Disintegrate, shoot out damage beams, but are weaker because they rely on damage over time instead of crits. Others, like Cosmic Anomalies, deal huge AoE damage and scale well with summoning builds.
Overall, these spells add a ton of flexibility and flair to your build. If you enjoy experimenting with damage types, triggers, and scaling effects, they’re very worth investing into. Just be ready to farm a lot of vials from Strong Rooms to upgrade them.
Nightmare Dungeon Escalation – Endgame Progression
Escalation is the system that ties the season together. When you complete a Strong Room, you earn an Escalation Sigil. These are used to unlock new tiers of Nightmare Dungeons with escalating difficulty and modifiers, eventually unlocking the path to Asteros, the seasonal boss.
It’s essentially your key to endgame. Escalated dungeons feel harder and more rewarding, and are the only way to push further into Season 9’s endgame loop. If you're here for challenge and loot scaling, this is where you'll be spending most of your time.
So… How Strong Is Your Character After All the Nerfs?
Surprisingly, stronger than you might expect—if you build smart. Even after nerfs, layering your Horadri spell effects correctly can fully restore your survivability and power.
For instance, on a Minion Necro build, using Propulsion with the barrier augment and cooldown jewels means you’re constantly barriered, reducing incoming damage significantly. Combine this with minions, shadow damage boosts, and lucky hit chance, and you can face-tank even higher-tier bosses and Pit levels.
The key is adapting. No more brainless face-roll builds, but if you engage with the systems, you end up even more powerful than before—just in a more intentional way.
What About the New Jewels?
New Horadri Jewels are one of the sleeper stars of the season. You get them mostly from Strong Rooms, and they provide high-impact modifiers to your spells. Cooldown reduction, additional triggers, damage conversion—these are huge.
Crafting and upgrading them involves unlocking recipes through seasonal progression. Once upgraded, they define your build direction more than many gear affixes.
There’s also an odd interaction where some items let you re-roll Temper affixes—possibly a bug, but if it becomes a feature, it would completely change item progression. Right now, it’s something to watch.
